The second line appeared before I even finished counting to three.
I sat on the closed lid of the toilet in my tiny bathroom, panties around my ankles, the cheap plastic stick trembling in my hand. Positive. Clear as day. Two pink lines staring back at me like an accusation.
My period was seventeen days late. I had told myself it was stress. Grief. Anything except the truth.
I had let a stranger f**k me raw with grief and rage still sitting in my chest, and now his child was growing inside me.
The memory hit without mercy.
His c**k stretching me open against that hotel door. The way he had flipped me onto my stomach and driven into me so deep I saw stars. The filthy, wet sound of skin on skin. How he had ordered me to come again while his fingers rubbed my c**t in tight, mean circles.
