Damage Control

Chapter 79

Today's the day, the day Stella gets married, and the day I get to be a bridesmaid for the first time ever, but of course, with my luck, I woke up bright and early this morning feeling sick to my stomach. That familiar nauseating feeling swept over me again, forcing me to shoot out of bed, cupping my mouth as I ran to the bathroom, emptying out my stomach in the toilet.

I cursed lowly as I flushed, praying Nathaniel didn't hear anything and was still sleeping peacefully, but that would've been too good to be true.

"Anastazi?" His deep voice was laced with concern as he barged into the bathroom, kneeling down in front of me with an alarmed expression.

"What happened love," he asked, cupping my face in the palms of his hands, searching my eyes for answers.

I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine, but another wave of nausea hit me like a truck, and in mere seconds I was throwing up again, only in front of Nathaniel this time. Without hesitating, he slid behind me and scooped my hair in his hand so that I wouldn't throw up on it before rubbing soothing circles along my back.

"Anastazi," his voice was strained, angry that he couldn't do anything to help me as of right now. "Something's not right; we're going to the hospital."

"No!" I choked out, spitting the leftover vomit into the toilet. "I'm fine, I promise."

He gently turned me around so that my back was pressed against the toilet bowl, reaching around me to flush. "You said that last time," he murmured, brushing my hair out of my eyes. "Let me take you, please."

I shook my head and took a deep breath, slowly feeling the nausea fade away. "Nathaniel, I'm fine, sometimes I get nauseated like this when my period is about to sta-"

I couldn't even finish my sentence before my eyes widened, completely threatening to pop out of my skull.

My period.

"What, Anastazi, talk to me," Nathaniel's voice sounded far away now as I slipped into a trance trying to do the math of when I last saw my period, which was more than a month ago.

I didn't think anything of it because I normally had irregular periods, but then I suddenly remembered how I forgot to take a week's worth of my birth control pills a few months ago after the Brandon situation. Around that time, my life was going entirely downhill, and I had more important things to worry about than making sure I took a couple of pills each day.

As much as I didn't want to believe it, I knew there was a high probability of it being true. I didn't know what to think or if I was ready to bring a beautiful innocent life into this world when I barely had my shit together, but the thought of Nathaniel being a father weirdly excited me and scared me at the same time.

Did he even want children? That's not something we ever talked about, and seeing how traumatized he became from his mother's death and how horrible his own father is, I highly doubt he was ready to be a father when he was just starting to enjoy life again. All the new responsibilities he'll have on top of his job that he pretends he doesn't love, was he really ready for this? To have his entire life change this drastically?

We were both two broken people that came from backgrounds of misery. Are we even fit to be parents? My father basically spent my entire life avoiding me until the day he died, and I didn't even get to know my mother. I have absolutely no qualifications under my belt that would deem me an excellent fit to be a mother because I had no idea what it was like to have one.

So many thoughts circled my brain, and it wasn't until Nathaniel scooped me in his arms when I finally snapped out of my trance.