I hand the barista a couple of creased dollar bills, and take my coffee in return. I flash the young girl a smile, but there’s no life in my eyes. I’m acting on autopilot. I have been all day.

I can’t stop thinking about what happened on Boston Common with Lucio. I made light of it at the time, but what happened scared the heck out of me. I’ve been trying to push the thoughts out of my mind, but it’s getting harder and harder. Young, otherwise healthy women don’t just throw up, except for two reasons: either they aren’t as healthy as they think they are, or…they’re pregnant.

I’m almost certain I’m as healthy as a horse. So that only leaves one option. But that’s not possible: right?

Except, maybe it is. Usually, my body is like clockwork. I can track my time of the month to the day. The problem is, that day has come and gone. It passed a week ago, to be precise.

I turn away from the counter, lifting the plastic lid from the paper cup to check they got my order right. The rich smell of freshly roasted coffee fills my nostrils; and, like everything else this morning, the smell curdles in my stomach. A wave of nausea rises in my throat. I have to resist throwing the coffee straight into the trash; anything to get the gruesome smell away from me. I stop myself, but only just; only because I want to avoid making a scene.

I know one thing: I need to get outside, into the fresh, inviting chill of a Boston morning. The cold will help.

I shoulder my way through the Starbuck’s glass “out” door. I brush past a middle-aged woman in a thick, fur coat, barely grazing her arm. Out of the corner of my eye I see the woman’s Waspy features twist. She looks like she’s smelled dog muck on her shoe. I ignore her.

There’s a homeless man sitting by the side of the road. He’s blowing air into his fingers in a fruitless effort to keep them warm.

“Are you cold?” I ask, biting back on the rising tide of nausea climbing its way up my throat.

The man looks at me with bleary eyes. It looks like he’s only just woken up. I can’t blame him. I’d like to go back to bed myself…

“Here, take this.” I choke, thrusting the hot cup of coffee into his hands. There’s nothing charitable about what I’m doing. If anything, he’s doing me a favor. I walk away to a soundtrack of the man’s muttered, startled thanks.

I unbutton my coat as I walk, trembling fingers stumbling as they move too fast to be useful. A couple of commuters hit me with a surprised side-eyed stares – probably wondering why there’s a crazy lady undressing herself in the street. I ignore them. The moment the cold air bites against my torso, I finally relax. It takes the edge off the queasiness, for now, at least.

“Pull it together, Sofia,” I mutter, wiping a droplet of moisture away from the corner of my eye.

I pull out my phone. Surely it’s not possible to get morning sickness so early? I cast my mind back to high school, trying to remember if they said anything about it in health class, but I come up blank. Maybe they should spend less time trying to drill algebra into your brain, and more time force feeding information that would actually be useful.

I punch a query into the search bar on my phone. A list of blue links pops up, and my thumb hovers over the first for what seems like an age before I tap it. I want to know, and I don’t. An epic battle is raging inside me. If I know, then this could be real, and I won’t be able to hide from it any longer.

Just do it.

I tap the top link.

It takes an age to load. I swear I could climb up into the nearest cell tower and pull the data out faster. My eyes devour the information at warp speed.

“Most women,” the website reads, “experienced the onset of symptoms of morning sickness at around six weeks post-conception…”

My phone flashes with a notification. It fills the entire screen – so what I don’t need right now. I’m just about to swipe and get rid of it, when I see who it’s from: Kieran. The text message reads: “Date night. Eight o’clock. Be there.”

My stomach does a backflip; either that or the hundred butterflies inside it all decided to pull a barrel roll at the same time. This is exactly what I wanted: and yet, and yet…

… Truthfully, I’m terrified. I flick my thumb right, and Kieran’s message disappears. I need to make sure that I’m right; because if I am, then tonight’s date is going to go a whole lot smoother.

I keep reading. I kind of wish I hadn’t.

My stomach sinks the second my eyes touch the next line down. It doesn’t just sink, it plummets. “… For some women, morning sickness can be the first sign of pregnancy, occurring as early as 2 to 3 weeks after…”

My phone screen blurs. I feel like I just hit the bottom of a bungee jump. Everything stops: my lungs; my brain; it all just grinds to a halt at once.

