“I could. One line is negative and a plus sign is knocked up, right?”
“No, no. I’ll go.” She sat up, looked at him long and hard.
He must have sensed the time for joking was over; he took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I can go with you.”
She pursed her lips. It all felt so insanely intimate, this moment. Whatever the verdict might be, she didn’t yet know what she’d feel about it. Though she did know one thing. “I’ll go by myself. I’d prefer you hear the news from me, rather than from staring at a stick I peed on.”
“Whatever you need.”
She took a deep breath, blew it out slow and noisy and didn’t feel a jot calmer.
Flynn offered another squeeze and nodded toward the bathroom.
“Right. Okay. Here I go.” Her hand fell from his and she crossed the small apartment, the journey at once endless and way, way too short. When she hit the switch, the light was so bright, the fan so loud. The tub so white and the tile so cold. The plastic wand sat on the sink’s edge, so innocuous. She crept up on it, squinting so she couldn’t make out its little window. When she had it in hand, she shut her eyes, took a breath, another, another. Opened them.
It took a moment to make sense of it. A blue line. Another blue line, fainter, crisscrossing the first, the point where they met darkest of all, like stripes intersecting on a field of gingham.
“Plus sign,” she muttered. That means pregnant. Doesn’t it? She set the wand down with a trembling hand and fished the instructions from the trash can. The illustration left no room for doubt.
Holy fuck. I’m pregnant. She snatched up the stick and stared at the window, expecting the second line to be lighter, maybe negligible, maybe inconclusive. But no, there was no denying it.
“Fuck.” She glanced down at her belly, eased up the hem of her shirt. Same pasty white skin as always, same navel with the same single freckle beside it. How could this landscape look so normal, and yet something so monumental be taking place just an inch or two below the surface?
“Laurel?”
She looked to the door. “Be right out.” Staring in the mirror, she found herself only wide-eyed, looking drunk or high or dazed. At a loss, she sputtered her lips in a raspberry and finger-combed her hair.
Time to change a man’s life forever.
She left the bathroom. Flynn was sitting in the same spot on the bed, eyes nailed to her as she emerged. His brows rose but he said nothing.
She didn’t know what to say herself. It wasn’t as though they’d been trying for this. She couldn’t rush him, pee-stick in hand, tossing herself into his arms and making his dreams come true.
Her silence seemed to speak for her.
“It’s positive, isn’t it?” he asked, voice soft and serious. Not grave, but somber, she thought.
She nodded.
“C’mere.”
He took her wrist as she drew close and pulled her down onto his lap. Strong arms encircled her waist and hugged her tight, and he pressed his mouth to her throat. His exhalation was long and warm and heavy.
“What do you think?” she whispered, wishing she knew her own answer to the question.
“I don’t know.”
“I have no idea what to do—” She’d nearly said, what to do about it, but that sounded so cold, like it was a pest and she had to choose between squashing it or trapping it with a glass and an envelope and shunting it out the window.
“Two choices,” Flynn said, lips tickling her neck.
“Two really awful choices. Oh. Three, I guess.”
He pulled back to meet her eyes. “Three? You mean adoption?”
She nodded.
His smile was small, a mix of sad and mischievous. “Honey, if you decide to have this baby, I’m raisin’ it, whether you want to join me or not.”
She could only stare at him.
“That’s not to say that it isn’t completely your decision to make. And whatever you decide, I’ll support you. But I know what it was like, having my dad walk out of my life, and no child born into this world with me as its father is gonna find out what that feels like.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She doubted she could form words, anyhow, emotion lodged like a fist in her throat. Flynn’s expression was soft but those eyes shone with something she knew well both from fight nights and from sex. Something hard and male and unbreakable.
“If you’re not ready to be a mom,” he said, “I get that. You have plans. Ones you put on hold long enough.”
“Yeah. I do.” She didn’t want to have a child now, not before she put her degree to use, landed a job with a salary capable of even making parenthood feasible. Boston was no place to raise a kid on tips. She needed a career, and a chance to live with this man for a while, as a couple— “Honey, you okay?”
She blinked, slipping free from the swirl of panic. He must have seen it on her face. “I’m okay. Just overwhelmed.”