MARRIED TO MY BILLIONAIRE HUSBAND, PREGNANT FOR HIS TWIN BROTHER

SICK

Rosaline's POV

I told myself it was grief.

Every morning for two weeks I basically dragged myself out of bed feeling like someone life chewed and spat out. Food smelt like crap, I had absolutely no energy. I cried at random things like an old song on the radio, a familiar smell that reminded me of mom, or even the way dad acted differently after her death.

This was grief. These were the things grief did to a person.

So I told myself that's all it was.

Donald started coming home less and less.

Each time, he had a new explanation for it. Either it was a board meeting that took too much time or an emergency meet up with the staff. I started to get numb to it at some point. I’d just wake up, kiss him goodbye and watched as he drove out, not knowing when exactly he’d be back.

The note from F.H. was folded inside the pocket of my winter coat. I hadn’t told anyone about it. Not donald.

Not even Crystal.

Each time I wanted to, but then I decided this was something I didn’t want to bring her into in case it gets too dangerous. This was something that caused the death of my mother. Who knew who else they would target to get to me. This was something I had to take care of myself.

While I was dealing with that, my body was finding new and creative ways to disorient me.

It started with the nausea.

I was making coffee on a Tuesday morning when the smell of the coffee hit me hard and wrong. Deeply, violently wrong. I made it to the bathroom just in time to throw everything in my stomach up.

I assumed it was something that would pass if I just drank ginger tea.

It didn't pass.

The next morning it happened again. And the morning after that. Soon it became a routine to see me crouched by the basin in the bathroom waiting for the next wave to hit me.

The suspicion of something I hated myself for thinking about came to mind.

I shoved it out immediately. I was not ready to look at that thought. Not even close.

Crystal showed up on a Thursday without warning, the way she always did. She held two coffees in her hands and took one long look at me standing in the doorway and said "You look terrible."

"Good morning to you too," I said.

"I'm serious, Rosaline. When was the last time you ate something proper?" She pushed past me into the house and dropped the coffee on the kitchen table. Then her eyes narrowed as she looked at me more carefully. "How long have you been feeling like this?"

"It's grief," I said. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine" She crossed her arms. "Are you sleeping?"

"Mostly."

"Eating?"

"When I can."

"Are you…" She didn’t complete it. She seemed to making some calculations in her mind and I hated it when she did that because she was almost always right. "Rosaline. When was your last period?"

The question was like a bucket of cold water.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

I couldn't remember.

***

Crystal drove me to the clinic herself.

I stared out the window and did the math in my head.

Unfortunately I was excellent with calculations. Unfortunately because no matter how I did, I was met with the same conclusion. And I didn’t want that conclusion.

We got there and a nurse took my details at the front desk. Another one led me to a small room with pale blue walls and a strong smell of alchohol and medicine that I would have been able to tolerate on a normal day.

The doctor was a woman, early fifties. She was calm and reassuring and somehow that helped me calm down a bit. She asked me some questions and took a blood test.

Crystal was in the waiting room. I had told her I was fine going in alone.

I wasn’t fine. Not one bit.

I sat in that pale blue room and stared at the wall trying very hard to be positive. Tried not to think about the date. I tried not to think about the symptoms and what they could possibly mean for me.

The doctor came back.

"Mrs. Mendez," she said. "Your results are back."

I gripped the edge of the examination table, anxious and a bit lightheaded from all the clashing scents I was suddenly so sensitive to.

"You're pregnant," she said. "Approximately six weeks along. Congratulations."

The words landed in my head like a steel ball.

Six weeks.

The thank you came out in a murmur. I was still in a daze. It was like I was out of my own body, watching myself move on auto-pilot. I heard myself ask a few questions in a calm and reasonable voice. I heard the doctor answer them. She even handed me a printed sheet with next steps and a referral and a due date circled.

I folded it neatly and put it in my bag.

Then I walked out of that room, past the waiting area where Crystal jumped up the moment she saw my face. She had this concerned look on her face and I didn’t know how to tell her.

Six weeks.

I stood on the pavement and tried to self diagnise one final time. I knew the test results weren’t wrong but I just didn’t want to accept them. I wanted something else. Anything other than the news I just got.

Six weeks ago was my wedding night.

In six weeks I had slept with Donald exactly once and that was the night he came back from Singapore.

Which meant the baby growing inside me right now had nothing to do with my husband.

Crystal, seeing me in a daze, appeared at my elbow. "Rosaline. Talk to me. What did they say?"

I turned to look at her.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

Her face froze in horror.

"And it's not Donald's.”