They’d talked about having kids and Nicole knew she wanted to start a family someday, preferably when she was young enough to have two or three children without worrying about her age and reproductive capabilities.
As she was thinking about all of this, as her mind spun round and round the different what ifs and possibilities, her eyes suddenly registered what was happening to the test strip. First the one line appeared, which she knew could mean a negative. But then quickly thereafter, the second line began appearing, as if by magic.
Nicole swooned a little, watching the tiny purplish line slowly (but faster than she’d ever expected) appearing on the little stick.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “Oh my god.”
She was pregnant.
Nicole didn’t know what to do next.
She sat on the toilet and held the pregnancy strip in her hand and marveled at how such a tiny, flimsy little thing could have such an enormous, earth-shattering impact on her future.
No matter what happens from here on, I’ll never be able to say I’ve never been pregnant. I’m pregnant with Red Jameson’s baby.
Even thinking the words didn’t make it seem real. The realness of it only served to make it more…unreal.
That was the word that should be used to describe her life now, Nicole thought. If someone made a movie about her or wrote a book, it would be called Unreal: The Nicole Masters Story.
She smiled a little at her crazy, jumbled thoughts, but then the smile died when she again stared at the test strip. Okay, possible false positive? She wondered.
Time to try again.
She ripped open the second test (a totally different brand) and also dipped that in the cup of urine.
Minutes later, it too had come up positive.
And not long after, she did the third one (because everyone knew three times is a charm and three strikes your out, etc. etc.).
They all said the same thing. Nicole Masters was incontrovertibly pregnant, and now she needed to figure out what to do next.
***
Nicole wasn’t sure exactly when she’d decided that she needed to talk to Red. Everything was happening so fast. And yet, at other moments, time seemed to have slowed to a crawl and the seconds were like hours.
She removed all evidence of her pregnancy from the bathroom, threw it all in a trash bag and then dumped that trash bag into the bottom of another bag full of garbage that Danielle would be very unlikely to sift through (unless she was secretly working for the FBI or something).
With that piece done, Nicole took out her phone and sat in the living room, staring at Red’s cell number.
Danielle had already gone off to work, so she had the apartment to herself. Nicole sure as heck wasn’t going to the office today. No, today was a day she definitely needed some “me time.” Time to figure out how the hell she was going to deal with this issue, time to decide whether she could manage this on her own or whether Red might actually step up to the plate and help her to work through things.
But she was scared. She was scared first and foremost that Red had already moved on, put her in the past. Maybe he hadn’t really loved her the way she’d loved him—he certainly hadn’t played the part of a loving fiancé when he’d dumped her unceremoniously after his brother’s visit to his mansion.
Nicole didn’t believe that was the real Red who’d dumped her, who’d told her that he was protecting her from himself. Nicole thought that Red had been overcome by fear and self-doubt and self-loathing. He truly believed that she would be better off without him in her life.
Still, there was an echo of doubt reverberating in her mind. Maybe it was her mother’s voice, so sure of the fact that Red Jameson was nothing but a scoundrel, the worst kind of man you could meet—an undependable man.
Would Red even want to know that she was pregnant? She wondered.
Finally she forced herself to dial his number.
And her call went right to voicemail.
The mailbox was full, so she couldn’t even leave a message. After so much tension had built up inside her, struggling about even making this call, she was crushed to realize that Red’s phone was basically a nonworking number now.
The next step was even worse.
She had no choice but to show up at his home and demand to see him.
Changing into a decent outfit (a sleeveless blue dress and sandals), Nicole left the apartment and took the train out as far as she could, and then grabbed a taxi to take her the rest of the way to Red’s mansion.
She tried to keep herself calm as they got closer and closer. When they finally arrived at the front gate, the taxi driver turned to her. “You sure this is the place?” he asked.
“I’m sure,” she said, a horrible feeling coming over her.
The guard at the gate was someone she didn’t recognize. An older man with a bald head and white mustache, he glanced inside at her and then spoke to the driver. “Can I help you?”
“This girl asked me to take her here.”
“Name please?” The guard said, now directing the questions at her.
“Nicole. Masters. It’s an emergency.”