Page 44 of Surprise Mother Pucker

“That sounds perfect,” I admitted wistfully.

He gave me one final kiss before retreating, the sounds of him gathering his phone and keys as he exited reaching my ears.

The moment he left, there was a hollowness in my chest.

I was well and truly fucked.

I was drifting in and out of sleep when Eli returned. He slid into the bed, slowly shaking me awake.

“Sweet pea, can you wake up for a moment?” he asked gently.

“Yeah?” I asked, sitting up.

“Something occurred to me while I was out, so I picked something up at the store. I probably should have talked to you first, but well… I remember you telling me about your morning sickness with Char and how you craved apples…”

It took a moment for his words to sink in.

I had told him about my apple craving. Toward the end of my pregnancy, I had been feral for apples. I couldn't get enough of them, but at least it was a healthy craving.

“Yeah?” I repeated, confused.

“Well, you're sick, and have been for a while, and you're eating lots of apples,” Eli said gently.

The sleepiness was wiped from my brain and replaced with sheer panic in a split second.

“You think…?” My chest started pounding uncomfortably. Why hadn't I thought of that? Why hadn't I even considered that as a possibility? “But I'm on birth control,” I mumbled.

“Birth control isn't one-hundred-percent effective. It's unlikely, but I thought it best we check, so I picked up a test.”

I rubbed my eyes, my mind running a million miles a minute. “Oh, god…”

“Do you think it's possible?” Eli asked, pulling me into him and running his hands up and down my arms in a soothing gesture.

“Now that you mention it, it is similar…”

“You've been sick for a while, and it's not going away,” Eli said.

I looked around my tiny room in my tiny apartment. If I was pregnant, it was going to be a nightmare. I could barely afford to keep myself and Char afloat. I couldn't handle a second baby. Where would I even put a second baby?

“I can tell by that look that you're starting to panic,” Eli said. “There's no point in panicking until you've taken the test. It may well be negative.”

I nodded dumbly. “Yeah, it’s probably negative. I'm on birth control. Let’s do this,” I said as I clambered out of the bed.

“Now?” Eli asked.

“Yep. Now that the idea is in my head, I won’t rest until I've taken the test.”

“I guess it's a good thing that I got the test before telling you my suspicions, then.”

“Oh, yeah. If you’d told me before you went out to get the test, I would have spent the entire time you were gone freaking out, panicking, and catastrophizing,” I admitted.

Eli chuckled. “It's almost like I know you,” he said as he sat up, ambling to the kitchen, where he had left the groceries.

He took out the small digital test and handed the box to me. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, ever considerate of me.

“You wait here. I'm going to go pee on the stick, and I will come back while we wait for it to process. Luckily, I need to pee after my nap…” I said, looking over the box. It was one of the expensive digital tests.

I went through the motions of taking the test, almost numb with panic. How could I let myself get back into this situation? At least there was an alpha this time. He was with me while I was taking the test.

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