Conquer Your Love (30 page)

I shrugged. “It’s not like I’m an expert or anything.”

“Why can’t they just mark it P for positive and a smiley for
not pregnant
?”

I laughed at her attempt at infusing humor. “You should give it another
go in case you didn’t hold it under the stream long enough.”

“Oh right. I thought dipping it in there was enough.” She smirked and
grabbed another test. I turned away to give her privacy.

“Hey, Brooke. On the off chance I’m not reading this right, can you try
the third one? Comparing my result with yours would make me feel better. I
don’t want to think I’m not pregnant and then find out I am when it’s too
late.”

“Sure. Just give me a minute.” I took the stick from Sylvie’s
outstretched hand and waited until she walked out of the bathroom leaving the
door ajar. Using a pregnancy test when I wasn’t pregnant was definitely strange
but I had done stranger things to help Sylvie out.

A minute later I was done and called Sylvie back in. She held out her
hand. I handed the pregnancy test to her and she placed it on the marble
counter.

“With your result we can’t be wrong,” she said.

“Yeah.” I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and tapped my fingers
against my thigh, waiting.

“Brooke,” Sylvie whispered. Sensing the sudden tension in her voice, I
turned and followed her line of vision, my heart slumping in my chest. “Didn’t
you say two bands means pregnant? Yours is showing two.”

I snatched the test from her hand and stared at it, my mind unable to
comprehend the meaning of it all. There were two lines, which had to be a
mistake.

“Oh shit.” Sylvie laughed. “
You
are pregnant.”

“I can’t be.” My voice failed me as I tried to make sense of the
situation. “Did you switch the sticks? If you did, it’s not funny.”

“It’s not a prank. I’d never do that.” Which was true. She didn’t like
jokes, or playing games.

I frowned. “Honestly, it must be a mistake. I’m on the pill. My period
is due any minute. Maybe I got it all wrong and one band means pregnancy and
two means nothing. It could be an Italian thing or the brand differs from those
advertised back home.”

I felt myself panicking but couldn’t stop it.

Take a deep breath, Stewart.

“You’re kidding, right?” Sylvie said. “The instructions are in Italian,
but in the end all pregnancy tests are the same and they work the same way.”

Denial is bliss.

I shook my head. “No, you’re the one feeling sick and I’m okay. Besides,
my period—” I broke off, unable to process the shock. My period was never
really on time. It changed like the weather. So that argument wasn’t valid.

“It can’t be, Sylvie,” I murmured. “I never forget to take the pill.
Every single day, at the same time.
It must be false
positive.”

“Nothing’s a hundred percent safe, and particularly not if you’re sick
or there’s something wrong with your hormones.” She squeezed my arm gently.
“Like you said, it’s not the end of the world.”

“I only tried to be supportive when I said that.” I thought back to my
first trip to Bellagio. Jett and I were staying at his house. During one
dinner, I got intoxicated and sick. It wasn’t my proudest moment, which is why
I must have repressed it and never told Sylvie about it. Maybe the few glasses
of wine messed with my hormones.

“It’s a false positive,” I whispered. “It has to be because we’re only
dating for a few weeks and it doesn’t happen that fast.”

Sylvie threw the pregnancy tests in the garbage bin and grabbed my arm,
forcing me to follow her to the library.

“What are you doing?” I asked as she sat down in front of the computer.

“
Googling
pregnancy tests.”

“The guys will be back any minute.”

“Let’s hope this old thing’s fast.” She heaved a long sigh as we waited
for the computer to boot. It whirred idly, like it had all the time in the
world. Waiting wasn’t good. It made me anxious. I could feel dark clouds
descending upon my head.

“That’s it,” Sylvie said, turning on the browser and navigating to a
search engine. Her longer fingers moved over the keyboard effortlessly and
then, with one click, I had my answer.

Two bands…positive.

“You’re pregnant. Congratulations!” Sylvie said, grinning. “It’s not me;
it’s you.”

I glared at her, ignoring the sudden urge to pour a glass of water over
her head. I felt so faint my legs threatened to buckle beneath me.

“Brooke? Oh, shit,”
Sylvie
said. “Come on. Sit
down. Don’t be upset. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Impossible. The test— ” Sitting in her chair, I took a deep
breath and let it out slowly. “—
is
wrong. I
don’t feel pregnant.” Lying to myself gave me a false sense of relief so I kept
going because it was easier than facing the truth.

“We’ll repeat the test, maybe even go to the doctor’s to check your
blood results.”

Which meant waiting at least a day or as long as it’d take to get an
appointment. I couldn’t wait. Sylvie grabbed me in a tight hug and I rested my
head against her chest, letting her stroke my hair, her soothing voice barely
reaching me. “Don’t worry, Brooke, it’ll be okay.” She kept repeating those
stupid words I said. “It’s not the end of the world.”

 
It is the end of the world. Definitely.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m doomed.”

I wanted to be a mom one day; just not at this point. The thought of
telling Jett filled me with dread. A pregnancy so early, when we barely knew
each other, could ruin my relationship. He’d run, like most men do. He’d run as
fast as he could, and that would hurt me more than anything in the world. I
didn’t want to lose him because of a mistake.
A stupid
mistake occurring under the influence of alcohol.

“You’ll have to tell him,” Sylvie said, deleting the browser history and
switching off the computer. “It might seem scary now. But once you do, you’ll
find out whether it was just a fling or more. And if he breaks up, which I hope
he won’t, then you can either let it define you or strengthen you. And there is
always
that
option,” she whispered.
“You can get rid of it and he’ll never know.”

I thought about it for all of three seconds. “That’s not me.”

