Page 6 of What Goes Around

They didn’t.

Chapter 3: Two Lines

By the third week I told myself it was just stress. The nausea, the dizziness, it had to be my nerves trying to survive the constant panic. I hadn’t been sleeping. I barely drank water. The nightmares didn’t help.

It made sense… didn’t it?

But deep down, something felt off. My body ached in ways that didn’t make sense. I’d catch myself pressing a hand against my stomach without realizing it, like I was trying to hold myself together from the inside out.

I tried to keep busy. I cleaned the apartment until my fingers bled, rearranged furniture, scrubbed the walls like maybe I could wash away the shame clinging to me. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore. My skin looked pale, my eyes hollow, I looked like someone who’d been through a war and lost.

One night I found myself scrolling through old photos: me and Payton laughing over coffee, me and Nick at the beach with his arm around my shoulders, Apple grinning in the background. My chest hurt so badly I could hardly breathe.

Then came the morning I almost fainted.

I stood up too fast and the room tilted. The edges of my vision went black. I grabbed the counter and breathed shallowly. My stomach twisted, but there was nothing to bring up, just bitter air and the sharp taste of bile.

That’s when the thought finally crossed my mind. What if this isn’t stress?

Panicked, I checked my calendar.

Two weeks late.

Suddenly, the nausea, the fatigue, the dizziness, they all made sense. And if I was right, if I was really pregnant, then everything was even more complicated than I’d imagined.

Nick hadn’t spoken to me since the wedding. He’d blocked every call and message. It felt like I had been erased.

For the last week I’d been hiding indoors because every time I stepped outside I felt the weight of a thousand eyes. I was hiding. I was cowardly. But today I had to leave the apartment.

I had to know.

At the pharmacy, I moved quietly through the aisles, trying to make myself small.

It didn’t help.

I could feel the stares anyway. The weight of them pressing against my skin, following me from one shelf to the next. Conversations dipped when I passed, then picked back up in low murmurs.

Riverton was too small for anonymity. Too small for mistakes. Everyone thought they knew everything about everyone. And when they didn’t, they filled in the gaps themselves.

And lately, my face had been everywhere.

Internet-famous for all the worst reasons.

A few days after the wedding there had even been a short clip on local news about the disaster. Payton and Nick came from money and influence; people loved to be near that kind of scandal. And I’d become someone to talk about.

I shoved a pregnancy test into a brown paper bag and clutched it to my chest like something shameful and sacred at once, then hurried home. Someone filmed me leaving the shop; the video was online within hours.

New posts bloomed: affair baby coming, homewrecker pregnant?

By the time I locked my door behind me, my hands were shaking.

I didn’t even take my shoes off. I went straight to the bathroom, tearing the box open with clumsy fingers. The instructions blurred for a second before I forced myself to focus.

I followed them mechanically. Then I set the test down on the edge of the sink.

And waited.

Three minutes had never felt so long.