It was only a few days after the luncheon that the morning sickness finally began. For weeks, I woke up every morning feeling incredibly ill. The relentless waves of nausea left me unable to eat anything, and I worried about the well-being of my baby.Nathan kept insisting that I go to the doctor, but I refused every time.“It’s just morning sickness,” I would tell him as I was wiping the sweat from my forehead. “It’ll pass. I read online that it kicks in right about now and can last for a while.”“Yeah, but you should still get checked out,” Nathan insisted. “You look like you’ve lost weight. I’m getting worried about you and the baby.”I had been trying harder to hold my tongue when it came to matters involving the baby, as my previous coldness surrounding Nathan not being the father only hurt him, and I was tired of arguing.Finally, I told Nathan that I would go by the end of the week if the morning sickness didn’t improve at all.It was Friday morning, and I was lying on the couc

I stood there outside Nathan’s room, feeling myself waver in front of him. I remembered pitching forward and being caught by his strong arms. I remembered him carrying me down to the car as though I weighed nothing, and I remembered his hand holding mine as he drove me to the emergency room.After that, a sudden fever took over me and I became too delirious to consciously remember anything.When I came back to my senses, there was an IV in my arm, two nurses and a doctor standing around me with concerned looks on their faces, and Nathan was nowhere to be found.The sterile hospital room enveloped me, a stark reminder of my vulnerability.“N-Nathan?” I mumbled, looking around confusedly.“He’s in the waiting room,” one of the nurses, a gentle older man, said as his face came into view. “You can see him once we’ve run some tests.”I nodded slowly, but I couldn’t deny the fact that there was anxiety coursing through my veins. In my semi-delirious state, I didn’t just want Nathan by my si

Soon enough, it was time for my next checkup. The doctor at the hospital urged me to start attending checkups more regularly due to the food poisoning, and of course as soon as Nathan heard the doctor utter those words, he arranged for me to attend appointments twice a month. Today, however, he was too busy with Alpha Council matters to attend my appointment. I was a bit relieved, because I had a plan. Ever since I returned to my hometown, Angela had been bullying me like a high school girl. The last time I spoke to her was at the banquet, when she kept commenting on the food choices that I was making and was insulting my weight. But I had seen her around town since then. I ran into her at the grocery store, the park, the pharmacy — it was as though she was everywhere, lurking around every corner. And she always seemed to come armed with some sort of snide comment or nasty glare. I had had enough. And today, I was glad that Nathan wouldn’t be coming with me, because I was ready

For a moment longer than it probably should have, Nathan’s thumb lingered on my cheek where he had brushed the flour away. As though coming to our senses at the exact same time, however, he quickly pulled away and I cleared my throat. “Want some pie?” I asked, turning away and walking to the fridge in order to hide my red face. I opened the freezer and dug around until I found a container of vanilla ice cream, which I had bought a few days prior. “Sure,” Nathan replied. By the time I turned back around to face him, he was on the other side of the kitchen and was avoiding my gaze like the plague. But even then, I could see how his mouth watered every time he glanced at the pie, and my apprehension turned to amusement. A few minutes later, we had between us two plates of bright red, gooey cherry pie topped with scoops of vanilla ice cream. The aroma of the sweet cherries and the buttery, flaky crust filled the air in the kitchen, reminding me of the little bakery that we use

Olivia’s kiss was burned into my lips like a permanent brand from a hot iron, and the taste of cherry pie on her tongue lingered in my mouth like a ghost.It felt as though her lips lived there now, inside my mouth, replacing my tongue and all of my senses. All I could taste was her, and I didn’t want to taste anything else.But at the same time, I knew that this was a bad idea. The feeling of the blood rushing through my body, urging me to do more than just kiss her as we stood in the kitchen, overwhelmed me and I had to get away.I knew that if I stayed with her any longer, I would be laying her out across the kitchen counter in the same fashion that she laid out the pie crust. It would be the demise of the friendship that we had only just rekindled, and it would break all of the rules that we had set in place.The last thing I saw before I painfully retreated was the sorrowful, hurt expression on Olivia’s face. Oh, how I wanted to stay and wipe that pain off of her pretty face; but