Chapter Thirteen
Three Months Later
Iris
“Was it awful?” I bit my lower lip and waited for Callum to laugh at the poem I’d finished reciting for him.
It made me more nervous to talk about my new writing than it did to try and shift under the covers to hide the extra ten pounds I’d gained while dating him. I was blaming the wonderful dinners we’d been eating. Going out on the town a few times a week was exciting and fun, but it wasn’t helping my already rounded hips any. Over the last few months, he’d been encouraging me to embrace my mostly forgotten inner poet. I had a reading at a small coffee shop soon—no biggie in theory, as I literally expected about five people from campus to show—but it was still scary. Maybe I was a hack. Maybe I’d fail.
Callum looked at me, his intense eyes boring into mine. Then he kissed my lips. “It wasn’t bad at all. Actually, it was pretty bloody excellent.”
I snorted and blew a long strand of hair from out of my eyes. “You say that because I have sex with you.”
He grinned and pinched my hip. “You have a lot of sex with me, but I’d still be honest if they were wretched. That one was really good; I loved the simile you used to bring in the moonlight.”
“Thanks.”
My shoulders relaxed as I leaned back against the headboard. I’d had more tension in my body than I’d realized, and the only thing that could have alleviated it was hearing those words from him. I needed confidence for my upcoming small show, and he gave me my strength. Over the last almost four months, he’d been my rock.
Callum slid the notebook from out of my hands and offered me a wide-eyed smirk. “You know,” he said, his voice hitting a low rumble that made my belly flip-flop. “I think your poem might be the perfect aphrodisiac.”
“I think you have a one-track mind, and that you’re not always thinking with your big brain.”
He crawled across the bed and hovered over me, lowering his hips just enough to grind his hardness against my hip. “It’s not that little, vixen.”
“Oh, I agree and—”
I closed my mouth fast as a bit of backwash threatened to work its way up my throat. Suddenly the flip-flopping in my stomach didn’t feel like it had anything to do with sexual attraction. Shaking my head, I slid away from him and rushed for the bathroom. I fell to my knees by the toilet and vomited into it. Damn. I almost didn’t make it. The spewing continued until I felt like my body was twisting itself inside out. It had come on so suddenly at only eight a.m., and I just hadn’t been expecting it.
I hadn’t felt bad last night, and I’d had some soup I’d made for myself before coming over to Callum’s penthouse after class. That didn’t make sense. Nothing else could have really upset it either.
I leaned back against the cool marble of his bathroom and shivered. Goosebumps erupted over my skin, and I tried to keep myself from vomiting again. But it was hopeless. Another huge twist of my stomach, and I was retching again. When I finally finished and was only left spitting bile into the toilet, a cool rag was already waiting on my neck. I groaned and relaxed as best as I could into Callum’s embrace. He swept me into his arms and then gathered me into his lap. Bringing the dampened hand towel to my forehead, he dabbed at my temples again.
“Are you alright?”
My stomach was empty now. I mean, it had basically tried to turn itself inside out, and I was feeling somewhat better. However, I had no idea what it was. “Maybe I have the flu? It’s not really going around campus if it is. I didn’t notice anyone at the office calling out sick either.”
“You look really pale, luv. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take you to a doctor?”
I shook my head. “Nah, frankly, the stomach flu might be a blessing. I need to lose a few pounds and…”
My mouth snapped shut as my mind automatically replayed the big events of the last few months. The fumbling with my birth control the first few hectic weeks when I’d started my internship. I’d forgotten more than a few days there. My weight gain and general exhaustion. My cravings lately for bananas when I used to hate them. The neon blazing sign that was Callum being upset our first time and mentioning the condom had torn. Was the birth control I’d had even enough?
It wasn’t possible.
Could not be possible.
Swallowing hard, I struggled to my feet and tried to ignore the dizziness in my head. There was no way I could keep the room from spinning, but I struggled as best as I could with my clothes. It took three tries to get my right jeans leg on.
Callum followed me back into his bedroom and frowned at me. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t want to get you sick. I know your work schedule like the back of my hand. You have three huge meetings all about that expansion project for commercial mall real estate you’ve been working on for months. I am not about to let you blow it because I got you sick.”
