Boss Daddy: A Secret Baby Romance by Black, L. (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

going on. Nobody I knew was sick. I took an extra couple of seconds to go through all the brothers and their respective wives, then the rest of the staff again just to be sure.

None of them had been sick as far as I knew.

Maybe it was something I ate. I thought back on everything I had eaten the day before but couldn’t think of anything that would cause food poisoning. But it had to be something.

Even though I’d brushed my teeth, my mouth still tasted sour. I got the mouthwash out of the medicine cabinet and swished it around. As I opened the cabinet to put the bottle away, I saw something that stopped me still mid-swish. The mouthwash burst out of my mouth into the sink, and I snatched the box of tampons out of the cabinet.

The unopened box of tampons. Unopened because I didn’t use them when I should have gotten my period… a month ago.

Holy shit.

I rushed back into my bedroom and grabbed my phone, pulling up the calendar.

I scrolled back through the last few months and found the little star I’d scribbled with my stylus in the corner of the target date. And beside it, a little check mark.

And there they were for the four months I scrolled through. Star and check. Star and check. Star and check. Star and check. But then I got to last month. Star. No check.

I couldn’t believe it. I had been so preoccupied by Ethan sneaking around I stopped paying attention. I hadn’t even noticed my period didn’t come.

Maybe it was stress. That could be it. I was definitely experiencing more than my fair share of stress because of the whole situation with Ethan. I could have stressed myself into not having a period for the month.

That thought brought a little bit of comfort, but there was only one way to know for sure. I got dressed as quickly as I could and ran out to the nearest drugstore. The array of pregnancy tests available was nothing short of mind-boggling, and I grabbed several different ones just to cover my bases. When I got home, I took a few of them and waited in the bathroom for the results while I guzzled a few bottles of water.

Twenty minutes after my first round of tests, I took a few more. They all told me the exact same thing, but that didn’t stop me from going for one more round to use up the selection I bought. By the time I was done, the entire bathroom counter was lined with tests, and they all had the same result glaring back at me.

I was pregnant.

It took me a while to leave the bathroom. It felt like stepping over that threshold was the moment my life changed. As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom, I was really going into a whole new chapter of my existence. I walked into that bathroom with a question mark over my head. I walked out of it with a big plus sign.

“I’m pregnant.”

The silence on the other end of the line didn’t really surprise me. By this point Samantha was probably getting used to getting phone calls from me that seemed to forego the beginning of the conversation in favor of dropping right down into the middle. But up until this point, most of those conversations had been about Ethan and the anxiety he was bringing into my life.

This conversation was admittedly a curveball.

“I’m sorry, you’re what now?” she finally asked.

“Pregnant. I’m pregnant.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said.” She let out a breath. “Wow. That’s… that’s a lot.”

“I know,” I said. “I woke up this morning thinking I had food poisoning, but it turns out it was morning sickness. So, I was hoping maybe you could give me a couple of pointers for how I can handle that.”

Maybe it wasn’t really the main issue I should have been thinking about right at that moment, but it was keeping my mind adequately distracted so I didn’t have to think about anything else. Samantha obliged, rattling off tips for how to deal with morning sickness and other symptoms I was going to start having.

“Thanks,” I said after almost an hour. “I feel more prepared now.”

“That’s good,” she said. “But tell me something, Hannah. Why did you call me first and not Jordan?”

“Because you’re my best friend,” I said.

“And?”

I let out a sigh. She knew me too well.

“And I’m terrified to tell him. He has so much going on with the new bar and everything. I’m afraid it’s all going to be too much for him,” I said. “When I tell him, I don’t want it to be more stressful.”

“So you’re thinking about his well-being before your own,” she said.

“I guess so.”

“You’re in love with him,” she stated plainly.

There was no point in trying to deny it. “I think I am.”

When I got off the phone with Samantha, I briefly considered calling Jordan. Maybe I shouldn’t delay it. But I stopped myself. He needed to get through the grand opening first. Then I could tell him. It would also give me time to process it for myself.

I had to do something. I couldn’t just stay there in my house by myself thinking about it. It was still a couple of hours before I needed to be at work, but I got dressed and headed for the bar anyway. Just as I walked in, I felt like I was interfering with a family moment. Tyler and Mason were gathered at the bar with Becca and Ava. The guys were cheering, and Becca threw her arms around Ava in a close hug.

“Congratulations,” Tyler said happily.

“Congratulations,” Becca echoed. “This is really amazing.”

I stepped in cautiously. “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”

Ava looked over at me and shook her head, grinning widely.

“No, no. Not at all. Come in,” she said.

I went over to the bar and looked at each of the faces there. They were all smiling.

“What’s