attack. “No. Don’t go, please. I really need you here.”
“Then here’s where I’ll be.” She smiled, but it was tight and worried. Her eyes echoed the sentiment. “You ready?”
I was everything but ready. “Yeah, let me have it.”
Alicia cracked a smile as she handed me the first test. “It’s saying stuff like that that got you into this possible mess.”
Despite the circumstances, I laughed. Sobering as I took the white plastic stick from her, I took a huge breath and I held it. When I was done, I placed the test on the cabinet and held out my hand for another. While I was doing this, I was going to do it properly.
Alicia kept cracking her little jokes, trying to lighten the mood. Neither of us glanced at any of the display screens until the last test was taken.
I washed my hands and squeezed my eyes shut, opening them only when I felt Alicia’s hand on my elbow. “Should we look?”
“How long has it been?”
She turned her wrist to check her watch. “Long enough. Let’s do this.”
“Let’s,” I croaked, my heart galloping like a runaway horse on a race track. Pressing my hand to it, I realized that my breast was tender as well. Crap.
Everything in me tensed as I prepared to look at those sticks. My heart was in my throat, and it felt like there was a bubble growing behind my eyeballs, making my vision narrow and blur.
The moment of truth came, and I couldn’t look. My hands flew to my eyes, and I had to force myself to peek through my fingers. Stomach rumbling, I saw that each test had the same result. The cheap ones, the expensive ones, the pink ones, and the blue ones, they all had two lines or one plus sign. The digital one read its result in the display screen: Pregnant.
My knees buckled, and I lost track of what was happening. Arms grabbed underneath mine and held me up. I was faintly aware of Alicia’s floral perfume and knew it was her that was keeping me from hitting the floor.
I sank to the tiles, cold and hard under my butt. It was all so surreal. The word kept flashing behind my eyes. Pregnant.
I was pregnant. Emotion swirled like a thunderstorm inside me. Sudden visions of a future I’d never considered with mini versions of Caleb running around a green garden popped into my mind. But then I banished them because they were impossible.
Caleb was going to hate me for this. He was going to think that I’d lied, and he’d never speak to me again. I glanced toward Alicia, and she pulled me into her arms.
“What am I going to do?” I whispered into her hair.
She hugged me tighter, breathing as fast as I was. “We’ll figure it out. How’re you feeling, or is it still too soon to ask?”
How was I feeling? I leaned back and glanced to my stomach, my hands and arms wrapping around it of their own accord. This was a shock of a lifetime, sure. I was scared to death of how Caleb was going to react, and I knew that my life had just irrevocably changed, but somehow, there was something else too.
A flutter of something different in my heart. Happiness.
But before I could figure out exactly how I feel about it, I lifted my eyes to Alicia’s. “You can’t say a word about this. Not to anyone, not even Jared. Okay? I need to figure this out first.”
God knew I had a lot of things to figure out now.
Chapter 23
Caleb
I paced the length of my hotel room. The waiting was killing me. It’d been years, but here I was waiting for Elizabeth again. I took Kelly’s advice and called her, even set up a meeting. For my hotel room, this afternoon. Now.
Kelly left my room shortly after midnight, despite all my attempts to convince her to stay. She was adamant that she needed sleep. It was after noon, and I still hadn’t heard a peep from her again yet. It was probably for the best. Dealing with Kelly and Liz at the same time didn’t appeal to me.
Well, dealing with Kelly appealed to me. Dealing with Elizabeth, not so much. It was weird to hear her voice again after all these years, but I knew that seeing her was going to be next-level weird.
Wiping my palms on my jeans, I froze when there was a soft knock at my door. I didn’t get nervous to