AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Friday night, I come home to find a box that was left with the front desk. When I open it, I find the things I’d left at Chase’s apartment. He didn’t even have the decency to drop them off himself. I would have never expected this from him. Then again, I didn’t realize how gun shy he was about a relationship.
I spend the entire weekend in my apartment, crying. Hunter comes on Sunday to comfort me. He’s the only one that truly knows what happened with Chase. I tell him I deserve this pain. I hurt Lucian, a man that was in love with me, so now I’m getting it back in spades. Hunter tells me it doesn’t work that way, that Chase had his demons to deal with and I can’t blame myself for his actions, but I’m unconvinced. Still wallowing in self-pity, I moan that Chase didn’t want me. He probably only saw me as a whore—a woman he could use in bed and be done with when he got bored with me.
“Dammit, Megan, don’t say that about yourself.”
Sniffling, I insist, “It’s true. He didn’t see me as worthy of someone to marry.”
Hunter passes me another tissue. “It’s his problem, not yours. You’re a wonderful person.”
“Why didn’t you want me then?”
“Megan, we didn’t want each other. It had nothing to do with you. If it was the right time and right place, we would have dated.” Hunter takes me in his arms as the tears fall from my eyes.
Two weeks later, I’m still miserable and nauseous each day. Over the weekend, I clean out my purse and find a small calendar that I keep buried at the bottom. I page through it and find an entry titled “Depo Due.” It was logged five weeks ago, and I’m late. My mind starts racing. Could my nausea be caused by something other than me being upset?
On the Depo shots, my periods were usually few and far between. I haven’t had one in two months and before that, three. Running to my bathroom, I dig around the back of the vanity until I find what I need—a pregnancy test. A few unbearable minutes later, I have my answer.
I’m pregnant.
I’m fucking pregnant with Chase’s child. How could I have been so forgetful?
He’s gone, and I need to decide what I want to do. The one thing I have no doubt is that I want this child. I’m almost thirty, and I keep wondering if I’ll ever have a relationship that ends in marriage. And I’m not getting any younger. As I worry about that, Chase’s words about not needing to be married to have a child come up in my mind. He was right. Setting my resolve, I told myself that’s what I’ll plan to do.
I have a good job, I’m educated, and I’ll figure out a child-care schedule when the time comes. I could do this. For the rest of the day, I border between being scared shitless and wondering if I’m really up for the task of being a single mother. One upside is that family surrounds me, and I’m sure that they’ll help when I ask. Between all my thinking, I realize my future is wide open.
Chapter 8
Third-trimester pregnancy is no fun. I’m eight and a half months along, and sleep has become very uncomfortable. Most mornings, I wake up with a backache. My family has been wonderful, though. JC and Hunter helped paint my office blue because I’m having a boy. They also put together the baby furniture last week.
I haven’t heard from Chase at all, though I do see blurbs about him in the Nolan Pharmaceutical Newsletter. I don’t know if he’s seen anything about me in them because I got a promotion. That stopped the chattering behind my back about me using my looks to get ahead.
Naomi Revere was hired after Chase left, and she was the one who promoted me due to my hard work. Thankfully, she’s been sympathetic to my bad pregnancy days since she gave birth to her daughter a year ago.
Dr. Revere also knows what it’s like to be a single mother since she is one. She’s a small woman, standing barely five feet, with dark brown eyes and honey blonde hair always pulled back in a severe bun. She can be intimidating, even at her size.
Cindy took over my position after I moved further up the ladder. I now have an office with a door, and it’s away from the lab. I now oversee specific research projects and report to Dr. Revere. Although it’s demanding, the extra money I’ve made has helped me plan for the months where I will be away on maternity leave; and I plan to take all four months.
Emma offered to stay at my place and take a week’s vacation when I’m first home from the hospital. My mother agreed to take a couple of weeks to help me out too. Their aid will give me some time to heal and get up to speed to take care of my son. Although I can’t stop wishing I had a partner to help father him; I wasn’t going to beg Chase to come back to me or let him know about my son at all. He doesn’t love me. He made that clear by leaving.
Even so, I’ve had a man by my side throughout my pregnancy. Steven contacted me shortly after Chase left. As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he made himself available for doctor visits, shopping trips, and anything else I needed. He had no qualms about becoming a father to someone else’s baby. He’s been very supportive. My mother has a different opinion; she feels I was foolish for getting pregnant, and I’m not mature enough to be a good mother. I plan to prove her wrong.
A week before I’m due, we get the Nolan newsletter. As I’m leafing through it, my heart stops. The words before my eyes rattle me.
Nolan Pharmaceuticals is proud to congratulate Dr. Chase Pearce on his engagement to Dr. Amberlynn Tyler. Dr. Pearce is head of the Research and Development Department of the Los Angeles Division. August nuptials are planned.
My breath is stolen from me as I lean back in my chair and shake my head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry. He didn’t want to marry me. I feel like such a fool, but the announcement makes me comfortable with my decision not to tell him about the baby. I would have forced him to be something he didn’t want, and I didn’t like the idea of him resenting me for the rest of his life for doing so.
Processing this, I stand up, and a horrible pain tears through my stomach that drops me back onto my chair. I take a few deep breaths and hope it was a cramp, but another comes several minutes later. Oh God, I think I’m going into labor. Clutching my belly, I grab my purse and leave my office. My assistant, Della, immediately knows what to do since she has five children and eight grandchildren. After placing a quick call to Dr. Revere, she’s helping me out the door.
She takes me to the hospital, and on the way, I call Lexi and my mother. If I can’t have a husband, I can at least have my family. Lexi arrives as I’m being hooked up to monitors. I smile weakly at her. My contractions are coming fast, and the doctor tells me that my labor is progressing very quickly, which means I might give birth in an hour or two.
“Wow, you’re lucky,” Lexi comments, clearly trying to distract me. “Johnny took thirteen hours while Arabella took fifteen.”
Through huffs, I grit, “I don’t know how you did it because this is unbearable.”
“It will be all worth it when you hold your son in your arms.”
Tears blur my eyes. I think of what could have been with Chase.
