Phoenix’s Plight by Tiffany Casper

 

“One test later . . .”

- June

 

Chapter 13

June

Five weeks later, after the ride to Cherokee, things with Heathen had seemed a little off, but he was still coming to her house three to four nights a week and taking her to the clubhouse at least once a week.

Smiling to herself, she walked into the tattoo parlor. Heathen was supposed to meet her there.

“Hey, are you okay?” Shiloh asked her as she followed her to the bathroom. They had just gotten everything laid out for a second tattoo.

“Your girl okay?” she heard Clutch ask.

She wasn’t sure what had caused it, but that smell . . . what had been that smell?

Then she remembered just yesterday she had been walking in the grocery store after work and the smell of fish had her vaulting herself into one of the bathroom stalls.

Yesterday afternoon, it had been fish. And this morning, it was eggs. Was she coming down with the flu?

“Yeah, I got sick yesterday and then today,” she murmured while her head was hung over the toilet at the tattoo parlor.

“Flu?” Shiloh asked her.

“No, I don’t have a fever or chills or hot flashes,” June muttered as she wiped her mouth off with a tissue.

“Hmm, maybe it’s just a stomach bug,” Shiloh offered.

“Probably.” After she finished in the bathroom and borrowed some of the mouthwash they had on hand, she made her way back to the chair and laid there for Shiloh to do her tattoo. Ever since she had gotten her first one a few months ago, she was addicted.

A lot of people couldn’t handle it, and she had heard that it hurt, but to her, it felt like a nice deep tissue massage. Okay, well, not really, but you get the picture.

Sadly, Heathen hadn’t been able to meet her at the parlor. He had to beat down someone who thought it was okay to beat on a woman.

Now, it was three days later, and she was still getting sick. Thankfully, when Heathen had been there the other night, he hadn’t stayed long enough to witness the vomiting the next morning.

So here she was, sitting in a hard, uncomfortable chair at her small-town doctor’s office, waiting to be called back to see what the hell was going on with her.

“June?” a nurse in deep purple scrubs had called from the door.

She stood up, walked to the nurse, and followed her. Her weight was taken, her blood pressure, temperature, and then she told the nurse what her symptoms were. Once all the paperwork was done, the nurse left the room.

Within a few minutes, which was weird, the nurse returned and stated, “We’re going to run a few tests due to the vomiting, and possibly some cultures, so we’ll need a urine sample.”

She knew she wasn’t pregnant due to the fact they’d used what they needed to in order to ensure no baby had been made.

After she peed in the cup and placed it behind the little metal door, she washed her hands and made her way back to the room to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, the doctor walked in with a different lady than her nurse and both of them had smiles on their faces. But that wasn’t what had her attention. No, it was the fact that the nurse was bringing some kind of contraption on wheels into the room.

“We believe we know the reason why you have been getting sick. Can you tell me, when the last time was that you had your period?”

“Of course, it was . . .” Wait a minute, her period should have come on the second or third of the month. She grabbed her phone and checked the date.

Well, shit, she was two weeks late.

With a kind smile, the doctor stated, “I imagine, judging by the whiteness in your face, that your period is late.”

Numbly, she nodded. “Two weeks.”

“Since that puts you at around seven weeks along, we might be able to see the baby with a sonogram. If not we’ll do it vaginally, so fingers crossed we won’t have to that.” The doctor had on a name tag that read ‘Dr. Chase’. She wasn’t the doctor she’d made the appointment with.

Sputtering, because her mind was going a mile a minute, June said, “But that’s impossible. I have an IUD. And we always used condoms.” Then it hit her. The one time it could have happened would have been that night at her house when they both realized the condom had broken.

Heathen had even gone and tossed the half-full box into the trash and bought another box. She knew he didn’t want kids. He wouldn’t have made sure for himself that she was on birth control.

“After we do the sonogram, we’ll check on the placement of your IUD and see what’s going on.”

“A condom had busted about a month ago,” June said, closing her eyes as she laid back on the table, lifted her shirt, and rolled down her yoga pants.

A nurse had squirted some kind of cold shit on her stomach and then she grabbed something and began moving it around on her belly.

Since they were both looking at the screen on the contraption, she hadn’t been able to see anything, not until the nurse smiled and looked at her. That was when she turned the screen around and pointed at a big black circle with a peanut-looking thing in the middle of it.

“That’s your baby,” she said with a soft and kind smile on her face.

June stared up at the screen. She couldn’t believe it. She was pregnant.

After the nurse printed off a picture from the machine, she held the grainy photo in her hands as the nurse and the doctor found her IUD and saw that it had indeed moved.

