But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a grownup. And he was going to try like hell to act like one. But it was hard. So hard not to give in to the anger beneath his skin when the ghosts from the past echoed in his head. With a groan he closed his eyes in agony, wanting to shut it all out but unable to.
“I’m too young for a baby, Shane.”
A baby. Holy fucking shit.
He looked into Bobbi’s tearstained face and felt all the hard lines inside him shift, and crumble. “But how? How can you be pregnant? You’re on the pill.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice broke and she squeezed her eyes shut, as big tears slipped from corners to lay tracks of fear down her cheeks.
If it was possible for Shane to feel like the lowest of the low, he was there. He was beyond there.
And he was scared, so he couldn’t imagine what Bobbi was feeling.
“Babe, I’m sorry. We’ll make it work. I just don’t want…I can’t handle you crying.”
She rested her head on his chest. Her heart was beating so fast he felt it through her thin top and his leather jacket. “I can’t have a baby,’ she whispered.
“We’ll get married,” he said quickly, ignoring her, cradling her head between his hands and gazing down into the eyes he knew he would never forget.
“Married? Are you crazy? Shane, you’re going to that fancy art college and I…I’m barely twenty. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. I can’t have a baby. God, Billie’s just played on her second Olympic hockey team and Betty is in Paris modelling and
I’m…I’m stuck in New Waterford and pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. I can’t have a baby.”
Stuck here. Stuck here with him. His face hardened. “Well, it looks like you are having a baby. My baby.”
She pulled away from him and wiped the tears from her face. “No,” she whispered, taking a step back. “No, I’m not. I don’t want to have this baby.”
“What are you saying?” He was barely able to keep his anger in check.
“Shane, you need to listen to me.” She glanced away, shaking—shivering so much that her teeth rattled. “I made an appointment at a clinic in the city.”
“You made an appointment?” He took a step toward her, not caring that fear now rested on her face. ‘How the fuck long have you known about this?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
Before he could stop himself, his hands were on her shoulders and he shook her so hard that her head snapped back and he didn’t stop until her whimpers registered through the fog in his brain. Stepping away, Shane fought hard to get control and when he did he could barely speak. “How the fuck long?”
“A few weeks,” she said eventually, her eyes sliding away from his.
“So last week when we went to that big bush party, you knew?”
She nodded.
“Last night when we went back to my place…when you snuck into my room and we fucked for hours…you knew.”
She winced, but again she nodded.
“You knew you were pregnant and you knew you weren’t going to have it.”
For the longest time there were no words and when he took a step toward her, she shook her head and gulped. “I’m not having this baby, Shane. I can’t. I need you to understand. Can you understand?”
Shane couldn’t explain the blackness inside him. It washed over everything in a palette of anger, confusion and betrayal.
“You’ve already made your decision so why the hell do need me to understand? Why the hell do you need me at all?”
“What are you saying? What do you mean?”
The blackness crushed him from the inside out and before he even knew what he was doing—or saying—he’d set his path and ruined the one good thing he had ever had.