Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
DAKOTA
Micah had been looking at me weirdly this entire morning; ever since I’d mentioned not having my period again this month. Like he knew something I didn’t.
But what would he know? This was relatively normal on my birth control. I didn’t mention it for a specific reason; I was just talking.
“Is something wrong?” I asked him, sitting at the breakfast table with my cereal. I’d moved on to off-brand frosted mini wheats. Something about generic brand cereal was better to me.
“What do you mean?” Micah responded, still looking out the window at the backyard, where the heavy snow was already mostly gone, only a light layer remaining. There was tension lining his shoulders.
“You look tense,” I commented, dragging my spoon through the milk.
“I’m not tense.”
“Well—”
“Mason’s going to bring you a pregnancy test. Okay? Just to try it.”
“Um.” I stared at him. He turned around after a minute. “Mason said—”
“Yeah. It’s not possible. And neither of us are lying about that. I wouldn’t lie about that.” He dragged a hand through his hair, bicep flexing. “I just…It doesn’t matter. Would you take a test if I bought one?”
“I guess so. I haven’t had any pregnancy symptoms, though. Other than missing my period, but that’s normal with my birth control. Like I told you.”
“You’ve been tired.”
“I’ve been tired my entire life.”
“Okay.” He slipped his phone out of his pocket, then typed something on it before putting the device away again. “Mason’s almost here.”
“Seriously? You don’t seriously think I’d be pregnant, do you?” Nervousness began to thread itself through my veins, weaving its way through me in a shivering wave. It wasn’t possible, and even if it was, I had zero intentions on having a child right now. I would figure something out. I had to.
“I don’t know what I think. I know what I think is possible, but I also know you are different than anyone I’ve ever encountered. Maybe I don’t know everything.”
“I took a test at Thanksgiving, and it said negative.”
Micah looked at me. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know. I was being irrational. It was expired, though, so I’m not sure if the results are affected by that.”
“They are. False negatives are much more common with an expired test.”
I squeezed my hands together, fingers twisting. “Well, that’s all I had. You don’t really think I could be pregnant, do you?”
“If I’m thinking logically, no, I do not think that. But there’s something worrying me. I just need to be sure of what’s going on.”
“I can’t have a baby right now,” I said, my voice starting to shake.
“It’s okay—”
“I really, really can’t, Micah.”
“I don’t think you will,” he said. “But we’re going to make sure.”
“Wait.” I shook my head, panic squeezing my throat tight, anxiety settling into the grooves of my brain. “Wait. I actually don’t want to do this right now, I—”
The garage door opened, Micah and I both turning our heads to watch Mason entering the house.
“No,” I said, my gaze pulling back towards Micah as I sought his reassurance. “I don’t want to do it.”
“Please?” His eyebrows pulled together.
“Micah, I don’t want to,” I begged.
“I’m sure everything will be fine. It’ll be quick.”
Everything will be fine.
“Okay,” I whispered numbly.
I stood up, shuffling over towards Mason in my socks.
He was confused and agitated, holding a plastic bag in his fist. He angrily thrust it in my direction as he kicked his shoes off, causing irritation to bristle through me.
As if this situation was my fucking fault, when he knew it wasn’t.
The only people I was currently having sex with were in this room.
And they’d also apparently been fucking each other.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Micah questioned from behind me.
I snatched the bag from Mason’s hand, ignoring Micah, then went upstairs to Micah’s bathroom and slammed the door.
Once I was alone, I noticed how badly my hands were shaking.
I really didn’t want to do this. They hadn’t given me much warning, or time to prepare.
I could not have a baby.
I wouldn’t. No matter what.
This wasn’t possible, and still, my brain had convinced every inch of my subconscious that it’d already happened.
I just had to try and remember what both Mason and Micah told me. There needed to be a supernatural element in both parents, and there was no supernatural element in me. I would’ve known. I didn’t have any scars on my back, hadn’t been born in Heaven, didn’t have an angelic aspect or any powers.
There were two digital pregnancy tests in the bag, and I took them both out, then set them on the counter, sucking in big gulps of air in an attempt to calm myself down. Maybe I should’ve let Micah be here with me.
Stupid.
But this wasn’t possible, so it didn’t even fucking matter. I was being dramatic.
I slid my finger under the flap on the first box to open it, then took out the test and tore open the plastic with trembling fingers. Repeating the process with the second one, I grasped both of them in my hand as I sat on the toilet, a pit in my stomach and a buzzing in my thoughts.
I was alone in the bathroom, but I felt watched, felt some sort of presence in the back of my mind. There was something terrifyingly holy about the way the light fell on my bare thighs, like four archangels were watching from Heaven.
I hated it.
I wanted to disappear, to hide, to sink into the ground.
Whatever was happening to me was not something I wanted.
I wished for Mary, not Michael and Gabriel and Raphael and Uriel.
Since I’d never been particularly religious, I’d never put too much thought into what I’d learned about the real version of Heaven, but in this moment, I wished for the comfort of the virgin Mary.
Of Jesus Christ. Something familiar to me.
Everything about Mason and Micah was foreign, went against everything I’d learned in all the years prior to meeting them. And for whatever reason, I was overwhelmed by it all now.
Tears slid silently down my cheeks in endless twin streams. I wished I could have a break from all of this, just for a little while. I’d been running for so fucking long, treading water while my mind deteriorated and my body weakened, always in over my head.
Running, hiding, fighting, trying to breathe, trying to keep myself from shattering in a way that couldn’t be fixed. But everything was always chasing me, always getting closer to finally catching me.
