One Secret Night, One Secret Baby. Charlene Sands

Brooke,” Emma said, feeling optimistic as she hung up the phone. Her stomach had eased back to normal and she figured she’d been through the worst of it.

      By the morning of the next day, she knew that she’d figured wrong. She emptied her stomach twice before it settled down. She managed to go into the office, but once Brooke took a look at her pasty face, she ordered her back to bed. Emma didn’t have the strength to argue.

      By Thursday morning, nothing had changed. She spent the morning in the bathroom next to her new best friend. Suspicions were running rampant in her head. What if she didn’t have the flu? What if there was something else wrong with her? Something permanent? Something rest and hot soup wouldn’t cure?

      Eyes wide-open now, she fought the invading rumblings in her belly, quickly dressed and dashed to the local drugstore. Once she got back home, she peed on a stick at three different intervals of the day, only to get the same result each time. Opening her laptop, she keyed it up and researched a subject she thought would be years down the road for her.

      She was as sure now as she would ever be; she had all the symptoms.

      She was pregnant.

      And Dylan McKay was her blackout baby’s father.