Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 149

Daphne’s POV

The nausea wakes me like a violent hand.

One moment I'm asleep in Xander's arms, warm and safe and dreaming of nothing. The next I'm lurching upright, bile rising so fast and fierce that my body is already moving before my mind catches up.

I barely make it to the bathroom.

My knees crack against cold tile as I crash down in front of the toilet, fingers gripping porcelain, and then my body betrays me completely.

The heaving comes in brutal waves—violent, uncontrollable, pulling from somewhere so deep it feels like my organs are trying to escape. I can't breathe between the convulsions. Can't think. Can't do anything except hold on and pray it stops.

Tears stream down my face from the force of it. My throat burns, my ribs ache from the strain.

Xander is there in seconds, I hear his footsteps, then feel his presence behind me—solid, immediate, asking no questions.

His hand gathers my hair back from my face, twisting it gently away from danger. His other palm presses cool against my forehead, steadying me, grounding me.

He doesn't speak, just holds me through the waves, steady as a lighthouse in a storm I don't understand.

Another heave wracks my body. Then another. I'm empty—I know I'm empty—but my stomach doesn't seem to care. It keeps clenching, keeps trying to expel something that isn't there anymore.

"Breathe," Xander murmurs finally. "Just breathe. I've got you."

I try. The air comes in ragged gasps, but it comes. The waves begin to subside. The violent clenching softens into tremors, then into stillness.

When it finally stops, I slump against him, trembling. My body feels wrung out, hollow, like someone has reached inside me and scraped everything away.

"I'm sorry," I manage. "I don't know what—"

"Don't apologize." He shifts, gathering me into his arms with careful strength. "Just rest."

He carries me to the edge of the bathtub, settles me on the cool porcelain, wraps a towel around my shaking shoulders. Then he disappears briefly and returns with a glass of water that I can barely sip.

"Small drinks," he says, crouching in front of me. "Slow."

I nod, too exhausted to argue. The water is cold and clean and tastes like salvation.

"How long?" His voice is tight with concern, his eyes searching my face. "How long have you been feeling like this?"

"A few days." The admission comes reluctantly. "Maybe longer. I thought it was stress."

"This isn't stress, Daphne. This is…" He stops himself, runs a hand through his hair. "We need to call the doctor. First thing in the morning."

"It's probably just the aftermath of everything."

I reach for the explanation I've been giving myself for weeks.

"My body is finally crashing after running on adrenaline for too long. It makes sense. We've been through so much, and now that the threat is neutralized—"

"Your body is telling you something's wrong."

"My body is tired."

But even as I say the words, my mind is doing something else entirely, counting. Backward through the calendar, through the blur of days that have smeared together since the first note arrived.

When did I last have my period?

The question rises unbidden, and I try to push it away. I've been stressed. Cycles get disrupted by stress. It's completely normal for a body under pressure to…

When?

I count again, more carefully this time.

Three weeks late. At least. Maybe closer to four.

"Xander." My voice sounds strange. Distant. "I need a minute."

He frowns. "Let me stay. You shouldn't be alone when you're…"

"Please." I meet his eyes, and something in my expression makes him stop. "I just need a minute. Can you make me some tea? The ginger one, in the cabinet above the stove?"

He hesitates, clearly torn between the need to help and the need to respect my request. "You'll call if you need me?"

"I'll call."

He presses a kiss to my forehead—gentle, worried, full of a love I don't deserve to keep secrets from. Then he leaves, pulling the bathroom door mostly closed behind him.

I sit in the silence, my heart pounding so hard I can hear it.

It's not possible. We've been careful. We've been…

But careful isn't perfect. Careful leaves room for accidents, for moments when passion overwhelms precaution, for all the times we reached for each other with desperate need and didn't stop to think about consequences.

I move on autopilot.

The bathroom drawer opens with a soft scrape. My fingers sort through old supplies that linger from another life—half-used bottles of lotion, expired prescriptions, a hairbrush I forgot existed.

At the very back, shoved behind everything else, my hand closes around a familiar box.

Pregnancy tests. A three-pack, with one remaining. Left over from years ago, when I bought them in bulk out of paranoid habit—when the twins were still babies and another pregnancy would have destroyed the fragile stability I'd built.

I check the expiration date. Six months past. Probably still functional. The chemistry doesn't change that quickly.

It's just to rule it out, I tell myself. Just to confirm that this is stress and exhaustion and nothing more.

My hands shake as I open the package.

The test is simple. I've done this before—twice, actually, both times with my heart in my throat, both times with life-changing results. I know the routine. Know how to hold the stick, how long to wait, how to read the little window that holds so much power in such a small space.

I take the test, then I sit on the bathroom floor, knees drawn to my chest, and wait.

Three minutes. The instructions say three minutes. It's the longest three minutes of my life.

I watch the little window like it contains the answer to everything. Like those two spaces—one for the control line, one for the result—hold the entire future in their small rectangular frames.

My mind races through possibilities. What if it's positive? What if there's another child growing inside me, right now, while the world outside is still settling from chaos?

We're not ready. We just survived a threat to our family. Xander's mother is actively trying to undermine us. The household is still stabilizing. This isn't the time for…

But when was it ever the time? When was anything in my life ever planned or prepared for or sensible?

The twins weren't planned. My relationship with Xander wasn't planned. Everything that matters most has arrived unexpected, uninvited, demanding space in a life that wasn't ready to hold it.

Two minutes.

I think about the exhaustion that won't lift. The coffee that turns my stomach. The tenderness in my breasts, the nausea that comes in waves, all the symptoms I explained away with stress and fear and anything except the obvious.

My body has been trying to tell me something. I just wasn't listening.

One minute.

I close my eyes. Open them again.

The window has changed.

Two lines.

Two clear, unmistakable lines.

I stare at them, count them. Blink and count again, certain I'm seeing wrong, certain the expired test has malfunctioned, certain that this can't possibly be real.

Two lines.

Pregnant.

The word reverberates through my skull like a bell being struck. I'm pregnant. Again. With Xander's child. A third baby, arriving into a life that has only just begun to stabilize.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So I do both.