Her tear-swollen blue eyes widen as I slip out and stand, fumbling with my zipper. I slap a palm over my face, drag it down hard, trying to restart my heart.
“Explain…Ashlyn. Explain yourself.” My voice cracks, high and foreign.
Has she lied to me all these years?
She slips beneath the blanket and holds it up to her chest like it will shield me from the memories.
“You were eighteen, Aiden. I was only fifteen. They would have— My father… Either you’d bedeador inprisonif they found out what we did and what we had planned. I had to tell my familysomething…”
Her words become a drone. The floor tilts. I can’t get enough air.Push-ups,my mind mutters.I need to do my push-ups.
Hands stroke my hair, as if that will soothe the agony building inside me. I pace the room, not really having any aim.
“So—you—” I can’t even get words out.
“I told them it was Talon. After I’d, you know…hurried to make sure it would make sense.”
Something inside me snaps. My body freezes like I’ve stepped off a cliff but never hit bottom. Blood drains into my feet until I feel hollow. “So you slept with him…to pretend he was the father.” My throat contracts around the word. “I always used condoms! How do you know he wasn’t?—”
Lashes lowering, she swipes her nose with the back of her hand. Her fists knot in the blanket, curling into herself like she could shrink until she disappears. “Because I found out before that.”
The floor pulses. My temples pound.Push-ups. Get on the ground. Do push-ups until this stops.Fucking kill someone just to feel it. Taste their eyeball.
“And…our”—my tongue stumbles on it, dry and uncooperative—“son?”
She gets some faraway look, as if she’s removed herself from the pain until she doesn’t even feel it. “I carried him, and he was okay, but then they said he died. He died inside of me, along with everything else.”
The words crack like glass behind my ribs.
Quieter, as a shaky whisper, she mutters, “I gave birth to him alone in my room.”
My chest caves. I can’t breathe. I had a child with her. A boy. She endured thatalone…
I have to clench my teeth to keep my jaw from rattling out of my skull.
“When?” It scrapes out like a plea.
Instead of showing any emotion, she repeats the words like they don’t matter.
“January. The ground was frozen. I found a shovel. And abox.” Her voice tilts, sounding wrong—like a laugh but too high, too thin. It has my stomach churning. “It was hard to dig the hole. My dad yelled at me the next day.”
I’ve never really cried before. Heated droplets fall over my cheeks as I search for air in this dank and dark place. “Why the fuck didn’t youtellme? You didn’t think you couldtrust me?”
“No, Aiden! You’d come to get me, and I’d ruin your entire life. I wasfifteen. A child. And you had this entire…future. Besides, Dad would’ve sent everyone he knew to find us. Then kill you. It was easier to pretend it was all Talon, the golden boy with a newly tainted reputation. They let me skip the last summer of Crest then. Because I was…”
Her face focuses on the comforter in front of her, one finger trailing along the seam. “And then I homeschooled my junior year but didn’t pass. So I had to catch up later.” She swallows back a strained sound. “I was not well.”
Not well.
Not well.
I slam my fist into the craggy wall, my knuckles immediately bursting with blood. “You weren’twell?Youweren’t? I was a fucking wreck, Ashlyn! You didn’t show up. I thought you’d abandoned me. I would’ve done anything to keep you safe.”
“Why?” Eyes blazing, she whips her head toward me. The covers slide off her shoulders as she kneels, crawling closer. “Why would you? I’m damaged. With a broken womb. And we make each other worse.”
Something violent surges within me—an urge to shake her, beat the thought out of her until she understands. But the fire in my chest folds me in half instead. I press my thumb hard under my eyes, smearing tears, trying to hold myself together.
It’s not her who’s broken.