I stop reading. I can’t do it any longer. I’ve seen all I need to see … and the news is not good. Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be. Of course, I would be one of the lucky ones, or unlucky ones, whichever way you look at it.

I know it in my heart – I’m pregnant. I can’t figure out how it happened. I didn’t use a condom that first time with Kieran – or any time, really – but I’m on the pill! What’s the point in popping that plastic packet every day if it’s not going to do a damn thing to help me?

You’re jumping ahead of yourself, I hear in my head, trying to reassure myself. You don’t really know anything yet.

I don’t believe it, even in the quiet of my own head. But the thought feels like a lifeline: a ray of hope on which to cling.

I spy the green and gold shop front of a pharmacy to my right, and practically run into it. The cashier tears her eyes away from her cell phone, and looks up at me, her eyebrows tented with surprise.

“Can I help you, Miss?”

“Pregnancy tests?” I choke out. It’s just about all I can say. God, saying it out loud makes it sound real. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I could just take all of this back.

“Aisle three, by the –.” I take off, ignoring the rest of the girl’s sentence. Just being around people seems too hard to bear in this state. I feel like a zombie. I’ve only got eyes for my destination: everything to my left and right disappears in a blur of nothingness.

I grab a basket from the end of the aisle. I slow down in front of the tests. The store has three brands. Who needs three? Surely they all do the same thing? I chew my lip with indecision.

“Screw it,” I groan. I do a clean sweep. A dozen tests fall through the air and land with a clatter of cardboard in my basket. I jog to the checkout counter, even though my feet are heavy as if weighed down by fear-filled, leaden ankle weights. Every step forward carries me towards a truth I’m not ready to hear.

The cashier looks up at me with a friendly smile. “Get everything you need?” She says.

I drum my fingers on the counter. “Listen,” I say, my voice sounding testy in my own ears, “I’m in a bit of a hurry…”

The cashier frowns, but doesn’t reply. I’d feel bad if my stomach wasn’t so twisted up in knots. I swear though, if anything, the girl seems to slow down – scanning each item through the register like a cave woman using technology for the first time.

“That’ll be twenty-nine bucks and thirty-three cents, please,” she says with a smile.

I throw a bundle of notes at the girl. “Keep the change,” I croak amidst a stifled sob.

A bell tinkles on the pharmacy door as I leave. “You have a great day, now,” the cashier calls off to me. Both sounds disappear into nothingness. Anger spikes inside me. I can’t help but think she’s taunting me.

There’s an Italian restaurant across the road. It’s just opening up for the day. I barge through its swinging wooden doors, and a teenager looks up from sweeping the floor, a look of surprise on his face. I stride through the closed restaurant, heading for the restrooms.

“Ma’am?” He squeaks, letting his broom fall to the floor with a wooden rattle. “Um, ma’am – you can’t go back there.”

I ignore him.

An older man pushes his way out of the kitchen, arms loaded down with a tray of freshly washed glassware. He looks up at me, mild brown eyes widening – first with surprise, then recognition. He looks like he’s about to say something when he catches himself. He presses his white-coated body against the wall to let me past.

“I’m sorry, Sergio, I tried – but the lady’s cra–.”

“Gustavo!” The older man wheezes in a tone of warning, silencing the kid in seconds. “Miss Morello can do as she pleases. Take this tray off me, boy – before I do my back in.”

I wince at the sound of barely-concealed fear in the old chef’s voice. That isn’t the way I want my family to be thought of. We’re supposed to protect these people, not extort them. But with my brother in charge, that’s clearly not what’s happening.

Later.

I block out to the sound of their voices. They might as well be the chatter of songbirds for all I care. I push my way into the disabled restroom, locking the door behind me. I let my head fall against the cool wood on the back of the door, leaning against it for a few seconds. I can’t believe this is happening, or what I’m about to do.

I pull one of the tests from its packaging and toss the cardboard box aside. I hitch up my skirt and pull my tights down – cursing the long, freezing cold Boston winter for making me contort myself like a gymnast in this confined restroom.

I crouch over the test, and listen to the sound of liquid tinkling in the toilet bowl like it’s determining my future. In a very real way, it is.

