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“There’s nothing to say. It wasn’t meant to be. Cole?” I ask, changing the subject because I’m not ready to talk about it. “He told you to come?”
“Yeah, he was—”
“Broken, he’s broken. And it’s all my fault.”
“No,” she grabs my hand, “you just said it yourself, it wasn’t meant to be.”
“He won’t come back from this.” I whisper the words, knowing that if I give them meaning they’ll be real, and my heart isn’t ready to accept what my head already knows.
Our baby wasn’t the only thing I lost today.
“He will. He just needs time.”
“You didn’t see him, Remi. It’s not like before when Donny...” I trail off, not wanting to go there. “I thought that was bad, but this... this will push him right over the edge.”
“Don’t say that. He’ll be okay.”
“He won’t.” Tears trickle down my face. “He thinks this was all his fault.”
“W-what?” She looks at me and I turn onto my side, careful not to move my legs too quickly.
“There’s some stuff… stuff I need to tell you.” My eyes shutter, but when they open again, Remi is staring back at me with nothing but love and understanding.
“Whatever it is, I’m here.”
“My parents sent me here because I fell in love with the wrong boy. His name was Tim.”
“Go on...” she encourages.
“Where I come from... it isn’t like here. Gravestone County is steeped in history and tradition. Tim was set to marry another girl.”
“Marry?” Her brows draw together.
“It’s a long story, but let’s just say that in a place like Gravestone, your destiny is decided long before you’re born.”
“And what about you?”
“I was to be promised to someone else. My father hadn’t brokered the arrangement yet.” I was too young. But I hadn’t been too young to fall in love with Tim.
“We had sex. It was our first time, and I got pregnant.”
“Oh my God.” Remi pales. “What happened?”
“I tried to make my parents understand how we felt about each other. But they were having none of it. A teenage pregnancy would bring shame to our family. Not to mention the fact that we’d jeopardized Tim’s future. He was a freshman in college, and I was a sophomore in high school.”
“A sophomore?” Confusion clouds her eyes. “But you started here as a sophomore.”
I nod slowly, hating the guilt that snakes through me. “I stayed back a year.”
“Wow, okay... wow. And how did I not know this again?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know. It would have only led to questions I didn’t have answers for.”
She gives
me a sympathetic smile. “What happened to the baby, Hads?”
“They... they made me get rid of it.”
