The bile in Maya’s mouth wouldn’t go down, and she’d already thrown up twice. Her head ached, and her limbs were too heavy for her to pick up for longer than a single moment.
This couldn’t be happening. Nope. It was all just a dream. Soon she’d wake up and everything would be just as it was before things had come crashing down around her. Maybe she’d wake up between her two men and be perfectly fine.
There she was again, telling herself she would be fine when she was anything but.
She wasn’t going to throw up again. No, sir.
And even if she did, maybe it was the flu. Yes, it could be the flu. That’s what they all said, after all.
She looked down at the two tiny pink lines and cursed. Then she looked down at her feet since she was currently sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the wall, and cursed again. Six other tests of various types littered the floor, staring up at her. Judging.
Yes, the little bastards judged her.
Little fuckers.
Some had two pink lines. Others had two windows where one was blue, the other a deep violet. One even had freaking words in the window that mocked her.
Pregnant, it said.
Pregnant.
She, Maya Montgomery, was pregnant.
And she didn’t know who the father was. She’d gone bare with both men and had even had a condom break with Border before she’d forgone condoms altogether. They were all clean and tested, after all. She was on fucking birth control.
She wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. For fuck’s sake, the other women in her family were pregnant. That was enough Montgomery progeny for now. She wasn’t even sure if her men loved her. They hadn’t said the words, and she’d been too chicken shit to say them. Their future was more uncertain now than it had been when they’d started because they’d all been so freaking careful not to say anything about their future.
Border could leave at any moment.
Jake could decide it was too much.
And Maya would end up alone and pregnant.
In any other relationship, this would be too much, but with three people involved in a society where more than two was beyond taboo—and illegal in some cases—this was even worse. She’d never be able to marry both of them if it came to that. They could marry each other now thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling, and she could marry either of them, but there wouldn’t be a legal union between the three of them.
That was if they wanted that in the first place.
Her brain hurt, as well as many other parts of her since she’d spent the morning throwing up and drinking way too much water so she could pee on various sticks of doom.
What would happen to this child? What kind of ridicule would he or she grow up with because Maya had been selfish to think that everything would eventually work out in a relationship between two men and her? She was going to ruin this child’s life because she told herself she’d take Jake as he was, no matter what. And in the process of that, she’d fallen for Border, as well.
She was as much of a slut, a whore, as people thought she was. Her family, as well as Jake’s, might be okay with what they were—even if she couldn’t describe it fully—but that didn’t mean the rest of the world would be. She’d seen the looks on people’s faces as she stood in line at the grocery store with her two men. She could feel the stares as she went out to dinner with both of them. Though they’d been very, very careful to keep it casual, they hadn’t been able to hide it all. There was a reason the three of them were explosive between the sheets—and in the shower, on the couch, on the counter—and that reason just meant it would be forever difficult for her, Jake, and Border to hide what they were.
And now she was pregnant, and she didn’t know who exactly had fathered her child. It could have been either of them, and if she were thinking a little clearer, she’d know that deep down, both of them would claim the child as their own. Or perhaps, that was just wishful thinking. They were still so new that they hadn’t discussed what would happen if she got pregnant. They hadn’t even discussed if she would move in, or what Border’s new job would be.
Hell, they’d been so focused on not rocking the boat, they’d knocked the damn thing over… as well as knocking her up.
Bile filled her mouth again, and she sniffed, refusing to let the tears fall. She was Maya freaking Montgomery; she would not cry. Crying was for the weak.
And if she truly believed that, she wouldn’t be a Montgomery.
Yet, if she cried, it would make it all that much more real. She put her empty hand on her stomach and closed her eyes. This can’t be happening, she told herself once again. Why couldn’t she wake up from this dream, this nightmare?