The back of the packet says to wait forty seconds for the results.

Each and every one of them feels like a lifetime.

Thirty-nine.

Thirty-eight.

I stare at the little chemical indicator on the white stick. Two blue lines: good. One blue line: bad. I feel bad for reducing a human life to that kind of thought, but I never planned for this. I imagine all kinds of other women around the world doing this at the same time as me. I wonder what they are thinking. I wonder how many, like me, fear what they’ll see.

I look away from the pregnancy test trembling in my fingers. I can’t bear the sight of it.

Twenty-three.

Twenty-two.

My throat twists, like it’s being twisted by a large plumber’s wrench. There are women out there – maybe thousands of them – who can’t even have kids. Those poor girls might be where I am now, but time after time they see two blue lines appear.

I hope more than anything that I’m one of them.

Seven.

Six.

I blink, and turn back to the test. I’m barely breathing, stomach clenched with anticipation.

Two.

One.

I let out a choked cry. It’s not a word, just an incoherent sound, like the explosion of air a body releases when it’s been hit in the stomach. I wipe my eyes with the back of my arm, hoping against all hell that I’m mistaken.

There’s only a single blue line on that stick. I reach down for the discarded box, now desperate to find out that I misread the packet. Maybe one blue line means that there’s no kid – that I’m all good.

I know it’s a false hope, but it’s all I have.

“Oh, my God,” I mutter underneath my breath. The tiny writing on the back of the packet says exactly what I feared it would. “Oh, my God,” I say, again and again. I can’t say anything else. I can’t figure out how to say anything else.

I’m pregnant.

My life just shifted on its axis. If I was walking on a tightrope before, now I’ve slipped off and I’m clinging on with two fingers for dear life.

Plus, it’s not just that. It’s not just any baby. It’s Kieran Byrne’s baby. I’m pregnant, and I’m bearing the child of one of my family’s greatest rivals.

I look down at the plastic bag full of pregnancy tests sitting discarded on the floor in front of me. My gaze is cool, disconnected, and passionless. I feel like all the energy just drained out of me – like someone pulled my cord out of the wall socket. I can’t be bothered to try again. I know that the result will be the same every time. Call it a mother’s intuition.

I should be raging, and fighting against the unfairness of it all.

I can’t. I won’t. There’s no point, even if I did.

I’m adrift, lost in a prison of my own foolishness. I set this trap, and then I walked into it. I know what happens now. There is no way that this disaster ends well. The second Mickey finds out what I’ve done, he’ll explode. I don’t know who will more be at risk: me, Kieran, or my baby…

I kick the tests aside. The first pricklings of an idea start to brew in my skull. The realization that this baby – that I didn’t want, but who I’ll, now, protect with my life – might be at risk, stirs my fight instinct from its slumber. It awakens slowly: stretching; rearing its head. But it wakes.

I walk to the sink. I’m still in shock. I pump soap into my hands and stick them under the rush of tap water, letting the bubbles wash past until the water runs cold. By the time I pull my hands out, my fingers are wrinkled and numb. I don’t know how long I stand there, unthinking, listening only to the sound of water splashing against the porcelain.

Ultimately, it does give me time to think.

One thing is absolutely, completely clear, now. If I carry on this path – sleepwalking – then I’m heading for disaster. I might as well give up now. I might as well throw myself at my brother’s feet and beg for his forgiveness.

I grimace.

“Like hell,” I growl. I’ll never do that so long as I live. I wouldn’t be able to bear the look of smug satisfaction on Mickey’s face. No. I’m going to fight this. I’m going to fight him and anyone else who tries to threaten me or … I guess … my baby.

But I need time. I can’t tell Kieran the truth. Not yet. For all I know, he could throw me to the wolves. It’s not just my life that’s at risk now. I can’t afford to make any sudden moves. Besides, I need to figure this all out in my own head.

I dry my hands, and pull out my phone one last time. The pregnancy facts webpage still glows on the screen. I tap on the ‘x’ located at the top right corner to kill the page. I do it with vigor. It’s all I have to express my anger.

“Kieran,” I type. “Need a rain check for tonight. I’ll see you at the hotel tomorrow.”

That’s all I send. I don’t trust myself to write anything more.