Chapter 35
SKY
I spent the next week in a daze. I was pregnant? How was that even possible? The doctors were probably wrong. They had to be wrong.
I stared at my reflection in the floor-length mirror, shirt off, trying to see a pregnancy that was only months old. This couldn’t be real. How could I raise a baby? I couldn’t even take care of myself half the time!
“Sky?” Fletcher approached slowly, worry apparent in the wrinkles above his brow. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m not pregnant,” I said, like a petulant child telling his parents he wasn’t going to bed. “It’s not real.”
He softened. “Oh, Sky. Come here—”
I jerked out of his reach, shaking my head. “No! It’s not. It can’t be. I’m too fucked up. I don’t deserve another baby. Not after—” I choked on the words, hugging my arms to my sides. “No.”
“I had a feeling this would happen,” Fletcher murmured. “I’ll be right back.” He turned and walked off, and I glared at my reflection in the mirror, as if it could fix the broken things inside of me.
When Fletcher returned, there was a small, rectangular box in his hand. My stomach sank when I realized what it was.
“A pregnancy test?” I whispered, and he nodded. I bit down on my lip hard enough that it throbbed.
“It’s up to you if you want to take it, but it would be the proof you need,” Fletcher explained. “You need to know, one way or another, in order to accept the truth and move forwards. This will give you the truth.”
He handed me the box, and I took it with a trembling hand. I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid of it being positive or negative, to be honest.
If it was positive, and I was pregnant, could I really raise a baby?
But if it was negative… I peeked up at Fletcher.
Would Adam and Fletcher hate me for it? Had the doctors gotten their hopes up for nothing?
Worse, would they expect me to give them a child down the road?
The thought made me feel queasy. I didn’t want to give anyone else a child. I’d lost too many already.
“Will you…” I swallowed back emotions. “Will you wait outside the bathroom until I’m done?”
“Of course, Sky,” Fletcher said gently. “Anything you need.”
I closed myself up in the bathroom and unboxed the test, being sure to read the instructions twice to make sure I didn’t do it wrong.
It was pretty simple: Pee on the stick and wait ten minutes. Okay. I could do that.
But ten minutes was an eternity when your hands were clammy and your insides were shaking and you felt like you might vomit.
Finally, the alarm on my phone went off. I stood on shaky legs and wobbled over to look at the test sitting on the counter. I squinted down at it, my heart stopping dead in my chest when I saw the two very strong blue lines.
Pregnant.
“Fuck.” I stumbled back, gripping my chest, my breath jagged and uneven. I was pregnant. Fuck, I was pregnant. I sank to my knees on the bathroom tile and gripped my head in my hands, tugging at my hair as a wail of a sob burst from me, unbidden.
“Sky?” Fletcher’s voice was muffled through the door as he knocked. “Are you okay?”
I barely heard him through my cries, buckled over myself and sobbing in the middle of the bathroom. I barely registered that he was there, kneeling beside me, wrapping me in a blanket and rubbing my back.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered, burying my face in the crook of the Omega’s neck.
“You can, sweetheart. I have the utmost faith in you,” he said.
“I don’t deserve to have a baby. Not when I failed all of them. Not when they’re all dead because of me.” I hiccuped, my heart aching.
“Sky, it wasn’t your fault. None of that was your fault.” He pulled me close, and I held on for dear life.
When I finally stopped crying, reduced to sniffles here and there, and my head had cleared, I sighed.
“I always wanted to be a dad,” I admitted softly. “When Dr. Thompson ran the tests, and it turned out I was pregnant, I was…foolishly hopeful. At least the first time. I felt joy every time I felt the baby kick, and I’d talk to it every night before bed.”
I closed my eyes. “Only for Dr. Thompson to rip it away from me the minute it was born. I heard its cries. It cried for me…”
And then never again. I’d mourned for months, grieving the child I’d lost, wondering what had happened to it, if it was still alive, but having little faith that it was.
At one point, I’d demanded answers of Dr. Thompson. “WHERE IS MY BABY?!” I’d screamed, and he’d simply smiled at me and said, in his cool, flat tone, “It served its purpose,” and I lost it. In the middle of the hall, I attacked him, landing several good hits before they jabbed me with a sedative.
I knew better than to get attached to the other pregnancies. Their fate had been sealed. Instead, I felt sorrow instead of joy when one of them would kick, because I knew once I gave birth, their light would be snuffed out.
“No one’s gonna take your baby this time,” Fletcher assured me.
“We’ll do everything right by it. Lamaze classes.
Prenatal yoga. Adam and I will build a nursery and buy all the essentials, like a crib and baby clothes and a changing table.
It’s gonna be okay, Sky. I promise. We’re gonna be right here, every step of the way. ”
I sank against the Omega, pressing my cheek to his shoulder. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
I wrapped my arms around him, hugging him as fiercely as I had the energy for. “Thank you.”
“C’mon, let’s move this party to the couch. What sounds good for dinner? I’ll have Adam pick it up on his way home.”
I perked up, considering my options. “Chinese?” I asked. “I could go for some shrimp fried rice.”
Fletcher placed a tender kiss to my forehead, then helped me up. “Chinese it is.”
The two of us retreated to the living room, where we put on some soft music and colored in intricate coloring books with fine-liner pens until Adam came home with the goods, and the food was so delicious that I almost forgot about my problems.
Almost.