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 fuck 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 cock stretching me open against that hotel door. The way he...