regaled me with stories about Egypt and Vietnam and other amazingly exotic-sounding places.
"Where would you like me to drop you, Brooke?" she asked when we entered the town.
I thought about it for a moment. "Walmart, if possible. Or as close to." I’d never been to a Walmart in my entire life, but I was willing to bet it’d be the last place on earth Dylan would look for me. If he was looking for me. Which he probably wasn’t.
She nodded. "It’ll take me about ten minutes to get there, if that’s okay?"
"I can walk," I said in a rush. "You've already helped me far more than I deserved."
Ruth just laughed. "You're too sweet, and I can see how you've let yourself fall into the hands of powerful men."
Somehow, she knew exactly what Blake and Dylan were like, even without me giving her more than a few snippets of facts about them.
"And I need to stock up before the storm, so I'll head in as well, if that's okay."
I nodded, not wanting to let the kindest person I'd ever met go just yet. "Thank you. I'd love that."
Ruth just smiled, like she already knew I had no desire to be alone, and continued driving across Warde. When we arrived at Walmart, I anxiously left my pack in Ruth’s car at her suggestion—no Walmart would let me carry a bag that big inside—and got out. Ruth stayed by my side the whole way into the store, chatting about her farm on the outskirts of town, which she'd just recently bought and moved into.
"It sounds lovely," I murmured as she grabbed herself a shopping cart at the front of the store.
She nodded. "It is. But it's lonely."
I had no response to that. I'd never lived alone, but I understood feeling lonely with my whole soul. Maybe it was fate that’d brought Ruth and I together.
"Here." She held her mobile phone out to me. "We should have reception here. Give your parents a call while I stock up on supplies." She winked, and I hesitantly took the phone from her outstretched hand.
Ruth walked away, pushing her cart ahead of her, giving me the privacy I needed to call... no one. I had no one to call. There was no way in hell I was calling Blake—if he was even still alive—and I didn't know how to get ahold of Mary. Her number had been saved in my old phone, and I’d never memorized it.
Idiot.
So instead, I found myself making a fake phone call. Mariah Carey’s version of Christmas carols echoed through the store as I talked to my fake parents, and I nervously wandered over to the aisle with pregnancy tests. The second I spotted the shelf with all the different options, though, my hands started sweating so hard I almost dropped Ruth's phone.
Then I just stood there, frozen with indecision. How the fuck was I supposed to know which test I needed? There were so many. Digital ones, non-digital ones, ones with lines or smiley faces or the words "pregnant" and "not pregnant" and ones with early detection and...
"Fuck me, I'm going to faint," I whispered aloud, bracing my hand on the shelf in front of me as the world started tilting.
Ruth was there in an instant, though. She’d abandoned her shopping cart further down the aisle and rushed over to me, her arm wrapping around my waist as she supported my weight.
"Hey, now, none of that," she murmured, her voice soft and kind. "Come on; you need some fresh air."
I couldn't argue with her; I was too worried I was in the middle of a panic attack. So I just let her lead me out of the store and sit me down on a bench beside the main entrance.
"Now, will you be okay here for a minute, Brooke?" she asked, crouching down in front of me with a look of concern on her lined face. "Just take some deep breaths. I'll pop back in and pay for my things, then we can get going."
I jerked a nod, wrapping my arms around myself. Fucking hell. I couldn't even buy the test; how was I going to handle it if I really was pregnant? If there was an actual life growing inside me?
Holy crap. I was in no way ready to be a parent. No freaking way.
Ruth was quicker than I expected, coming back out of the store with several large bags weighing her down. On instinct, I jumped up to help her carry