HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1) by Lexie Ray

Author:Lexie Ray [Ray, Lexie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-08-27T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The next morning, I told Pumpkin to forget about going to the clinic with me—at least that morning. I was bone tired and didn’t feel like having doctors poke or prod at me.

It was even easier to not go the next morning. And the next. If I didn’t see any changes in myself, the fact that I was carrying a child was easy to ignore.

The fact that I actually was pregnant hit me hard after I missed my third period since the fateful test. I was having more and more trouble wearing my skirt for work, the buttons and zipper squeezing me. I’d taken to just leaving the button open and pulling my work blouse down over it.

It wasn’t a true baby bump. It was more like I’d been stuffing my face full of fast food and never exercising. Nobody said anything, but I got a girdle all the same. It wasn’t something I wanted Mama knowing, especially since I’d taken the money she’d given me for the abortion and stashed it with the rest of the cash I’d been saving.

At four months pregnant, I knew I was past the point of return. What had been a gut turned into a full-fledged baby bump. The future wasn’t my endgame; it was just getting past the challenges of my everyday existence. I purchased a larger blouse to help me conceal the bump, and I stopped sauntering down the hallway naked after taking a shower—my usual way of getting laughs from the other girls. I withdrew into myself and my room, thankful for the first time that I didn’t have a roommate to share the space with. I kept my door closed, looking at my belly in the mirror, and trying on clothes to see if I had anything that still fit.

Everyone knew something was wrong with me, but only Pumpkin—and Mama—knew the details. Pumpkin gave me my space, but I ran into Mama when I was in just a bathrobe—and girdle-less—downstairs in the kitchen one morning.

I was currently undergoing a wicked craving for a hotdog. It’d bounced me out of bed earlier than I was used to getting up and kicked my ass right down the stairs. It had to be a big hotdog, slathered in mustard and relish. That’s what I wanted—no, needed.

I was rooting around in the refrigerator in the kitchen with more seriousness than I’d shown most pursuits in my life when I heard the door open.

“Morning,” Mama said, her voice bleary. I stiffened, thinking of the cash I hadn’t used on an abortion, and looked at the package of hotdogs I was clutching. This looked exactly like it was—a pregnant woman succumbing to a vicious craving at an ungodly hour.

I turned, carefully pointing my bump inside the fridge.

“Morning,” I returned, trying not to sound suspicious. “Did we do good last night?”

“You know we did,” Mama said. She’d coated her face in a green mask of some sort, and her hair was in a shower cap. I could smell her hangover from where I was standing, and it made my stomach turn precariously.

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