Her tone changes, sharper now.
I look up.
She’s studying me with narrowed eyes. It’s the same look she gets when she’s sizing up a rude customer or trying to figure out whether someone’s about to cause trouble.
“Answer me something,” she says quietly. “When was your last period?”
The question lands like a slap.
“What?”
“Your last period,” she repeats. “When was it?”
I open my mouth to answer automatically, then stall.
Because I don’t know.
My thoughts race, sifting through the recent chaos of moving to the estate, Devin’s accident, Kaz’s shooting, my first day at theLennox, and the conference, all of it blending into an indistinct blur, much like paint dissolving in water.
“I…” I swallow. “I don’t remember. Maybe last month?”
“Early last month or late last month?”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice thinning. “Why are you asking me that like it’s an interrogation?”
She leans closer, lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Because you’ve been tired as hell lately, you’ve been nauseous, you nearly puked at that fish dinner, and you’ve been running hot like you swallowed a furnace.”
My stomach drops.
She watches my face carefully, then says it, plain and simple.
“Aly, he thinks you’re pregnant.”
I laugh.
It bursts out of me too loud and too sharp; the sound bordering on hysterical. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “We—we barely?—”
My words trail off aseverymemory catches up with me.
The night in his bedroom.
His hands.
The way everything spiraled out of control after that.
The rule we broke.
The second time.
The third.
Devin shakes her head. “Whatever is going on between you two, I wish I could meet a man who makes me look as blissed out as you do.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
Her eyebrows climb. “You didn’t?—”
“I haven’t gotten it,” I say, the realization creeping in like cold water. “My period. I haven’t gotten it.”
