Chewing the inside of my mouth, I looked around to have something else to do. She may have let me in but it was clear she wasn’t thrilled that I was still hanging out with her daughter. I understood why, Tegan was younger. If I’d known exactly how much younger when we met I probably would have walked in the opposite direction. It was too late now.
Tegan walked downstairs, followed by Lucas. I tried to stop turning my nose up but it didn’t really matter, they were so transparent, I could see that he was trying to fix her and she was looking in all the wrong places to be fixed.
She grinned. “Hey.”
The stone cold stare from Lucas just proved my point. Too overprotective, too intense and too determined to be her white knight. She was the one that needed to be strong and when she finally was she’d see how wrong he was for her. I just hoped she’d see I was right.
“Bye,” Tegan snapped, gritting her teeth at the less than warm reception I was getting from Lucas and his brother who’d poked his head around the door. Grabbing my wrist, she tugged me out of the house.
I’d noticed at Ava’s party that they were fine with Adam. It was obviously just me. They probably knew that I wanted…something with Tegan, even though I didn’t mention it unless I was making a ‘joke’.
“Tegan?” Lucas called after us.
“Just keep walking, Kai, I’ve had enough,” she said. We reached the car seconds later and both got in. “Drive, I don’t want to talk to any of them.”
“Sure? You don’t want to sort out whatever the hell is going on?”
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry for how Lucas and Jake acted back there.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I get why they wouldn’t like me much.”
“They’re stupid.”
“Stop stressing about it. It’s fine. We know we’re not off shagging at every opportunity and so should Lucas. You’re allowed friends of the opposite sex so forget about their reaction or what they say.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I fake gasped. “I’m what? Say that again.”
“Oh, ha ha.”
“No, go on, say it again.”
“Shut up, Kai.”
Laughing, I pulled into Holly’s drive. “Try not to get too paralytic tonight, okay?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, sir.”
I unclicked my seatbelt but Tegan sat dead still. She’d paled.
“Hey, you okay?”
With a little shake of her head she replied, “Yeah, sorry, was in another world. Let’s go in.”
I led her through Holly’s house and headed to the kitchen to get us a drink. “Okay, what do you want?” I asked, gesturing to the bottles of alcohol in front of us.
Biting her lip, she grabbed a can of coke. “I’ll just have this.”
What? “You’re not drinking?” She shook her head, avoiding looking at me. I shook my head and smiled. “Wow, you’re not pregnant, are you?” The colour drained from her face for the second time in as many minutes. Shit. “Tegan?” I said, my blood running cold.
She opened and closed her mouth twice before shrugging. Shit!
I gulped. Fuck, I wasn’t ready for a kid. Tegan looked as terrified as I felt. I was gonna throw up or pass out. Man up. Clearing my throat, I said, “We need to do a test.”
She looked even more scared. I took her hand and started to walk but she tugged, making me stop. “Wait, Kai.”
“What?” I stepped closer, put my hands on her shoulders and bent my head to her height. “We have to know.”
“We? You don’t.”
I frowned. What the fuck was that? “This is my...problem, if that’s the right word, too. If you think I’d let you go through this alone then you clearly don’t know me at all.”
“No, I don’t think you’d do that. I don’t… I don’t know what to think right now. I’m seventeen, I can’t have a baby. I’m screwing everything up and I don’t know how to stop it. I’m so scared, Kai.” She was on the verge of tears. I’d watch her struggle with her emotions plenty of times but it’d never hurt me to see it before. This was half my fault. I’d ruined my parents’ lives for a while and here I was doing the same thing to a fucking teenage girl.
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close, showing how sorry I was. “It’ll be alright. We just need to find out one way or the other first, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered against my chest.
I felt as low as I did the first day I decided to change my life and had to acknowledge the shit I’d done.
We left Holly’s house, lucky that no one really paid any attention to us and Sophie wasn’t here yet. The closer we got the more withdrawn Tegan was. She stared out of the window, expressionless. Her body was sitting beside me but her mind was somewhere else.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. I promise.
“How?” She took a deep, uneven breath. “What if I am?”
“Hey, don’t worry. If you are then we’ll do whatever you want.”
She sniffed and wiped her cheeks. “What do you mean?”