Page 90 of Breakaway

“Remi, we have to talk.”

“I can’t. Not right now.” She couldn’t look at him. She pressed a hand to her eyes. “I just can’t.”

He was still and silent. Then he stood. She still couldn’t look at him. She heard him putting himself back into his pants, the rasp of the zipper. The crushing pressure in her chest had her gasping.

“Remi, I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“Just go! Leave me alone! I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Should I come over tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Remi…”

She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know if she’d want to see him tomorrow or the next day or ever, for that matter. She felt the weight of his gaze on her, even though she sat with her back turned to him, his semen seeping out of her, sticky and wet between her legs. She listened for the clap of the door closing behind him. And then she fell apart.

She had never called in sick when she wasn’t sick, but Friday morning she did. Well, shedidfeel sick. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours and that sleep had been restless and disturbed. She could not function in the classroom and it was better that she’d found a substitute teacher and just stayed home. She had three whole days to try to deal with the mess her life had suddenly become.

It was almost too painful to even think about, but she made herself do it, like picking at a scab or worrying a sore tooth.

Brianne was pregnant. With Jase’s baby. The baby Remi had always wanted, with the man she loved, the man she now wanted to have babies with. She stood and kicked a chair. Hard. Ow.

She sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands.

She was in love with Jase. She’d actually been considering moving in with him. She thought she’d met the man she wanted to be with forever and he loved her too. Their future had stretched ahead of them, bright and shining and forever, maybe with…babies. Children. A family of their own.

And now this. She and Jase were done. How could she be with a man who’d gotten another woman pregnant? She started to cry yet again. You’d think the tears would have dried her right out, butsomewhere, somehow her body was able to produce more and she cried and cried again until she lay down, exhausted.

She hated how she felt after a big crying jag. She hadn’t had one for so long, not since her parents had died. She hated the stuffy nose, the swollen, stinging eyes, the puffy lips, the feeling of being on the edge of starting all over again.

She sat up slowly on her bed and dragged her hands over her cheeks, shaking her head. The pregnancy had happened before she and Jase had met. It wasn’t as if he’d cheated on her.

So he said.

No, Jase wouldn’t lie. She knew him better than that. He hadn’t cheated on her, hadn’t planned this. When she thought about it logically, she realized it was just an awful mistake that happened to people sometimes.

Only she’d never thought someone else’s unplanned pregnancy would affect her.

She was responsible, used birth control. Why hadn’t Brianne? Why hadn’t Jase? It was both their responsibility. Anger at both of them flared up in her so hot and furious she couldn’t breathe. How could they have been so stupid and irresponsible? How many lives had been impacted by something so careless?

With a small burn of shame, she recalled how she’d been willing to forego a condom the last time they’d had sex, how she’d been willing to take the risk. And the burn turned into a shaft of agony remembering how she’d almost hoped she’d get pregnant.

When Jasmine called to see if she’d done anything about selling the house, Remi wanted to yell at her. Didn’t she know she had other bigger problems right now? But she bit her tongue and quietly told Jasmine she would have to talk to Kyle about it. It was his home too and he needed to be part of the decision. The school year was almost done for him. He’d want to come home for the summer.

“Actually, I want to go to Australia for the summer,” Kyle told her when she called him a while later. She sat down heavily on a chair. “A bunch of buddies are going and I want to go with them.”

She stared across the living room, the phone to her ear. “How will you pay for that?”

“Well, I thought you might help me out. But we’re going to work when we’re there. Some odd jobs or something.”

“But Kyle, I don’t have a lot of extra money for that. What about tuition for next year?”

“I’ll try to save enough when I’m working to help pay for that. It’ll be fine.”

She told him about Jasmine and her wanting to sell the house.

“That would be perfect!” Excitement colored his voice. “I could use my share of the money for the trip and there’d be enough to pay for the rest of my college. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

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