Baby for My Stepbrother

Chapter 8

My feet stopped moving and my body froze in place as her words filtered through my thoughts and didn’t make sense. Spinning around to face her, I asked, “Wait. What? What do you mean you have your period?”

Carly and I had practically the same cycle since we reached puberty, with my period always starting a few days before hers. For years we wondered if our cycles would finally catch up to one another and start on the same day, but it never happened and I’d become the unofficial herald of her coming pain and misery. Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I opened the calendar app and stared in shock at the fact that I hadn’t started on time.

You could set a watch to my cycle and it was odd that I was now, officially, a week late.

“You didn’t start yet?” Straightening up from the bent over posture she’d been in since I arrived at school, she stared at me with wide eyes. “Because you should beat least three days into it by now. You always start before me.”

Lowering the phone and flicking the button to turn it off, I stared back at her. Excuses and rationalizations flew through my thoughts. There had to be some explanation as to why I was late. Maybe stress had messed me up. I’d read somewhere that even a change in diet could affect a woman’s cycle.

“Maybe you started early,” I said.

“Nope. Twenty-eight days since my last one – as usual,” she answered. Her eyes widened even more and she leaned in to whisper, “Holy shit, Luna. When was the last time you had sex with Jack? You don’t think …”

I put my handover her mouth to silence her. I didn’t need her to vocalize the one thought that I’d refused to consider. Carly grabbed my arm and shook me in order to break me of the frozen shock that held me.

There was noway. I couldn’t be …

“Luna, you’re coming home with me today after school. I have some tests beneath my sink and you’re going to pee on a stick, young lady. Don’t even try to argue with me on this.”

After handing me a slender cardboard box, Carly took a seat on her bed and crossed one leg over the other. Without saying another word, she pointed me in the direction of her bathroom.

I felt like a beaten dog that had no other choice but to tuck tail and go where I was being directed.

Did I really want to know the results of this test? All day, I’d considered the different possibilities for the reason I was late. Stress, diet, sleep issues, anything besides the obvious reason that was now staring me in the face. Looking down at the box I

scowled at the picture of a happy woman holding a pregnancy test that read pregnant in the little oval shaped window. If my test read the same as hers, I certainly wouldn’t be smiling like she was.

Huffing out a frustrated breath, I walked into the bathroom, closed the door and sat down on the toilet holding the stupid stick between my legs. My bladder was more nervous than I was, but after a few minutes I was finally able to pee on the stick. Using some toilet paper, I cleaned it off and replaced the cap, setting the test on the counter so that it could work its magic over the next five minutes.

I left the bathroom and paced Carly’s room, not wanting to know what the results of the test were. Five minutes passed quickly and the alarm Carly set went off. I jumped at the sound of it and sat down on the opposite side of her bed.

“You go check it. If’s it negative, let me know. If not …”

She barked out a humorless laugh. “If not, you’ll find out soon enough – whether I tell you or not. Might as well rip the band aid off now, you know?”

I nodded, my stomach rolling over in my abdomen as I listened to her feet pad over the tile in her bathroom. She emerged from the door and I turned around to see a look on her face that forced my stomach to fall into my feet.

“You’re pregnant,” she said, choosing not to sugarcoat it or beat around the bush. My head fell into my hands and I thought I was going to curl up and die right there.

“Please tell me you’re screwing with me, Carly. Please tell me that the test says not pregnant and you’re just trying to scare me.”

I looked up at her and felt tears stinging at my eyes. “Please,” I begged.

She didn’t have to say anything for me to know she was telling me the truth. The sad look in her eyes said it all. There was no denying that the test she held in her hand said I was pregnant.

And there was no denying that my life was about to change forever.

No matter how long I sat there and argued with myself over the situation, I had no choice but to accept the fact that I was pregnant with my stepbrother’s baby.

It had to be Dane’s because I hadn’t slept with Jack in months. “What are you going to tell Jack?” She asked.

The tears that had previously threatened my eyes began to slide down my cheeks and when I looked up at her, I had no

choice but to tell the truth. It would eventually come out anyway. “It’s not Jack’s baby, Carly.”

Her eyes widened and I readied myself for the final blow. “It’s Dane’s.”