That’s the truth I can barely write. The truth that makes me want to vomit every time I think about it. I got pregnant, and I don’t know which one of them did it because I’d been with so many. Steele one week. Stone the next. Titan when he demanded it. Other brothers when they came calling.
I was a whore, Stephen. That’s what I became. A woman who traded her body for her daughter’s safety and told herself it was noble.
The pregnancy was a nightmare. Every day I woke up knowing there was something growing inside me that was conceived in violence and desperation and shame.Every kick, every movement, was a reminder of what I’d become. What I’d allowed myself to become.
All my life there was one person who could handle the hard things life threw at us. One person who wasn’t bound by the same rules the rest of us were.
She had a willingness to do what others wouldn’t, to cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I’d always known this about her, even if I never said it out loud. Even if I was afraid of her because of it.
When I realized I was pregnant, I knew I couldn’t keep it. It didn’t feel the same as when I carried our daughter. That time was filled with hope, with excitement. With love.
Our daughter was a junior in high school, too old to hide the pregnancy from, so there was only one other option. One weekend close to my due date, she was away on a school trip, and the timing felt like a cruel joke from God.
A window.
An opportunity.
And there was only one person I could call who would actually do something about it. Who wouldn’t hesitate or judge or try to talk me into keeping it. She would handle it. She always handled every situation I found myself in.
Not because she loved me unconditionally. Not because she was my mirror or my anchor or any of the things sisters are supposed to be. I called her because she was the only person in the world who would walk into this darkness with me and not flinch. Who would do what needed to be done without asking too many questions.
She came to Arkansas without hesitation. Drove through the night. And when she arrived, I could see it in her eyes—that cold calculation, that willingness to cross into territory most people wouldn’t even acknowledge existed.
I was terrified of her.
But I needed her more.
So I called Caroline.
I knew it was a mistake the moment she walked into the small house I lived in. One look into her eyes and I remembered why you pulled me away from California, away from her. But I was desperate, Stephen. Terrified. I needed someone to hold my hand through this nightmare, and Caroline came without hesitation.
She drove all the way from California to Arkansas. She didn’t come alone. She brought someone with her—a woman who knew how to induce labor, who had done this before. It was planned. Premeditated. There was nothing accidental about any of it.
The birth was in the middle of the night. Just Caroline, the woman she’d brought, and me in that tiny house. The pain was unbearable, but it was nothing compared to what came after.
And then he was born.
A boy.
Tiny and perfect.
Beautiful in a way I wasn’t prepared for. His eyes opened. His lungs filled with air. He cried, this small, perfect sound that broke something inside me.
I held him. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the weight of him in my arms, to understand what I’d done, to realize I couldn’t take it back.
And then I looked at Caroline.
She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with that cold, calculating expression, and I knew. I knew what came next. What I was asking her to do. What I was choosing.
“What do we do?” I whispered, though I already knew the answer.
Caroline took him from my arms. Wrapped him in a blanket. And walked out of that room.
I never saw my son again.
I told our daughter the baby died. That’s the lie I’ve carried all these years. That’s the shame that’s eaten mealive. Not that I lost him, but that I gave him away. I asked my sister to make him disappear, and she did. No questions. No hesitation. Just the cold efficiency of a woman willing to do the unspeakable.
I held a living, breathing baby boy and then I let him go.
