Not even when I felt her hot, salty tears sliding between our lips when I dipped my head down to kiss her.
Not when she buried her face in my neck as I slid inside her again and again, deeper and faster, matching her desperation with my own.
And not when she cried my name with her eyes squeezed shut, clenching everywhere, milking my own orgasm out of me.
We went three rounds before we crashed, naked, limbs tangled together.
When I woke up at 5:25 a.m. for my morning run, I was alone.
One thing hadn’t changed.
Layla never stayed the night.
And this time was no different.
Chapter Six
Layla
Five weeks later
“This . . . can’t . . . be.”
The positive pregnancy test stared back at me defiantly. I was the first to blink.
“No. No, no, no, no, no.” I shook my head. “No,” I said more sternly, scowling at the small pee stick.
I stood up from the toilet seat and kicked aside a few pregnancy tests that were scattered on the floor. They all had two dark-blue lines. But since I couldn’t be pregnant, and this was all a big, fat misunderstanding, I had gone back down to Duane Reade and bought one of those tests that clearly stated “Pregnant” or “Not pregnant.” I’d read on the internet that sometimes the blue-dye tests were unreliable, especially if you left them out too long.
Well, this test left no place for error.
It saidPregnant.
In bold.
All that was missing were three exclamation points and a middle finger emoji.
As I paced back and forth in my shoebox-size bathroom, I rummaged in my memory box to five weeks ago. I was withGrant. We didn’t use a condom. We always had in the past, but not this time. I was raw from seeing Connor again. But Iwason the pill. I hadn’t missed one in at least three years.
A strong déjà vu feeling wrapped around my neck, squeezing tightly.
No. This was wrong. I wasn’t pregnant. I couldn’t be. For one thing, I didn’t want any children. At all. Ever.
Ah, yes. An unwanted pregnancy,a voice inside me said, clucking its tongue.What a weird, new concept.
But I didn’t even have any symptoms. No nausea. No weakness. No exhaustion. None of the issues that had plagued Maddie the second Chase’s sperm had caught one of her eggs in a game of tag. My period was just abnormally late, so I’d decided to take a test.
Speaking of my best friend, I needed to see her.Now.
I took an Uber to Mad’s Upper East Side penthouse, which was about the size of the Museum of Natural History, and marginally more extravagant. It was Saturday morning, so I expected everyone to be home—including Chase, their son Ronan, and the hot Italian au pair, whom shesworeshe’d chosen because she needed someone to tumble around with her energetic toddler, not because he looked like Michele Morrone.
“Layla!” Maddie greeted me with a warm hug, pulling me into her vast loft. “What a pleasant surprise. I’m so happy to see you. You look—”
“Like hell,” her husband, Chase, finished for her, draping a protective arm over his wife’s shoulder as he kissed her temple. He was as rude as he was gorgeous. Which wasvery. But he wasn’t wrong in his assessment.
“Have you been crying?” He squinted.
“Oh, only since about six a.m.” I breezed past them, straight to the open-plan kitchen, where I opened the fridgeand poured myself a glass of OJ. “I have some very disturbing news, actually.”
