Need You Now (Martha's Way Series Book 2) (5 page)

Lily continued to stare at the word for the rest of the
allotted time
until the buzzing of her phone pulled
her attention away. Her eyes dragged to the printed screen.

Adam.

Back
on the island.
See you in a few days. We’ll stay in
bed all weekend. I’ve missed that body of yours. Ciao.

In spite of the nervous butterflies in
her stomach, she smiled. Adam had been in Italy for two
weeks for a race and visiting his parents. He didn’t have to return until next
week but cut his visit short after the two agreed to extend her visit to two
weeks.

Fuck! She was pregnant with Adam’s c
hild.
A man who had nothing
permanent in his life.
A man whose ability to commit peaked at fuck buddy.
A man with no home, no country.

Still, she’d have to tell him.

Tears welled up in her eyes. With her back pressed against
the cool wall, she gasped, buri
ed her face in her
hands and wept. “I can’t do this,” she choked, rocking her body back and forth.
The hot, salty drops dripped down her chin to her arms.

Lily wasn’t sure how long she cried. She only knew by the
time she entered her bedroom, night had fal
len. She
spotted the previous tests on the bed, each one with the plus sign. It crossed
her mind to gather them and throw them away but drenched with fatigue, she
shoved them aside and laid her tired body on the bed.

Just as she placed her phone on the nig
htstand, the tune
I’m Sexy and I Know It
by LMFAO echoed in the room. There was
no need to look at the caller ID; she assigned that ringtone to only one man.

Nonetheless, her eyes came to rest on the small screen and
watched Adam’s name as the phone contin
ued to ring
until
MISSED CALL
appeared. He wouldn’t leave a voice
mail; she already knew a text would follow. Adam was not known for his
patience; leaving a message to call back was usually out of the question unless
she was teaching.

Liliana,
I’ve missed
you. Call me.

Even with words, the man had the power to generate a
physical reaction from her. Her already tender breasts swelled at the thought
of his lips against her. “Seriously, Lily, that’s how you got here in the first
place. Calm the fuck down.”

W
hile she didn’t want to talk at
the moment, she knew better than to avoid his text. She didn’t want a repeat of
five
weeks ago when he appeared at her
doorstep. No, she couldn’t handle that tonight. Picking up the phone, she
scrolled to his name, the first
name on her contact
list–something she blamed on the genius who decided to automatically
alphabetize how names were entered and saved.

Hi, I’m okay.
A bit under the weather so going to bed early.
See you soon
.

What’s wrong?

Leave it to Adam to try to
get to
the bottom of the problem right away. This one was a nine months problem.

Just a little tired and nauseous
.

Oops, she slipped on the nauseous but her fingers had
already hit the
SEND
button.

Nauseous?

Might have eaten something bad.

Okay, that
was a lie, but not
really because until today, she had attributed the nausea to an upset stomach.

You
need to rest. See you soon.

If she hadn’t discovered she was pregnant, she would be
talking to him right now, laughing and flirting over the phone. Her
fingers tapped on the screen of her iPhone.

I
can’t wait to see you. Good night, Adam.

Sweet
dreams, Liliana.

Lily studied the words for a few seconds, and smiled
slightly with mixed emotions. Like it or not, she’d soon be someone’s mother.
Maybe trade
in her skinny jeans for high-
waisted
pants, drive a minivan to soccer games
in last season’s clothes smeared with dirt.

She released a deep breath. There was no time to retreat
and go somewhere quiet to think. She’d have to face this head on. In two days,
she’d be on that ferry crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Woods Hole and come
face to face with her baby daddy. Overwhelme
d with
emotions, she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow.
And then closed her eyes with hope to shut the world out,
at least until tomorrow.

Chapter Five

“
Sex is like math—
You
add the bed, subtract the clothes,
divide the legs

and
pray you don’t multiply.”

Anonymous

Lily fought back the nausea that bubbled up in her stomach
and entered the quaint little house that doubled as a doctor’s office.
As luck would have it, the
waiting area was filled with pregnant women all sitting with
hands on their round bellies. The men responsible for
putting them there sat idle beside their significant other flipping blindly
through magazines or playing whatever game on their smart phone.

She glanced around the room. Some of the women’s faces were
brimming with happiness, but most looked
uncomfortable, their eyes tired, breasts swollen, and stomach protruding in
various sizes of growing bumps. She took in their restless movement of tapping
feet, tipping of water bottles, adjusting clothes. It seemed
the bigger the bump, the more fidgety they appeared.

