Page 34 of His Obsession
“Who do I need to kill?” she demands.
“No one.” I let out a hollow laugh. “I just need you to take me to a pharmacy. And stay with me while I take a pregnancy test.”
Her reaction is almost comical. Her jaw drops, and I can see her eyes go wide behind her sunglasses.
“Fuck,” she hisses. Then she sucks in a breath before having her own meltdown. “Okay, this is not the end of the world. Babies are cute. They cry a lot and smell pretty awful, but they’re cute, right? Holy shit, who’s the father? You never go out. You’re basically Mother Teresa. Except—oh God. No.Shit.”
“How are you freaking out more than I am?” I almost laugh.
“It’s Sebastian’s, isn’t it?” she answers quietly.
“If there is an ‘it’ at all, it’s definitely his,” I confirm. “He’s the only person I’ve been with in…”
I trail off because doing the math is depressing. We end up at a pharmacy a few neighborhoods over. There’s no real reason for that, it’s not like I know a lot of people in my neighborhood. I just feel the familiar paranoia of being watched and want to go somewhere outside my routine.
Inside, the fluorescent lights are offensively bright. I wish I had my own pair of oversized sunglasses and maybe a scarf over my face. It’s like I’m onstage with a spotlight tracking me around the store.
I stand in front of the tests for so long that Gia finally puts three different boxes in the basket herself.
“I don’t think there’s that much of a difference.” She shrugs. “Pregnant is pregnant, right?”
“Would you keep your voice down?” I hiss.
She glances around, gestures at the empty aisle. “I think the cashier’s going to figure it out when he rings us up,” she says in a mock whisper. “Why do women need to feel shame about buying pregnancy tests?”
“This wasn’t exactly part of the plan, was it?” I point out, a knot forming in my stomach.
“He doesn’t know that,” she volleys. “Just put your tests on the counter, pay, and walk away. You’re never going to see him again.”
I take a fortifying breath and nod. She’s right. This isn’t the hard part. The hard part comes an hour later when we’re standing in Gia’s bathroom, staring at one of the sticks and willing it to give us a sign. Preferably a negative.
Then the little plus sign comes into focus. For one second, I genuinely think I must be reading it wrong. That the line means something else. That there’s some kind of user error, some technical glitch, some reason the universe is not actually this cruel.
I grab the second box out of the bag with shaking hands.
“Give me a minute,” I tell her, ignoring her sympathetic expression. “This one could be defective.”
She and I both know I’m full of shit, but she gives me the space to take the second test. Then the third, just for good measure. Three minutes later, I’m staring at three positive results.
I must be in shock. I don’t remember opening the bathroom door, but one minute I’m standing over the sink feeling like the world is ending, and the next I’m in the living room wrapped in Gia’s arms.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says softly. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get through this.”
That does it. I start crying so hard my whole body shakes. She guides me to the couch, throws a blanket over me, and pulls me into a tight embrace. She rubs my back and whispers soothing words, and for the first time in a long time, I feel the sharp grief of being motherless.
My child is never going to know its grandparents, and I don’t have my mom here to tell me everything is going to be okay and walk me through this next chapter.
“I can’t do this,” I choke out.
“Yes, you can.”
“No.” I shake my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. “No, Gia, you don’t understand. I can’t. I can’t be pregnant. I can’t.”
She waits until I can breathe again before she says, very carefully, “You are the strongest person I’ve ever met, Valentina Moretti. Whether you decide to keep this baby or not, I know that you’re going to make it through this.”
I close my eyes. “I just want my mom,” I say in a weak voice.
She squeezes me tighter but doesn’t try to make my mother’s absence better. I’ve barely talked about my parents’ death with her, just the fact that they’re not here anymore. They’ll never get to meet their grandchild. After I left Adrian, I promised myself I wouldn’t bring kids into this world, and here I am, pregnant and single.
