Page 1 of The Alpha’s Sin (Forbidden Omegaverse #7)

POPPY

“D on’t be pregnant…don’t be pregnant…don’t be pregnant,” I chant.

I’m sitting on the lid of the toilet, hunched nervously over the little plastic stick clutched in one hand. The directions said to wait for five minutes and then look, but I can’t put it down.

The first line—the one that tells you the test is working—has already popped up. I’m looking at the second little window, hoping like hell it remains clear. I guess I’m hoping if I stare at it, I can scare that little line away—keep it from appearing.

But I guess I’m not scary enough. Because here it is—sliding into view like bad news coming to surprise me. Only this is no surprise. Dirk flushed my birth control down the toilet weeks ago.

“We’re married now, babe,” he said, when I tried to stop him. “ It’s time to start a family.”

“But you said I could go to nursing school first!” I protested. I had already done all my prerequisites and had been accepted to my school of choice— USF —back in Tampa . But Dirk had convinced me to come live in Virginia with him—to be near his family.

“There are plenty of nursing schools up there,” he’d assured me. “ But if we’re going to start a life together, I need to be near my big brother. Plus , I have a job up there, waiting for me.”

I don’t have any family of my own. I never knew my dad and my mom died when I was nine. I was raised by my grandparents. Grandpa passed three years ago and I had lost my Grandma just about a month before I met Dirk . So I moved with him.

I know it sounds stupid—and it was—but I thought I was in love. I thought Dirk was too.

From the minute I met him, he showered me with compliments. He talked about how beautiful I was—how he loved “curvy girls”—and how I was the smartest, most amazing woman he’d ever met.

He gave me gifts too—chocolates because he knew I had a sweet tooth, earrings he saw that made him think of me, and flowers “just because you’re so beautiful, babe.”

He texted me all the time, talking about our life together and how happy we were going to be. And because I was vulnerable and still grieving the loss of my Grandma , I fell for it. I sold her house— I know, it was really stupid of me—and put the money in a joint bank account with Dirk .

“Part of it we’ll use for our wedding and part of it we’ll use to buy a place of our own once we get back to Virginia ,” he promised me.

I believed him— I thought this man was completely, head-over-heels in love with me. And I was head-over-heels for him too. So we moved to Virginia …only we never bought a house. Dirk got us a crappy little apartment on the bad end of town.

“Just for now,” he promised me when I said that I didn’t feel safe going outside at night. “ Just until we get married. Then we’ll start house-hunting.”

Again, I believed him. I told myself it was going to be fine—that the apartment was just for now. I got busy planning our wedding.

But it turned out that Dirk didn’t want “a big production” as he put it. In fact, it almost seemed like he went out of his way to make it cheap. He set the ceremony in an old, rundown Baptist church and booked their dim and dingy meeting hall for our reception.

“But we have plenty of money from selling Grandma’s house,” I protested, when I saw the hall.

Years of neglect had turned the white walls an off-yellow shade and there was grime in the corners and along the baseboards that no amount of scrubbing was going to get out. Seeing it made my stomach drop—and not in a good way.

“Nah, this is fine. This place has a lot of history,” Dirk said dismissively.

“But we can afford a nicer venue!” I argued. “ We have enough to get something better than this , at least.”

Tampa, where I had moved from, was a growing real estate market.

When it sold, my Grandma’s little bungalow had fetched just over five hundred thousand dollars because it was in an up-and-coming neighborhood that everyone wanted to live in.

That was plenty enough to have a nice wedding, as far as I was concerned.

But Dirk wouldn’t listen.

“No—we need to save most of that for a house,” he told me. “ If we have a less expensive wedding, we can have a nicer home to raise our family in.”

Again, I reluctantly agreed. I was disappointed, but I did want a nice house and everything is so expensive these days. So I let him have his way once again and we kept the wedding and reception at the old church.

The wedding wasn’t exactly the one I’d dreamed of as a little girl. I got a secondhand dress at a shop Dirk knew of because again, he didn’t want to “waste money that should go to buying our house.”

The dress was pretty enough, but it wasn’t really what I wanted.

