Kylie leaned over, trying to snag the paper off the ground that she’d just dropped. “Oof,” she gasped, as her belly squished up against her knees. She really wasn’t used to having to maneuver around a volleyball, sticking out of the front of her everywhere she went. “Sorry, girlfriend,” she said, patting her stomach reassuringly. “I remember that you’re there. I just forgot for a moment that I can’t bend over anymore.” She carefully slid off her chair and knelt down, finally giving her access to the damn piece of paper. She heaved herself back up into the chair.

“Everything all right up here?” Adam asked, popping his head around the corner from the back room.

“Oh yeah. Me and the baby, we’re just gonna have to decide who’s gonna be where so we can start making reservations a week before we need to get there.” She was trying to make a joke about how her belly was arriving places a week before the rest of her did, but based on the blank look Adam was giving her, she could tell she’d lost him. “So,” she said, hurrying on – explained jokes were just never very funny, “I was thinking about going for a little walk, just to stretch my legs, and I thought I’d go down to the Muffin Man to pick up coffee or something. Do you want me to get anything for you?”

He gave her a hang-dog look and she bust out laughing. “Chocolate donut with sprinkles and a jelly donut it is,” she said with a teasing sigh. “But only if you eat those carrot sticks I cut up and put in the fridge first.”

“Deal,” he said, giving her a long, thorough kiss.

“And feeding them to Mr. Mopsy doesn’t count,” she whispered against his lips.

“What? Who me?” he asked innocently, pulling back a bit and batting his brown eyes at her. “I’d never dream of such a thing.”

“I’m gonna tell Ollie to keep an eye on you. He won’t let you cheat.”

“I don’t know where you get this idea of me,” he said, flabbergasted. “Why, I am the very picture of good health and good eating.”

“You tried to argue last week that Snickers was good for you because it has nuts in it,” she reminded him dryly. “You keep this up, and you’re gonna be 900 pounds. Ollie!” she hollered.

Adam snuck one last kiss from her, muttered something about being henpecked, and disappeared into the back again. Kylie rolled her eyes, trying and failing to keep a grin from spreading across her face.

Hmmm…well, it’s okay to smile since he can’t see me, she decided. Encouraging him, though…that would not be a good idea.

“Yes, Ms. Kylie?” Ollie asked, appearing in the doorway to the back.

“First off, there’s carrots and celery sticks back in the fridge. I want you and Dr. Whitaker to have them all eaten by the time I get back from the bakery. Second, I want them eaten by you two, not by Mr. Mopsy. He’s here to get testing done, not to eat his weight in carrot sticks. Third, what donut do you want me to get for you from the bakery?”

“Oh, Bavarian creme!” he said, his face lighting up at the talk of donuts. He looked…decidedly more excited about that than the carrots and celery she was insisting he eat.

Why was she not surprised…

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she told him. “If the phone rings, just let it go to voicemail. I’ll call ‘em when I get back.” She’d done her best to teach him not to lecture clients on whether it was okay to have a business card, but still, it seemed best to leave client relations up to her.

She walked out into the heat of the late July sun, letting the warmth pound down on her for a moment, and then began meandering towards the Muffin Man. She was excited by the chance to get out and stretch her legs, sure, but she was more excited to go chat with Sugar.

After attending Sugar and Jaxson’s wedding three weeks ago, Kylie felt like she finally had a friend in the area. She’d never been real close to anyone in Sawyer growing up – definitely one of the reasons why it’d been so easy to move to Oregon for college and leave Long Valley behind – and the few people she would’ve reached out to since she moved back home had also moved away, so other than her botched attempt to make friends at Knit Wits, she hadn’t had much of a chance to expand her social circle.

Sugar had been four years older than her in school, which had seemed so important back then, but didn’t mean diddly squat now. Post high school was a pretty nice world to live in, after all.

She walked into the cool of the bakery and sucked in a deep breath. “Oh, that’s nice,” she murmured to herself.

“Hi, Kylie!” Sugar said, coming out of the back and wiping her hands on her apron. “How are things going?” Her eyes dropped down to Kylie’s belly and back up to her face. “Wow! For some reason, I thought you were only like five months along or something.”

Kylie sent her a pained smile. “It’ll be six months in another five days and before you ask, no, I’m not having twins. I’m apparently just like my momma – I carry my babies up front and proud. I just made a joke to Adam about arriving somewhere a week after my belly did, and he just looked confused. I’m afraid pregnancy humor is rather lost on him.” She sighed. “He’s started seeing a lot more patients in the clinic, making clients take their animals down to the clinic whenever possible, rather than driving out to see them at their house, because he doesn’t want to leave me alone. He’s got the helicoptering part down flat, and I’m not even due for another three months.”

“You should’ve seen Jaxson after the bakery fire,” Sugar said, laughing. “Every time I sneezed, he wanted to take me to the emergency room. I finally had to tell him, ‘I love you, baby, but if you don’t go back to work and stop hovering over me, I’m going to leave you.’ Apparently, I finally convinced him that I meant it, because he went back to work the next day. That didn’t stop him from hovering over me before and after work, and sometimes during work, but I at least got breathers in between.”

