Page 118 of Reaper and Ruin

And yet, what was the alternative?

I still had no answers when I wrapped myself in a towel, and started searching the drawers for a hairbrush. I felt bad for going through Whip’s things, and I really didn’t want to snoop, but he hadn’t had any conditioner in his shower. So although I had spent a long time scrubbing the blood out of my hair, and it was now clean, it was a matted, tangled mess that finger combing wasn’t going to fix.

Each drawer held all of Whip’s things. Cologne. Toothbrush and paste. Deodorant. A facial cleanser that I mentally high-fived him for because even I, as a woman, was pretty slack about skincare.

No hairbrush. I supposed he didn’t have much need for one when his hair was only a few inches long.

I’d almost given up hope when I pulled open the bottom drawer.

The contents were very different from all the other ones. It was filled with bright colors, unlike the grays and blacks with the odd splash of red that branded all the items Whip used regularly. A lady’s hairbrush sat among a packet of pads, a box of tampons, makeup removing wipes, old, unused pregnancy tests, and an eyelash curler. My fingers brushed over a headband, some ponytail ties, and a necklace with a J hanging from the end of it.

Whip’s wife’s things. I was sure. Things that had at some point probably littered the countertop, in use every day. They’d probably gotten ready for work, side by side in this bathroom, brushed their teeth, and loved each other in it.

And then someone had taken her away from him.

I could feel her ghost in the room with me.

Could practically see their life together, playing out around me.

Yet there was no jealousy. For maybe the first time that night, there was a calmness in the air. He’d loved her. I knew that. They’d had a family together, a life. That was a part of him I would never want to take away.

Something about being in this home felt right. Seeing her things in that drawer reminded me this had once been a happy house, filled with love and laughter. And my heart whispered that it could be like that again.

I could see myself here, with Whip stepping out of the shower behind me, dripping wet, wrapping a towel around his trim waist and then his arms around me. Placing a good morning kiss to the side of my neck.

I could hear kids’ voices outside the door, and my heart squeezed at the thought of raising a family with him. Notreplacing the one he’d lost. But finding solace in the people who were in his life now.

I plucked the brush from the drawer, but my attention caught on the period supplies.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used them.

I racked my brain, thinking back through the weeks and months. Had I even had a period since I’d met Whip? Since Levi had gotten out of jail? Since X had murdered Paul Jedderesen at that house on Olympic Drive?

I didn’t think I had. The days were a blur of grief and fear, of happiness and laughter…

And the nights were a whirlwind of hot sex.

Hot, mostly very unprotected, sex.

We’d been so careless, but I hadn’t really even thought it would matter. The voice of my doctor, the one I tried really hard to never go see, was always in the back of my mind. Every time I went there, he reminded me I needed to lose weight. That I was considered obese. That I would never be able to get pregnant at the weight I was.

I’d gotten so sick of hearing it, I had basically stopped going to the doctor altogether. I would be dying on the couch, and Toby would beg me to go find a new doctor, but I knew they would all say the same thing, and I couldn’t bear to hear it from someone else’s mouth. I’d spent my entire childhood hearing people tell me I was too big, too fat, too unhealthy. Tooeverything.

I didn’t have to hear it as an adult. Didn’t have to subject myself to that sort of shit.

So I just never went.

But my period had always been regular.

And now it wasn’t.

“Stress,” I told my reflection in the mirror, raking the brush through the tangled lengths of my hair with a vicious stroke. “You’re stressed. Nothing more.”

Except my gaze kept straying to that bottom drawer. To the pregnancy tests just sitting there, right next to the tampons.

I forced my gaze back to the mirror. Forced myself to brush my hair until it was smooth and straight. “You have no pregnancy signs…”

I had thrown up a few days ago, but that had been food poisoning, not morning sickness.