Women
were supposed to glow; at least that was the myth.
A lie.
Instead, across from Lily sat a woman
with her shirt falling in folds around the watermelon-sized bump where her
stomach should be, her palms cradling the baby within. She looked as if she was
read
y
to pop at any second. With the exception of one or two w
ith clear, even-toned skin, the waiting room was filled
with distressed-looking women sporting a nice case of acne or spotty skin.

Whatever
happened to the contours of the body becoming more rounded and feminine with
pregnancy? Another myth, she supposed.
The pregnancy
god had tricked all of these women to believe their bodies would gently swell
and produce cute little babies. Instead, their skin stretched with a promissory
note to never regain its elasticity.

Great, just great.
This was what she had to
loo
k forward to.
Swollen hands and feet and a watermelon for a stomach.
One day, she’d have a
conversation with the pregnancy god and confront him on the deception, that
pregnancy was a beautiful phase in a woman’s life. Because so far, based on the
nausea al
one, it was all
false advertisement
.

The
revolving door swung open and Paige, the pretty nurse with Lily’s chart in
hand, greeted Lily with her usual welcoming smile.
“Hi, Lily, good to see you again.
Come in.”

Lily
returned the smile and quietly followed
Paige down
the hall where she was led to a patient room.

“Is
everything okay? You said it was an emergency, so Dr. Mason will see you right
away.”

You
better believe it. I got knocked up.
Under normal circumstances, Lily would
consider Paige a friend. Not
on the same level as her
friendship with Minka but close enough. Only one barrier stood between their
friendships
—
Paige’s close relationship with her brothers. As the head
nurse of the OB-GYN who prescribed her birth control and the unofficial fourth
membe
r of the three musketeers, Lily always
maintained a level of distance so that her brothers would not interrogate the
other woman.
Too bad, because she
always liked Paige.

“I
appreciate it.” The first thing she had done this morning was call the office
for
an appointment. After a long hold, Paige had
asked her to be there within one hour.

“Minka’s
wedding is coming up,” Paige continued, her voice warm and pleasant as she took
Lily’s blood pressure, a common practice during each visit. “Rafa said you are
leav
ing for the wedding tomorrow.”

Lily
nodded. Rafa was the oldest of the three Musketeers, also known as Rafael,
Lily’s older brother by five years.

“Blood
pressure is a bit high.” Paige’s amber eyes studied her. Lily kept her
expression as blank as she coul
d. Eventually, the
secret would be out and Paige would know her reason for the sudden visit. “I’ll
go get Dr. Mason. By the way, I checked your file; your birth control is low.
I’ll call the pharmacy for a refill.
Another year supply?”

“Um, I’m
fine for
now.”

As
expected, the other woman paused; realization for her emergency visit seemed to
be sinking in. “Lily,” the nurse said thickly. “Can you give us some urine?”

She
nodded, although she could have saved them some time had she brought those darn
positi
ve pregnancy sticks still on her nightstand.

“I drank
two glasses of water,” she said, attempting humor for humor’s sake.

Paige
chuckled and led her down the hall to the restroom. “Leave the cup in the
holder then come back to the room when you’re done. Dr
.
Mason and I will be there shortly.”

Less
than five minutes later, Lily stood alone in the patient’s room. She
picked up a magazine. It
read—
Pregnancy
in big, bold, red
letters. She put the magazine down and stood alone with her thoughts, the
renewed ener
gy she experienced when she first woke up
now merely a fraction of what it was.

On the
radio, Gary Clark,
Jr,’s
piercing chords crooned
the lyrics to
Numb,
a feeling Lily had experienced before
when she discovered her cheating ex-fiancé’s explicit text mes
sages to his side piece. And now, sitting on the cold, hard
exam table, she couldn’t tell if the things happening around her were really
occurring. All of a sudden life had thrown too much against her at once.

A hushed
tone of knuckles on the door forced L
ily to
straighten herself as Dr. Mason entered with Paige close behind. Their eyes met
and Paige gave her an understanding nod, easing away the fear that the whole
patient confidentiality thing might be in jeopardy. An appreciative smile
passed on Lily’s l
ips as some of the tension left her
body. She turned to the doctor for the inevitable.

