by Parker, Ali
“Two lines means it’s positive.” Olive’s eyes were huge, the whites of them visible around her blue irises. She stood as still as I was sitting, the only movement her chest rising and falling on massive gulps of air.
“Well, fuck me.” Valerie stared at me for a beat before she started laughing hysterically, eventually bending over to put her hands on her knees. “Or actually, don’t fuck me. You’ve clearly already made it past that step.”
The last sentence was spoken between the hysterics. Olive glared at her, but then the corners of her lips twitched up as well. “She’s got a point, you know.”
Unable to believe that my friends thought this was funny, I just held out my hand for the next stick. “You guys, this is serious.”
“Yeah, but we can laugh about it or we can cry about it. Guess which one I’m choosing?” Valerie had finally stopped laughing for long enough to recover her composure, crossing the bathroom to put her hand on my shoulder. “We’re all in this together, you know that, right?”
“I told her pretty much the same thing earlier.” Olive was still smiling, handing over the next test like I’d asked her to. “There, but I don’t think we’re going to get a different result.”
We didn’t. That test flashed the word “positive” in a digital result box, and a low groan fell from my lips as I shook my head. “That one barely even touched me before it lit up.”
“You must be very pregnant then.” Valerie grinned and held out her hand to Olive. “Just in case, though, let me do one too.”
Olive sighed but did as she asked. “Fine, I guess I’ll do one too. In the spirit of solidarity and all that.”
“Thanks, guys.” A genuine smile pulled at the corners of my lips. I was so far up shit creek and I’d never been farther away from a paddle, but at least my girls had my back. “I really appreciate this.”
Valerie smiled, then washed her hands after she was done with her test. She put it between the others, propping her hands on her hips as she jerked her head at Olive. “You’re up next, kid.”
“Who’s your kid?” Olive retorted, then giggled again. “There will be a kid around here soon enough, but it’s not going to be me.”
“Right.” Valerie laughed, sliding her eyes to mine. “I guess we’ve got to stop calling Olive the mother of the group now too.”
“Way too soon,” I muttered, closing my eyes again. The enormity of what all this meant was too much for me to process, so instead, I just focused on my friends.
Olive finished up, keeping her test well away from the others while we waited for her and Valerie’s results. Finally, she held it up. “Negative.”
Valerie blanched when she glanced down at the sea of positive tests lying on the counter. “What the fuck?”
“Which one was yours?” Olive raised both her brows, looking between me, Valerie, and the counter. “Oh my God, don’t tell me you’re pregnant too. You haven’t been sick or anything, and have you even—”
“No,” Valerie squeaked, which was not like her at all. “I haven’t. This can’t be happening, I…”
She trailed off, her skin turning an alarming shade of gray before she let out a victorious shriek. “Never mind. Here it is. Negative. It just got mixed up with all of Heidi’s.”
“Well, that makes me feel better,” I grumbled, shooting a glare at her. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“Hey, I’m already going to be a godmother. Let’s have one baby at a time, okay?” She smiled.
Olive pouted, her hands flying to her hips. “Who says you’re going to be the godmother? You guys have always called me ‘Mom.’ I should be the godmother for all that teasing you’ve put me through.”
Val stuck her tongue out at Olive, about to reply when I suddenly interrupted them. “Holy shit. Godmothers? I…”
I didn’t even know what else to say. Shock tightened my throat and blurred my vision, making my limbs feel too heavy to move. “If you guys are talking about who is going to be the godmother…”
Olive realized first that I was on the verge of either a panic attack or hyperventilating. Possibly both? Didn’t hyperventilating go along with a panic attack? I couldn’t seem to remember. Breathing was becoming difficult, so was thinking, and I couldn’t remember how to move. When had moving my fingers become so hard?
Without noticing her moving, Olive was suddenly crouched in front of me. She took my hands in both of hers and held them tight. Her brow was furrowed, all traces of laughter and trying to ease the tension gone from her features.
“You’re going to be okay, Heidi. Deep breaths for me, okay?” Her voice was soft, imploring. She pointed at her chest, then took in a deep breath, demonstrating what she needed me to do. “In and out, babe. In and out.”
Valerie appeared next to her, mimicking Olive’s breathing techniques. “We’re here for you, okay? You’re not just our friend. You’re our sister. We’ve gotten through everything else together, and we’re going to get through this too. I promise, okay?”
I nodded, but tears jumped into my eyes and slid in warm rivulets down my cheeks. “What am I going to do?”
“First, you’re going to tell Will,” Valerie said. It wasn’t such a surprise that she was the one taking charge of the logistics. Olive was the responsible one, sure, but for all her badassery, Val had always been good in a crisis. “I’m going to fetch you your phone now. Call him, speak to him, then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
Nodding again, I wondered how long it was going to be until that didn’t feel like the thing I could do under the circumstances. Olive stayed with me when Valerie went to get my phone.
She reappeared all too soon, handing over the device with an encouraging smile. Sucking in as much air as my lungs would allow, I took the phone from her and scrolled to Will’s number.
