I drove around for at least two hours. Raleigh was beautiful, but sitting still in a city when so much was trying to go through my head was absolutely not something that I could do right now. I was one hundred-forty miles away from the beach, and I put my foot to the floor and booked it out of Raleigh as fast as I could.

By the time that I got there, the beach was closed. So I parked my car on the side of the road, and got out to walk down there anyway. I didn't see any guards, and to be honest, they were usually only interested in patrolling the parking lot.

I went as close to the ocean as I could get and fell to my knees, letting the gentle waves come up and lap at my knees.

What had I done? What was I going to do?

They were both valid questions. Not only was I pregnant, but the father of my child was one hundred-forty miles away and had no idea that I was carrying his baby. I had, for all intents and purposes, broken up with him before I had left.

I hadn't meant to do that. Breaking up with Samuel had never been a consideration in my life. I had just wanted to get away as soon as possible, and his damn reasonable face had been standing there, pleading with me to reconsider a more logical course of action.

So I had lashed out at him, and the end result was that I was sitting knee deep in a pile of wet sand, thinking about how much the father of my child loved the beach without him here with me.

How was I going to fix this? I had to throw the match tomorrow, in order to keep my personal life personal. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a career.

Samuel had planned to be at the match tomorrow, but I knew now that he wouldn't be there. I was going to have to go to the match, protect our kid and then just go home by myself. All of that was my fault, and the feeling of incredible failure washed over me to match the way that the waves were washing over my knees.

I sat there for at least an hour, letting the ocean take in exactly how pitiful I was. The emotional turmoil of the day didn't remain hidden, as I let the tears fall freely. There was no point in holding them back, after all. The ocean wasn't going to judge me, no matter how much I absolutely deserved it.

After an hour of sitting in the wet sand, the novelty wore off. More important, a sharp stab of hunger made me aware that I needed to get some food. I'd missed both lunch and dinner. That wasn't typical when I was only eating for one, let alone two. I had to take better care of my body than this now.

I realized with a start as I stood up that the little bundle inside of me was absolutely the reason why I having such difficulty in keeping up with my workouts. Getting up was difficult, for one thing. An enormous sensation of dizziness overcame me and I almost fell. It was a miracle that I didn’t fall flat on my face.

How was that going to work with getting in the ring? Why hadn’t been able to connect the dots before?

I knew that the answer to the last question was that I had been too caught up in my emotional outbursts. Was that normal with a pregnancy? It had to be. I’d always heard that it was omegas in general who were overly emotional.

But that wasn’t true of me. So maybe it was just true of pregnant omegas. If I had a sense of humor, I would have been amused at the fact that I had spent so long fighting against hint that I had any so-called “negative” omega traits, only to end up embodying every one of them once the right alpha had come along and knocked me up.

Samuel … Samuel would have laughed about it with me, if I hadn’t broken his heart and ruined both of our lives.

By the time that I made it back to the car, I of course had a ticket. I ripped the ticket off of the windshield and slammed the door as I got into the car. When it rained, it truly did pour, and right now, I couldn't imagine anything else going any more wrong than it currently was.

Another hunger pang hit and I increased my speed a little to get to the next fast food restaurant. Fast food was terrible to eat just before a championship, and I could hear Kamal in my head warning me about the importance of eating healthy before the big event. But I was starving and the idea of a huge, greasy cheeseburger seemed just right. The only thing that sounded better was a huge portion of greasy fries. Actually, what sounded even better was a large vanilla milkshake to wash it all down.

I pulled up to the window and an overly cheerful teenager greeted me.

"Welcome to Fries and More," he said, with the kind of happiness that I had literally never demonstrated as a teen. "How can I help you?"

"I need a large cheeseburger, with extra ketchup, no mayo. An extra large fry, and a large milkshake," I reported.

"Got it. Anything else?"

I thought about it and then I made what was probably the saddest request of my life. "Can you put it in a kid's bag? To make it ... more cheerful?"

The teenager didn't bother to hide the fact that I sounded like a weirdo. "Sure," he said. "Do you want a toy, too? That will be an extra 15 cents, since you aren't ordering the actual kid's meal."

I swallowed hard and the mention of kids, but I was determined that I wasn't going to cry in front of a total stranger.

"No," I said. "I don't need a toy, thank you."

