Back at the apartment, I rushed inside, not even knowing why I was rushing. Well… I did know, but I tried not to think about it while I put everything in its exact designated spot in the kitchen. Everything but the tests and the box of tampons I was certain I would need the next day.
No matter how much I tried convincing myself to wait a few more days for my period to start, I just… I couldn’t. Not with the way I needed control. How could I keep it if I didn’t know?
Since Ava was at school, I at least had some privacy while I sat on the toilet, staring at the tests. All three of them in a neat row, showing me something I refused to believe. The two dark solid lines on all three of them. There was no way. I mean, there was. Obviously. I got with a lot of guys, which was just a whole other part of my planned chaos. But I was so careful, even being on birth control. So freaking careful. It was one of my many rules.
That I only slipped up on once. Eight weeks before. In a moment of weakness, of pure passion I had never felt in my life, I threw one of my most important rules out the window. There was no doubt in my mind it was his. How could it not be? I hadn’t even been with anyone else since that one time, no matter how hard I’d tried to make it happen.
I muttered an expletive at the test. At the bathroom. At no one but myself. How could I let this happen?
My control crumbled beneath my feet. Tears streamed down my cheeks while I just stared and stared at the tests. As if to verify it was real, my stomach rolled again, a cold sweat breaking out over my neck. I would have thought there was nothing left in there. But there was.
When I was done, I took the tests to my room, locking the door. Then I just cried and cried there with the positive tests in hand. What could I do? Who could I tell?
I couldn’t tell Ava, even if it was her—
No!
Should I tell Kai? Could I?
I didn’t know.
The only thing I did know was that there was a little person inside me. A person who didn’t choose to strip away all my control. But they did. Slowly cutting away every strand of it that I had on my life as my mind worked, finding resolve in something so unexpected.
The first thing I needed was to find a doctor.
2
Kai
When I got off work, I read Kate’s reply over a few times. I couldn’t stop reading it. The fact that she had replied at all was shocking. She was sassy. That enthralled me. My banter was always met with a snarky comeback that had me pining for a woman I barely knew.
I had specifically brought up the subject of our one time together that she had told me never to mention again. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. About her. She had told me there would only be the one time. That made me want her more. I would do whatever I could to get her to break that rule. Logic had me questioning why she had such a rule to begin with, but what I felt for her was not logical.
It was irrational. Idiotic.
She was just another girl. Except she wasn’t. She played the Southern sweetheart, but she was a spitfire at heart. She was a genius majoring in computer science. And she was enigmatic. It didn’t go unnoticed that she didn’t share much about herself. I didn’t press, didn’t ever ask about where she came from, why she had come to Oregon for Thanksgiving rather than spending the time with her own family. But I wondered all the same. I wondered if Ava had asked her. Or if Ava even noticed how reserved her roommate was. I noticed. That mysteriousness was what drew me in. There was so much beneath her surface—which was perfection—that I wanted to know it all. If she would let me.
My term in the air force would be up in only a few months. This aspect was made sweet only by her. I had thought about reenlisting for most of my term. I enjoyed what I did, enjoyed my work. Engineering—knowing how to take things apart, put them back together, keep them running smoothly. Fixing things. But the second I met that woman, I wanted to go back home—or to Tennessee—only so I could get under her skin. Learn those mysteries she kept buried deep.
It was absurd. To go home just so I could get to know some woman I’d only met twice. Even if we had rolled around in the sheets that one time. I had done that with plenty other girls. But she was more somehow.
After reading the email once more, I composed my reply, wondering if she would send another reply or ignore it as she had most my emails.
You know the exact words to my heart, sugar.
What are you sick with? You letting Ava take care of you? Did you go in to work today?
I’ll make a deal with you. Every question you give an honest answer to, I’ll send you something cool from Germany ;)
Your Dream Hunk
That was my genius plan. I wasn’t above bribery. Especially if it got me some insight on this girl who filled my every thought. It was likely she wouldn’t let Ava take care of her if she was sick. I could tell she was the independent type. But that was how I would know if she was giving honest answers.
If she saw fit to answer at all.
She didn’t. An entire week passed, which wasn’t abnormal. Before she
