Page 135 of On the Double
“I don’t know, but telling him when he’s on a job isn’t going to be helpful. Besides, I need time to think.”
“About what? What’s there to think about?”
I looked at him, shrugging slightly. “What I’m going to do when he tells me he doesn’t want it.”
The look of shock on my brother’s face was what I was feeling right now.
“We should go. I have to get to work. I’m already super late. They’ll fire me if I don’t show up soon.”
“Fuck them, Harper. You just found out?—”
“That I’m like every other woman who finds out she’s pregnant when she’s not married,” I finished. “Yeah, I’m screwed.”
“You’re not screwed,” he said, gripping my hand. “It’ll be alright.Edu’s a good guy. Maybe I didn’t feel that way in the beginning, but then there was the accident and— He took care of you. He was there for you during it all. He wouldn’t walk away from you now. He loves you.”
Maybe he did, but he hadn’t said a word to me about it, and I had the feeling that was because he still couldn’t admit to himself that I meant something to him. That didn’t bode well for the bean sprout growing inside me.
“Take me to work.”
Oliver didn’t want to, but he knew there was nothing else for me to do right now. When he dropped me off, I turned back to him. “Not a word to anyone. I need time to figure this out.”
“Of course,” he nodded, but I knew he was fuming inside.
I shut the door mechanically and walked inside at a leisurely pace. It didn’t matter if I hurried when I was already late. Besides, my old boss had moved on to bigger and better things. His ire for me no longer threatened my job.
I stopped in the office and told my manager about my neck pain this morning, then told her I was okay. She was very understanding and even asked if I wanted to go home, but what would be the point? The last thing I wanted was to stare at the wall all day.
“Girl, where have you been?” Luna hissed as I walked into the break room.
“Are you on lunch?”
“Yes. I only have ten minutes left. Where were you?”
“At the hospital. My neck was sore, so Oliver made me go in. And then they were going to run X-rays, but surprise! I’m pregnant,” I laughed.
Her jaw dropped open in shock. “You’re—I’m sorry, what?”
I continued laughing, unable to hold it in. “I know. It’s hilarious, isn’t it?”
“That’s not exactly what I would say,” she mumbled.
I looked at her and grinned. “My boyfriend is extremely against marriage and kids. He doesn’t ever want either. I mean, it’s surprising I can even call him my boyfriend,” I gasped with laughter. “And now I’m pregnant with his child!”
She gripped me by the arms, shaking me lightly. “Harper, you have to pull it together!”
“I know,” I continued to laugh, then I gasped, covering my mouth with my hand. “Oh God. I’m like one of those tragic books I read.”
“What?”
“In my romance novels, there’s always some miserable woman who gets pregnant in the third act.”
“Aren’t acts in plays?”
I started laughing again. “I’m the woman who gets pregnant, don’t you see? I’m so fucking predictable, just like in those books! She gets pregnant, fears telling her boyfriend because he’s some tragic man who can’t get his shit together. Hello, that has me written all over it. Only, women who read these novels think the scarred man who can’t fall in love is sexy and needs an understanding woman to heal him.” I snorted in amusement. “There’s no healing them!” I laughed. “Edu is perfectly tragic in every way! He’s just like the men in my books. Only those men come around and confess they need the heroine. They can’t possibly live without the woman they’ve unknowingly fallen for.”
I huffed out another laugh, unable to contain the growing unease inside me.
“Except, Edu—while fitting the mold perfectly—will never come around and decide he wants the baby and marriage with me. He’s the antithesis of a bad boy who falls for the dimwitted heroine.” I looked at her sardonically. “That would be me.”