by Lisa Suzanne
“Sure are.” She grins at me like it’s happy news, and my first thought is I have the spawn of Ethan Fuller growing inside me. “You’re measuring at two weeks and four days. Does that sound accurate?”
I think back to when the condom broke and nod, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.
“Most people don’t find out this early, but it’s good you did. No more drinking, no more smoking. Avoid caffeine. You’re a healthy woman otherwise, but it’s early. Risks decrease significantly after the first trimester, so it may be in your best interest to wait until then to share the news.”
I clear my throat and force out my question as dizziness grips me. “What’s my due date?”
She checks the paper as I mentally scroll through everything I have to do between now and nine months from now—not to mention everything I wanted to accomplish in life before I have the kid I never planned on having.
“Looks like October fourth, though that date could change.”
“What are my options?” I ask. One part of me feels like I’m already connected to this creature growing inside me, and the other part of me is desperate to know whether there’s a way out of this.
“What do you mean?”
“Can I take that morning after pill?” I don’t know if I would—in fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it—but I just want to know.
She shakes her head. “It’s too late for that. It’s most effective within seventy-two hours.”
“Adoption, abortion, or having and keeping the baby.” As lacking as my motherly skills have been my whole life, I just can’t imagine growing a child inside me only to give it away when I have the means to give it a good life, so I rule out adoption. I rule out abortion, too. This is my responsibility now, planned or not, and I just don’t see it as an option.
She nods passively. “That about covers it.”
I suppose that leaves me with the final option. I’m the only one who knows besides Holly, and I think I’ll keep it that way a while. I need to let this settle over me for a bit before I decide what I’m going to do about it. I’m just not sure how to keep up life on the road as a traveling musician or how to keep up my badass girl of rock persona without giving away my news—especially if the nausea doesn’t stop and I keep vomiting every five minutes.
I sigh as I contemplate this heavy news. “What can I take for the nausea?”
“We always recommend trying home remedies before medication. When you’re pregnant, medication is a last resort.” She’s all business again while I’m trying to ask the pertinent questions even though my mind is racing.
“What home remedies?”
“Dry toast, crackers, that soda you’re drinking. Some say ginger works well. Others swear by mint, and still others say light exercise helps.”
I nod as I try to commit all these suggestions to memory. It’s hard given the fact that I think I might still be in shock. “And if none of those work?”
“Get in touch with your obstetrician and she’ll recommend something.”
“When will I start showing?” I ask. I suddenly have about ten million questions but none of them are going to make this nightmare end. None of them are going to change anything. None of them are going to prepare me to share this news with Ethan or Griffin or anyone else.
“Most women start somewhere between twelve and sixteen weeks.”
I mentally calculate three months from now. I have studio time, which I can do pregnant. Griff and I discussed some stunts for my next tour, so practicing those will probably be out now. In fact, a fall tour might not be in the cards at all since that’s when I’m due.
Fuck.
Fuck.
This was so goddamn careless and stupid of us. We took the right precautions, I guess, but now I’m two weeks and four days into something that’ll link me to Ethan Fuller for the rest of our lives.
Fuck.
“When will the nausea go away?” I ask, desperate for some good news.
“Like I told you, everyone is different. Hopefully it’ll pass quickly, but there aren’t any guarantees. Generally speaking, it runs from six weeks to fourteen weeks. But yours came on early, so it’s possible it’ll end earlier, too.”
“Fourteen weeks?” I realize she said other words, but those are the ones that stuck with me. In fourteen weeks, the tour will be long over. Actually, the tour will be over in four weeks.
In four weeks, I won’t see Ethan every day anymore.
In four weeks, I’ll be back to life as normal.
In four weeks, everything was supposed to change. I was supposed to have found my happiness after getting what I wanted. I was supposed to be leaving Ethan behind me in the dust after I exacted the revenge I’d craved for so long.
Everything certainly changed—just not in the way I expected it would.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask.
“You can run specific tests as early as seven weeks, but most women don’t find out until around twenty weeks.”
My jaw drops.
Holly chuckles. “Good luck Maci. You’ll be fine. Take care of yourself and your little peanut.”
My little peanut. My eyes fill with tears, and this time I’m not sure if it’s because of her kind words or because of the fact that I’m pregnant and Ethan Fuller is the father, but I am sure I’m going to be an emotional wreck for the next nine months…and likely beyond.
I take a stack of paperwork with me. I’ll need to find a better hiding place than between my mattress for this shit, but I have to keep it around. It’s got all my home remedies for overcoming nausea plus some charts and information about how to take care of myself and my “peanut.”
She said the words and I heard them, but it hasn’t really hit me this is happening—or who it’s happening with. Do I even tell him? Would my silence be the ultimate revenge, the best way to get back at him for hurting me? Do I want this baby to be around him, to have him in his life?
I know the answer.
This is half of Ethan, and he deserves to know no matter what happened in the past between us.
I spot Griff in the waiting room, and he looks relieved when he stands and steps toward me. “Everything okay?” he asks.