If I hesitated before calling him, I knew I wouldn’t do it tonight. So instead, I hit the call button and held my friends’ eyes while I waited for him to answer. I took strength from the certainty in their eyes, knowing that they would stick with me despite what Will said.
“Heidi?” Will sounded puzzled when he answered, not surprising since it’d only been a couple of hours since we’d left the boardwalk. “What’s wrong? Did they come back?”
I took a shaky breath and shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. The FBI hadn’t even crossed my mind again—for obvious reasons. “No, that’s not it.”
“Okay, you still sound weird, though. What’s going on?” It felt almost like a repeat of the conversation we’d had only hours earlier, and yet so much had changed.
I hadn’t been okay then, but I really wasn’t okay now. “I need to see you again. Tonight.”
“Okay,” he agreed, even though he sounded confused again. “Just tell me when and where.”
Chapter 29
Will
The restaurant Heidi asked me to meet her at was located near her job. A smaller dining area with dim lighting was to the left of the narrow, single entry door. It was set back from the beach and offered a more intimate setting than the others in the area.
Frowning when I walked in, I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart. For the second time in one fucking day, it felt like it was actively trying to escape from my body. Since it had spent a lifetime never really getting that way, I was starting to wonder if I were developing a heart condition or if it was just the effect Heidi had on me.
She made me feel more alive than ever before, but apparently that came with those kinds of consequences. Whenever I heard a sliver of tension in her voice, it was like my body became wound too tight. Like I couldn’t think or breathe properly until I knew what was going on with her.
Heidi waved at me, seated in an alcove in the far corner of the dining room. She didn’t stand up when I approached her, chewing on her bottom lip and barely managing a faint smile.
Her demeanor had my heart beating in my throat, cutting off my air supply and making me feel light-headed.
Holy fuck. Really caring about someone fucking sucked. Rayce was the only other person I really cared about; although, it wasn’t at all in the same way that I cared about Heidi. Heidi was the only person who triggered that kind of reaction in me.
“Hey,” she said when I reached the table. She held out her hand and I took it, letting her pull me into the semicircular booth beside her.
She kept her hand in mine, holding it tight as though I would take off if she let go of me. Tilting my head, I met her green eyes. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“I thought we could get dinner.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was definitely something off about her. “Apparently this place makes a mean soup.”
“Soup?” The frown I’d been wearing since I got her second call deepened. “Do you often have soup for dinner during the summer?”
“Nope, but it’s light. I’ve been feeling…” She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “I’ve been feeling a little under the weather this week.”
“I noticed earlier that it looked like you’d lost some weight. I didn’t want to bring it up, since it seemed a little rude, but are you okay?”
“I, uh. Yeah. I think I have lost some, but don’t worry. I’ll be putting it back on soon.” In the dim light of the single oil candle on our table, I saw something that looked a hell of a lot like terror before she blinked, and it was gone. “Losing a little bit of weight might even be good for me right now.”
“Heidi?” I took her hand, lacing our fingers together under the table. With my free hand, I slid a finger under her chin and looked her right in the eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Have you ever thought about having kids?” The question was soft, and yet it had come out like it was the last thing she wanted to know while at the same time, my answer was all she really needed to hear.
Alarm bells went off in my mind, but I silenced them. Surely, she couldn’t be going where I thought she was going with this. “It’s not at the top of my priority list, but I wouldn’t mind having them at some point in my life.”
Her green eyes slipped away from mine, seemingly looking everywhere but at me. “What about at this point in your life?”
I felt my eyes widen, and my stupid heart did its racing thing again. It had only just started calming down. At this rate, I was going to have to go see a fucking doctor soon. “Why would you ask me that?”
“It’s just a question.” She still wouldn’t look at me, but her grasp on my hand was tighter than ever.
“No, it’s not.” I studied her carefully, taking in the worried set of her jaw, the way she sat as if a straight steel rod had replaced her spine. It was the fact that she wouldn’t look at me that made me think there was more to it, though. “Heidi, are you pregnant?”
She paused for just a few seconds too long before she shook her head. “No.”
I’d never heard anyone sound less sure about anything than how Heidi sounded about not being pregnant. Something was going on with her, and given her line of questioning, pregnancy was the most logical conclusion to come to.
However, I knew what people said about assuming things. I needed her to open up to me, to find out why she’d dragged me out for soup of all things when we’d just had coffee earlier. Not that I minded spending more time with her, but I doubted she’d called to have a chat with me. We could have done that over the phone.
“I have an idea,” I said, forcing my lips to relax and form a smile. “Do you want to see my new house? It’s not far away, and it’s a little more private than this.”
Whatever it was she wanted to talk to me about, even if I had apparently been wrong about what that was, I was sure it would be easier on her to do it without an audience. She sighed and nodded, then a flash of annoyance crossed her features before her head jerked to a stop mid-nod. “You have a new house?”
