I don’t answer. Not right away.
Because that’s the thing I haven’t said out loud yet.
I don’t know who I’m trying to impress more. Knox, or myself.
And I also don’t knowwhy.
She must sense it, because her eyes soften again, and she nudges the soup toward me.
“You want to talk about him?”
My pulse skips. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Start with: did he freak out when you collapsed?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. He was there. He caught me. Stayed with me until I came to. He called the doctor. Got the kitchen under control. He didn’t leave.”
Maya lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Okay,Chef Daddy.”
“Maya.”
“I’m just saying, that man looked like a brick wall with anger issues when I first met him, and now he’s out here playing knight in shining apron?”
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. “It’s complicated.”
Maya doesn’t say anything right away.
Instead, she leans forward, rummaging through her oversized tote like she’s looking for contraband, and pulls out a crinkled brown paper bag.
She plops it on the coffee table between us with a weighty thud.
I frown. “What’s that?”
“Something we need to talk about,” she says, carefully pulling out not one, not two, but three boxes of pregnancy tests.
My mouth drops open. “Wait. What?”
She doesn’t flinch. She keeps unpacking like she’s setting up a science experiment. “Three different brands. Six tests total. Don’t worry, they all had good reviews.”
“Maya, what the hell?” My voice comes out high-pitched and shaky. “Why would you… why are you even… what?”
She finally looks at me, expression stern. “Josie. Come on. You passed out cold. You’ve been dragging for weeks. Nauseous. Exhausted. Moody as hell. Your boobs hurt, you said so the other day, remember? You’re crying over soup.”
“I’m sick, not...” I shake my head violently. “Okay, maybe I thought about it. Once. But I didn’t want to… fuck, Maya, I wasn’t ready to admit it.”
“Well,” she says, voice gentle now, “I have. And I think it might be a good idea tocheck.”
I just stare.
Because somehow, in the chaos of trying to keep up at work, in the fog of being so damn tired, in the mess of whatever is happening between me and Knox, I genuinely hadn’t stopped long enough to do this math. To connect those dots.
And now that she’s said it, now that the possibility is sitting on my coffee table staring back at me in bold pink lettering, I feel like the ground tilts beneath me.
“Maya,” My voice cracks. “You think I could be pregnant?”
She softens instantly. “I think it’s possible. And you need to know either way.”
I sink back into the couch, heart thudding so loudly I can barely hear over it. “I’m not ready for this. I don’t even know what I want from Knox, or from this town, or from my life right now. How the hell am I supposed to know if… if I can handlethis?”
