Chapter 35: Positive

It was only after Ian had left the stage that Celine realized what he had done to curb that little scandal from yesterday.

According to the statement released by Ian and his good friend Jeremy Crox, it was said that Jeremy was tired of how heartbroken his friend had been over Celine so he took matters in his own hands and hired those women to cheer his friend up. He explained that Ian was never the kind of man to have fun like that, but he had stubbornly taken that decision on his own.

The public, seeing Ian in such a situation in a hotel room immediately painted the scene of a player hiding behind the false identity of a noble artist. Though only a few people began to use the pictures to spread this notion while eighty percent remained desperate fans who wouldn’t believe anything but an official statement from Ian, those images still put a dent in Ian’s good reputation. Of course he would quickly rush out into a press conference to clear his own image.

Ian had looked like the heartbroken lover who was waiting a thousand years for his lover to be reborn at the press conference as his friend Jeremy stood up to take full responsibility of the situation and even admitted his guilt, and when it was Ian’s turn to speak, he had quietly admonished his best friend and gone on to show his yearning for Celine again which undoubtedly melted the hearts of his female fans who never entertained the thought of doubting him in the first place.

Celine had known somewhere inside that a little trick like this wouldn’t be enough to show Ian’s true face to the world but she had done it anyway because it was an opportunity that presented itself, but just like that, the whole issue was blown over and Ian continued to remain the loved singer.

Celine watched the press conference disinterestedly, she had known Ian wasn’t that easy to fight against, that was why she had tried to keep her expectations of the outcome of such a scandal minimal.

Just as she thought, Ian’s armor in the entertainment industry was impenetrable.

Celine no longer wanted to be Ian’s victim, but she knew that in order to gain even a fraction of victory against him, one had to be fully prepared.

She didn’t have the amount of connections, power and network Ian had in the industry…bringing down his image was almost impossible… almost.

She made a firm promise to herself…she would definitely do everything she could to make Ian’s perfect image crumble to the public.

Everything she had done to get to where she was today was a result of her own hardwork, yet so easily Ian had ruined it all for her.

It had always been her dream to become an actress, why should she allow that to be taken away by a no good man like Ian?

She suddenly remembered something someone had said to her… someone she had been trying to forget.

’I don’t see that woman everyone calls an idol, everyone’s star. All I see is a woman who needs freedom, from what exactly, only you can tell. But no one else can free you, no one else can fight for you but yourself. The moment you choose to stand up for yourself…you’ll find that freedom you desperately need.’

However, she never got the chance to fight for herself, never got the chance to get her career back and expose Ian when she discovered something that would go on to change her life… forever.

It was something shocking, something she had never expected to happen…

A nauseating smell had suddenly hit her one morning while she was in the middle of making breakfast. The strange smell made her stop in her tracks. It was the smell of something familiar but the more she inhaled it, the more it made her stomach crawl.

It was strange to suddenly get this kind of smell in her own kitchen when she was a very meticulous person, she would never leave anything to rot or spoil to the point that it would create an unpleasant smell…but if she thought about it, it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant smell of something rotten, in fact it was the smell of something quite fresh.

Celine pulled the refrigerator door open with a confused frown and the smell hit her fully, her stomach clenched and churned and before she knew it, she ran urgently towards the sink to urgently let out the vomit that just rushed up her throat unannounced.

She felt like she has barfed up her whole gut by the time it stopped. She suddenly felt weak as if her whole body could no longer be moved. Nevertheless she pushed herself to clean up then washed her face afterwards.

That was weird.

Why was she suddenly feeling this way?

If she thought about it, she hadn’t been feeling well enough since she woke up this morning. She had felt a weird headache and reluctance to get off her bed.

Was she falling sick?

Celine walked back towards the fridge but this time covering her nose with her palm so she wouldn’t perceive the annoying smell again because this time, there was genuinely nothing left in her stomach to be thrown up.

