7. Sawyer
SAWYER
“Okay, Sawyer. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. You’re just waiting for test results from a pregnancy test. No big deal.” I glanced down at the stick in question, leaning against the yellowed wallpaper in my bathroom. “Yeah, right. Quit lying to yourself.”
The internet said I should take the test first thing in the morning. Something about the hormones being more present after not emptying your bladder all night. However, that wasn’t an option for me. There was no way I could wait until morning when these three minutes felt like an eternity already.
My head was already swimming with anxious thoughts and worst-case scenarios. I could barely keep my grandma and myself afloat as it was. How was I supposed to add a whole other person to the mix? A very tiny one who couldn’t fend for themselves, at that.
Immediately, I started ticking off a list of things I’d need to do.
I was going to have to ask Duke and Liv for a raise.
I’d probably still need to pick up a second job, even if just while I was pregnant, so I could build up some kind of savings when I’d have to be out of work after the baby was born.
And then I had to think about what to do when I was ready to go back.
Maeve could barely take care of herself, let alone an infant.
Could I even afford daycare? No, I knew I couldn’t.
I sometimes overheard parents complaining about it over happy hour.
Oh god. What the fuck was I going to do?
Deep breaths, Sawyer. Deep breaths. You have options. It’ll be okay.
It had to be.
These were the moments I wished I could pick up the phone and call my mom.
She was younger than I was when she got pregnant with me.
She must have been so scared. I just wanted someone to talk through this with me.
I didn’t know what to think or how to feel.
If I was happy, sad, or somewhere in between.
Maybe I just needed to be told I wasn’t alone.
That they’d be by my side the entire time and wouldn’t leave me.
Beckett and his stupidly charming smile flashed in my mind, and I groaned.
A no-strings-attached fling seemed fun until I wound up possibly pregnant with no way of contacting the father.
I didn’t know anything about the man, other than he came from big money.
There was no business card or a phone number scribbled on a bar napkin. I didn’t even know his last name.
If this was real, if I was pregnant, I’d likely have to do it alone.
Just then, the alarm on my phone went off. The three minutes were up. The test was ready. Pushing onto my knees, I reached for the stick on the counter. My hands were trembling as I brought it down to eye level.
Fuck.
There it was. Two pink lines. Confirmation and damnation all wrapped up in one.
Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard I tried to suck in air, nothing came. My body fell forward as the first sob left my lips. Then I clutched the stick to my chest and gave myself permission to cry.
I woke to a sharp rap of knuckles against a rattling. “Baby? You in there?”
I blinked, looking around the too-bright room to gain my bearings.
It definitely hadn’t been my intention to sleep in my bathroom, but I’d cried myself into a coma of sorts.
No matter how hard I tried, my body wouldn’t move.
It wouldn’t stand up from the floor or clean up my mess or walk me to my bed.
I just had to sit there and exist until sleep claimed me.
Which couldn’t have been more than an hour or two, given how early my grandma usually made her rounds to check on me.
She’d done it ever since I could remember.
Sometimes I wondered if it was because her daughter decided to leave in the middle of the night with a scribbled apology.
I’d never plucked up the courage to ask.
She was probably freaking out when she didn’t find me in bed.
“Sawyer?”
“Y-Yeah, sorry, Grams. Think I caught a stomach bug, or something. I haven’t moved since I got home last night.” It wasn’t a total lie.
“Do you need me to bring you something? I think I’ve got some ginger ale in the kitchen…”
The thought made me want to gag.
“No, that’s okay!” I said, quickly, hoping she’d take the hint and leave. “I think the coast is clear now. I’m just going to shower really quick and go lie down.”
It was silent for so long, I thought she’d shuffled by, but then I heard a pat on the door. “You let me know if you need me, baby. It’ll give me an excuse to go by Harold’s trailer. He’d be happy to run to the store for us.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. The two of them had formed what my grandma liked to call an “attachment.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly what she meant when she said it, either.
Her cheeks always turned a deep scarlet, and she wiggled her brows.
“Ass-crack Harold? No, thank you,” I’d said the first time she mentioned him in passing.
Grams tutted. “You young people are so narrow-minded. I can overlook a little crack for some sugar if you catch my drift.”
“Goodnight, Grams!” I said, hiding my groan. Hopefully, I could get that image out of my head before I crossed paths with our neighbor.
“Sleep tight,” she called, shuffling back down the hall to her bedroom.
I waited until I heard her door close, then blew out a sigh of relief.
Thank god I had enough sense to lock the door last night.
I couldn’t imagine her barging in to see a solo cup full of pee on the counter and me clutching a positive pregnancy test.
It likely would’ve given her a heart attack, and then I really would’ve had a reason to feel guilty.
I rolled my neck, stretching the rest of my body as I pushed to my feet.
Other than sleeping in an actual bed, what I really needed was to clean up this mess and take a shower.
I turned the dial and waited for steam that never came.
Our water heater wasn’t the best, and it rarely got hot enough to be satisfying.
Thankfully, my trusty orange and peach shampoo hadn’t turned my stomach yet.
