Chapter 50 Expected
Expected
I woke with my stomach twisting away in my gut, the sudden need to vomit incredibly overwhelming. Ripping the covers off me, I yanked myself out from under Darren’s heavy arm and raced to the bathroom, just barely making it to the toilet.
Luckily, there wasn’t much left in my stomach to throw up, but my abdomen clenched painfully all the same.
When I was finished, I dragged myself to the sink to brush my teeth.
“You okay?” Darren asked from the doorway.
“I’m fine. Just a little nausea.”
“Still?”
I side-eyed him before spitting into the sink, irritated by the fact that this was the third time this week I’d vomited. I’d been feeling shitty for the past couple of days, and as best as I tried to hide it, Sloane caught on too quickly.
I could battle the headaches and fatigue all day, but nausea was an entirely different beast.
And the last thing I wanted to deal with was being forced back into another round of mandatory bullshit bedrest.
“Yeah. Still.”
Bypassing Darren through the door, I went back to the bed to lie down, hoping to quell some of the unpleasant aftereffects. Darren silently followed and sat down beside me, his warm hand pressing against my forehead.
“You don’t have a fever,” he noted, pushing my hair from my face.
Looking up at the clock, it was about 7 a.m., too early for me, but I doubted Darren would go back to sleep now.
“I just want to lie here for a little while.”
Darren sighed, his big shoulders sagging while his thumb stroked the side of my jaw.
“I’ll have Sid come see you again this afternoon,” he said, the hint of an odd smile on his lips as he leaned down to kiss me on the forehead.
“Thank you.”
After he left for the day, I kept my ass in bed, breathing through the nausea until I was able to fall back asleep, waking up another hour later.
I found Camaro lying down just next to the bed, my arm able to reach her head for scratches from where I lay.
I still felt bad that I’d almost vomited on her just a few days ago.
When I felt fine enough, I got up from the bed to take a quick shower, hoping the water would bring back some energy. When it didn’t, I forced myself to get dressed anyway, moving at a fucking snail’s pace until I made it out the bedroom door.
“Oh, you are awake,” Sloane said from my right. “Feeling any better?”
“Not really, but I’ll be okay. I’m going to go down to see Sid.” I didn’t feel like waiting for him to come find me.
“Then I will accompany you.”
I waved her off. “Oh no, you know you don’t have to do that—”
“My orders came directly from Mr. Davis this morning. You are not well and should not be left unattended for any reason.”
I cocked a brow at her. A potential stomach bug should not warrant this much attention. “If you insist,” I replied with a yawn, slowly making my way to the infirmary with Camaro and Sloane at my side.
Sid was studying something in his office, his expression a little more bleak than usual. He actually looked nervous for some reason.
“Still not feeling good, eh?” he asked me before coughing to clear the odd hoarseness from his voice.
I shook my head, watching as Sloane moved to stand against the wall. “Not sure what’s going on, but I’ve just been feeling pretty shitty.”
His brows furrowed. “For how long now?”
I shrugged my shoulders as I stepped up. “Few days.”
Sid’s eyes bounced up and down my form, his mouth forming a tight line as he scrutinized me.
But I found myself doing the same to him, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and the droopy lids that nearly covered them.
His face had been looking very gaunt lately, but his cheeks appeared a little swollen today.
“Okay, well,” he groaned as he stood from his desk, a subtle wheeze in his breath. “Let’s draw some blood and run some tests.”
Three vials of blood later, Sid had also taken my blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, listened to my lungs, and then went over my symptoms.
“You should have come in sooner, Jaden. I don’t know why you try to hide your ailments.”
I scoffed. “It’s just a stupid stomach bug. It’s not like I’m dying, Sid.” I eyed him closely, wondering if he would catch on to the hint that I knew which one of us actually was. He didn’t. That, or he just ignored it.
“Yeah, well, hiding symptoms just makes my job harder. I’ll be back with your test results in a little bit.”
Sid left the room with my blood, leaving me alone with Sloane and Camaro. Getting up from the medical table, I walked over to the leather couch against the wall and lay down, Camaro followed me to plop down in front of the couch.
Sitting up was difficult to do when my stomach still felt off.
I wondered what the fuck I had eaten that would cause me to feel like this.
Or maybe I’d caught a bug from one of the guards?
