Page 27 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

Stress. Bad sushi from Monday. Hormonal weirdness. There are a million rational explanations for feeling slightly off, and for my period being MIA.

Except… the nausea isn’t just slight. It hit me like a ton of bricks during the Atherton Group pitch meeting yesterday. Right in the middle of explaining Q3 social media engagement strategies. One minute I was dazzling them with pie charts and projections, the next I was swallowing hard, sweat prickling my hairline, trying desperately not to projectile vomit onto their very expensive mahogany conference table. I managed to hold it together, barely, blaming low blood sugar and making a hasty retreat. But the feeling lingered.

My phone timer buzzes.

Okay. Showtime.

My legs feel wobbly as I walk back to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror looks pale, anxious, definitely not like a woman confidently running her own PR firm (even if it is a tiny, one-woman shop). No, I look like someone bracing for impact.

I pick up the test stick, my hand trembling slightly. I close my eyes for a second, whispering a silent, desperate plea to whatever deity handles reproductive mishaps.

Please be negative.

Please, please, please.

I open my eyes.

Two lines.

Not faint, maybe-it’s-a-shadow lines. Two clear, bold, aggressivelypinklines.

Positive.

The air rushes out of my lungs. I grip the edge of the sink, knuckles white, staring at the irrefutableproof.

Positive.

POSITIVE.

Oh my god.

There’s no doubt. No other possibility. That one night. That single, stupid, condomless encounter with Leo Maxwell in his palace of a hotel suite. The night he doesn’t even remember.

My mind races, flashing back to that morning, fleeing his room, wrestling his jeans back onto his sleeping form. The shame, the panic, the certainty that he’d never know.

And now this. A permanent, nine-month, life-altering consequence.

My first instinct is pure, unadulterated terror. Me? A mother? I’m barely keeping my fledgling business afloat. I eat cereal for dinner three nights a week. My longest relationship was with a ficus tree that died of neglect. How am I qualified to raise a whole human being?

And alone? Because there’s no way Leo is part of this equation. Even before the positive test, a morbid curiosity had led me down a Google rabbit hole. ‘Leo Maxwell.’ The search results painted a picture clearer than any pregnancy test. Billionaire tech venture capitalist, yes. But also: notorious playboy, fixture on the gossip pages with a rotating cast of models and actresses, adrenaline junkie. Photos of him grinning from exclusive parties. Articles about his wingsuiting hobby...he flies off of cliffs for FUN. Videos of him BASE jumping, heli-skiing, doing things that scream ‘I have a death wish and zero dependents.’

This is not father material. This is the walking, talking embodiment of everything my own father represented: instability, recklessness, the guarantee of eventual disappearance. Telling him would be invitinghistory to repeat itself, setting my child up for the same abandonment I experienced. He wouldn’t want this baby. He’d see it as an inconvenience, a complication to his jet-setting lifestyle, another problem for his army of lawyers and fixers to handle. Maybe he’d offer money, a settlement, an NDA. Make the problem go away quietly. But I’m not interested in his money. Or anyone’s, for that matter. Never have been.

So no. Absolutely not. My child deserves better than a father who might acknowledge him or her with a checkbook, if at all. My child deserves better than waiting for a dad who never shows up.Ideserved better.

This baby,mybaby, will have one parent who is one hundred percent committed, fiercely protective, and always, always there. Even if that parent is currently hyperventilating over a positive pregnancy test.

But…oh god. My mother. Diane Taylor, pillar of the community, the woman who raised me with fierce love and an even fiercer disapproval of anything unconventional. Me, her carefully raised, scholarship-winning daughter, showing up pregnant and unmarried?

The disappointment would be crushing. She sacrificed so much for me after Dad left, worked two jobs, instilled in me the importance of independence, ofneverrelying on a man, of planning meticulously for the future. But this… this is the opposite of all that. A grenade thrown into the carefully constructed life I built to make her proud.

A solution floats into my head, ugly and terrifying. A single word.

Abortion.

It’s an option. A practical solution.Erase the mistake. Get back on track. No one ever has to know. My career wouldn’t be derailed. My mother wouldn’t be devastated. I wouldn’t have to face the terrifying prospect of single motherhood, of potentially failing this child.

My fingers tremble as I pull up a browser window on my phone and enter the search term:Abortion clinics near me.

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