“And don’t tell me you don’t know, Calder. Even Colby knew about Allen.”
Rain shivered off his skin as he winced. “What?”
“Colby heard you that night. She was in the tree house when you and Rachel walked by,” I said, his eyes rounding as the words tumbled out. “She told me Rachel was upset aboutAllen, not with you. Colby looked at me like I had three eyes when I told her you two were dating.” I sucked in a breath, not needing air when there was so much agony oxygenating my blood. “I don’t understand, Calder.”
“Lara, it’s not my place—”
“Not your place?” I was shaking now, furious because all I wanted to do was reach out and rip the truth from his perfectly formed lips. And afraid that if I touched him, instead of shaking him, I wouldn’t be able to resist pulling him close and sinking myself into his heat. “It wasn’t just her relationship, Calder. It was yours, too. She came to you. You have the right to share what happened; that doesn’t just belong to my sister.”
He dropped his head back, closing his eyes and letting the rain soak his face. When his face lowered again, rain had slicked every taut line of muscle. “Rachel and I had broken up the week before. Things weren’t working out and we both knew it.”
“So why did you bring her here?”
Air pushed through the tight line of his lips, and for a second, I thought I was never going to win this fight. Before I could think better of it, I stepped forward and grabbed his shirt, clutching him to me as I whispered, “Please, Calder. What happened to my sister?”
His jaw popped and I felt the tension start to seep from him, his deep rasp reaching my ears.
“I brought her here because she was pregnant with Allen’s baby.”
A tornado could’ve swept me off to Oz and it would’ve been less shocking.
Rachel.
Pregnant.
“Lara.” His hands reached me even before his rumbling growl, holding me steady as I started to sway, overloaded by every single aspect of the revelation.
Pregnant.
My sister had been pregnant. With someone’s baby, who wasn’t Calder’s.
And she hadn’t told me.
My mind was scorched, thoughts flying like flaming batons, and every one I caught burned worse than the last.
I knew Rachel had gone out with friends plenty of times without Calder. Bars. Frat parties. Everything that wasn’t his scene. Had they all been to see Allen? Was it one time? Had Allen—I shuddered.
I’d thought I was prepared for anything. For God’s sake, I knew how to bring a trauma victim back to life. But I wasn’t prepared for the moment when I was the one crashing out.
Why hadn’t she told me?
“Lara.”
Calder’s hands framed my face, the bracket of warmth a shock to my system. I blinked slowly, my eyes wading in and out of focus on hisface. On the worry in his glinting gaze. And then I felt it—the calm he created. Like he’d drawn me into the eye of my own storm, destruction and calamity whipping around but unable to touch me.
Slowly, I let out every molecule of oxygen in my lungs and said, “Tell me what happened, Calder.”
He moved his hands to my shoulders like he was trying to let go of me but couldn’t. Water shivered off the scruff of his beard as his jaw tensed and then finally unlocked for the truth.
“A few days after we broke up, she called me ... very upset. Panicked.” For Calder to describe her that way, I knew exactly the state my sister had been in. “The things she was saying, I thought she might be in trouble, so I picked her up and brought her here. Somewhere safe.”
“Please, tell me he didn’t ...” I couldn’t even finish the statement, feeling the entirety of my Hippocratic oath start to unravel at the thought of someone hurting my sister.
“No. He didn’t hurt her,” he said quickly, and his expression blanched. “She told me they’d been hooking up for several weeks, and she was pregnant.”
Oh, Rachel . . .
Guilt sat like a stone in my throat, but before I could chip away at it with an apology, he continued. “She told him about the baby, and he didn’t take it well. He wanted her to get rid of it, and after that, he started denying it was his.”