“Yeah. You’ve been saying you want to see my place, right? Let me show it to you.”
“Okay.” She held my hand while I paid for her bottle of water, which she’d ordered while waiting for me to arrive, and kept hold of it on the way to my truck. As soon as we were settled in our seats, she gripped my hand again. The same thing happened after we got out of the truck and walked up to my new house.
As much as I loved the feeling of her fingers within mine, I was starting to suspect that there was more to this too. Maybe not even worrying that I was going to disappear if she let go, but more like she was touching me as some form of comfort or reassurance.
Unlocking the front door to my brand-new house with the key I’d only picked up from the realtor earlier in the morning, I fumbled a bit trying to locate the light switch.
The sellers had been more than willing to vacate the premises immediately. Apparently they were moving out of state to start new jobs, and one of them would have had to stay behind if I hadn’t bought the house.
Finally snagging my fingers on the switch, I flipped it and the room flooded with bright white light from fancy-as-fuck downlights. Heidi and I both blinked at the sudden brightness of the room.
Heidi let go of my hand then, walking into the living area. She looked around for a few seconds, her eyes bouncing from the kitchen to the massive, solid wood dining table the previous owners had left behind, and the gleaming hardwood floors beneath our feet.
“Please understand that I don’t mean any offense by this, by how did you afford this house with your job?”
My head jerked back as if I’d been slapped by a wet fish. “What?”
“It’s just…” She cocked her head as she trailed off, taking in the heavy curtains in the windows and the glittering pool outside, which was only just visible in the moonlight and from the bulb installed under the water. “I’m a bit on edge after everything that has happened today. Usually, I wouldn’t have asked, but I am now.”
“I saved, okay?” I crossed my arms, then I uncrossed them because having them folded felt like it was too defensive.
Heidi’s eyes narrowed to slits. She scoffed. “That’s bullshit.”
“Maybe it is.” I took a step closer to her, but she moved the same distance back. Frustration barreled into me. I still had no idea why she’d essentially summoned me, now I’d given her what she wanted all along by showing her my place, and she was reacting as if I had mortally offended her somehow. “It’s not something you want to know about, now how about you tell me why you asked me out tonight?”
She threw her arms to the side, palms up as she gestured around the room. “Is all this from your brother’s life of crime? Is that why I don’t want to know how you’re affording it?”
“No, that’s not it.” Technically, I hadn’t afforded it by Rayce’s life of crime but by my own. I doubted that was the answer she wanted to hear, though. “Could we—”
“No, I don’t think there’s any point talking if you’re just going to lie to me.” She moved around me, standing in the door with one hand on her hip and the other on the doorknob. “You know where I’ll be when you’re ready to tell the truth. Goodbye, Will.”
After she stormed out, it took me a couple of minutes to process what had just happened. I had no clue what that was all about, but it occurred to me that this was nuts. And I still didn’t know what she had wanted to talk to me about in the first place.
How exactly it had happened that we’d ended up in our first fight, I didn’t know. Nothing about the night made a lick of fucking sense.
Determined to find out what the fuck was going on, I ran out after her. Only she was nowhere to be seen when I hit the sidewalk. Their house wasn’t that far away, but unless she had literally run away from me, she should have still been on my street.
She wasn’t, though, so I jumped in my truck. I took the most direct route to the girls’ house, but Heidi had to have made her way home at a flat-out sprint because I caught sight of her hurrying through the door when I turned the corner.
Goddamn it. She ran away from me. Like physically fucking haule
d ass. Despite the irritation flaring in my gut, confusion and worry were still the primary emotions flaring inside me. Nothing I had seen from Heidi so far had made it seem like she was overly emotional or dramatic, and I thought I had gotten to know her pretty well over the past couple of months.
Either I had been wrong, which I doubted very much, or there was something serious going on. Something more serious than even the FBI showing up at her house asking for her. And that was pretty fucking serious.
Jogging up the stairs to their house, I paused outside the door to knock. The windows on either side of it were open. Valerie’s voice filtering through from inside stopped me in my tracks, the question I overheard her ask suddenly making the reason for Heidi’s weird behavior crystal fucking clear.
“So, did you tell him you were pregnant?”
“What did he say?” That was from Olive.
They were both waiting for Heidi’s reply, but I couldn’t. Before I could think twice about it, I turned around and headed back to my truck. Heidi was pregnant.
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
Chapter 30
Heidi
As soon as I caught my breath, the girls and I walked from the entrance hall where they had been waiting for me to the kitchen. My mind and heart were both racing, my breaths coming in pants from the exertion after I crossed our neighborhood at full speed.
Running wasn’t really my thing. Sure, the girls and I ran sometimes, but it wasn’t really something we made a habit of.
When I’d stepped foot into Will’s house, though, it was like my entire body came alive with the need to flee. Something about the house didn’t sit right with me.
He had told me a few times that his apartment was too far away, even when we’d been right around the corner from my house. Will had also mentioned earlier that the house he’d taken me to was a new house.