There was nothing spoilt or rotten in the fridge, but the smell was coming from an overripe batch of cantaloupe she had bought some days ago because she had suddenly had a strong craving for it. The smell of it was so disturbing to her it made her feel like hurling her guts out again, she immediately grabbed the few left and tossed them in the self recycling trash can.

Celine felt mystified, she loved eating overripe cantaloupe, and the smell might be quite unpleasant but never disturbing enough to make her want to barf. The smell became so unbearable she couldn’t even stand the thought of eating it again.

Suddenly, breakfast no longer felt enticing to her anymore because she felt like whatever she ate would just come back up again. Instead, she sat on the sofa in the living room suddenly becoming aware that something had been weird with her these past few days.

Lately, she had randomly been feeling nauseous for no reason, she couldn’t exactly pinpoint when it started but it had become a frequent occurrence for her everyday. Sometimes it would be when she wanted to eat something and it would suddenly feel weird to her or she would find it nauseating, to the point that she would skip meals because she couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything.

She hadn’t thought too much about it, she assumed that maybe she just didn’t have the appetite. But today, something she liked to eat make her vomit as if she had perceived something utterly repulsive. She had never felt that way before.

Also, her appetite would increase sometimes and drastically reduced other times. Not to mention the constant overwhelming tiredness that would suddenly hit her out of nowhere. And if she really thought about it, she had been sleeping a lot more lately and that wasn’t normal.

“Something’s wrong…” She muttered thoughtfully because she really wasn’t feeling like herself lately.

All these things happening to her right now, if she didn’t know any better she would have thought that she was…

Celine suddenly froze as if a thought she couldn’t believe had landed in her mind, her eyes widened with a shocking realization and something that came to her awareness now that she had overlooked.

Her period…she was supposed to have seen her period a few days ago, was she late?

Celine instantly looked into her period tracking app, it indeed reflected that she had missed her period and a jarring warning sign showed that she was eight days late.

She knew being a few days late was sometimes nothing to worry about, but it hit her harder this time because of these strange symptoms she has been feeling.

Symptoms that felt like she was…

No! It couldn’t be, maybe her period was just late.

Celine told herself so she wouldn’t panic.

She had seen someone else have these symptoms once before…back then, Lightstar had assigned a new assistant to her. Melanie, at that time Celine had really liked the girl because of her diligence and since they went everywhere together, Celine had gotten quite close to the girl. Except they hadn’t worked together for very long when Melanie seemed to suddenly feel sick…

Celine remembered how she used to throw up even at the smell of her favorite foods, how tired she always seemed, the changes that started becoming apparent in her body. At the time Celine had repeatedly had to instruct her to go home because she would look so fatigued, but several days later she resigned on her own, but not before quietly admitting to Celine that she was pregnant.

Celine’s symptoms now felt almost exactly as Melanie’s back then, but…there was no way she could be pregnant.

Celine thought to herself.

Besides, she had also taken morning after pills that day, there was no way these symptoms she was feeling would be anything more than just her body acting up.

Though Celine consoled herself by saying this, she couldn’t sit still anymore after this.

In the end she stood up and frantically began to pace back and forth in her living room before suddenly rushing into her closet to grab a change of clothes and bits to cover up then rushed out of her penthouse.

She was almost breathless by the time she ran into a pharmacy close by and quickly grabbed a pregnancy test kit then sprinted back home.

“I’m just mistaken…it can’t be…” She muttered to herself as she followed the instructions on the pack and carried out the test by following each step.

But by the time she was done, she didn’t have the courage to look at the results it must have showed by now.

Celine stood by the sink in her bathroom, holding the test strips in her hand but not daring to look at it.

That night…there had been a promise of no commitments, something so complicated as her being pregnant…it would be like breaking that promise.

Nothing would change no matter how long she delayed looking at the result, there was no point in letting it drag on. Celine realized.

With a calming breath, she lowered her gaze and glanced at the strip in her hand resolutely but what she saw made her freeze as if blood had completely drained from her body…

“Positive… I’m pregnant?”

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