She smiled and brushed my hair off my face. “I know and I would never
encourage you to do that. It would destroy you, haunt you for the rest of your
life, and that’s a lot worse than the pain you’d feel if he let you down.”

In the silence
of the house, we heard the
car pull outside and the doors slam shut. Figuring I was too shaken to face
Jett, I hid inside the bathroom. Through the walls, I still could hear them
downstairs, chatting and laughing. I pressed my feverish forehead against the
cool wall tiles when a knock on my bathroom door made me flinch.

“Brooke?” It was Jett. The strained undertones in his voice betrayed his
worry. “Sylvie said you’re in here.”

“Wait.” Jumping to my feet, I straightened my clothes and stepped out of
the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I curled my lips into a smile,
praying it looked genuine enough to fool him. My pulse leaped as he lifted me
up in his arms, and my stomach began to flutter at the way his lips brushed
against mine, exploring my mouth as though we hadn’t seen each other in weeks.

“Are you okay?” he said after putting me back down.

“Just a headache. That’s all.” It wasn’t even a lie. Ever since
discovering my possible pregnancy, I felt physically sick and my head was a
throbbing pulp.

“Where were you?” I tried to keep my tone casual in my attempt to steer
the conversation to him.

“We had the license plate checked. It was a waste of time. It’s not
registered and thus fake.” He smirked and grabbed my hand. His fingers
interlaced with mine. On any other occasion, his touch would have pleased me,
but today it only managed to make me feel even worse.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, baby.
Kenny’s hacking into
Lucazzone’s
computer today.
I’m confident if there’s
something, Kenny will unearth it.”

He walked downstairs to join Kenny and Sylvie. I felt Sylvie
scrutinizing me, watching my every move. I grimaced at her in the hope she’d
get the hint to act normal. The last thing I needed was being examined like a
bizarre specimen at the local zoo. Jett wasn’t stupid. He’d catch that
something was wrong in a heartbeat.

“Did you tell her about the computer?” Kenny asked. At Jett’s nod Kenny
turned to me. “Are you okay with it? The hard drive will be destroyed beyond
repair and you’ll have to throw it away.”

Sylvie shot me a sideway glance. I could smell her fear in the air and
gave her a noncommittal shrug. She had deleted the browser history so we had
nothing to worry about.

“Sure, Kenny. Do whatever you need to do. It’s not like I intend to keep
it.”

“Good.” He snatched his rucksack and headed out, calling over his
shoulder, “Because it can go two ways: Either we get into his computer,
retrieve the information, and destroy the disk in the process. Or we find
nothing, but the hard drive’s done. Either way, what we do will leave a trail
behind. A pro will be able to tell and there’s no going back.”

I swallowed hard. If Alessandro decided to check, he’d find out that his
guests had been snooping around the place. Did I really want that?

“Brooke.” Jett nodded at me encouragingly. “We talked about this in the
basement, remember? You have a right to know.”

“I know. I just—” I exhaled a slow breath. I could always tell
Alessandro the computer broke down and I bought him a new one. “Okay.”

Kenny lay out all the tools,
then
started to
disassemble the computer, explaining each step.

“If the hard drive was erased, a pro might take weeks, maybe even months
to retrieve the data. If you use a good data destruction software, no one will
ever recover anything.”

“We don’t have weeks or months,” Jett said.

Kenny shrugged. “I’m just saying, man. The fact that you used the
internet
means the hard drive’s not destroyed, so he
probably performed a wipe-out. What was the guy’s name again?”

“
Lucazzone
,” I said. “So how long do you think
you’ll
take?”

“That depends. Maybe an hour.”

Kenny continued his chatter as he removed the hard drive and pushed it
into what looked like a black box, which he called an enclosure, and connected
it to his computer. It all looked so complicated and, judging from Sylvie’s
expression, boring. All I could see was a black screen—until he opened a
program and the data transfer began.

“The software’s doing its own rewriting during the data retrieval
process. We’re burning the entire information as an ISO image on this disk to
make sure we have a backup,” Kenny said, popping a mini CD-ROM into his
computer.

I could see Sylvie was bored out of her mind from the way she suppressed
a yawn, which made me laugh. She suffered from a short attention span, and in
particular when a conversation involved sports, computers, or anything with no
relation to fashion, men, or parties.

“So boring,” Sylvie mouthed. “Come on.”

I shook my head.

She grimaced and turned to Jett, gesturing at me. “Do you mind if I
borrow her?”

“You have thirty minutes, then I want her back,” Jett said.

Sylvie pulled me into the kitchen and closed the door behind us.

“You okay?” she whispered.

I hated when people asked that question. The desired answer is yes, even
when you don’t feel like it.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.” I groaned inwardly at her skeptical expression. “Please,
Sylvie, I don’t want to think about anything anymore.
Please
?”

“Sure.” Pouting, she sat down and regarded me. I grabbed the opportunity
to change the subject.

“Remember when I told you a private investigator found a diary in the
chapel?” I waited until she nodded before I continued. “I’ve always wanted to
locate it.”

Her eyes narrowed conspiratorially. “Do you want to—” She trailed
off, leaving the rest unsaid.

I looked out the window at the lush green scenery and the dense woods
stretching as far as I could see. “It’s stopped raining. I say we go check out
the chapel.”

“Is it far?”

“No. Come on. I’ll show you.”

Our flip-flops sank into the damp earth and the grass and fallen twigs
scratched our feet as we made our way down the staircase and through the
bushes.

“It’s nice,” Sylvie remarked as we finally reached the chapel. I walked
around the tiny building and tried to peer through the small window. The glass
was too dirty to make out much but the wild rosebushes near the door told me at
some point someone must have cared enough to plant them.