“I’m pregnant.”
He stopped breathing. His lungs seized until the pressure in his chest became too much and he sucked in a breath. He hadn’t heard her right. They used a condom. Always. Almost always. But she was on the pill. “That’s impossible.”
“Well, it’s not impossible because I am,” she said, a touch of haughty impatience in her voice before it softened again and she smiled sweetly. “I just found out, and I knew you’d be coming home for the wedding, so I wanted to tell you in person.”
“You said you were still on the pill.”
“I am. Or I was.” She bit her lip. “I might have missed a few. But it’s too late now, right?” She turned in her seat to face him. “I’m due in September. We should get married soon. Before or after I tell my parents? They’re going to freak, so maybe we should get married before we tell them about the baby. What do you think?”
He couldn’t process, his brain in complete denial. “What?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? Did you hear me? I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
“Are you sure it’s mine?” Please, God, don’t let it be mine.
“I cannot believe you would ask me that! You’re the one that hooked up with another girl!”
This isn’t happening. His arms shook, he was gripping the steering wheel so hard. Sweat dripped down his spine and the wheel slid through his tight grip as he took another turn.
He was going to be a father. A husband. He’d get a job. No more college. No more football. No being something great. No catching up to his brothers, who were always ten steps ahead of him.
“It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
His stomach rolled with nausea and…she was smiling. Smiling! He stared out at the road, barely seeing it.
“We won’t fight anymore, and both our moms will help with the baby. It won’t even be that hard. It’ll be fun.”
No. It won’t. It won’t be fun. He couldn’t breathe.
“I’m nineteen years old,” he muttered under his breath, knowing she was just as young, but…this is what she’d wanted. This is what she’d asked him for. To stay home, to get married.
My brothers would have never done something like this.
“Slow down.”
Bare winter trees flew past on his left, but he didn’t slow down, as if maybe he could outrun this. His car the only thing he had to hold on to, the speed the only thing he could control.
Rachel went on and on. Where they would live, job ideas she had for him, and he was sick. He had the tedious and fleeting thought he should pull over so he didn’t puke in his car.
“Aren’t you excited?”
He struggled to breathe.
Quit football. Quit school. Get a job. Support a family.
His heart pounded painfully and his chest squeezed. Rachel was hammering at him, screaming at him. I don’t want this. I don’t. He needed air.
“You should be happy! It’s your baby!”
“Well, I’m not! I’m not happy!”
He snapped like he always did when Rachel screamed at him, pushed him. Always backing him into a corner. They rounded a sharp turn and he saw an instant too late he was going too fast to make it, and then they weren’t on the road anymore.
Trees on both sides. Nowhere to go. The screeching of metal losing the battle against wood. When he’d come to, he was in the woods, the front end of his Mazda molded around a tree. His legs alternated between a burning fire and no feeling at all. Rachel moaned beside him, her head lolled to the side. A thin line of blood trickled from her forehead down to the tip of her nose.
And then there was nothing.
Over the next days, he’d drifted through a morphine haze, waking to voices of family members and hands of nurses.
The seatbelts and airbags had saved them, reducing certain death to only minor injuries. Except for his leg. It seemed unreal. It felt like he was moving both feet, both legs. But he wasn’t. Because from five inches below his right knee, one leg was gone. The shock of it overrode everything else until the door opened and Rachel walked in. He knew she was okay—his mother had told him that days ago—but he didn’t want to see anyone. Didn’t want her pity.
Good thing, because he didn’t get it.
Her gaze fell to the sheet covering the lower half of his body and remained there a long while before finally raising to meet his eyes. And it all came rushing back. Those last seconds. The road. The news. Rachel didn’t move closer, but he felt her energy like a bomb seconds from detonation.
“I’m not pregnant anymore,” she’d blurted, her eyes angry. “Did you know that?”
No. He hadn’t known.
“So, you got what you wanted. I hope you’re happy now.”
Happy? No. Just sick at all that had happened in an instant. All that had been lost. And even sicker looking into Rachel’s accusing eyes.