Page 36 of Please Open Me
I was wrong.
Because if either of them had an ounce of foresight, I wouldn’t be standing in a pharmacy aisle, staring at a wall of pregnancy tests.
Early detection. Digital. Rapid results.
One line. Two lines. Words. A cross.
Yes. No. Maybe.
Hell if I knew.
I’d never actually seen a test up close before. And while I loved that Mason trusted me enough to ask for help, I couldn’t help but feel like Seb or Lucian would have been a better fit for the job.
The fluorescents buzzed overhead, a relentless hum that might as well have been a swarm of blood-hungry insects. My skin crawled, and my heart thundered loud enough to leave me dizzy. A tremor crawled into my hands, and I stuffed them deep into my jeans to keep from showing it.
For weeks, I’d been hinting to Mae that I thought she might be expecting again.
You’ve been sleepin’ a lot, are you feeling alright?
What’s got you so sensitive, Sweetpea?
Are you sure you’re not comin’ down with something?
Looking back on it, I could’ve been more direct, but the point stood. I knew something was off, and she didn’t listen until her damned girlfriend, the onenoneof us had met, brought it up.
My jaw tensed as I reached out, fingers grazing a laminated box. The tests rattled inside the cardboard as I brought it closer. I squinted, trying to make sense of the tiny white lettering on the back.
Why the hell did they make this stuff so hard to read?
I squinted harder, hoping for something useful. This box had it all: promises of early results, 99% accuracy, instructions in six different languages, but none of it told me what Ireallyneeded to know.
Would Mason be okay?
She loved Rosie. God, did she love that baby. And she was a fantastic mother—gentle, patient, all soft hands and lullabies. Watching the two of them together filled my heart so full I swore it might burst. One more baby would probably tear it right at the seams.
But Mason didn’t want that. Not now. Not again.Not yet.
She was just about as anti-pregnancy as I was these days.
She had too much going on—album deadlines, interviews, photo shoots stacked back-to-back. She wanted to be there for every one of Rosie’s milestones, not miss them because she was too sick or too swollen or too damn exhausted to crawl across the floor after our daughter.
Fuck, I didn’t know how I’d react if—when—the test came back positive. If I had to bet, I’d be irritated at her for not listening. Ready to kill Seb for getting her pregnant. I didn’t know for sure he was the one that did it, still he once let it slip that he believed “pulling out” was an effective form of birth control and wouldn’t listen when I told him it wasn’t.
The fear of the unknown wouldn’t help anything right now. So I grabbed a few different boxes for good measure and turned on my heel to head toward the front.
That’s when the air shifted, as if something had entered the aisle behind me.
My chest tightened. My pulse thrummed in my ears.
The lights flickered and a cold tickle crawled up the back of my neck. The kind of feeling you get when someone stares at you. Not dangerous, not yet, but it could be.
Slowly, I turned to look over my shoulder.
Nothing. Just the empty aisle behind me. Boxes of antacids. Shampoo. A stained patch on the velcro-like carpet decorating the floor.
Still, I didn’t relax.
I knew better.
