Author's Note: This is an AU tangent to my other BONES story 'Sooner Surrender'. For the ones who don't feel like reading everything again here it is: Chapters 32-33 were a warp of 'The Proof in the Pudding'. Starbuck's test was a false positive and she and Zack ended up living happily ever after. But, what if she was pregnant and didn't tell Zack? This is that story.
Xxx
January 2010
She could honestly say that she never saw this coming. Who would? Pregnant and dumped at merely 21. She stood in her bathroom, in her empty house, staring at the stick with the two pink lines. This stick had chosen her path. Motherhood instead of the bohemian life she had vowed to live after college. Sure, there was always abortion, but she didn't want the death of her child on her conscience as well as everything else. Catholic guilt was a funny thing. It made you flip your life path around.
She put a hand on her stomach. Under it, under the thin skin and bones was a baby. A tiny mush of veins and tissue that would tie her and Zack together for the rest of their lives, if she chose to let him know. But, she didn't want him to be with her just because she was having his kid and it was forced. They would grow to resent each other and maybe hate each other when they realized that nothing about their relationship was real anymore.
So she would keep it (as she did not know the gender of their child yet) a secret. It would be her own. Lisey and Emma, not to mention Lance, would know in due time, when she was ready to tell them where she was and their silence was ensured.
But for now, she would have to be alone in this endeavor.