My heart thudded. “No, no,” I said quickly. “I didn’t start. I’m just… really late.”
He laughed a little, that careless kind of laugh. “Okay. It’s probably nothing. We’ve had a stressful few weeks, that’s all.”
But I didn’t laugh with him. I just looked at him, my fingers twisting the hem of my dress.
“I took a test,” I said softly. “It’s in your bathroom. On the counter.”
Kairo glanced toward the bathroom, then back at me. “It’s ready?”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “It should be.”
He hesitated, like he was waiting for me to move first. “You wanna look?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. But you can.”
He nodded and walked toward the bathroom, and I followed behind him, my heartbeat so loud I could feel it in my ears. He picked the test up off the counter and turned it over, squinting.
“I don’t know what this means,” he said, frowning at it. Then he took the little plastic top off. “Why is this part yellow and wet?”
I gasped, snatching it from his hand. “You make me so sick!”
He laughed that same goofy laugh that always made me melt, even when I didn’t want to. He was trying to lighten the mood, but my hands were trembling too hard to find it funny.
“Two lines mean positive,” I said, my voice barely holding steady. “One line means negative.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, still smiling. “Well, it’s positive that you aren’t pregnant.”
My stomach dropped. I looked down at the stick, and the two pink lines stared up at me clear as day.
“The positive means that Iampregnant,” I whispered.
For a second, everything went still. The laughter fell out of his face, replaced by this blank, stunned look like his mind couldn’t catch up to what his eyes were seeing.
Then he just… moved. Wrapped his arms around me tight and kissed the top of my head.
“Hey,” he murmured against my hair. “Don’t cry. We’ll be fine. I’ll figure everything out.”
But even as he said it, I could feel his heart racing against my chest. My mind started spinning so fast that I could barely breathe.
“No, no, this can’t happen,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I can’t let this happen. I can’t do this. This changes everything. This changes all my plans. This changesourplans.”
“Khloe,” Kairo said softly, but I couldn’t stop.
“I was supposed to cheer in college, we were supposed to go off together, everything was supposed to be perfect—”
“Khloe!” he said louder, voice cutting through my panic.
I froze. He’d never raised his voice at me before. Not once.
He closed his eyes, exhaling hard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. But you need to calm down, okay? We’ll figure it out. Nothing’s gonna change.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Everything’s already changed.”
He shook his head. “Maybe you can’t cheer on the college level right now, but that’s just for now. You can try out again next year. We can still go off, still do everything we planned. We’ll just… have to move different.”
I wiped my face, my voice cracking. “My parents are gonna be so disappointed.”
“Maybe they will,” he said quietly. “And maybe they won’t. But it’s not about them anymore.”
