Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(95)

She had fought so hard inside of her mind and heart not to turn around and go running back to him, not to rush to him and beg him to just run away with her, because she knew that they both had a life that they were going to be expected to live without each other.

Reggie tried to talk with her a few times, but she wouldn’t look at him or speak to him. It was because of his betrayal of their friendship that everything in her life and everything in Connor’s life had been upended and destroyed. There was almost no happiness in her life following her last night with Connor.

Her father tried to cheer her up a few times, but she was not interested in anything that he tried to do to make her happy. There was nothing he could say that would bring a smile to her face, and they grew quiet around one another.

It was two weeks since her last night with Connor when she woke up one morning and crawled out of bed, forcing herself to go to the bathroom to get ready for school. She ran out of deodorant that morning and tossed the old container in the trash bin, and then opened the cabinet door beneath the sink to pull out a fresh container of deodorant and as she closed the cabinet door, everything in her stopped.

She leaned back down and opened the cabinet door again and looked inside, and the thing that had caught her eye sat there in the dim light of the cabinet, staring back at her like a ghost.

It was her box of tampons. She had been so wrapped up in her heartbreak over all the weeks since their trip to Springfield, that she had not realized that the box of tampons she was looking at had never been opened, and it should have been. It stood there in the corner of the cabinet, brand new, untouched, and panic struck her heart as she lost her breath and sank to the floor in utter fear. She had not had a single period since she had been in Springfield with Connor.

Her mind raced backward over the days and weeks behind her, over all of the times that she and Connor had made love, and he had come deep in her every single time, and every single time he had never worn a condom. They had never talked about birth control, and since she hadn’t had any lovers during her time in college, unlike most of her girlfriends, she hadn’t been on the pill in so long that she hadn’t even thought about it.

For her, sex was purely pleasure. She hadn’t even considered that it might be something much bigger than that. She closed her eyes and dropped her face into her palms as she began to cry softly, muffling the sound so that her father wouldn’t hear her.

It couldn’t be, she thought. There was just no way that she could be pregnant, she promised herself, but there was that box, standing there before her like an omen of truth, and she felt more fear in her than she ever had in her life. She found herself suddenly wishing for the umpteenth time that her mother was still alive, and that she could go to her for help and advice. She was alone. There was no way she could go to her father with this, even in her uncertainty.

She wept a while longer, and then when she felt she had enough strength, she pushed herself back up off of the bathroom floor and looked in the mirror. She looked more tired than she ever had, and it disgusted her. Catalina got into the shower and turned it on full and hot, hoping to cover the sound of her weeping, and somehow to wash all of her sorrows and troubles away down the drain.

The troubles and sorrows were more evident than ever when she got out of the shower and looked at her abdomen in the mirror. There was no sign of change. She could see no roundness or indication of what might be a clue to her state as she examined it closely. It felt a little harder than usual, but that was all, and that was no sign that she could reasonably rely on.

She dressed herself and did her hair and makeup, trying to make herself look as normal as possible. She answered her father as he told her good morning when she walked out of her bathroom, saying good morning back to him, and that was all she said to him. She skipped the breakfast that he made for her and left the house early to go to the drugstore on the way to school.

Catalina went out of her way to go to a drugstore that was nowhere near her home or her school, and she bought three pregnancy tests, each one a different brand, just in case one of them might be wrong. Best two out of three, she told herself. Then she went to the school and headed for the handicap enabled bathroom in the library. Hardly anyone ever used that bathroom, and it was a single person bathroom, so there was no chance of anyone walking in on her.

She peed on all three sticks and then set them up along the counter, watching them as the seconds slowly ticked by. She tried to breathe evenly because she was afraid that she might pass out if she hyperventilated or held her breath, and that was all she needed; to be found passed out in the bathroom with three pregnancy tests lined up on the sink. She’d never live it down.

About a century later, two minutes had finally passed and she looked at all three tests. All three of them were positive. There was no getting around it. She was not alone in the bathroom. There was a baby inside of her belly. Connor’s baby was inside of her belly, and she was alone and he was gone.

Tears stung at her eyes and her chest tightened as the fears in her were realized and she lost all control of herself, crumbling to the floor and sobbing so hard that she threw up. She cleaned up her face and hands, threw all evidence of the tests away, and tried to steady herself as she walked out of the bathroom, hoping to keep from making eye contact with anyone.

She walked blindly around the campus for most of the morning, wondering who she could talk to and what she was going to do. She did not go to her classes that morning and by lunchtime she was tired and felt sick to her stomach with worry and grief, and, she guessed, pregnancy, and she went home. Her father was at work so she had the house to herself for the afternoon. She went into her room and closed the door, taking a photograph of her mother off of her shelf and staring at it.