I recalled the morning after. Garrett said he didn’t have a condom, and while we hadn’t had sex that morning anyway, I had never really remembered how that night had ended. Had he actually finished inside of me? Had…
Had fucking Garrett Marks knocked me up?
I didn’t have a pregnancy test with me because as depressing as it sounded, I had sex so infrequently that it wasn’t something that I ever had to worry about. But now…
As soon as I was one hundred percent sure I was not going to throw up, I was storming to the kitchen, grabbing my keys, and heading to the nearest pharmacy.
* * *
I looked at the stick.
I wanted to believe it was a false positive.
I wanted to believe that there were many reasons the test could be wrong.
But just because I wanted to believe something didn’t make it false. And what I saw on that test was something that I had no choice but to believe.
I was pregnant.
And Garrett was the father.
“Fuck…no. No!”
I was fucked if this was true—which it was, no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise. It was one thing to keep a night a secret that had no consequences, but this was literally a life-long consequence. I couldn’t hide a belly for nine months, much less a child for the rest of our lives. I wasn’t willing to get an abortion—the death of my parents had made me value life far too much, and I’d sworn long ago to never get an abortion unless my life literally hung in the balance. And even then, I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t going to give it up for adoption. Just as my parents’ deaths had made me not willing to kill, it had made me unwilling to give up on the chance at love. I knew there was always a strong chance of great financial struggle and difficulty, but nothing would ever compare to the tragedy I’d gone through in my youth.
So the baby was coming, and it was staying with me. That was so settled, I didn’t even want to acknowledge the possibility of a natural abortion or it being stillborn. I’d rather see Garrett and Mason fight than have that happen.
Which, unfortunately, seemed very likely to happen.
I called Garrett again. Not surprisingly, it went to voicemail. But this time, I wasn’t willing to say anything. This was far too important, far too critical an announcement for me to resort to distant means of communication to say anything.
I definitely couldn’t tell Mason, or at least not without some serious brainstorming.
I had to figure out a way to tell Garrett face to face without Mason present. How, I had no idea. Mason and Garrett lived in the same house. I supposed Mason could invite me over and I could get Garrett alone, but unless Mason went to the store or disappeared somehow, I was only going to draw heavy suspicion.
The clock was ticking on finding a good answer.
The worst was going to happen.
Garrett
It was time for church, and I had never felt so glad to leave my phone outside.
Hannah just never seemed to get the fucking hint. No matter how much I ignored her, she kept fucking reaching out. I didn’t take any fucking pride in the matter, but I would have liked for her to moved forward.
“Hey, it’s been a few days, how are you?’
“Garrett, are you OK? I haven’t heard from you.”
“Garrett, I know things are weird, but please talk to me.”
All in the span of three weeks. And now a fucking phone call? No, no way. I hit ignore, dropped the phone in a basket just outside our church meeting, and walked inside.
With the formation of an actual clubhouse, we now had our actual seating layout. At the very front of the table sat Brock as club president. To the left was Steele, his vice president. To his right was Mason, the sergeant-at-arms. To Mason’s right was Connor, the club enforcer. To Steele’s left was Zack, the club treasurer.
And there I was, seated to Zack’s left, the club secretary, the guy who took notes, organized everything, and kept everything going. And yet, of all the people here, I was the most likely to disrupt the club—and seemingly everyone but Mason knew.
