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“I could have left at any time—”
“They manipulated you,” Pete said softly, but then bit his lip as I pulled away him.
I was overwhelmed. I needed to get out of here. I wanted to go home.
“That’s enough for now,” Pete said into the room, his voice an echo in the silence. “Thank, Dego. And you, too, Grant. For everything.”
Pete picked up Holly and handed her to Moira, then rested his hand on my shoulder.
“I think we can go home now.”
The drive back to Pete’s apartment was silent. George dropped us off without a word, and I trudged upstairs and immediately curled up in bed.
I didn’t care that my parents knew where to find me. I didn’t care that Jonah knew where I was, and he spoke with my mother, that I was shacked up with another man.
None of it mattered anymore.
I was free, but it didn’t feel freeing. Not now, when the weight of what I’d been through now rested on Pete’s shoulder along with everything else we were going through.
I slept, and slept, and slept a dreamless, empty sleep that had me waking late in the evening. I was sweaty and cold at the same time as I slowly got out of bed with a hand resting on the small swell of my stomach.
I heard Pete in the kitchen talking to someone in a harsh whisper that set my body on edge as I moved to the door and opened it.
I half expected him to be yelling at my mother, or Jonah, but I stepped out into the hallway and say one of the sheriff’s deputies leaning against the wall. I stepped forward, my footsteps silent as I rounded the wall and stood before the sheriff and Pete.
“What’s happening?”
Pete looked me up and down, his brow furrowed in a scowl.
“I was just telling him I wasn’t going to wake you up, but now that you’re awake,” he said with a sigh, tilting his head toward the kitchen island. “Paperwork.”
“For the restraining order?” I asked.
“We were able to get a judge to look them over tonight.”
“Okay,” I whispered, picking up the pen on the counter.
But I hesitated.
I was, effectively, putting a wall between me and old life—between me and parents, and between me and the man I’d once been in love with.
My hand absently brushed over my belly as I looked down at the papers. I didn’t read a word printed on the pages. I couldn’t make sense of it.
I knew I had work to do to find a way to make sense of my situation in whole, both my past and my future.
These were people I’d loved in my own way. They were people I used to trust.
And they’d hurt me deeply. Used me. And still wanted to, for their own gain.
I looked up at Pete, who was watching me intently. His expression was hard, but his eyes were soft and all-seeing, like he could peer right into my heart and could see the pain there.
I trusted him. I knew I did.
My hand trembled as I pressed the tip of the pen to the paper. I signed my name, over and over, while the Sheriff collected the papers I was done with. With each stroke of my pen I imagined making a promise to our unborn baby:
I will never do this to you.
I will never force you into something like this.
