Page 166 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers.
The words hang in the humid air of the bathroom.
I’m pregnant.
A heavy, deafening silence immediately rushes in to fill the small space.
I stare at her. I stare at her hands, resting protectively over her flat stomach.
Suddenly, the pieces slam into place. The nausea. The dizziness. The refusal of alcohol. The exhaustion. The way she’s been pulling away, terrified of the Morality Clause that explicitly forbids scandalous behavior.
A baby.
Our baby.
Or… my baby? Ethan’s? Asher’s?
It doesn’t matter. The thought barely forms before it’s wiped away by a wave of pure, unadulterated awe.
“Pregnant,” I repeat, the word tasting strange and wonderful on my tongue.
Tessa squeezes her eyes shut, tears spilling over her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Owen. I ruined it. The clause. The investors. If they find out… if they know I’m pregnant and I don’t know who the father is… it’s a scandal. It destroys the brand. It destroys you.”
She’s spiraling. I can see it in her eyes—she’s already writing the tragedy in her head, casting herself as the villain who brought down the Phantom Trio.
“Hey,” I say, my voice rough.
I reach out and grab her waist, lifting her effortlessly onto the counter.
“Owen, don’t,” she cries, trying to push me away. “You don’t get it. It’s over. We have to…”
“Shut up,” I murmur, stepping between her legs.
I frame her face with my hands, forcing her to look at me. My thumbs wipe away the tears tracking through the dust of her exhaustion.
“Look at me, Tessa.”
She opens her wet eyes, sniffing.
“You think this ruins us?” I ask, searching her gaze. “You think a baby destroys us?”
“Doesn’t it?” she whispers. “We signed a contract. No scandals. This is… this is the definition of a scandal.”
I laugh. It’s a breathless, incredulous sound.
“Tessa, we’re engineers,” I say, grinning like an idiot. “We live for complications. Complications are just features we haven’t integrated yet.”
“This isn’t a joke, Owen!” she hits my chest, half-sobbing. “I’m pregnant! With one of you! And we can’t tell anyone!”
“Then we don’t,” I say simply. “We hide it. We protect it. We figure it out. But you…” I drop my forehead to rest against hers. “You aren’t doing this alone. You are never doing this alone.”
“But Ethan…”
“Ethan will build a fortress around you,” I promise. “He’ll probably try to buy a hospital just to ensure you have privacy.”
“And Asher?”
“Knowing Asher, he probably figured it out from your heart rate yesterday and is already calculating the optimal vitamin regimen,” I say.
