"I don't care what you want! For once in your life, Romeo, think about what I want. And what I want is for you to leave."
I set the test down on the coffee table, and I go toward the door because I don't know what else to do. Staying will only make things worse. But when I reach the door, I turn back, and she's standing there with her arms wrapped around herself. She looks small and scared, and so completely alone that it breaks something inside me.
"I love you," I tell her, gripping the doorknob. "I know you don't believe me. I know you think it's just obsession. But I love you, and if you're pregnant—if you're carrying my child—I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be here. I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to?—"
"Go." She's not looking at me anymore, just staring at the test on the table like it's a bomb waiting to explode. "Please just go."
So I do.
I walk out of her dorm and down the stairs and out into the afternoon sunlight. I feel like I'm moving through water, like everything is happening in slow motion. I get in my car and drive, not really paying attention to where I'm going, just driving until I end up parked outside a restaurant three miles from her apartment.
I sit there with my hands on the steering wheel, shaking, my whole body trembling.
If she's pregnant, my father will have to accept it. He'll have to let me be with her, because a Ciresa doesn't abandon his child. If she's pregnant, Thad can't have her, because she'll be carrying my baby. If she's pregnant, her father's threats don't matter anymore, because she'll need me, will need my protection and my resources and everything I can give her.
If she's pregnant, she's mine.
18
SAVANNAH
The pregnancy test sits on my coffee table like an unexploded bomb. I can't stop staring at it, even though looking at it makes my stomach turn over in a way that has nothing to do with the nausea that's been plaguing me for days. Romeo left twenty minutes ago, and the apartment still smells like the soup he brought, which doesn’t help the sick feeling.
I want to throw the test away. I want to pretend this conversation never happened, that Romeo didn't show up at my door with medicine and soup and that look on his face that reminds me of what I feel for him and what I’m losing. But I can't throw it away, because he's right—I am late.
The nausea isn't just stress or the flu or any of the rational explanations I've been telling myself. It's something else, and now Romeo has dragged it into the light with his certainty that we created something together in that moment of desperate passion when neither of us could stop.
I can still feel him inside me, can still hear the way he groaned my name when he came, can still remember themoment of horror when I realized he wasn't wearing a condom and I wasn't on birth control and what we’d just done.
And then we kept doing it.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. This is too much. I pick up my phone and text Romeo:I'm not taking it yet. I need more time.
His response comes immediately:How much time?
Savannah:I don't know. A few days. I just—I need to think.
There's a long pause, and I can picture him staring at his phone and trying to decide whether to push or give me space. Finally, he texts back:Promise me you won't do anything without talking to me first.
The request is so Romeo—possessive and completely unreasonable—that I almost laugh. But there's something underneath it, too, that seems like fear, like he's terrified I'm going to make a decision without him knowing. That should make me angry, should make me tell him that my body is my own and I'll do whatever I want with it. But instead I find myself typing:I promise. I won't do anything yet.
Romeo:Yet.
Savannah:I need time, Romeo. Please.
Another pause, longer this time. Then:Okay. Take the time you need. But Savannah?—
Savannah:What?
Romeo:I meant what I said. If you're pregnant, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to take care of you. Both of you.
The words make my throat tight. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, and I have to set the phone down because I can't respond. I can't find words for the tangle of emotions that's knotting itself in my chest.
Part of me wants that. I want Romeo to take care of me, to believe that he could be the kind of man who shows up and stays and builds something real instead of just this desperate,obsessive thing we've been doing. But another part of me knows that's not how this works. A baby doesn't fix what’s happening; it will only make it all worse. More complicated.
That’s the last thing I need right now.
I'm still sitting there, staring at the test and trying to breathe through the panic, when there's a knock at my door.
