Page 91 of Devoured By You
She did a one-eighty, striding over to my office door. I hadn’t recovered my voice when she glanced over her shoulder.
“One last thing. Get changed. We have lunch reservations at one.”
With a casual wave, she disappeared, leaving my door wide open.
What the actual fuck?
Chapter 32
Jill
Courage is facing your fears rather
than running from them.
A month had passed since Blay had kicked me out of his house, his cutting words ringing in my ears. I’d cried so much on the flight home that the cabin crew must have thought I was dying, or something equally awful. Each morning I opened my eyes, hoping the heaviness sitting on my chest would have vanished, only to find more weight had been added overnight.
This morning, though, things were different.
Oh, I still ached, but I finally had something to distract me, something to look forward to.
Well, two things, although one of them was so fucking scary I struggled to breathe every time I thought about it. Scary things were good things, though. A lecturer at university once told me that courage was facing up to fear of the unknown rather than running away from it.
I slotted a few things into a shoulder bag and grabbed a light jacket and an umbrella. My train to London didn’t leave for another thirty minutes, and I lived a five-minute walk from the station, yet I always had this habit of arriving for any kind of public transport far earlier than necessary, then cursing my preparedness when I had to hang around for ages.
If Samantha didn’t like what I’d done with this book, then too bad. I’d already decided to self-publish it, especially if she wanted me to change large swathes of it. I didn’t mind tweaking here and there, but the bulk of it stayed. All one hundred and ten thousand words of it. My longest book to date had been a labor of love in some ways and a cathartic exorcism in others.
A way to celebrate the time Blay and I had shared, despite how it’d ended, but also a chance for me to move on, to face up to an uncertain future without the man who’d given me a parting gift I hadn’t expected.
My gaze drifted to the pregnancy test I’d taken yesterday morning when I’d thrown up for the third day in a row. It was one of those that baldly stated “pregnant” or “not pregnant,” you know, in case women’s hormones made it far too difficult for us to process the difference between one line and two. My eyes rolled of their own accord. I bet a man had designed these tests.
Butterflies swarmed my stomach. A baby. I was going to have a baby. I must have looked at this test a hundred times or more yesterday. I’d taken three others just to be sure, and when they’d all come back with the same result, I’d finally believed it.
It could only have happened on one of two occasions. Either in Barbados or the one and only time Blay and I had had sex after his accident. Until I saw the doctor tomorrow and underwent a proper examination, I wouldn’t know whether I was in the very early stages or already into my third month of pregnancy.
Unbelievable.
The jury was still out on whether I should tell him. On the one hand, he deserved to know he’d fathered a child. On the other, I worried he’d either think I’d trapped him into it as a way to force him into something he didn’t want, or he’d want nothing to do with me or the child.
Being at the end of either scenario wasn’t all that appealing.
Besides, I was still newly pregnant. Anything could happen. There wasn’t any point in telling him yet when so much could go wrong.
Tears pricked my eyes, and my stomach tilted. I wrapped my arms around my middle. Already, this bunch of cells ruled my emotions. I couldn’t bear to think of an outcome other than a healthy, bouncing baby who’d keep me up all night, give me lifelong bladder problems, and puke on my favorite T-shirt.
Even if I did this on my own, I had several things in my favor. I was a strong woman—capable, financially independent, and most importantly, able to work flexibly. I didn’t have to deal with a demanding boss who’d pretend to be understanding, only to turn into a beast at an approaching deadline.
Within half an hour, I was on the train and headed for London. The knots in my stomach wouldn’t loosen until I was sitting opposite Samantha and hearing the words “I love it” spill from her lips. Despite my vow to self-publish if she passed, I still craved her approval. I might have only released one book with my publisher, but my editor and I had struck up a friendship from the moment we’d been introduced, and her endorsement of a story that included some personal experience meant a lot to me. Not that I intended to share with the media or my readers that I’d used what had happened to Blay and me when crafting the follow-up to my bestseller. I’d changed enough of the details to ensure that the fictional and real events wouldn’t marry up.
Two and a half hours later, I disembarked at Paddington Station and emerged into the clammy heat of inner London just as the lunchtime rush began. Workers, profusely sweating in their suits and high heels, dashed from office buildings to grab a bite to eat before the interminable afternoon meetings got underway. I dodged several streams of them, wondering, as I often did on the odd occasion I came to London, if I’d missed some sign and was walking in the wrong direction.
I arrived fifteen minutes early for my meeting with Samantha, so I ordered a coffee and a slice of Madeira cake and grabbed a seat by the window. Scrolling on my phone, I came across a glowing review a new reader had left on a book I’d published a couple of years ago. I smiled to myself. This shit never got old. I loved it when readers took the time to leave reviews. They owed me nothing other than the price of the book, which made me even more grateful when they took time out of their lives to share their experience when reading one of my stories.
The trolling I’d suffered the day Blay had kicked me out had disappeared as fast as it had emerged. I’d assumed the PR department at my publishers had used their clout, but when I’d dropped Samantha a note to tell her to pass on my thanks, she’d said they’d had no luck with the online retailers, nor did they have any leverage over TikTok, a.k.a. the Wild West of social media apps.
That left only one option: Blay must have somehow cleaned it up. But why? A parting gift to assuage his guilt at the heartless way he’d kicked me out, perhaps? Whatever his reasons, he had my silent gratitude. One day I might tell him that in person. Maybe.
As if the universe knew I was thinking about Blay, a text arrived from Aspen. She’d taken it upon herself to give me regular updates about Blay’s progress, and like an addict craving a fix, I hadn’t asked her to stop. When she’d told me how she’d muscled her way into his house, despite his protestations, it’d brought a much-needed smile to my face. Served him right. Aspen would give him hell, and he’d hate her invading his home and telling him what to do.