Neither were the flowers, which we got at a discount florist. As for the cake, we bought it at Wal - Mart .

The DJ was a guy Dirk knew and so was the photographer—neither of them charged hardly anything because they owed him favors, or so he said.

And sadly, the service we got from them reflected the price.

The music was awful, and half of our wedding pictures were out of focus and blurry.

I wasn’t happy with any of these cost-cutting measures, but Dirk assured me over and over I’d be glad once we went to buy our house.

He even drove me around town to look over several properties for sale—big, grand Colonial mansions with front porch columns that he said would be perfect for our new life together and all the kids we were going to have.

And I believed all of it—because of his love-bombing and because I’ve always been a sucker for a guy with a pretty face.

I have to admit, Dirk was nice to look at.

He had sandy brown hair, a shade darker than my own dark blonde, and bright blue eyes with long lashes.

He had straight, white teeth and this way of laughing out of only half of his mouth that was snarky and charming at the same time.

Also , he was almost six feet tall with nice arms and fairly broad shoulders.

When he first came up to me and started flirting, I was sure he couldn’t be serious.

I’m not the kind of girl who gets that kind of guy.

I have nice hair and a pretty face but I’m not thin—quite the opposite, in fact.

I’ve always been “curvy” for as long as I can remember.

I’m what they call a “pear shape,” meaning I carry most of my weight in my hips and ass.

I have pretty thick thighs too— I don’t know any man who goes looking for those qualities in a girl—let alone big, handsome guys like Dirk .

“Don’t you worry about it, honey—some men like a girl with meat on her bones and a big caboose,” my Grandma used to say.

But I never actually met one until Dirk came along and started raving about how much he loved my curves.

Later , I came across his Instagram and saw how many thin, perfect models he was following, but at the time I believed him.

I believed everything— because I so desperately wanted to.

So we got married and he flushed my birth control, saying he wanted to start a family right away. A month later, he was gone.

“Shit…shit… shit!” I mutter as I stare at the dreaded second line on the pregnancy test. I’m pregnant— I’m really pregnant.

Just the thought of it makes me nauseous. Or maybe it’s morning sickness. Whatever it is, the dry slice of toast I had for breakfast this morning is coming up.

I hop off the toilet, push back the lid, and fall to my knees just in time. What comes up is a brown mush that floats on the surface of the water. The sight makes me sick again and I puke until there’s nothing left but acid in my stomach.

When I’m sure I’m done, I get off the floor and flush. I wash my mouth out in the sink and splash water in my face, trying to think what the hell I’m going to do.

Most people would probably tell me to get an abortion but that’s not an option.

Dirk left a month after our wedding and I missed my period a few days after that.

But at the time, I was so upset I didn’t even notice.

That was right around the time I’d found out that our joint bank account had been completely cleaned out, leaving me without even enough money to pay the next month’s rent or buy groceries.

Needless to say, I don’t have money for medical care either.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about the rent situation because it’s the end of the month.

I approached my landlord—a sleazy guy with a lazy eye who always smells like he just smoked about a pound of weed—and asked for an extension.

His response was succinct—“ Pay up or get out. I don’t give extensions, second chances, or warnings, girly. ”

So that was a no-go.

I wish I had some money coming in but I don’t, mainly because I don’t have a job.

Dirk wanted me to stay at home, “ Just at first, babe. Until after we buy the house,” he told me.

So I’d been playing housewife for him, doing all the cleaning and cooking and of course, having unprotected sex with him whenever he asked for it.

Which makes it hard to know exactly when I got pregnant.

I look at the stick again and then I look in the mirror.

A woman with wavy, dark blonde hair and green eyes looks back at me.

Her eyes are red and puffy from crying— I’ve been a mess ever since I realized Dirk isn’t coming back.

He didn’t even leave me a note. He just said he was going to work one day and never came home.

Of course, I was frantic when he went missing and didn’t return any of my calls or texts.

I called every hospital in the area, looking for him but he hadn’t been in an accident.

It wasn’t until my card got declined at the store when I was trying to buy a few groceries that I thought to check the bank account and found it empty.