“You seem off.”
“Frankly,” I said, slipping my t-shirt over my head and hoping I could play into his sympathy for my situation. “I don’t want to get sicker here. It might be very embarrassing, and I know you care about me, but three months into a relationship, I’m still not expecting you to nurse parts of me even I don’t like!”
He sighed. “Whatever you need, Iris, but if you start feeling worse, call me. I can get you in with my personal physician ASAP.”
Nodding, I picked up my purse. “Sure.”
Yeah right. If I’m pregnant, then that’s the last person I’d want to see.
***
I stared at the little blue plus sign like it was a giant monstrosity, some huge, blinking neon sign in Las Vegas that had to be over fifty feet high. It felt as obvious now, felt as blatant. How could anyone possibly miss it? Okay, I’d thought I was wrong, so I’d cried, begged Allison to run out and get me three more tests, and peed on all of them. This was test number four and, while mistakes did happen, I was pretty sure I was pregnant.
I walked out of my bathroom and fell heavily onto my bed. Ally slung her arm around my shoulders. Her dark eyes were serious, and even her normal spunky, devil-may-care attitude was drained from her body. I was usually the worrier, but both of us were feeling the full force of reality right now.
“Maybe we can do a fifth stick?” she hinted. “If you do a fifth one, maybe it’ll be different.”
I shook my head. “We both know what’s going on.”
“I…when are you going to call Callum?”
I stood and started pacing. Well, tried to. After a minute or two, I was feeling nauseated again, so I sat back on my bed. “Ally, I can’t tell him.”
“I don’t understand that at all. You get along great with Symone. You and he have a perfect relationship as one of those couples who are just too intense with each other that everyone else is always jealous of.”
“You and Chadwick are cute too!”
“I know,” Allison replied, winking at me. “You’re in the same club we are, definitely awesome. Ergo, since he’s that awesome, he’s going to understand.”
I shook my head. “My dad is one of his best friends. I only got the internship because Dad called in a favor from Cal personally. I’d never met Callum, but if I announce to my dad that his like best friend ever got me knocked up with his first grandchild and, oh bonus, I’ll have to put off MBA school? Yeah, we’re all gonna get murdered Hamlet style.” I put my head in my hands. “This is totally like something out of a Greek tragedy.”
Ally shook her head. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even if your dad freaks, then you can stay here and just start a new life with the family who will support you. Callum cares, and I’m sure he’ll love the baby.”
I gripped my stomach protectively. “I do, and I can’t imagine anything else but having this child and raising my only little piece of Callum. At least I can have that much of him.”
“Why just ‘at least?’ You have to talk to him!”
“And tell him I messed up my birth control? I have to what? Explain to him that he has to have a whole new family all over again at almost fifty when he’s already set with his daughter? Presume that after four months or so he wants to be with me, to really make it a full deal, after he still mourns his first wife so much? I can’t compete with the memory of Priscilla. If I even tell him what’s happened—that it’s no longer no strings attached—he’ll reject me, and I can’t live like that.”
“So you can live with just running away?”
“I can live with regretting what never was a lot more than I can live with having him reject me to my face and tell me that I don’t matter to him, that he could never fully commit.” I took one of Ally’s hands between my own. “I love him. I’ve been falling in love with him for months, and if he stomped on that, I’d never make it.”
“It’s his child.”
“I can’t do this.”
I pulled out my smart phone and started making flight arrangements. At least I had a good cover. I could get a flight in the next couple of days; Dad had let me have a Black American Express card in case of dire emergencies. This was the biggest one I could think of. If I kept faking sick, I could keep Callum from visiting, especially with his slammed schedule, for a week or so. By then I’d be back in Baltimore, and he could get started with the swinging bachelor lifestyle he needed so badly.
I wasn’t Priscilla. She’d inspired him.
I was just the fling, and I couldn’t put my heart or my child’s heart through that.
“What are you doing?” Allison asked, her tone suspicious.
“I have to make my flight plans. I have to go home.”
And figure out how to hide things from my family forever because they were all three going to murder me.