“Shit, Payts, I didn’t know you were trying…”
“We weren’t. There was an accident and we knew it could be a possibility, but we weren’t getting it on like rabbits.” No more than normal, but Seph didn’t need that detail.
“Owen will be cool with this?”
I nodded. “If I am, he’ll be over the moon.”
“If you’re not – will you tell him?”
I nodded. “Course. And I’ll tell him you were here and you know. We don’t keep secrets; not knowingly.” It was probably why we hadn’t struggled when we were both busy with work. Our conversations were very honest and open; I didn’t hide my moods, mainly because he could laugh me out of them and after our one big row when he hadn’t told me about his ex, we’d kind of learned.
“I’m not sitting in the bathroom with you while you pee on a stick, Payts.” Seph looked the picture of disgusted.
“Wouldn't expect you to. Wait here.” I turned and opened the en-suite door, clutching the box with the tests in it. I was fully expecting to have an experience now where I couldn’t pee. Total stage fright.
I pulled everything down and sat on the loo, reading the instructions even though I didn’t need to. Procrastination wasn’t something I usually bothered with, but this could be life changing.
“Are you okay in there?” Seph’s voice rang through the door.
“Just trying to pee!”
“You don’t usually have any trouble with that. I remember a trip to the zoo where we had to stop five times because you needed to go.”
“I had a water infection.”
“You’d drank too much before we got in the car and you were scared of wetting yourself.”
I started to laugh, and my bladder relaxed. I aimed the stick and prayed.
I sat on the bed next to Seph watching the viewing screen thing on the stick that could change everything.
“I should be grossed out that you’ve pissed on that.”
He was trying to inch away.
“You are grossed out. You ever watched this before?”
There was no answer.
“Seph? Any of your girlfriends had a scare?”
I turned to him and saw that he was pale, unsmiling.
“Cassie was. She didn’t keep it and I didn’t see the test.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known that. What I did know was that my brother would’ve taken a baby on his own – or as on his own as he would be with all of us. That would’ve hurt him.
“She didn’t know if it was mine or not, but by then I didn’t know what to believe from her. It was just before you came back from Manchester.”
Around the time Jackson had started seeing Vanessa, Seph had a meltdown. Him and Cassie had just split up and he was partying pretty much every night and turning into a mess. I’d been helping set up the Manchester office and was almost done when Max called and asked me to head back down to London. Because of Seph.
“Was she telling the truth?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never knew what to believe from her by then. Payts – look at the lines.”
Lines.
Plural.