I nod as I fight back tears because it’s really not okay. In fact, I’m not sure if it’ll ever be okay again. My life is spinning away from me so fast I can’t even reach out to try to catch it.
He leads me out to the car waiting for us, and once we’re settled in the back, he asks, “What did the doctor say?”
I clutch my paperwork to my chest. I haven’t invented a lie yet and I have no idea how I’m going to keep this secret—especially since it sounds like this nausea and “morning” sickness might not go away anytime soon.
“Something I ate. Bad sushi probably.”
“Did they give you anything?”
I shake my head. “It’ll just work its way through. They recommended dry toast, crackers, and soda.”
“I’ll get you whatever you need.”
“Right now I just need my bed,” I say numbly. I think about telling him, but once I say it out loud, it’s real. It’s true. For now, it’s just my little secret, and somehow that seems less scary than letting it out into the world.
“Hotel or bus?”
“Bus,” I say. It’s the closest thing to home I have right now, and even though I prefer the luxury of the hotel, I want to lie in my own sheets and smell my own smells. The metal tube suddenly sounds like the most comforting place in the world—it’s all I have of home right now.
Our car pulls into a space near the buses. Griff helps me out, and as we walk toward my bus, I find the Vail boys having a little party. Someone created a makeshift fire pit in a metal garbage can, and I spot most of the guys in the band and their wives sitting in camping chairs around the fire. Vick is there, and roadies plus a few other people I don’t know mill around or engage in conversation with various band members.
Suspiciously missing from the cir
cle of friends is Ethan.
“Feeling any better?” Mark calls out to me.
I nod as I wonder whether he knows I went to the hospital. I approach the group. “A little. Thanks.”
I doubt I’ll feel any better once I tell Ethan. I never imagined having kids, but I really never imagined doing it on my own. I always figured if I got pregnant, it would be something the person who knocked me up would find out at the same time as me. It would be something we both wanted.
But that’s not how it worked.
I want to tell him. I don’t want to be alone in the knowledge of what’s going on. It affects both of us, and he deserves to know.
I suck in a resolute breath, and then I automatically back away from the fire, not wanting the smoke anywhere near my lungs. I glance up from the fire toward Ethan’s bus, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust to the darkness after staring into the bright flames.
I wish I hadn’t looked. I wish my eyes hadn’t adjusted. I wish I could take back what I see the very second I see it, but I can’t.
My eyes fill with tears and my chest squeezes so tightly I gasp for breath as I spot Ethan Fuller standing just outside the door to his bus. Some blonde bimbo’s back is shoved up against the side of his bus, and Ethan holds one of her arms above her head as his mouth assaults hers and his hips rock against her pelvis.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
MACI
I’m not totally sure if the nausea is coming from what I just saw or from what’s going on with my body, but I feel like shit as I beeline for my bus. I don’t bother with an excuse as I run away from the get together outside the buses—the casual formalities are gone completely as I try to process what I just saw.
After Ethan told me he didn’t want anyone else, there he is…with someone else. I realize I was a massive bitch to him. I realize I pushed him away, ignored him for weeks, yelled at him and hit him just earlier tonight. I realize I deserve this pain, this jealousy, this heartbreak after the way I’ve treated him. I also realize we never made a commitment to each other and I was only pursuing him because I wanted to fuck with him.
Everything’s different now, yet it’s so much the same—Ethan Fuller managed to find yet another way to ruin my life, and I can’t even imagine the sort of spiral having a baby with him will cause.
I walk through the forward cabin and the bunks and end up on my bed. I don’t bother with such silly things as lights. Instead, I collapse on my bed in the dark and finally let out the wail I’ve been holding in all damn night.
I clutch my pillow to my chest and cry for everything—the hurtful words he said so long ago, the painful loss of both my parents, the life I’ve already committed to giving up so I can provide for the new life I’ll be bringing into the world. I cry for my mom because I want her here to hold my hand as I embark on the scariest journey of my life, one she made look so effortless. I cry because I’ll never be able to get her back. I cry for the revenge plan as I watch it slip through my fingers yet again because how can I do that to him now—how can I leave him broken in the dust behind me when he’s the father of my child?
Most of all, I cry for little Dani Mayne, the girl with the bright future ahead of her who took words to heart and allowed a stupid boy to change the entire course of her life.
“What you saw…it wasn’t what it looked like.” The familiar voice cuts into the darkness of my bedroom. I sit up on the bed and see his silhouette in the doorway. I wonder where the fuck Griffin is and why the hell he isn’t doing his job. “Can I come in?”
I don’t respond; instead, I just squint as the light behind him hits my puffy, swollen eyes.
He steps into the room and flips the switch for my bedside lamp, and then he steps closer to me. “I never thought I’d see the tough as shit Maci Dane shed a tear—least of all because of me.”
“What do you want, Ethan?” I ask with a defeated voice.
“I just want to explain.”
I hold both hands up as if to tell him to have at it.
