Friends with Benefits - Nicole Blanchard Page 0,54

school and back-to-back difficult shifts at work. It was too much for one person.

Tripp. I could go to Tripp. He’d be home from practice in a couple of hours. He’d know what to do. If nothing else, he was always the perfect shoulder to lean on. But he had his own problems with practice and games. He already did enough to help me as it was.

And things had gotten so complicated.

No, I’d deal with this on my own for once. I’d have to.

I should have been studying, but I couldn’t concentrate on my notes if I tried. All I could do was picture the girls crying because my mother had abandoned them somewhere. I pictured my buddies at work getting a call and arriving at a scene, with my twins as the victims. Countless scenarios raced through my mind, each worse than the last.

It was midnight before I came to the conclusion that my mother wasn’t bringing the twins back that night. Wherever she was staying, she was keeping the twins to sleep over. Without any other option to turn to, I felt hopeless, listless. There was nothing I could do but wait to hear back from them or my mom. I just hoped it would be soon.

I threw myself into my bed and tried not to think about how theirs were empty down the hall. I almost wished I hadn’t moved them out of my room. Maybe they wouldn’t feel so far away.

My phone chimed with a notification. Hoping it was my mom, I sat bolt upright and turned on my bedside light. My stomach sank when I realized it was only a notification from an app. I almost turned my phone back off until I realized which application it was. It was the app I used to track my cycle. The one that told me when my period was due.

I unlocked my phone to go to the app when I realized what it was saying. I double-checked the dates and then checked them again because it couldn’t be right. There was no way.

But it was there.

I was late.

It had to be stress. Or the IUD I got before Chris and I broke up. According to my doctor, my cycle could be wonky for a few months. That was all. Maybe I’d gotten lucky like a lot of women and wouldn’t have a period at all.

Knowing I wouldn’t get any sleep until I had more information, I went to the bathroom where I kept a lone pregnancy test from a scare when Chris and I had first started having sex and before I got on the IUD. The minutes I waited after taking the test were almost as excruciating as waiting for news from my mom.

The timer I set on my phone dinged, and I picked up the test, my chest full of apprehension.

The digital readout said positive.

My knees simply gave out, and I fell to my butt right there on the bathroom floor. When I could breathe again, I checked the screen once more, and the word positive was still there. It was the same on the two other tests I ran out to get. I had all the time in the world to watch my life go down the drain. If there was an upside, it was that my panic about the girls was obliterated—if only for a moment.

I was in too much shock to feel anything other than stunned disbelief.

No matter how much I didn’t want to believe it, there was no denying the results.

I was pregnant.

Fuck.

Chapter Twenty

Tripp

Ember didn’t answer her phone after I got out of practice, which didn’t concern me at first. We played when I came over by ear, so I didn’t really think anything of it. Much of our relationship—or lack thereof—consisted of ignoring how much of a relationship we actually had. I spent more time at her apartment than mine. We didn’t date or sleep with other people. When she wasn’t working, I was normally in her bed after the twins went to sleep.

Which made my apartment feel as quiet as a tomb in comparison. I knew she thought the girls were too much to handle, and they certainly were a handful, but that didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy them. They were two of the sweetest kids I’d ever known, and, having been in their lives since they were babies, I felt an incredible kinship toward them. Like a mixture between uncle and older brother. I couldn’t imagine a future without