Then I knew what was going on— I realized that Dirk had left me.

But of course, by then it was too late. He was long gone, and he’d taken every last little bit of money from the sale of my Grandma’s house with him—all five hundred thousand.

The bank manager said he was sorry but since we were legally married, he couldn’t report it as any kind of crime or theft.

The money was gone, along with my husband.

Later that week, I used my last two dollars to buy a cheap pregnancy test from Dollar Tree . ( Yes , they have them there.) I was desperate to know why I’d been throwing up every morning and why I felt so dizzy all the time.

Now I know.

“It’s a really cheap test though,” I say out loud. “ Maybe it’s wrong.”

Yeah, right. I know in my heart I’m in trouble. I’m pregnant and I’m going to be living in my car by tomorrow night because rent is due tomorrow and I don’t have any money to pay it.

I don’t have anything but my clothes, a few knick-knacks from my Grandma , and a beat-up old Chevy Cavalier that barely made the trip from Florida to Virginia .

I don’t even have enough money for gas to keep it running at night, so it’s going to be cold.

Autumn is half over and it’s chilly in the evening.

What am I going to do?

I rack my brain, trying to think. What options do I have?

I can’t go home— I have no living relatives and I’ve lost touch with my friends.

None of them are in a position to let me couch surf, anyway.

Everyone has it tough. And even if there was someone I could stay with back home, I don’t have the money for gas to make a twelve hour road trip.

The Cavalier is a gas-guzzler. I used to joke that it barely gets two miles per gallon but that’s not far from the truth.

Where can I go, then? If Dirk’s parents were alive, I’d beg them to take me in for the sake of their grandchild, which I guess I’m now carrying. But they’re dead—it was one of the things Dirk and I had in common—that we’re both orphans. So begging to stay with the in-laws is out.

I run a hand through my hair distractedly. I don’t know anyone else up here I can stay with. Well , that’s not exactly true, I amend to myself. There’s Logan , Dirk’s older brother…but I’ve only met him a few times including the wedding.

Logan is Dirk’s polar opposite in looks.

He’s nine years older than Dirk and taller too—six five or six with shoulders so wide he has to go through most doorways sideways.

He’s dark where Dirk is light. He has black hair with salt and pepper at the temples.

His short, neatly trimmed beard has some silver too.

He has these piercing, pale gray eyes that I can’t stop glancing at, every time I see him.

And he’s muscular— I bet he’s got less than ten percent body fat.

Which must be nice, I muse as I look in the mirror. I’m already fat and I’m going to get fatter. I still can’t believe I’m pregnant.

But maybe not—maybe it was just a cheap test. I mean, it was from Dollar Tree and those things give what they call a “false positive” sometimes, don’t they?

The more I think about it, the more I convince myself that must be it. I’m not going to believe I’m pregnant for now, I tell myself. Right now I just have to find a place to crash until I can get a job. Preferably someplace besides my car.

Again, Logan’s face comes to my mind. Normally I would never ask him for anything. My brother-in-law is a silent, stoic man—completely different from Dirk with his loud, easy charm. He barely said ten words to me at the wedding, even though he was Dirk’s best man.

In fact, I swear I caught him looking at his younger brother disapprovingly—as though he didn’t think we should be getting married.

Considering that Dirk claimed he wanted to go back to Virginia to be close to family, his only brother doesn’t seem to like him much and I didn’t see any kind of warmth between them. So Logan will probably turn me away.

But I have to try. I can’t live in my car with it getting colder and colder at night.

I’m a Florida girl— I’m not used to the cold and I don’t own any winter clothing.

Seriously , not even a thick jacket or a pair of boots.

I lived my life in flip-flops and t-shirts back in the Sunshine State and I haven’t gotten around to buying anything warmer yet. Now , I don’t have the money to.

All I can do is ask. I’ll beg him to let me sleep on his couch just for a little while—just until I can get a job and get back on my feet.

Once I earn enough money, maybe I can make my way back to Florida .

At least I know people there, even if I have lost touch with most of my friends.

I can get reconnected and try to make a life for myself.

But for now, Logan is the only chance I have— I’ll have to take a risk.