“It was worse than hell.” Cill must have so many things bottled up inside, but he doesn’t add anything else. I wait for a while to make sure.
“It was about missing you,” I explain, hating how stupid it sounds. “It was about trying to live with that emptiness. That’s all it was.”
His hand moves again on my back. “When did it happen?”
I wish I could just fall into the darkness with him and forget all of this ever happened. The sheets rustle as I maneuver under them, playing he won’t push me away. Denying the past won’t get rid of it. It won’t change what I did with Reed. All it will do is force me to spend more energy pretending that my life played out differently. I don’t want to do that.
“The first time was after your dad died.” Reed and I had both gone to the funeral. I felt like my dress was choking me. The service was filled with people from Cavanaugh and all I wanted to do was escape. I didn’t want to keep the life I had. “The funeral was hard. Reed was devastated that you couldn’t be here. He said it was fucked up that you couldn’t be there. He wouldn’t drop it.”
“How long after?”
“A few weeks.” I steel myself to continue. “Then you stopped answering my calls and when I went in, we had that fight.”
Anger spills out of him. “So you thought it would be better to fuck my best friend?” I begin to pull away, but Cill holds me tight. “Kat—I’m sorry. Fuck.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
“It already happened,” Cill says. I get the impression he’s repeated this to himself many times over the past four years. “It’s done. It hurts like hell, but it’s done.”
The words are right there, wanting to be heard, but he continues instead, “Not being able to see you was the lowest moment in my life. And then you stopped coming altogether.”
I can feel him hesitating over a question.
“Just ask,” I plead. This is so damn painful. It’s the hardest conversation I’ve ever had because I need us to come out better after this. I can’t lose him again. Cill’s the only reason I’m not crying already. I sure as hell want to. The tears are nearly ready to flow. The guilt churns in my stomach.
Far off in the distance, almost so far we can’t hear it, a police siren disturbs the city.
“And you still have feelings for him?” Cill asks although it’s not so much a question, just a known truth.
I don’t lie to him, “Yeah … I still have feelings.”
“Did he wear a condom?” Cill asks.
I knew he would say that, but my stomach drops. “No.”
“You could have gotten pregnant.”
My teeth lock together like they don’t want to let out the words. I don’t want to give voice to the words. Every day I’ve tried to come to terms with this. To accept it as something I did that’s not any better or any worse than anyone else’s actions. But it is worse, because it was Reed. Because Cill had lost his freedom. I still had mine, and I used it to royally fuck up.
I can’t speak. The longer my hesitation lasts, the surer he’s going to be.
“You told me not to hold back,” Cill says gruffly. “Now you don’t hold back.”
“I did.” There. He knows now. I said it, and he knows. “I did get pregnant.”
As he props himself up to stare down at me, I fall to the sheets, the tears flowing, but nothing else does. “Hellcat …”
I’ve made it this far without breaking down. That won’t last forever.
“I found out two months in when I miscarried.”
Cill sucks in a breath. The shadows that line his face highlight the pain in his expression. I swear I see him wipe under his eyes just as I look at him, but I can’t be entirely sure as he leans down to kiss the crook of my neck the moment I think he’s crying.
I made a mistake and I suffered it alone.
Besides watching Cill get arrested, the miscarriage was the worst experience of my life. At first I didn’t know what was happening. I hadn’t been paying much attention to my cycle because I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything. Everyone knows that stress can cause you to be late. That’s what I thought, if I thought about it at all.
Then the bleeding started. The pain was what made me realize it wasn’t normal. I was only eight weeks along but it hurt so badly I couldn’t stand up. Every time I tried, I’d get dizzy. I thought I might die in my own bathroom.
Nobody else was there.
I wasn’t talking to Reed after what happened. It was awful what we’d done.
Cill wasn’t talking to me either. We had the fight and then I went silent and he gave me the silent treatment back.