Sweetest Devotion

Prologue

When you're young, constant fantasies of the future dance in your brain as distant goals. Thoughts of growing up, establishing a respectful career, getting married, and starting a family are always present as you play house with the neighborhood kids. No one prepares you for how fast you grow up and how fast those fantasies become realities.

The thing is, not everything turns out the way you plan. Actually, pretty much nothing goes according to plan— at least not in my life.

At twenty-five years old, I was doing fairly well for myself. It was my second year out of college and I already owned a pretty successful boutique in London. My dreams were rapidly coming true, at least in a professional sense.

I'd learned that being single at this age is moreso something to celebrate rather than mope about. You learn very quickly watching your friends get married and divorced within a year that being 'young and in love' isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'd rather wait for the right man until I'm old and gray than settle for the wrong one and be a divorcé by the time my thirtieth birthday is in sight.

Despite my single-ness, I enjoyed my life and all of my friends that life blessed me with. It seemed that everything was going according to my life-long plan.

But everything pretty much came to a screeching halt when that word appeared on the tiny screens of the four sticks that laid out in front of me on the countertop.

Pregnant