Knock Down, Drag Out / Book One

Chapter Sixteen

Darcy twisted her fingers together, pacing the floor in front of the bathroom sink. Lylah and Ruby tried to distract themselves with putting the contents of the cabinets back up. This was the longest five minutes of their lives, the unknown waiting to develop on the small stick Darcy had placed on the sink.

"For the love of God, how much longer?" Darcy growled, so anxious that her stomach was starting to cramp. Lylah checked the timer on her phone and held up a single finger.

Darcy jumped when the alarm went off, staring at the pregnancy test like it was a deadly snake waiting to strike. Lylah placed her hand on her twins shoulder and Ruby flipped the test over, the three of them staring at the faint plus sign with mixed emotions.

"Oh God. Oh God! What the hell am I supposed to do?" Darcy asked hysterically, sagging against Lylah. Ruby put her arms around both of them and pressed a kiss against Darcy's head. Things had just gone from bad to overly complicated and dangerous.

There was a knock on the door and they all three jumped, the pregnancy test flying from Ruby's hand and hitting Elijah in the chest when he swung the door open. Silence filled the room as he caught it and glanced down, a look of realization coming over his face.

"Please don't tell Maddox," Darcy blurted, surging forward and snatching the test from his hands. She wasn't quite sure how she was going to tell Maddox, but him hearing about it from one of his friends was not how she wanted it to go down.

Elijah shook his head and held his hands up. "Won't say a thing. But this changes things, with Steven Lambert still on the loose and you pregnant. We'll have to be extra cautious now."

Darcy's heart dropped, dread coiling so tightly inside of her that she was sure she was going to snap. She rushed to the toilet when her stomach began to cramp and threw up the breakfast she had eaten just an hour earlier, chills erupting all over her body.

She knew that Steven not being caught soon was an option, but she had hoped that they had caught him by now. She went to the sink after flushing the toilet, brushing her teeth to get the taste out of her mouth.

"We have to go get more groceries tomorrow, do I need to grab anything for your...situation?" Darcy looked at Elijah and slowly shook her head.

"She's not more than two weeks along, if that. Just grab some prenatal vitamins out of the pharmacy section and make sure you get saltine crackers for when she gets nauseous," Ruby advised, gently taking the pregnancy test from Darcy's hand and putting it back in the box. She stuck it in the cabinet under the sink, behind a box of tampons. She knew her son wouldn't look under there and it was better to keep it hidden until Darcy was ready to tell him about it.

"Why don't we go downstairs and I'll make a small breakfast? The guys didn't eat with us earlier and Darcy needs to get back what she just threw up," Ruby asked quietly, smiling at Darcy and Lylah when they looked at her like she was crazy.

They thought it was funny that she cooked when situations got out of control, but they didn't complain. The food was too delicious for them to seriously make fun of her for it.

"You guys go, I'll be down in a few minutes." Lylah gave her twin a hug before leaving the bathroom, Ruby and Elijah following after her and leaving Darcy alone.

She shut the bathroom door and locked it before making her way over to the mirror, pulling her shirt up so she could stare at her still flat stomach. She rested both hands right above her bellybutton and squeezed her eyes shut, her heart breaking and so full of love all at the same time.

She could almost picture her child, a baby girl with Maddox's eyes and her hair and a set of dimples identical to her father's. Darcy slid her hands around until she was cradling her stomach and allowed the tears to fall from her eyes.

She hadn't lied to Lylah when she said having this baby might shatter her, but now that she knew she was pregnant she couldn't bring herself to even think about considering an abortion. This baby would be her perfect piece of Maddox that she got to keep once he left.

"I don't know what the future holds for us. I don't know if I'll even be a good mom, or if you'll like me. I don't know the first thing about babies. But I do know that you're going to be so loved. And spoiled. I know that your Aunt Lylah is going to obsess over you for the rest of her life, and so will your grandma. And I know that I'm going to love you more than anyone in the world."

Darcy wiped the tears off of her cheeks and took a deep breath, her hands rubbing small circles against her stomach.

"I'm really scared. I'll probably be scared for the rest of my life because of you, but that's okay. Mom's are supposed to be scared and worry about their children."

She opened her eyes and looked down at her stomach. Her baby would grow in there, would be safe from the world and all the horrors it had to offer.

"God, I hope you like me. I hope that we make memories you can look back on and smile at. I hope that I'm even half the mother mine was, or that your Grandma Ruby is. I hope that we make it out of this alive, because I don't want to lose you. You're already the most precious thing in my life. I just got you. I don't want to lose you to a psychopath."