Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Please, please, please.
Cami went into the stall and unfolded the directions with her unsteady hands. She went through the outlined steps, swearing softly when she peed on her fingers. But she’d gotten plenty on the stick, and so she carefully repackaged it, wrapped it back in the plastic bags, and left the stall to wash her hands as she waited for the test to do its thing.
As she lathered the soap, for some reason her mind returned to the remark she’d made to Rex Lowe. She’d told him she had a habit of simplifying things, and he’d asked her what she’d simplified lately. Hollis had interrupted them before she could answer, but if she had, what would she have said? Because despite the half-joking way she’d tossed the statement at him, it’d felt like one of the truest things she’d said in a long time. She simplified her reactions, and her opinions, and most expressions of her intellect. She did so because it was easier to fit in that way. At least with the crowd she was in.
Not that she thought she was any smarter than any of them. In fact, she knew that she had to work a lot harder than many for the grades she got. No, it wasn’t intellect. She had this feeling that they were all pretending in some way or another. Most of them just weren’t bothered by it. Like Hollis.
Would she have even known how to say any of that to Rex? Cami turned off the faucet and pulled a paper towel from the dispenser. No, probably not. It was the first time she’d really said it to herself.
The door banged open as she was drying her hands, and she held back a cringe as one of her mother’s bridge partners, Mrs. Rolland, came in. “Cami!” She gave a little laugh. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Cami smiled and grabbed the bag containing the pregnancy test off the counter. “Hi, Mrs. Rolland. How are you?”
“Oh, just fine. I swung in to pick up Gerald’s prescription before going to Pilates. Will Farrah be there tonight?”
“No. My dad’s leaving for a business trip tomorrow morning, so we’re doing dinner tonight.” She kept the bag by her side and took a few steps toward the door.
“Oh, safe travels to him, and tell Farrah I’ll see her on Friday.”
Cami pulled the door open. “I will. Bye.”
She practically flew out of the store, plunked into her car, and tossed the bag onto the passenger seat. She had no idea if it’d been ten minutes, but she decided she’d look at it behind the locked door of her bathroom after all. Then she would put the—again, please God—negative test at the bottom of her purse and throw it away in the morning.
But first, she needed to calm the hell down. She flicked on her radio and turned up the volume, rolled her head on her shoulders as she turned out of the lot, and then took a long sip of water from her drink tumbler.
Everything was going to be just fine. The nausea had faded, and she was actually hungry. Her stomach growled as she pictured a steaming plate of her mother’s spaghetti and meatballs with a crunchy piece of homemade garlic bread.
She was just stressed. Stress did all sorts of funny things to a female body. She’d look at that test when she got home, and then she’d head downstairs for the biggest celebratory dinner she’d had in a long time.
Her mother’s car was sitting in its usual spot in the driveway, and she pulled behind it, grabbed her stuff, and hopped out of her car, humming the song that had just been blasting on her radio as she walked to the garage and typed in the code.
She stuffed the bagged pregnancy test into the pool bag on her shoulder as she moved toward the door that led to the mudroom, and zipped it shut. Cami entered the house and kicked off her shoes, pausing for a moment as she listened for the sounds of her mom in the kitchen. The missing scents of garlic and basil that she’d expected to greet her elicited a frown, an uncomfortable prickle raising the hairs on the nape of her neck.
“Mom?” she called as she moved toward the open door of the room that led into the hall off the kitchen. “Elle?”
A body stepped into her path, causing her to rear back and drop her bag. Her scream dissolved into a garbled gasp when a fist slammed into her face. She barely registered being caught before she could hit the floor, the pain in her cheek so intense it blinded her.
“That’s it, pretty thing. I saw your photos on the wall. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Cami groaned, managing to open her eyes a mere slit as a man wearing a medical mask carried her past her fuzzy kitchen. The red fog in her brain cleared so that she became aware of what was happening, and a blast of panic shot through her system like lava. She screamed against the man’s clammy palm and then kicked backward and thrashed her head. But the man just laughed and clamped his arms around her more tightly. “AJ,” he called. “We got a wiggly one here.” He leaned in and licked the side of her face as he dragged her up the stairs. “You like to wiggle, hot stuff? Yeah, I like to wiggle too.” He laughed again.