Knocked Up By The Mountain Man (Wildwood Alphas #4)

1. Alyssa

ALYSSA

Autumn leaves crunch beneath my Doc Martens as I make my way into town.

My Toyota died about a mile outside of Wildwood, but it's just as well because I think I needed the exercise to take my mind off of my nerves.

In movies, sometimes the main character says, “There's no turning back now!” as though the next action that they have to take is inevitable. As though the choice has already been taken away from them, and that once decided, they can't change what they're about to do.

Those words have echoed between my ears throughout this journey back to Wildwood, boarding the plane at LaGuardia, touching down at a nearby town, getting into a questionable rental vehicle, and driving towards Wildwood with only one bar on my phone to power my GPS app as I navigated to a destination I've only been to once before.

“There's no turning back now!”

I tried to tell myself this a million times. The problem is, those words never felt like the truth. Of course I could turn back. This isn't life or death.

I don't have to do what I'm about to do. I could turn back right now, literally just turning on my heel and making the walk back to the abandoned rental car that I left on the side of the narrow dirt road.

I could go all the way back to that small regional airport and book a ticket back to New York. I could go home and pretend that I never had this crazy idea in the first place.

It's never too late to turn back…and that's a problem for an over-thinker like me.

A truck speeds past me, its wheels dipping into a pothole full of mud and splashing it all over me.

“Shit!” I say, pulling my coat tighter around my shivering body.

Maybe I should have called someone, but who? I don't think that they have Uber in a remote mountain town like this.

Maybe I should hitchhike, I think, but quickly dismiss the thought.

At only five two, I'm not much of a match for any serial killers or creeps that might be lurking in these mountains…especially when I'm pregnant.

I glance down at my phone. Not only do I have zero bars now, but my battery is rapidly dying. Trying to do this journey on foot was probably a poor decision.

Many poor decisions were made today. Which is fitting, because poor decisions are how I ended up in this predicament in the first place.

I look down at my increasingly round and protruding belly. It seems to get a little bigger every day.

The one time I tried casual sex is, of course, the one time that I got pregnant.

We used protection. Two different kinds, actually. The pill and a condom.

How is this even possible? What are the odds?

According to my gynecologist, the odds are almost zero. The fact that I managed to get pregnant is a miracle. Or maybe a curse.

The road twists and the little downtown square of Wildwood comes into view. I see the diner on the corner, the lights all on inside and a waitress moving in the window. I hadn’t planned to stop for a mug of hot chocolate, but my feet are killing me.

I’ll just take a quick break. And then I’ll figure out how the hell I’m going to hitch a ride to my soon-to-be baby daddy’s house.