Because she’s prey, and so am I.
I’m so fucking tired.
I laid the two pregnancy tests flat on the counter and didn’t look at either of them.
I pulled up my underwear and shorts, then slid down to sit on the heated tiles, crumpling into a ball, laying on my side.
I stared at Micah’s nice bath mat and thought of the one at my trailer with all the threads hanging off of it.
A minute passed in which I avoided looking at the ceiling out of fear that something might be watching me from there. And then I got on my knees and looked over the edge of the countertop to the small windows on the digital tests.
Pregnant
On both of them.
For a few seconds, I did nothing.
I stared at them, my hands clenched into fists to prevent the shaking from getting any worse.
My heart was beating harder and harder. Too hard.
I felt sick to my stomach.
No. No. No.
Please don’t let this be fucking true.
All my efforts to escape the life I’d grown up in felt more and more futile by the second.
I’d never felt as much like trash as I did now. Like I’d fucked up every decision I’d ever made, and my life was completely embarrassing.
“I don’t want to have the baby,” I said as I burst out of the bathroom, Mason and Micah both sitting on the edge of the bed. They both stood up.
“You’re pregnant?” Micah asked, his voice strained.
I gestured back at the open door to the bathroom with a shaking hand. He stepped in with Mason, both of them looking at the two tests laying next to each other on the counter.
“I don’t want it,” I repeated.
“You don’t have to have it,” Micah said as he approached me, his arms slipping easily around my body, holding me to his chest.
I just started crying harder.
“I really don’t want a baby. I don’t want to be pregnant.”
“That’s completely fine.” Micah’s voice was low and rumbling against my cheek.
I squeezed my eyes shut, more tears sliding down my hot cheeks.
“Can we make an appointment?”
“I need to figure out the best way to do this, okay? I don’t think you can go to a clinic. We don’t even know how far along you are. It can’t be very far.”
“We have to go a clinic,” I said, pulling back, panic making my head spin. “Can’t you just make them forget if there’s any ichor?”
“I can only make them forget me. Not you or the baby.”
“It’s not a baby. It’s a fucking parasite,” I snapped, wrapping my arms around my stomach, stepping away from him further. Right after the word left my mouth I wanted to take it back. But I didn’t.
“Okay.” Micah dropped his hands from my shoulders.
I looked at Mason standing to the side of him, waiting for him to say something, acknowledge me in any way. When he didn’t, anger trickled in my blood.
“You have nothing to say,” I surmised.
“I support you. That’s what I have to say. And we’re going to figure it out.”
“Fine.”
I pulled back the comforter on Micah’s bed and climbed onto the mattress, facing away from both of them as I laid on my side with my knees tucked up to my chest, endless tears spilling down my face and soaking the pillow.
Neither of them stopped me. My glazed-over eyes stared out the window at the gray sky and tops of the pine trees.
There were pills I could probably take at home, to prevent this from happening.
I didn’t know much about that, but I knew this pregnancy couldn’t have been very far along. At the most, two months.
Two months.
Pregnant.
What the fuck.
No.
Mason and Micah were conversing behind me in hushed tones, but I was too stuck in my own head to care about listening to what they said.
Knowing there was something inside of me was so indescribably strange. I wanted it out immediately. More tears soaked my face and the pillow.
I wasn’t going to continue the cycle I’d been born into. I knew I wasn’t ready or healed enough to have a baby. My life wasn’t together. I couldn’t provide the type of life a child deserved. I was too fucked up.
Footsteps left the room and I looked over my shoulder to see Micah leaving the room. My eyes flitted to Mason’s stony face.
“You lied to me,” I said through my quiet tears. “You said this wasn’t possible.”
“Because it’s not, Dakota. It’s not possible.”
I pulled the covers up to my chest, wiping beneath my eyes, sobs stuck in my tight throat.
“Then what is happening? Why do those tests say positive?”
“Maybe because you’ve added a third guy to your rotation?”
My jaw dropped open, my cheeks flaming red, his accusation slicing clean between my ribs.
“Get out,” Micah snapped as he stalked back into the room. “Get the fuck out before I fucking kill you.” He grabbed Mason’s shoulder and ripped him backwards, then shoved him towards the door.
“Like you didn’t say the same fucking thing!”
“I didn’t.”
“And you can’t kill me.”
“I can try.”
Micah lifted me off the bed, then brought me downstairs in his arms and set me on the couch, covering me with a blanket. Mason was still lingering near the bottom of the stairs, watching us.
“Mason, I said leave,” Micah ordered.
“I’m not fucking leaving, and you’re completely insane if you think I am. She’s literally somehow pregnant with—”
“Well I’m not going to be pregnant very long,” I reminded him through tears, pulling the blanket up under my chin. “I’m going to get rid of it.”
Mason glanced over at me. “Okay. Fine.”
Micah came back into the room, glaring at Mason with the sort of hatred that could only be built on great familiarity. He held a cold water bottle for me, his free hand flexing at his side. I didn’t take the water bottle, so he set it on the coffee table.
There was no air in the room.
I wanted to curl up smaller and smaller, until I could disappear into the couch. I didn’t want this baby, but seeing Mason not want it either hurt me more than I’d ever expected it to.
I had no choice but to stand here and bleed; he got to make the decision to be disgusted by it.
There were very few times that either of them had ever made me feel like a slut in the bad way, and this was one of them. Was it even reasonable for me to be mad when I was sleeping with more than one man? It wasn’t three, but it wasn’t one, either.
Yeah, I was fucking two people, but so were both of them.
I was the only one who’d ever have to deal with any consequences.