Page 163 of Between Never and Forever
“Is she yours?” Savannah asks, and my jaw tightens before I answer.
“Yes. In every way that matters, yes. She’s mine.”
“But...is she...”
“No.”
The silence fills the room, and I wait for her to ask more questions. I want to tell her. I’ve been hiding it for so fucking long, but she doesn’t say anything. Not a sound. So instead, I just start talking.
“It was Julianna who…initiated…the night we slept together. She’d just broken up with this guy a few weeks earlier, and I just assumed it was some sort of rebound thing. I just wanted to get it over with. Having sex, I mean. I was curious, and horny as fuck, and done doing what my parents wanted. But that’s why I was so upset and confused in Miami. I did everything right. Wore a condom. She was on birth control. I looked it up. It’s less than a 2% chance. Turns out, though, she was already pregnant.”
Savannah gasps.
“She...tricked you?”
I shrug and sigh.
“It’s not how you think. Fuck, this is such a mess.”
She waits in the quiet while I collect my thoughts, then I make eye contact and I don’t break it again.
“Julianna was at a party. She was drugged. She would never tell me who the guy was, but I think she knew. She knew, and she was scared. I think she felt guilty, too. Like the pregnancy was her fault. Looking back, there were signs, you know? But I didn’t know.”
I take a deep breath and fight the urge to look away. I’ve beaten myself up over it so much since I learned the truth. There were signs that something wasn’t right. I should have picked up on them, but I thought she was a virgin and was nervous. She was uncomfortable even though she kept telling me she wanted it. Hell, I was uncomfortable. I thought we felt that way for the same reasons.
I was so fucking wrong.
I shake my head and plow forward. Even though it hurts, even though I feel so fucking ashamed, it’s a relief to say it out loud.
“She didn’t want her parents raising the baby, but she didn’t think she could do it alone, so she tried to make it look like I was the father. We went to church together. We were kind of friends. She trusted me. I guess she knew I’d step up.”
“She trapped you. She lied.”
Savannah’s anger mixes with her sadness, and I feel it, too. I felt the exact same thing for a long time. But it doesn’t matter. Jules was right. I did step up, and I don’t regret it. I’d do it again. Inod, because she did lie, but she didn’t trap me.
“This one....” I sigh and close my eyes. “It exists in the gray space, Sav.”
She scoffs, but I keep talking.
“I was there for every ultrasound. Every doctor’s appointment. I was there for the baby shower. We got an apartment together off campus. We decorated a nursery. Fuck, I was in the delivery room when she was born. I picked her middle name. At first, I hated all of it. I did it all reluctantly. Out of duty. But then...I don’t know. At some point during the pregnancy, I started to get excited. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to hold her. I meant it when I said I never fell in love with Julianna, but I respected her, and Sav, Ididfall in love with Brynn. I fell in love with her before she was even born. Iwantedto be her dad.”
I breathe through the pain. The ache of betrayal rattles through my rib cage, fresh and raw. It’s like ripping a scab off a wound. Tearing open stitches. It fucking hurts just like it did the first time.
“When did you find out?”
“About an hour after she was born,” I say with a dark chuckle.
“How?”
I tap the cleft in my chin.
“I read once that it’s a dominant trait, but Brynn doesn’t have one. Once I noticed, I couldn’t stop thinking about that statistic. Less than 2%. So, I tried to figure out the math of the pregnancy. I’d never done that before. I just trusted Julianna. Then I asked, and she told me the truth.”
Savannah is gaping at me with her eyebrows slanted in concern. Her eyes have welled with tears, and she looks like she’s feeling the pain with me. We’re connected, and for once, I don’t feel like I’m shouldering all this alone. Sav shakes her head in disbelief.
“But you stayed with her?”
“No. I was gutted. I was furious. I wanted Brynn to be mine, Sav, and I was fucking broken. I told Julianna she could keep the apartment, but I left the hospital and moved my shit out that night. I crashed with one of my classmates for the rest of the semester. Slept on the fucking couch. I completely cut her off. I let her keep telling people Brynn was mine, let everyone believe I was a fucking deadbeat. Hell, I felt like one, and it fucked with me for a while, but I was too hurt to go back to Julianna.”
