Sorry Hayden, I’m Seven Months Pregnant with Another Man’s Baby Chapter 01

Sorry Hayden, I’m Seven Months Pregnant with Another Man’s Baby Chapter 01

With May 1 and our wedding date both drawing near, my fiancé insisted on attempting a through-hike of the Sierra High Route.

I was about to talk him out of it when I accidentally overheard him talking with a few of his backcountry hiking buddies.

“Hayden, your phone has location tracking on it. Are you seriously asking us to carry it into the Sierra High Route and just toss it somewhere?”

“Nora is going to be worried sick. What if she hikes in after you?”

“Exactly. You two are about to get married. Pulling a stunt like this is just going to break her heart for nothing.”

After hearing that, Hayden Hawthorne’s mouth curved into a lazy smirk. “I don’t have a choice. I got this girl pregnant, and she’s almost due, so I need to be there to take care of her. I’ll have to disappear for a while first.”

“On a remote high-country wilderness route like the Sierra High Route, even if someone calls for help, there probably won’t be a massive search right away.”

“Just remember to throw my phone down a cliff so it looks like I disappeared without leaving a body.”

His hiking buddies exchanged glances. “Hayden, aren’t you afraid that once Nora thinks you’re dead, she’ll turn around and marry someone else?”

Hayden let out a scoff.

“Marry someone else? She’s so blindly in love with me that if I died, she’d only mourn me like a widow.”

“She’s already waited six years for me. What’s one more year? Once I come back and say a few sweet words, she’ll fall right back in line.”

Outside the door, I slowly let go of the doorknob.

So his pre-wedding adventure was really an adventure with another woman.

That was why, this time, I did not stop him. A year later, he came back from the Sierra High Route.

“Nora, I survived by a miracle and found my way back! I came back to marry you!”

Only this time, I rested a hand on my seven-month-pregnant belly and said apologetically, “Sorry, but I’m almost due myself, so I found a husband to take care of me.”

…

At seven that evening, Hayden came home with a bag of my favorite strawberries in his hand.

“Nora, I need to tell you something.” He set the strawberries on the coffee table, sat down, and looked at me with a serious expression. “I told you before that I’m going to attempt the Sierra High Route on May 1. If nothing goes wrong, it’ll take at least half a month, so I might not make it back in time for our wedding.”

He paused, then sighed. “The wedding team is booked for late May. If I can’t make it back, or if I’m in bad shape when I do, forcing the wedding to happen would just make everything worse. Why don’t we push it back for now?”

I said nothing.

When he saw that I did not react, he leaned forward a little.

“And I thought it through. Even if I get out by mid-May, I’ll still need time to recover. Wedding photos, makeup trials, invitations—there won’t be enough time for any of it. Instead of scrambling at the last minute, we might as well text our families and friends today and tell them the wedding is canceled.”

“Canceled?”

I repeated the word softly.

I did not know whether I was asking him or saying it to myself.

After all, I had waited six full years for this wedding.

Six years ago, he said we would get married once his career was stable, and I believed him.

Four years ago, he said we would set a date after meeting both families, so I pushed my parents to make it happen.

Two years ago, he told me to wait a little longer and not rush.

This year, my parents treated getting me married like their personal mission. They took turns calling me three times a week to urge me on.

I did not want to be almost thirty and still stuck with the label of “fiancée.”

I wanted to get married, focus on building my career, take the promotion when it came, have a baby when the time was right, and finally turn the page on that part of my life.

But he was always so calm, so unhurried.

The day the wedding date was set, I was so happy that I bought coffee for my entire team.

My mom booked a flight overnight and said she was coming to help.

Now, with one careless sentence about canceling it, he crushed everyone’s expectations into dust.

I had clearly heard all about his “brilliant plan” to hike into the wilderness, but when I heard him say with my own ears that he wanted to cancel the wedding, it still felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.

The chill sank straight into my bones.

I opened my mouth, wanting to ask, “Do you know how much my mom was looking forward to this?” But before the words came out, I swallowed them back.

Because he had already lowered his head and started typing on his phone, sending out a mass text to cancel the wedding.

He did not even look at me once.

After sending the messages, he finally reached over and stroked my hair.

“Once I come back from the Sierra High Route, we’ll set a new date. We’re both still young anyway. We don’t have to rush over a few weeks, right?”

I looked into his eyes.

The only thing flashing through my mind was the sentence I had heard outside the door that afternoon.

“Once I come back and say a few sweet words, she’ll fall right back in line.”

So the first step in his plan to sweet-talk me was to wipe the wedding clean off the calendar.

“Hayden, a through-hike in that kind of wilderness is dangerous. Are you sure you still want to go?”