“No, Fallon, no! You don’t understand.” She finally looked up, her eyes wet with tears and terror that stole all the breath from my fucking lungs.
“What, Augusta Belle? What’s wrong?” I slid a hand into her hair, my palm at the back of her soft neck.
“There’s more.” She swallowed. “There’s one more thing I haven’t told you about.”
I nodded, unable to form a word, trying to blink some sort of silent signal to encourage her on, but the truth was, I didn’t think I wanted her to.
I wasn’t sure I was ready for whatever else she was about to tell me.
“I spent so many nights crying, so many nights wondering what I could have done different. I could hardly eat. Missing you was the darkest time of my life, Fallon.” She wrung her hands, swallowing again before her eyes darted from my gaze to my lips and back again. “I missed you so much those first few weeks at school…” Fresh tears tracked down her cheeks. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant.”
TWENTY-TWO
Augusta—Nine Years Ago
Tears of pain cut quietly down my cheeks as I winced, trying not to squirm as the doctor pressed apart my thighs, encouraging me to relax.
“This will only take a minute, sweetheart.”
I cringed at his term of endearment, wishing the nurse was at least still in here with me, someone to make me feel not so alone on this cold hospital bed, feet in stirrups.
“Have you seen the baby move yet?” He grinned, popping out from behind the sheet covering my lower half.
I swallowed razors and squeaked, “No.”
“Should be any time, most women see an elbow or a foot pop out over the last few weeks.”
I swallowed again, fear spinning through my stomach as I wished like hell he was here with me.
Fallon.
After each girl was enrolled at Sacred Heart for four weeks, a customary blood test was taken.
A test that checked for a lot of things: diseases, disorders, pregnancy.
And that’s when I’d found out.
Not wrapped in Fallon’s arms, our eyes shedding happy tears as we planned our lives together.
But 500 miles away in the middle of nowhere, all alone.
There were other girls who were pregnant. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon, considering many of the girls who showed up at Sacred Heart came from a sketchy past. This was usually their last resort before juvenile detention.
Once the administrators found out I was pregnant, they moved me to another wing. I shared a room with three other girls who were each expecting, little privacy for homework or reading or crying.
I was still writing Fallon letters.
I couldn’t stop.
I knew I’d never send them, but they weren’t for him anyway. They were for me.
“There ya are, sweetheart.” The doctor patted my knee, my legs falling closed.
I clamped down on my lip, feeling violated not for the first time since I’d been coming to these “prenatal appointments” in the basement of the school. The building wasn’t set up to house a hospital wing, they said, so they’d done very little to spruce up the place and forced us to see a local doctor once a month, outdated equipment tagging along with him.
I’d written my parents early on, begged them to come and get me, told them we could raise the baby together. The house was big enough, I could get my GED, I conjured every happy ending in my head before I realized there wasn’t one coming.
There were no such thing as happy endings, and if I was going to survive, I’d have to save myself.
