I hold out my hand, gesturing her toward the bathroom.
She points. “Why—”
“Because it’s the only place we’re guaranteed privacy.”
“I wasn’t guaranteed privacy!” Alex calls from his room.
I glower at his closed door. “Use the damn lock.”
“It’s just me and Abuela up here,” he hollers back. “Andsheknocks.” His bedroom door opens, and Alex emerges, smoothing a T-shirt down over his chest. It’s white except for the letters LSD written in what looks like pink, yellow, and blue cake frosting.
Millie narrows her eyes at the letters, and Alex looks down at his shirt. “Oh, don’t freak out, Millie,” he says, meeting her glare with a grin. “This LSD is the band. Not the drug.”
“I know,” she says through clenched teeth. “Mattie’s been blasting ‘Angel in Your Eyes’ in her room the last three days.”
Alex’s teeth flash. “Must be our song.”
I grab Millie by the wrist before she can push my brother down the stairs. “Go,” I tell him.
Still grinning, my brother high tails it down the stairs. Millie pulls out of my hold, stalks into the bathroom and folds in half on the edge of the tub. Her purse falls to the floor and she drops her head in her hands.
“My God. She’ll be pregnant by New Year’s.”
I step inside and close the door. I lock it for good measure and lean back against it.
“She won’t get pregnant.”
A curtain of red hair hides Millie’s face. “She will,” she moans. “We’re doomed.”
I push from the door, moving to her, but she whips her head up, eyeing me with alarm. “We have to break up.”
I’m not gonna lie. Even though I know she’s panicked and rattled and has her head in the wrong place, even though I know in my soul she is mine, her words land like a club to my gut.
I take a deep breath and absorb the blow. I empty my lungs slowly. “Millie, why are you saying that?”
Her bottom lip trembles, and I watch her swallow the emotion and steel her resolve. “Because. It’s the right thing to do.”
A bitter laugh cracks from me. “Right for who?” I’m standing over her, and the posture feels all wrong. Everything about this feels wrong. So instead of sitting beside her on the tub, I sink to my knees, lay my hands on her knees.
Her worried eyes are now level with mine. “Honestly?” she asks, her voice going squeaky. “All of us.”
I shake my head. “Nope. Not good enough.”
She clenches her jaw. “If I end this now, I can stop further damage.”
“You end this now, there’ll be nothing but damage.” I speak the words like an oath. “It’ll wreck me.”
Millie closes her eyes and deflates. “But at least you’d be free.”
My face becomes a scowl. “Free to do what?” When she doesn’t answer me, doesn’t open her eyes, I reach for her shoulders and give her a little shake. “Where is this coming from?”
So slowly, she lifts her eyelids and all I see is regret. “Nine months ago, I conceived a child with a man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with,” she says, and for the first time this Carter guy she’s barely mentioned seems like a real threat. I want to brain him with a hammer.
“Even though it didn’t feel like it at the time, losing him was not the worst thing to happen to me.” Her eyes well, and she blinks and forces herself to smile. “It wasn’t even in the top three.”
The fight goes out of me, and I take one hand from her knee and grip her fingers in mine. She doesn’t need to tell me her top three. Mother. Father. Child. In whatever order. Probably all tied for first.
“When he left, he said something to me I can’t forget.” Her voice is choked, stricken.