“For the safety of the baby, we need to remove the IUD,” Dr. Chase said.

With a nod, she got ready, then they removed the failed implant.

On her ride home, after she picked up some prenatal vitamins and the goodies the doctor handed her, she tried to run every scenario in her mind as to how to tell Heathen and not risk him never seeing her again.

It was a week later, and she was on the back of Heathen’s bike headed to the clubhouse for a party.

June smiled the entire time, remembering it was better to hold on to that once-in-a-lifetime love than it was to have never loved at all.

Hand in hand, they walked together into the clubhouse, smiling at those she knew.

When they made it to the courtyard, he kissed her temple after he dropped her off at the table where Lil was seated, and she sat down.

“You okay?” Lil took in her face and knew something was wrong.

“You ever need to tell someone something, but you’re afraid of the outcome?” she asked in a whisper.

“Yeah. A few times,” Lil stated as if she already knew.

With a nod, June didn’t say anything more, and neither did Lilliana.

When Heathen brought her a bottle of beer over to her and then walked away to help the grill, she slid it to the center of the table.

“Mind if I grab a water?” June asked.

That was all that she had to do. Lil offered her a smile, but there was grief for June in that smile. Not pity. Had it been pity, she wouldn’t have been able to handle that.

Everyone knew Heathen. Everyone knew how he felt.

It wasn’t a secret.

Lil leaned in and asked quietly, “How far along?”

“Eight weeks,” she said in Lil’s ear.

“He pulls away, you’ve got me.” She gave her a kind smile. “And a kickass baby shower.”

“Thank you, Lil.” She had asked her to call her Lil like everyone else, and though it didn’t feel right, she was trying.

After the two of them made their plates, they sat back down at the table and what shocked her was that Heathen had been the first one to sit down beside her instead of choosing to eat with the others like he always did, and Powers had followed him.

It was funny when the other men tried to sit down. “You got a woman who’s sitting here?” Heathen asked them with a raised brow.

When the men had left, she bumped him with her shoulder and winked.

It was because of the scorching kiss that he gave her that told her it was time.

The moment they made it back to her house a little after midnight, she climbed off and carried her helmet into her house.

She sat her helmet on the counter and pulled out their leftover Chinese. They always ordered double, so they could make two dinners out of it.

She dished out the contents and then heated their bowls up. It wasn’t that the food was bad, it was just that she hadn’t had an appetite, and Heathen had noticed that, so he hadn’t had much to eat either.

Neither one of them said a word. Hell, she didn’t know what was going through his mind, but through hers, this was the moment that was going to change her entire world. She knew this was going to tilt both of their axes.

And if the man told her to abort her baby, then he wasn’t the man she thought he was.

She grabbed herself a bottle of water and took a giant swig.

“Beer?” she asked him.

“No. Sit down.” The order he gave her caused her to jump. She hadn’t heard him speak like that before to her. Other people? Oh, yes. But never, not once, to her.

“What’s wrong? You haven’t been yourself,” he told her, staring at her once she had sat down on her microfiber couch.

The microwave beeped, signaling their food was done, but neither of them made a move to take out their bowls.

This was the moment, the make it or break it moment. She would have rather loved him with everything in her than risk never loving at all, and if he walked away from them, then that was all there would be for her. No man was ever going to measure up to Heathen. “Johnny, I—”

But before she could say anything more, she stopped because she saw the panic in his eyes, and then his mouth started working.

“Babe, the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that you were mine. I didn’t have any what-ifs. And I certainly didn’t have any maybes. What you don’t get, and I’m laying it all out here . . . down . . . now . . . out in the open, is that . . . you . . . have . . . me. No one else. No one else has ever gotten ‘I love you’ from me. No one else has ever touched me. No one else has ever had my mouth on their pussy. Only. You. Now, I don’t know what kind of fucked up shit is going through your mind at the moment, and I frankly don’t care. All I want to hear are the words that you love me. You tell me that, there is nothing we can’t get through.”

That was not what she expected to come out of his mouth.

Now or never, she thought. “I’m pregnant,” she said. Tears were trying to roll down her cheeks, but she kept them at bay.

And just like she thought, she knew how he would take the news.

She hadn’t been wrong.

He got up from her couch, walked out her front door, slamming it, climbed on his bike, and then left.

An hour passed and he still had yet to return. Only then did she allow those tears to run out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

She grabbed a tissue and wept for what she had just lost.

In her torment, she hadn’t heard a sound.

She hadn’t heard the moving of a door.

She hadn’t heard the boots on her hardwood floors.

She hadn’t even heard the heavy breathing that she should have heard.

Not until it was too late.