I poured it into my hands and rubbed it through my hair, taking the time to treat myself to a scalp massage.
Figured I deserved one after the past twelve hours.
I repeated the process with my conditioner and moved on to the body wash.
I ran the soapy loofah over my body, pausing as I came to rest over my stomach.
Kids were never in my plan. Not really. It wasn’t that I was adamantly opposed to the idea of having them, but I could blame my hesitation on the fact that my own mother decided to give me up instead of sticking around to raise me.
She never even came back to check on me.
Didn’t write on holidays or my birthday.
It was like I never existed, which, I supposed, was what she wanted all along.
My feelings toward my mom were complicated, but I was grateful she gave me up. My life with Grams might have been difficult, but not as much as it would’ve been living in the shadow of someone who blamed me for ruining their life by simply existing. Grams had been the mother I needed.
I had options. I knew I did. More options than my mom ever had.
If I didn’t want to be a mom or wasn’t ready to be, then I didn’t have to.
It was early enough that I could seek termination, or I could look at adoption.
There were plenty of couples who wanted to have kids but couldn’t, so maybe I could help give them the family they always dreamed of.
I shook my head. First things first, I needed to schedule a doctor’s appointment.
Preferably out of town, since I was sure the OBGYN here delivered me.
I could ask Olivia for help finding someone.
She was the closest thing I had to a friend and confidant.
Besides, I was going to have to tell her sooner rather than later, since she’d been right about the whole pregnancy thing.
The least I could do is apologize for shutting her down so quickly.
After a quick rinse, I hopped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my middle.
The pregnancy test was still sitting on the counter, so I grabbed it and the bag of other tests on the floor.
I couldn’t leave it in the trash in case Grams went snooping.
She didn’t do it often, but being cooped up in the house day after day made her restless.
Sometimes she’d decide to reorganize cabinets just for the hell of it.
By the time I made my way to my bedroom, it was nearly five in the morning. I changed into an oversized t-shirt and shorts before collapsing onto my bed. No matter how much I wanted to sleep, I knew it was a lost cause. There was too much on my mind.
Instead, I grabbed my phone and pulled up a browser.
The cursor blinked as I stared at the screen.
I wanted to put Beckett’s name in, but what was I going to type?
Rich guys named Beckett? Give me a break.
That’d probably bring up a bunch of weird results, none of which would give me what I was looking for.
I did it, anyway.
Just as I expected, the first few pages of results were old white men smiling in boardrooms or shaking hands. It wasn’t until I was about to move on to page four that something caught my eye.
The image was grainy, but I recognized the man in the photo without question. His eyes were recognizable, even if he looked a lot less happy than I recalled, but I was probably just imagining things. Goosebumps cropped up along my skin as I remembered the way he made me feel. How he touched me.
But all of that was quickly washed away by the fact that he had his arm wrapped around the waist of a petite blonde who looked like she could’ve been an actress.
I bet she was. The image looked like it was from social media, so I clicked on the link and waited for the profile to load.
It didn’t belong to him, and after a little bit of digging, I realized he wasn’t tagged.
It didn’t matter because I got what I needed in the caption. Going back to the browser, I typed in the name Beckett Montgomery, and voila. There he was.
The man I saw in the pictures was familiar, but so different.
His smile wasn’t as full. That megawatt grin that I’d been a sucker for was nowhere to be seen.
And the skin around his eyes wasn’t crinkled from laughter.
It was so at odds with how he had stared down at me with such tenderness weeks ago.
This side of him was all business. His suit was clearly expensive and immaculately tailored. There was a Rolex on his wrist, and his leather loafers were polished. Not a single hair out of place or a wrinkle to be seen. In these photos, he rarely smiled, and if he did, it looked forced.
Even though I spent an entire night with the person on the screen, I still had no clue who Beckett Montgomery was.
We obviously came from different worlds, but I hadn’t realized how different they truly were.
I shared a beat-up 2005 Toyota Camry with my grams while he was shaking hands with the actual owner of Lamborghini.
His dad owned one of the biggest property development companies in the world. If the company biography on his website was to be believed, Beckett had been working for his dad since he graduated from college.
There was an irrational part of my brain that told me this could solve all my problems. If I could get ahold of him, I could tell him about the baby.
I could ask for help. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I was sure he wouldn’t want word to get out that he’d gotten someone like me pregnant.
His family might’ve even paid me off to keep silent.
They probably wouldn’t want some small town nobody showing up to ruin their son’s life.
I was the kind of woman people like that kept a secret.
But the problem with people like that wasn’t what happened in the aftermath; it was getting in touch with them in the first place.
From what I could tell, Beckett had no social media presence.
The email listed on the website was likely monitored by one or more assistants who’d hit the delete button faster than I could blink.
The man came from money. And not just in a way that meant he was well off.
No, Beckett came from a family of billionaires with a capital B.
I was sure it wasn’t the first time a random woman tried to trap them in some kind of pregnancy scheme.
I’d be willing to bet his family had a whole horde of lawyers at their disposal, ready to tear me apart for even suggesting the baby was Beckett’s.
Which meant I was right back where I started.
Completely and totally shit out of luck.