Chapter 33

MAGGIE

~FIVE YEARS AGO~

All my life, I’ve depended on other people, which mostly consists of two people, my dad and Logan. And they have never made me feel alone. If Dad wasn’t around, I always had Logan to look after me.

But today is different. I need to face this without those two pillars in my life.

I wipe my tears and tell myself that it’s going to be okay. It’s going to play out, just like in the movies.

When I tell Carter that I’m pregnant with his baby, he’s going to be really happy, and then we’re going to go shopping for baby clothes and toys.

He hugs me as soon as I walk into his house and I instantly feel better. He thinks this is about the fight we had yesterday, so he says, “I’m so sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to say those things to you.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I have to tell you something.” I follow him upstairs to his room.

“Mom’s not home. She went to buy some groceries. You should stay over and have lunch with us, and then we can go somewhere in the evening.”

“Carter, I’m pregnant.”

I’m gauging his reaction, but his face goes blank.

“It’s not April yet.” He chuckles nervously.

“This is not an early April fool’s joke. I’m serious. I missed my period, and I…”

His face turns as white as a sheet. “But so what? You told me it’s common to miss periods some months because of some hormones or shit.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like that this time. I took the test twice. You didn’t use protection that night when you stayed over at my house, remember?”

“So, you’re saying this is my fault? You told me you were on the pill!”

“Can we please stop blaming each other?”

We hear the sound of the front door of the house opening and then closing. Mrs. Cruz calls out, “Cart, honey…I got your favorite donuts.”

Carter rushes to the door. “Mom, I’m here upstairs. Maggie’s here too. We’ll be down in a few minutes.” He slams it shut and locks it before coming back to stand beside me.

“You absolutely cannot tell this to anybody.” His brown eyes look terrified. He runs his hands through his dark hair and paces around the room nervously.

“If my mom finds out, I’ll be grounded forever! Or worse, she’ll send me back to live with my dad! And I fucking hate his new family!”

“What do you mean, she can’t find out?”

“We have to find a way to get rid of it.” His hand is shaking as he pulls out his phone and starts tapping it furiously, “I’m going to look for some clinics that will fix this.”

“But I thought you loved me. You said we would get married, eventually.”

“Eventually, Maggie! Not right fucking now. We don’t need that baby to ruin our lives right now, okay?” he says in a frustrated voice.

“Look, I don’t know about you, but I plan to play for the NFL, and that thing inside you is going to fuck up my career. My mom would be super mad about this.”

“That thing is your baby!” I scream at him.

He presses his hand to my mouth. “You can’t be loud about it, Mags. Please! Try to understand. I’m doing this for us…” He’s becoming hysterical, and I think Carter is going to cry.

“I won’t tell your mom. Don’t worry.”

He heaves a sigh of relief. “This won’t happen again, all right? I’ll be very careful next time.”

I want to tell him there won’t be a next time.

Carter offers to drive me home, but I refuse. I feel suffocated in his presence, so I make some excuse about my dad picking me up. Instead, I walk around the neighborhood aimlessly.

I realize that I’ve come too far, and I could call Carter again, but my fingers hover over Logan’s name.

LOGAN

I’m at home looking through some work, enjoying my coffee, when I get a call from Maggie. I haven’t spoken to her since the party where she tried to get me to admit my feelings for her. Since then, I’ve been buried underneath work. It was mostly just to distract myself from thinking too much and knowing that I’d done the right thing by letting her go.

I realize I need Maggie to have a full college experience. I don’t want her to rely on a man eighteen years her senior.

She deserves to explore her options. She’s a beautiful woman, one that deserved so much more than me.

At the time, I didn’t realize the mistake I was making by letting her go.

“Logan.” Her voice sounds like she’s been crying. “Can you…can you pick me up from here?”

Her voice tells me something’s wrong.

I’m already grabbing for my car keys. “Where are you right now, Maggie?”

She sends me her location, and it’s easy to track because it’s a local park a few minutes from my place. I’m one hundred percent sure she had a huge fight with Carter. There’s no other reason she’s calling me.

When I get there, I notice that she’s sitting on a swing and staring into space. There aren’t any kids around. It’s just her. She notices my Mercedes SUV and comes jogging toward me.

She doesn’t smile at me, or have any sassy comments for me, which honestly surprises me. That’s not Maggie’s personality, so whatever happened must be really serious. I quickly look for any signs of abuse.

If he hurt her, I’m going to find a way to kill him.

I don’t drive. Instead, I unbuckle the seat to get a better look at her. I lift her chin to face me. “Maggie, are you all right?”

Her big eyes look at me, and instantly she bursts into tears, crying with loud, heaving sobs. She pulls the armrest away to crawl into my lap, and I let her.

I’m not going to stop her. Clearly, she needs me right now because of whatever happened to her.

She soaks my shirt front as I hold her close to me and kiss the top of her head. “I want you to tell me what happened. Did he hurt you?”

She shakes her head, but doesn’t stop crying as she holds me tightly.

She looks at me with tear-stained eyes. “You would stay with me forever even if you get married to someone, right?” she asks between tears. “You would always be mine first!”

I just want her to stop crying, so I say, “Yes. Always yours.”

“I’m so sorry….” She circles her arms around my neck, clinging to me, crying harder. “I love you so, so much…,” she whispers.

I caress her back, speechless from her affection, but my heart’s breaking thinking of what might have happened to her.

When she finishes crying buckets, she sits back in her seat and stares out the window.

“Maggie, you want to tell me what happened?”

Instead, she says, “Can we go for apple pie? I skipped lunch. I only had cereal for breakfast.”

I give her a nod. “Then let’s have lunch first. What do you want to eat?”

“Tacos.”

I think she’s forgotten about whatever she’s sad about when she gobbles down some tacos. Her phone flashes and from my vantage point, I can see it’s Carter calling her. She eats with one hand and cancels the call with the other.

I smile. “Maybe you should see what he wants to say.”

“He’s already said enough. I broke up with him. I mean, he doesn’t know it, but I’m going to tell him soon.”

“About time.”

I take her home in the evening. By this time, she’s had lunch followed by apple pie, and then we made a trip to the mall arcade, where I won a teddy bear in a honeybee suit.

She looks far happier than she was when I found her at the park this afternoon.

“Thanks for today, Logan,” she says, and then hugs me again before stepping out of the car and running inside her house.

I wish I knew how much worse things are going to get from here.