I paid for the meal and then pulled up to the stop light. Alone in the silence of the car, the bright red and black of the bag did nothing to make me feel better. It did not affect my mood in any positive way.

Feeling the tears start to form, I turned on the radio as loud as I could and rolled down the window.

"I hope you like classic rock, baby," I murmured to the baby. "Because it's just you, me, and Led Zeppelin for the next one hundred-forty miles."

I was tired and miserable, and I didn't feel like driving the way back home, but I didn't have a choice. I had to get back home right tonight, because I still had the championship tomorrow.

As I thought about the championship, a wave of guilt washed over me. But no, I was going to compete in the championship. I had worked so hard for it, and I was sure that the baby was going to be just fine.

Any lingering doubt I washed away with a long drink of my vanilla milkshake. I waited until I got home to eat the rest of my dinner, but the lonely howling of the love songs that kept playing on the radio made me homesick in a special kind of way that made me disinclined to actually want to try to eat. Was it morning sickness, motion sickness, or was it homesickness? It was hard to tell, but either way, I needed to wait until I had stopped moving in order to eat.

By the time that I got home, it was almost morning. The vibrant dark pinks and bright purples of the morning sunrise were beginning to peek through the clouds and replace the stars.

It was a beautiful sunrise, and definitely one that should have been shared with someone else. In the same way that happy lovers would look to the sunrise and rejoice, I was unable to find any joy in a sky that would have brought so many others pleasure. In fact, all it did as I held by "happy meal" sack close to me was increase my misery.

To stew in my unhappiness, I stood on the entryway to the apartment and stared up in the sky until the last of the stars disappeared. As they flickered out of sight, I watched various people getting up to go to work. The couple across the street kissed in the entryway of their apartment, before getting in their car. The couple two doors down were putting their kids into the car, and I could hear them making chatter about going to school. The oldest looked as though she was decked out in a soccer uniform, while the youngest had a cheerleading costume on, and the spirited family looked so incredibly perfect as they got into the car.

Part of me hated them – the parents, not the kids. The other part of me wondered what the baby in my stomach was going to look like when it was the same age as those kids. Would it take after me or after Samuel? It would probably be a pretty kid with pretty light hair. But would it have his height, or mine? Would it inherit his dark eyes or my blue ones? Would the baby grow up to love greasy cheeseburgers or plain oatmeal?

Then, of course, there was the third option: the child could be a complete mix of both of us.

Standing on the entryway to my lonely apartment, I was once again overwhelmed with pain, but I figured I needed to go into my apartment if I was going to start crying all over again. It was better to cry all alone than to allow a bunch of strangers to see it.

The cheeseburger and fries were cold, but I ate them anyway. As I ate, I thought about what I was going to do tomorrow. The championship really did mean a lot to me, but maybe it was better if I went ahead and canceled it. I wasn’t overly worried about the baby getting hurt. I was a third time champion fighter, and I was fighting against someone who was never going to be in my league. I could protect the baby and guarantee that I didn’t get hit in the stomach.

Maybe I should take the time to go see Samuel and try to beg his forgiveness instead. I had no idea if it was too late to try to forge a relationship back together from the shattered pieces of what I had broken, but I knew in my heart that I wanted to try. There was nothing more that I wanted to try than to try to repair it, but I had no idea what the first step would even be in that situation.

After all, this wasn’t the first time that I had screwed everything up completely. This wouldn’t be a second chance. It would be a third one, and there was no reason to believe that Samuel needed to be that forgiving.

Would any of that work? If I was in his shoes, I wouldn't forgive me, that was for sure.

As I was thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow, my phone buzzed. I was excited, until I looked down and saw Terrance's number splashed across my screen. There was only one word written there in the text: Remember.

Anger and desperation fought for dominance within me, and I ended up standing up and punching the wall as hard as I could. Unfortunately, the wall was too cheap to stand up to the force of an MMA champion's fist, and my punch left a huge hole in the wall.

At least Terrance had my answer. I couldn't just quit. I couldn't be a no show. I had to show up and fight him so that I could throw the match. If I didn't, Terrance's blackmail was going to be all over the news.

What kind of life would that be, for the baby?

As I laid down to sleep, I had only my duffle bag and a blanket to keep myself company. Alone in the cold, dark, and abandoned apartment building, I dreamed of Samuel's arms, safe, warm, and completely lacking in judgment.