“She kissed me,” he says, sitting on the bed beside me. “I was trying to push away from her but she was a strong little thing. Mark said you saw us and took off for your bus.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I sniff and wipe the tears still falling. “You can kiss whoever you want.”
“I’ve already told you, Mace, I don’t want anybody else.”
“Why me though?”
He lifts both shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s something about you.” He looks away from me. “Something familiar. Like I’ve known you my whole life.” He lowers his voice. “Like I’m home again even though I’ve never had that before.”
He’s quiet, and I don’t know how to respond as I think about what I know about his life growing up. I don’t feel the same way…or maybe I do and I’ve been fighting so hard against it I can’t even see what’s right in front of me.
Whatever the case, eventually we’re going to have to find a way to be civil with one another.
I’m pregnant. It’s yours.
I open my mouth to say the words, and just as the first sound of a syllable squeaks out, he focuses on something on my nightstand.
“What’s this?” He picks it up and studies it, and it takes a second for me to realize what he’s holding.
A picture taken nearly twenty years ago.
A high school Ethan next to a high school Mark.
“What the fuck is this?” he says, his voice louder. He picks up the notebook with the drawing of his face I created just hours ago.
His confused eyes turn toward me. “Why do you have this?” he asks. He holds up the photograph, the edges faded from all the years I’ve held it and studied it and plotted over it. Desperation edges his voice and I have no words. He stands up and stares at me as he holds the picture in his hands.
“Why do you have a picture of Mark and me from high school?” He studies my face as panic sets in, and I can’t think of any sort of viable explanation. There’s one out there, certainly—a fan gave it to me, I found it, it’s not mine—I could form any one of a million lies, but I can’t come up with a single good reason I’d have it other than the actual truth.
“‘It isn’t what it isn’t.’ There’s only one person I’ve ever known who said that.” He paces the short space of the side of my bed as my heart rate starts to pick up speed. “The colored contacts. I was hungover that morning, but I saw your eyes when you woke up in Houston. They’re not blue. I’ve had my suspicions, Maci, but now this photograph. You aren’t who you claim to be, are you?” he asks, his voice soft as his eyes fall on mine.
I look up at him guiltily as my heart pounds so hard I feel it in my head.
“I can’t piece together why you wouldn’t just tell me, but you’re her, aren’t you?”
“I’m who?” I whisper.
“Dani Mayne.”
Coming April 23: The Invisible Thread (The Unbreakable Thread Book Two)
PRE-ORDER HERE: http://amzn.to/2D8MKk3
One decision was all it took for Ethan Fuller’s life to be flipped upside down and for Maci Dane’s twenty-year plan to fall off the rails.
Ethan tells Maci about the invisible thread that links two people destined to be together. The road isn’t always smooth, but eventually the two people holding the thread will find their way to each other.
They found their way together, yet they keep finding themselves apart. Mistake after mistake, lie after lie, grudge after grudge…it may be too much for two people to overcome.
Are Maci and Ethan tied by the invisible thread, or will their thread break before they can find their way to happiness?
Pick up your VAIL with special guest MACI DANE concert t-shirt here: teespring.com/destinyII
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you first as always to my husband who gives me the support and encouragement to live my dream job every day. Thank you to Mason for giving the best hugs in the whole world. Thank you to my parents for watching Mason a couple days a
week so I can have a few quiet hours to write.
Thank you to my editor, Trenda London. You’ve become a friend over the last year and I’m so grateful I found you. You pinpoint every issue exactly yet you do it in a way that makes me feel like I’m doing something right.
Thank you to my beta readers, Kelly Werner, Stephanie Costa, and Jen Wildner. I love all three of you so much and I thank you for taking the time to not just read my book, but also to help me with the critical feedback I need and for loving my characters the same way I do.
Thank you to the beautiful ladies on my ARC team who are always eager and excited to get their hands on the next book. Thank you to the Vail Tail Fangirls and Team LS for loving my Vail boys and for making these groups my two favorite places to spend time on Facebook. Thank you to my author friends, especially the newly formed band of authors and the DND girls. Thank you to Katie Harder-Schauer for the final proofing.
Thank you to Give Me Books for the release day blitz and to HEA PR & More for the cover reveal. I love working with both of you so much! Thank you to the bloggers who work tirelessly and oftentimes thanklessly to promote authors like me. I hope I make you feel thanked because I’m so grateful for all you do.
Thank you to YOU. Thanks for taking some of your time and spending it with my characters. It’s a dream come true to write these stories for you to read. I love revisiting the Vail world! It’s truly like seeing old friends again, and it makes me want to stay in this world for a few more books…
I can’t wait for you all to read the epic conclusion of Ethan’s story.
Xoxo!
Lisa Suzanne
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Suzanne is a romance author who resides in Arizona with her husband and baby boy. She’s a former high school English teacher and college composition instructor. When she’s not cuddling baby Mason, she can be found working on her latest book or watching reruns of Friends.
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