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Nico sighed. “She should have called in.”

“I don’t think she wanted to see us,” I said.

“Even if she was pissed, she’d want to see that I was back home safe,” Nico grumbled and headed for the back door.

Marcos and I followed slowly, bodies aching after being awake for a close to thirty hours. We never had gone to sleep after we punished Maya Thursday evening. Now it was Saturday morning and we were dead on our feet.

“What this?” Nico asked, holding up a sheet of paper that was sitting on the counter, next to what appeared to be a used saline bag.

I narrowed my eyes on the bag, confused, before I looked at the note.

Reevaluate and renegotiate.

Red.

“What the fuck?” Nico asked, whirling on Marcos.

I could only stare blankly at the paper, my mind still trying to process. Maya’s neat cursive handwriting was on that paper, but the words didn’t make any sense.

Marcos swore under his breath, before he took off running for the stairs.

“No,” Nico gasped, before he quickly followed after him.

My heart dropped into my stomach.

Red. As in her fucking safe word. She fucking wrote us a note with her safe word and then my guys had flown up the stairs.

“NOOOO!” Marcos’s deep cry of agony filled the house.

“No,” I muttered, my eyes still on the note. “No.”

“She’s gone,” Nico said, coming down the stairs. “She left. All her stuff is gone.”

I sank to my knees, my eyes falling from the note, to the empty saline bag and used needle on the counter, wondering what the fuck had happened.

A week later

Maya

Ipushedmyselfupfromthe floor of the bathroom, reaching up to the flush the toilet as I wiped my mouth. At the sink, I quickly washed my hands before rinsing my mouth out.

After I brushed my teeth, I took a deep breath and stared into my reflection in the mirror. I felt like shit. I hadn’t been sleeping and I was throwing up every day. I could only image how much weight I’d lost in the last week of being at my sister’s.

“How you doing?” Jenna asked as she came tolean against the door frame.

I dragged my tired eyes over to my sister, just in time to watch Jenna set a pink box onto the counter top. A pregnancy test. “Fuck.” My heart sank upon seeing the box. The realization rolling over me.

“Yeah,” Jenna murmured.

“Fuck,” I repeated.

Jenna nodded. “That’s usually how it happens.”

I couldn’t even crack a smile at the off-hand joke. In my mind, I just repeated the word: Fuck.This couldn’t be happening!

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Jenna said, after she pulled a paper dixie cup out of the medicine cabinet.

I nodded numbly.

Jenna left the bathroom.

All I could do was stare at the box. Fuck.

This was it. All my hopes and dreams, all of my plans, all laid out before me, about to change. Everything was about to change. I didn’t need the test to know the answer.

In my heart, I already knew the answer.

I was pregnant.

To be continued…