Page 165 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

She’d never faltered before, winning a scholarship to college and coming up with the idea for Style On Point—‘SOP’—before she’d even graduated. From there she’d climbed the corporate ladder, all the while saving the start-up capital and attracting investors for her passion project, until she’d been able to take the plunge and launch the boutique. Despite being such a young company, it had already seen exponential growth: she’d had numerous purchase offers from bigger conglomerates, but she’d turned them all down, and would keep doing so. Jasmine had started SOP with Zara, but after the wedding debacle Jasmine had bought her ‘best friend’ out and forced her to leave. There was no way she would trust her life’s work to someone who had already betrayed her. SOP washersand she was determined to see it grow into a powerhouse in the industry.

If something arbitrary wasn’t causing her to remember a specimen of a man she should forget, there was a bone crushing exhaustion ever present to distract her. It didn’t help that her breakfast had ended up in her bin that morning after she’d discovered her yoghurt had spoiled.

Still, she needed to push through. Her goals wouldn’t achieve themselves. In the last two months, they’d undergone some re-alignment. Jasmine was no longer looking to get married, or raise a family. Her sole focus would be on SOP. All the time she had once wasted with Richard and Zara would now be poured into the only thing that mattered: her work.

A knock on her open office door had her looking up.

‘Ten-minute warning, Jasmine,’ her PA said.

‘Thanks, Jenna. Take these files to the meeting room. I’ll be right there.’

Jenna was looking closely at her. ‘You look exhausted. I can reschedule?’

‘That won’t be necessary. Close the door on your way out, please.’

Jenna nodded and did as she was told. As soon as she was out of sight, Jasmine pressed her fingers to her eyes. One more meeting—a meeting with her buyers about stocking a young, up-and-coming designer that Jasmine had been looking forward to for weeks.

Everyone had already gathered when Jasmine entered and sat at the head of the table in the biggest conference room on the floor. She called the meeting to order and tried to listen to the input of everyone around her. Her head was pounding.

‘The samples Paris Elham sent over are amazing,’ one of her buyers was saying. ‘The quality is great.’

‘What about the fit?’ Jasmine said. ‘People trust us to provide clothing that’s inclusive. It’s not enough that the quality is good. She needs to fall in line with our ethos as a company.’

‘Well, she did send samples in several sizes, plus we asked her to send over pictures of them on variously proportioned models.’

‘And do we have those pictures yet?’ Jasmine asked, twirling her engraved Montblanc pen in her hand. It had been a gift from her mother after SOP celebrated its first birthday. Jasmine knew it would have taken months of saving for her mother to afford it and it was always close at hand.

‘We do.’ The Head of Buying pressed a button on a remote and a new slide appeared on the screen, showcasing the dress.

‘It looks good,’ Jasmine said.

‘It looksgreat, Jasmine!’ the woman presenting said. ‘I would love something like that when I’m bloated.’

‘Yes!’ another buyer agreed. ‘That time of the month is the worst.’

At the words, Jasmine felt the breath leave her lungs. She picked up her phone and opened her cycle-tracking app. There were no entries for this month. Nor were there any for the previous month. Jasmine’s heart began to race. Her mouth had gone dry.

She’d been so busy that she hadn’t noticed her missed periods. She had thought nothing of her skipped breakfast, the yoghurt she’d tossed out that morning. Because it was spoiled. But she’d only thought so because the scent of it had had her gagging. Just as the scent of her favourite shower gel had suddenly started turning her stomach. After the wedding debacle, she had thrown herself into her work and thought of little else. She ate, slept and breathed SOP—that had been the only possible explanation for her exhaustion.

‘The designs look good,’ she heard herself say through a constricted throat. ‘I’m happy to sign off on this. Jenna, finish up here.’ Then she was out the door without another word, working to keep her breathing even as she half-walked, half-ran to her office and shut the door. She couldn’t panic in front of her employees.

Keep it together, Jasmine,she told herself as she lowered the blinds on the glass panels of her office, her hand shaking round the remote. She dropped it and her phone with a thud onto the stack of papers on her desk.

‘This can’t be happening!’ she whispered to herself, pacing the length of her office. She couldn’t be pregnant. She hadn’t had sex in five months…apart from that one night when she had been vulnerable and letting her hair down. Trying to escape being her for a night. And she had…with Emilio.

I can’t be pregnant with the child of a man whose first name is the only thing I know about him! I just can’t!

What happened that night?

Her pacing became more frantic.

We used a condom. Yes, it broke, and yes I asked him to continue. But I was on the pill!

She grabbed her phone—the one tool she had to rely on in an emergency—off the table and opened her health app, scrolling back to the night in question and all the days of the week leading up to it. She had been religious about recording everything she did. Just as she had thought, she hadn’t made any mistakes with her birth control.

God, how can this be happening? One time! I let go one time and it comes back to bite me in the ass!

She was very nearly hyperventilating. ‘Think, Jasmine!’ she said out loud, and took a deep breath, then another. And another, until the haze clouding her judgement lifted enough for her to get control.

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