Oh god, what if it was because Camaro had bitten me?
Darren would be fucking furious if her bite mark caused me to get sick.
Twenty anxious minutes later, I’d practically jumped from the couch when Sid walked back into the room, Darren right behind him. My brows knit together in confusion.
Why was Darren here?
Maybe you really are dying?
I cautiously stood from the couch, my hands automatically clenching into tight fists at my sides. “What’s going on?”
Darren’s eyes locked with mine, a hardness set in his fascial features while his jaw clenched like he was preparing for a fight. I felt my stomach roil.
“Sloane, take Camaro with you and give us the room, please,” he ordered, the weight of his stare still holding me in place.
My stomach dropped even harder as I watched Sloane collect Camaro and walk out of the room, the click of the door shutting suddenly making it difficult to breathe.
Oh, shit, maybe I really was dying.
With Sloane and Camaro gone, Darren released a deep sigh and placed his hands in his pockets, finally glancing over at Sid.
Taking the cue, Sid finally spoke. “Well, Jaden, it seems we have some very good news to share.”
My eyes slid back and forth between him and Darren, the idea of good news sounding like an ominous trick.
I could feel myself starting to panic inside, my heart rate elevating as my breath hitched.
But when my gaze caught the sly grin hiding in the corner of Darren’s lips, I felt all the blood leave my face.
No.
No. No. No.
“Turns out, you’re not actually sick at all, Jaden,” Sid continued. “You’re just pregnant. Congratulations.”
And just like that, a bomb went off in the room.
Suddenly, the only thing I could hear was my racing heartbeat mixed with that awful ringing. A wave of dizziness threw off my balance as my stomach clenched from an invisible blow to the gut. My breath caught in my throat, denial trying to convince me I had to have misheard Sid.
My mind went completely blank, like reality was just a whirlwind of white noise and I was only dreaming. It was just a figment of my imagination.
But that familiar stab of ice-cold terror shot its way up my spine as the heartbreak of another betrayal smacked me right in the face. With my mouth quickly drying up, I found it difficult to speak.
“What?” It was all I could manage to say.
Darren’s head tilted forward. “You heard him, Jaden.”
My focus glazed off to the side, my brain trying to wrap around how it was possible. But it couldn’t be.
“No, that can’t be right,” I argued, looking at Sid for validation. “We replaced my birth control implant. I can’t be…be…”
Sid’s gaze wavered as his eyes fell to the floor. “Well, actually, Jaden, we—”
“Your replacement was a dud, Jaden,” Darren answered plainly for him.
I felt my entire body harden in place. “A…a dud?”
“You’ve been off birth control for the last two months.”
Oh, God, I was going to vomit again. This couldn’t be happening. Two months? My eyes locked with Sid’s, looking for the confirmation that he had conspired with Darren to trick me like this. But the guilt and regret coating his face told me the horrible truth.
I sucked in a breath of disbelief, horror drenching my voice. “Why?”
Darren tilted his head, his stare narrowing like I’d just asked a stupid question.
“You know why.”
My eyes fell from his to the floor as my brain worked through the web of denial I was still trying to spin inside. But as my hands moved to clutch my lower abdomen, the proof hit me there just like another bullet.
Suddenly, all the fucking we’d been doing made sense. He had been trying to get me pregnant the entire time. And he apparently had succeeded.
“You…” I started, still working to accept what was happening. “You lied to me. You both fucking lied to me!”
Darren’s expression didn’t change, his hardened features unwavering in the face of my obvious distress. Instead, he just tilted his head, his voice cold and detached.
“A lie would imply that I told you something I knew was false. I’ve always been honest about what I expect from you, Jaden, especially as my wife.”
My eyes widened from his sheer audacity to spin this with his typical twisted bullshit logic.
“It’s still deception!” I argued. “You’ve—”
“Deception?” he mocked, cutting me off. “You mean like how you deliberately deceived me to help Kayla escape? When you lied and told everyone she was dead? That kind of deception?”
My stomach flipped at the memory of what he’d done to me for helping Kayla and covering for her. Regret snaked through my blood, wishing now I had made a different decision back then. My jaw clenched hard as my fists curled in anger.
“Yeah,” I murmured, my voice dropping low as I prepared for the worst. “I can see how much of a mistake that was now. A mistake that I didn’t go with her!”