“Sunshine?” He looks back and discovers Lauren waiting behind him, Carlos Jr. in a bedazzled carrier by her side, then twists around with eyes blown wide. “Shit. Baby, please, it’s not what it looks like. You have to let me explain.”
“Explain?” I repeat, my dumb eyes filling with hot tears. “Explain what? What a fool I am? That I actually thought…”
The lump in my throat refuses to let me complete that thought. Instead, I spin on my heel.
Shame and embarrassment threaten to push my tears over the edge, but I can’t let them fall. Not where they can see. The two of them have gotten enough tears out of me.
Warm sand kicks up beneath me as I jog down the path, Justin’s voice chasing behind me. He can’t take off and risk jostling the baby’s neck, so if I keep moving, maybe I can outrun him. If I move a little faster, maybe I can outrun the pain, too.
A girl can hope.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1ST
Disaster
?Freshman Year
JUSTIN
FAIRFIELD ACADEMY 7:05 A.M.
The mental tapes played the entire drive to school.
So… baseball’s not the only thing you and the old man have in common. A baby in high school. Maybe you should compare notes.
You knew you were never good enough for Peyton… and this only proves it.
Just when she’s getting her life back, you have to come along and ruin it.
That last one hurt the most.
Peyton Williams was a fighter. Her determination to literally get back up on the horse and ride Oakley blew me away. In the short time I’d known her, her progress was incredible, and her therapists believed that by the end of the summer, she’d be back to kicking rodeo’s ass.
But you can’t ride horses at breakneck speeds pregnant.
The one thing my girl loves the most—the thing she’s been killing herself to get back to—may very well be stripped away from her again. All thanks to my stupidity. Some secret boyfriend I’d turned out to be.
And then… that was just how this affected her. What about me?
Yeah, I was a selfish prick for thinking it, but this didn’t only involve Peyton. My future was on the line, too. Baseball was the one thing I was good at. The diamond, and my team, the one place I ever belonged. Coach Williams was the first man since my Gramps who ever saw anything in me, believed in me. Would that faith be shot to hell once he found out how I betrayed his trust? Would he kick me off the team?
From the very beginning, I’d told myself to stay away. Peyton Williams was a Commitment. She was declared off-limits, so I had no right sniffing around her.
But I couldn’t—or didn’t want to—tell her no. Which led me back full-circle:
This was all my fault. As such, it was up to me to fix it.
When Rosalyn pulled up in the circle drive in front of the school, Peyton was already there, waiting on the front steps. I’d jokingly named it ‘Sunshine’s stoop,’ so the sight was familiar, only this time she wasn’t furiously turning the pages of one of her books—another sign of how being with me had changed her, and not for the better.
I closed the door behind me and she pushed to her feet, smoothing the wrinkles of her uniform skirt. “Hey.” She waved goodbye to Rosalyn with a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes, then turned to glance at the brick building behind us. “Like you said, it’s dead right now. Only a few admins and a couple upperclassmen in for detention. We should have the entire second floor to ourselves.”
“That’s good,” I said, feeling awkward as hell. Questions and uncertainty hung between us, making the already oppressive Texas heat heavy. I hiked my backpack higher on my arm. “I’ve got what we need, so let’s do this.”
Peyton bit her lip, relief obvious in her eyes. She hadn’t been sure she could count on me. I couldn’t blame her, since the last time she saw me, I’d been borderline catatonic, but the lack of trust hurt.
I tugged open the main door and waved her inside, making sure our skin didn’t touch. It was dumb and probably juvenile—we’d touched a lot more than hands to find ourselves in this mess—but it felt necessary. Like, one touch from Peyton could break the carefully constructed fa?ade of calm I’d erected overnight.
Peyton padded inside, eyes on the floor, and waited for me to join her. Then, she began filling the silence with chatter.
“Dad thinks I’m here to help Mi-Mi clean out her locker,” she said, hanging a right into the stairwell. Her voice echoed in the corridor and she quickly lowered it. “He was so glad to hear I’d made a friend that he didn’t even question it. I mean, how much crap could Mi-Mi possibly have in her locker that she’d need me here this early, you know? But he bought it hook, line, and sinker. I lied to him, straight in his face, and he didn’t even blink.”
Guilt cracked her voice, and the pressure in my chest grew tight. Peyton and her family were close. So close it freaked me out, to be honest, because I never had that. Knowing she lied to them, that she probably felt even more alone because of it, triggered those mental tapes again.