He walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. A few minutes later, his dad, Katie, and my mom came into the room with Cole behind them. Thankfully, I had decided to pull on panties and a t-shirt. Cole crawled onto the bed behind me and wrapped his arms around me. “She doesn’t feel like she’s running a fever,” he informed them. I sighed. “She just began throwing up all of a sudden.”
Katie snorted. “I think she’s pregnant,” she said bluntly.
I choked on air and sat up quickly, running my fingers through my hair, tugging on the strands roughly.No, I couldn’t be pregnant. It could be anybody’s kid. Cole and those ATL bastards had never used a condom. With Cole, I never really cared enough to demand him to wear one. I mean, I was on birth control for fuck’s sake. But I never was given a choice with those bastards.
My eyes filled with tears, and I choked back a sob. Cole’s arms quickly came around me before my mom’s could do so. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispered, kissing my forehead. He tucked my hair behind my ears and turned my face so I could look at him. “Baby, youwillbe okay.”
Katie knelt in front of me next to my mom. “Amelia, there are options out there,” my mom started, her voice trembling with emotion. “You can even have a DNA test done before you have to make some kind of decision.”
I slapped my hands over my ears childishly. I didn’t want to hear about how it could possibly be one oftheirsif I was.
Cole sighed and pulled me against his chest. “Go. She doesn’t want to hear this.”
“She needs to,” Katie said.
“I said go!” Cole snapped at her.
My mom and Katie both shot him a glare but left the room. Cole stood up and set me on my feet. “Get dressed. We’re going to go to the doctor and getting a pregnancy test done, okay?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to know,” I sobbed, tears streaming down my face.
Cole held my face in his hands, making me look up into his face. “Amelia, you need to know. If you are, you’ll do what you feel is right, okay? You’ll never be able to make a proper choice if you don’t find out though. I want you to have all of your facts.”
He walked over to my closet and tossed me jeans and a tank top with my leather jacket and my cut. I got dressed, and he grabbed my hand, walking to his room. Once he got dressed, we walked outside, and he straddled his bike. Sliding on behind him, I wrapped my arms around his waist tightly. He pulled one of my hands up to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
Despite the fear wracking my body because of what I was about to face, I smiled a little as I rested my head on his back.
Cole would be by my side, no matter what.
* * *
“Amelia, you are pregnant,”the doctor said, confirming my worst fears. “I’d like to do an ultrasound to determine how far along you are because you have not had a normal period in a while due to your birth control.”
I grabbed Cole’s hand in both of my own, squeezing tightly. He looked up at the doctor as he squeezed my hand back in reassurance. “How far along does she have to be for a DNA test to be done?” he asked.
Though part of me was angry for him even asking something concerning me and my health, I realized it would be stupid of me to be angry with him. This baby could be his for all we knew. It wouldn’t be fair to him if he didn’t know.
“We can do a test at twelve weeks. That’s the earliest I do these tests on my patients,” the doctor replied.
Cole looked at me. I knew he wanted to do this ultrasound to see how old the baby was—to determine how far along I was. I sighed and squeezed his hand tighter and nodded. He looked at the doctor. “We’d like to do an ultrasound.”
The doctor nodded, and we were led to the ultrasound room. I laid on the table, and the ultrasound tech smiled at me. “First time mom?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. Cole grabbed my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s going to be okay,” he soothed. “We’ll find out.”
I nodded. “I need you to lift you shirt up to right under your boobs, okay, darling?” I flinched at the little nickname, and Cole noticed. Clenching his jaw as anger briefly flashed through his eyes, he stood beside my head, giving me some comfort.
I lifted my shirt up, and the ultrasound technician squirted some warm gel on my belly. She placed a small wand on the gel and moved it around a bit. A small baby popped up on the screen. Cole laced his fingers through mine and rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I felt my stomach churning.
I was keeping my fingers crossed that the baby didn’t belong to any member of the ATL.
Cole and I had been messing around for a while—a few months now—and I was desperate for it to be his baby. I didn’t want to kill any child, but I knew I would never be able to carry my rapist’s child and keep my sanity.
“It looks like your baby is about eleven weeks old, which places you at thirteen weeks into your pregnancy.” She looked over at us. “Would you like to hear your baby’s heartbeat?”
I shook my head no. I couldn’t handle that. This was already too much to handle as it was. She nodded and turned the monitor off after handing us a couple of pictures. “I’ll lead you back to your examination room.”
I wiped the gel off my belly with the paper towels she handed me and stood up. When the doctor came into the room, he began to speak immediately. “I can do the DNA test today and have the results back to you in twenty-four hours. You can come back tomorrow about an hour after the time that the test is done today, and I’ll give you the results and go over your options. Is that okay?”