Page 26 of The Right Woman

If she wants me, she’ll have to come find me.

Chapter

Twelve

PIPER

Dread rollsin my stomach as the week passes, thinking about possible pregnancy. I mean, it’s so very highly unlikely, but he neveraskedme. And I refuse to take hormones.

I just won’t have sex with Adon again. It’s that simple.

No pricks.

No dicks.

No fuss.

Only muff.

That could be my new motto.

A firm knock on my door startles me from the mess I’ve made organizing my record albums strewn about the living space. My broken mattress frame lays on the floor underneath me at a crooked angle. I tried to fix it, but it’s hopeless. So I’ll just have to set the thing out at some point.

The delicate sundress I’m wearing covers my ass, so I feel okay checking the door in it and my fuzzy slippers. My heart beats harder as I think about this being Adon showing up again for another round and how I’ll tell him to get lost. I totally will. Won’t even open the door.

Instead, it’s a few men with a large couch, acting as if I’m wasting their time.

“Uh, hello?” I call through the door.

“Delivery for Piper Hendricks. Got your sofa sleeper.”

Lowering my brow, I try to remember a wine drunk night of online shopping recently. It’s definitely something I’d do, but I really don’t think I did that this week.

“I didn’t order a couch.”

“Uh, Adon Griffin did. Lady, look. This is heavy. Can we place this or not?”

Adon ordered me asleeper sofa? Well, I guess that’s right, considering he broke mine. I slip open the locks and throw the door open. “Yeah, but there’s barely room with the old one.”

The guy at the door shrugs and points to the broken pieces on the floor. One of the others drops his end of the new sofa and heaves the old one out of the way. In record time, the crew sets up my new couch and carries the old one downstairs. I hurry to my purse and give him some money as a tip before they leave.

It’s very formal looking, the arms rolled and puffy. Definitely not my style. But I’ll take it. Especially when I pull out the bed and flop onto the mattress. “Perfect!”

Freckles abounds from the bathroom and plops on my head with a stretch of his belly. “You must like it, too. Maybe having a sugar daddy isn’t so bad. If I get knocked up, perhaps we’d get a bigger apartment out of him.”

The next week, nothing much happens, except for that building dread. Sometimes I think it’s nausea and get concerned enough to panic in the library bathroom on the gross floor tiles, hugging my legs to my chest and trying not to think about my box cutter at home.

When I’m not ill from anxiety, I’m raging with anger that Adon seems to have ghosted me. No work visits or alleywayrendezvous. Even when they opened the cafe back up, he hadn’t shown his face.

Have I reached out to him? No way.

No pricks, no dicks, no fuss. Unfortunately, no muff, either, but I haven’t been out much. The creepy crawlies in my guts keep me home to read more smut than ever before.

By the third weekend after Adon left, I’m consumed with worry enough to purchase a pregnancy test. As I pace with Freckles in my arms outside of the bathroom, the clock ticks on my phone, the screen just visible from the corner of the pedestal sink. I must squeeze him too tight because Freckles squirms out of my embrace and hides under the dining table.

A text notification sounds, and I jump while screaming like someone just broke inside my place. Taking a slow, deep breath, I meander over and glance at the screen as if the vision may scar me for life.

And it kind of does. My sister’s message reminds me to stop over tonight to plan Thanksgiving dinner with her and my mother. Groaning, I slip on some jeans and comb through my hair just as the timer goes off.

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