“How are
you feeling?” Dr. Mason, her OB-GYN for the last ten years, had a voice that
always carried the same level of calm with no sign of surprise or
disappointment.
Today was no different.

Never
had a simple question been so loaded. How did she answer that?
Confused.
Shocked.
Scared out of my panties.
No panties reference.
Nunca
.
Never ever.
“A little shaken,” she
answered as honestly as she could.

He
smiled warmly. “
You were on antibiotics a couple of
weeks ago. That weakens the birth control,” the wise doctor informed her.

Well,
damn! Shouldn’t that be in big bold letters on the prescription or the pill
itself?

“Paige
is going to take you to the exam room for an ultr
asound.
After that we can proceed with your options.”

What
options?

Ultrasound?

The
words cluttered her brain.

Her eyes
narrowed in confusion.
“Options?
An ultrasound?”

Dr.
Mason pulled his chair and lowered his thin frame. “Part of my job is to make
sur
e there’s a heartbeat and ask if you are going to
keep the baby. Not all unplanned pregnancies are kept.”

Her
heart tripped and her hand automatically landed on her flat belly. As petrified
as she
was,
the possibility of not
carrying the baby full term had
not once crossed her
mind. And of course there’d be a heartbeat. She had ten tests at home proven
she was very pregnant. “I’m keeping the baby,” she said in a low voice. There
had to be a way to deal with her family. Maybe move somewhere very far. Now tha
t was a tempting option. She looked at Dr. Mason.
“Why the ultrasound?
I took ten tests.”

The
doctor leaned forward. “There are occasions when there’s no fetal heartbeat in
a pregnancy. That usually ends in a natural miscarriage or a dilation and
curettage
.”

She knew
what a D&C procedure was, but shit, she hadn’t thought of that possibility.
All the emotions bottled inside paused for a moment as Lily processed this
information. “I see.” But really, she didn’t.

Paige
squeezed her shoulder. “That will take a
few minutes.
After that, we can do all the required blood work and go from there. Come to
the front desk when you’re ready. In the meantime I’ll have the technician set
everything up for you.” With a comforting smile Dr. Mason and Paige slipped out
of the
room.

Once
alone, Lily slipped off the table and reached for her purse.  She choked
on the lack of oxygen she had and released a deep breath in an attempt to stay
calm, but the motion made her dizzy. Fear of what she may have to face alone
consumed her.

Th
e key to the Benz convertible fumbled
between her fingers.
Heartbeat—
the word repeated over and over in her head.
The possibility that the life forming
inside of her had a chance to never experience living scampered through her
thoughts.
She let out a shak
y breath and
was about to exit the room when she almost crashed into Paige.

“Lily, I’m going to be in the room with you. I don’t have
to, but I want to. And no is not an option.”

In spite
of the situation, she appreciated Paige’s offer. “You don’t have to
do that. I can go alone.”

Paige
shook her head. Her face set with determination.
“Nonsense.”
She closed the door
behind her for privacy. “I know I’m closer to your brothers than you, but I
consider you to be a friend.” She paused and clasped Lily’s hands i
n hers, no longer playing the role of a nurse but a friend.
“I would never break patient-doctor confidentiality and tell your brothers any
of this. This is for you to tell your family when you’re ready. I promise I
won’t ask how, who, what,” she finished w
ith a
reassuring smile. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

Alone
.
The word bit through her.
She had never considered herself alone before. She was surrounded by friends,
family, and maybe even Adam to some level. Only he wasn’t the lean-on-me type.
Fro
m that aspect, she was indeed alone. All they had
was a physical connection.
Nothing
more.

Her
shoulders dropped in defeat. Feeling powerless over the present or the future,
she answered with a small nod, surrendering to the support offered. “I
appreciate
it, Paige. Thank you,” she whispered just
before the tears she had bravely tried to hold back began to cascade down her
cheeks.

* * * *

Less
than one hour later and exactly six weeks pregnant, Lily sat in her car and
scanned through the pamphlets one
last time. A
prescription of prenatal vitamins had been called in to her pharmacy which she
had to pick up. Two weeks after the wedding she had a follow-up visit. She sent
Paige a thank you text before dialing Minka’s number. To her relief her friend
picke
d up on the first ring.

“There
you are,” Minka greeted her on the other line. “I’m so looking forward to
seeing you. How long has it been since we last saw each other?”