Page 65 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part Two
As soon as I stepped into the drugstore, I let myself freak out. Holy fuck. Holy fuck. A baby.
The logical, rational part of my brain knew there were a lot of reasons for a woman to miss her period. We’d covered most of them in our sex-ed class, which had consisted mostly of them telling us we’d all get antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea if we didn’t stop fucking in the gym bathrooms. Didn’t work. Let’s just say there were quite a few trust fund babies walking around with the clap.
But the number one reason a woman would miss her period? Yeah, it was fucking pregnancy.
I ignored the bored shop attendant, and slipped into the first aisle. Why were there so many fucking test types?
In the end, I bought the two most expensive, and hoped they’d do what she needed them to do. I took them to the counter, and the woman behind the register glanced up from her phone briefly to check me out. There was no recognition in her eyes, which was a fucking relief. Last thing we needed was for this to be on the front page of the tabloids tomorrow.
I took my paper bag of doom back to the car and climbed back into the driver’s seat. We sat there. Silent. The bag like a bomb between us.
“Where to now? Back to the hotel?”
“No!” she shouted. She sucked in a breath. “No. I think… I don’t know what I think. There’s a public toilet block around the corner. Let’s go there.”
I screwed my nose up. “You want to pee in the public toilets?”
She rolled her eyes at me, and it made me feel a little better. She wasn’t completely losing it yet.
“Don’t be so fucking la-di-dah, Bad Boy. Most of us didn’t grow up pissing in gilded pots.”
Smart-mouthed little wench. I wanted to put her over my knee and spank the hell out of her, but we should probably get this other thing over and done with first.
I pulled around the corner to a public park, complete with a suspicious-looking toilet block. She grabbed the paper bag and climbed out. “Wait here.”
“Yeah, I’m not letting you go in those darkened fucking public toilets alone, Good Girl. You must be out of your damn mind.” I climbed out of the car after her. There was a broken exterior security light, and it cast dark shadows around the park. Fuck, now I wished that I’d insisted on going back to the hotel. Hell, I should have gotten a second hotel room, just to use the bathroom. Or maybe I should have brought Evan’s gun. Or Evan.
I walked into the women's restrooms first, making sure there were no junkies or prostitutes littering the floors. A small sound alerted me to the fact someone was in the far cubicle. I moved further in, and when I pushed on the last door, it was locked.
“Who the fuck is in there?”
Nothing. I shouldered open the door, and a soft scream told me it was a woman. I looked down at the woman—no, it was a fucking girl—curled up in a ball, holding out a switchblade in my direction.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell are you doing in here?”
Her face scrunched in fury. “I’m in the women’s bathroom, asshole! The better question is what the fuck are you doing here?”
Aviva appeared behind me at that moment. “Sorry, sorry! He’s with me. He’s just overprotective and thinks bad guys are going to jump out of every shadow.”
The girl's eyebrows lowered. “He isn’t wrong.” There was a world of pain in those words, and it made me feel sick to my stomach. “If you guys are going to fuck, just know I’m not leaving. I won’t interrupt, but I ain’t going out there.”
Aviva shoved me out of the cubicle. She held up a pregnancy test. “Nah, we aren’t here for that.”
The girl’s eyebrows raised so high, they nearly touched her hairline. “Too late for the fucking then, I guess. Seeing how you’re in these dirty ass bathrooms in the middle of the night, I’m gonna assume it was an accident.”
“That’s none of your business,” I interrupted before Aviva spilled everything. The girl rolled her eyes at me, but tilted her head to the left. “Use the one beside me. Still has paper.”
Aviva smiled brightly at her. She turned back to me, standing on her toes and kissing my cheek. “Wish me luck.”
Wishing her good luck for a negative result seemed weird, but I still said, “Good luck, baby.”
She disappeared into the cubicle the girl had indicated, so I turned back to the teen in front of me. If she was more than fifteen or sixteen, I’d be fucking surprised.
“How old are you?”
“Young enough that you’d be adding the word statutory to any ideas you’re having right now.” She lifted the knife higher.
“Kid, that girl in there is the only woman I will ever love, so you can fucking relax. I’m not a fucking pedophile.”
