“Oh my God.” Then again, quieter. “Oh my God. No.”
She could blame the birth control, and she would, but the honest truth was that the weeks leading up to the premiere had been busy; she had not been consistent, and she had known better and not applied what she knew.
“It’s not that bad after a while,” Sametra said, voice gentle the way only a mother’s could be. “Your body will recognize the blessing and cut you some slack.”
Kennedi met her eyes in the mirror and shook her head. She was in Silverrun, Colorado, miles from everyone she loved, on a production job with a timeline. This was not the time for this.
She went back to the table and tried to finish out the game night, but she was spiraling. Mildly panicking. They could be reading the situation wrong. Bodies did strange things. She was tired. Probably just exhaustion.
“I, uhm — I need to get back into town. Thank you so much for inviting me. I had fun.”
“You’re welcome anytime. You’re family now.”
Halo and Sametra walked her to the front door.
“Sis, take care of yourself. Call me if you need me. I don’t have kids, but Sametra does, so let us be there for you if you need us.”
“I’ll send my list of recommended doctors in the area.”
“Y’all, you could be wrong. I could be tired.”
“Well, go find out.”
She hugged them both and drove off in silence until she stopped at CVS. She bought every test on the shelf — six of them — and a Gatorade she didn’t need but grabbed anyway. Thecashier didn’t blink. She appreciated that more than she could say.
At her Airbnb, she paced the bathroom as the timers counted down. She opened his Instagram to keep her eyes busy; it had become an unhealthy habit she wasn’t proud of. Her gaze landed on the photo first — the stolen one, the embarrassing shot from the cabin that triggered everything, the least professional moment of her career. Yet, she kept it. You can't forget a man who looked like that, nor what he gave her.
She had messed up royally running from him, and she knew it.
The timer went off and scared her half to death. With trembling hands, she looked at the first test.
Positive.
The next one. Positive. All six, one after the other, thirty dollars’ worth of confirmation saying the same unbothered thing.
She sat on the edge of the tub.
“This is what you get, Kennedi,” she said out loud.
Because it was. She had stood in a doorway at Club Velvet and let that man kiss her forehead and tell her he would wait, and she had walked away anyway, run the minute she could find a reason to. God had a sense of humor. She was beginning to understand that personally.
She picked up her phone. Opened Rolani’s contact and sat there with her thumb over his name.
Then she closed it.
She opened Instagram instead and went back to his page, scrolling until she found the one she always stopped on. Monroe at a spelling bee, trophy raised with both hands, Rolani in the frame behind her with his arms crossed, pride written all over him. She swiped to find another, but this time all that was visible was Monroe’s legs, the roses so big they swallowed her.
She smiled and shoved that down.
“Dammit.”
She pressed her hand flat against her stomach. She had months before her body stopped keeping her secret, and the only thing she had figured out with any certainty was that she was having this baby. That decision had been made before she finished taking the tests, quiet and firm, not up for renegotiation. Everything else was still a mess she would have to sort through.
Her phone buzzed.
Mommy: How was game night with the stars?
Her mama was sitting somewhere in Coupeville with no idea what her daughter was currently holding. She would be over the moon, which was a whole separate problem, because Heidi Walters over the moon required management, and Kennedi did not have that in her tonight.