They laughed together for a moment, and then Kylie said, “So, I’m on a donut run. I’m making Adam and Ollie eat carrots and celery before I give them their donuts, but I figure that if I promise them sugar in return for veggies, at least they get veggies into their system at some point.”

“Bavarian creme, jelly donut, and a chocolate one with sprinkles?” Sugar asked, already starting to pull the sleeves out to ready them.

“I’m not sure what that says about the eating habits of the employees of Whitaker’s Veterinarian Clinic that you have that memorized,” Kylie said wryly.

“The only one I don’t have memorized is you, and that’s because you actually pick a different one every time.”

“Moi?” Kylie said, placing a hand over her chest innocently. “Why, I hardly ever eat sugar. But since I’m here…” She began wandering along the display case. “Oh, the coconut one,” she said decidedly, pointing to the delicious-looking donut with shredded coconut heaped on top. Sugar scooped it up and slid it into its own bag.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you that we got pictures up on Facebook from the wedding,” Sugar said, ringing up the total on the cash register. “Apparently, the photographer forgot to get one of just you and Adam, even though I specifically asked her to, but there were a few with you two in the background. Between customers, I’ve been doing nothing but tagging people in pics. I can’t believe how much your stomach has grown just since the wedding! I mean, in the wedding pictures, I could see the baby bump, of course, but it’s definitely gotten bigger since then. You’re just about the cutest pregnant woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. It isn’t fair how adorable you make it look, honestly. Have you found out if it’s a girl or a boy, or do you want to be surprised?”

Kylie had heard the words, off in the distance, registering somewhere in the back of her mind, even as the rest of her mind was busy screaming in panic and terror. Not on Facebook. I can’t be on Facebook. Not Facebook. He could find me. Oh God, I should’ve taken my Facebook profile down…

“A girl,” she murmured, answering Sugar’s question even as she tried not to retch in fear. She smiled broadly at Sugar, panic thrumming through her veins. “A girl. I couldn’t be happier.” She shoved a ten-dollar bill across the counter and snagged the bag of donuts, practically running for the door.

“Are you oka—” and then Kylie was outside, heading down the street. Towards the clinic and her phone and Facebook.

Stupid. So stupid. She’d been careful since she got home, making sure to only take pictures of her face when posting on Facebook. No mention of the pregnancy at all. She’d ducked Sugar’s photographer all night, making sure to head the other direction whenever she seemed intent on her and Adam. She’d even turned off all of the geographical tagging that Facebook liked to include, and had stuck to generic posts about, “Having a good day today!” She hadn’t wanted to go completely silent because people might worry over that, but she’d hoped…

She’d hoped for the impossible, honestly. Why would Sugar make sure not to tag her in photos on Facebook if Kylie didn’t tell her the truth about Norman? Why would anyone think to be careful about that?

And if it hadn’t been Sugar’s wedding, it would’ve been something else. She should’ve just gone silent and deleted her account. Let a few people worry. Better than letting that dickwad track her down. She didn’t want to lose all of the pics and posts and videos she’d been making on Facebook ever since her mom finally let her get an account when she was 13 – way past the age most of her friends got their own account – but was that truly worth it in the end?

Stupid, stupid, stupid Kylie…

She hurried into the cool of the clinic and directly over to the front desk, leaning over the counter and grabbing her phone to log into Facebook without even bothering to walk around the counter so she could sit down. Every second counted. Hands trembling, she brought up her Facebook app, a big bell of notifications sitting there. She quickly untagged herself from every picture at the wedding, grimacing at the roundness of her stomach so blatantly noticeable. Sugar’d seemed to think that Kylie’d grown a lot since the wedding, but honestly? She really hadn’t been that small back then.

“Hi–oh, hey Ms. Kylie,” Ollie said, coming to a stop when he saw her. He’d obviously heard the ringing of the bell over the doorway and had thought a customer had come in. “Everything okay?” he asked, taking in her sweaty clothes from her jog through the summer heat, the panic that was no doubt registering on every cell in her face, and the fact that she was standing on the wrong damn side of the counter.

Yeah, probably not hard to figure out that something was wrong.

She flashed him a casual smile. Everything is fine… “Oh yeah, just forgot to send a text message before I left. Did you guys eat your veggies?”

“Yup, all of them. We split them in half. Dr. Whitaker said it was fairer that way.” Even as Kylie was sliding her phone back onto her desk – the tags deleted – and grabbing the donuts nonchalantly, like absolutely nothing was wrong, a small part of her brain celebrated the fact that Ollie was actually talking to her. Real sentences and everything. Although she was a human, and even worse, a girl, he must’ve decided that since she was also a regular purveyor of donuts, she was okay to like anyway.

“Well, in that case, I say we celebrate by enjoying some donuts.” She flashed him another smile, promising herself that she’d go ahead and completely delete her Facebook account that night. As tough as that was to lose all of that information she’d posted over the years, not giving Norm the breadcrumbs to find her? Priceless.