Bright Midnight

“I’m giving you all that I have!” he says, voice deep and rising. “All that I can give. I don’t know if it’s the best, but it’s all I got.”

“Are you?” I counter. “Because it’s fucking impossible with you sometimes. You’ll write out your poetry, but when it comes to the person who wants to hear it, wants to feel what you have to say, you hold it back.”

“I’m not holding back,” he says gruffly, jaw grinding. “I’m just…trying to figure this out, just as you are.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re done trying to figure it out now, right? Best we just part and be on our separate ways then?”

“Shay, you deserve someone better than me,” he cries out softly, and the worst part of it is that I can tell he’s not just saying it. He really believes it, deep down, that he isn’t good enough for me. That fucking cuts me to the core.

“Don’t even say that. Don’t you dare say that.”

“You don’t even know what’s best for you, you—”

Oh no.

Not this.

“Don’t pull that you know what’s best for me crap!” I snap at him, my anger surprising even myself. “That’s some shit you would have pulled in high school, treating me like dirt so that I’d push you away, so that it would be easier for you. Well, it wasn’t easier for me. You don’t even know what really happened, Anders. You have no fucking idea. You think it was so easy that you left? You left me in a state from which I’ve still barely recovered.”

He stares at me, shaking his head slightly, dark brows drawn together to form a sharp line. “What are you talking about?”

And now I’ve said too much.

I press my lips together, hard, willing myself not to continue.

But, shit, it’s been too long. I’ve been keeping this a secret for too long. All this time and even my mother doesn’t know that I had the abortion. Only Everly and Hannah do. I never got the chance to tell Anders, and I told myself I wouldn’t now because I didn’t want to bring up the past, didn’t want him to feel bad, didn’t want to mess up the precious time we had together.

But since he wants to push me away, well, I guess now is a good a time as any.

“I was pregnant,” I tell him, my voice sounding so small and faint in the room. “It was…it was yours.”

His eyes go wide, mouth dropping open slightly. He stares at me like the world was just pulled out from under him. “What…I don’t…when?”

I close my eyes, trying to gather my nerves, to give myself a spine of steel.

“I think it was the time in the pool. We didn’t use a condom. I found out I was pregnant a week before I found out that you cheated on me.”

Silence is a live-wire between us.

I open my eyes and dare to look at him. He’s staring up at me, brow furrowed, anguish flooding his features. “You never told me…why didn’t you tell me?”

I balk, blinking at him, hackles raised again. “Are you kidding me? Anders, you pushed me away. You wouldn’t return my texts, you wouldn’t even look at me in the halls. You think I was suddenly going to tell you I was pregnant? First of all, I had to make sure with the doctor, and then by the time I did know, I already knew you cheated on me. There was no reason to tell you. You had made your choice. You pushed me away, so I dealt with it on my own.”

“And how did you…deal with it?” he asks, voice low, breaking.

“I had an abortion,” I tell him matter-of-factly, and his face falls just a little, enough to make me defensive. “That was the only option I saw for me. I was scared out of my mind. I only had Hannah, and she had so much riding on her plate with school. I couldn’t raise a baby and keep it, nor have it and give it up for adoption. So I got an abortion because it was the only thing that made sense.”

“Do you regret it?” he whispers.

I bite my lip for a moment before shaking my head. “No. I’ve done a lot of soul searching over the years, and no. I don’t regret it. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Hell, I don’t know if I ever will be, if that’s ever something I’ll even want. I don’t regret it because it was the right thing to do at the time. But that doesn’t mean it was easy. It doesn’t mean it’s something I was able to push to the side and forget about. I’ve made peace with it now, but for the longest time it weighed on me. I felt…ashamed. And guilty. And because I had no one to really talk to about it, because I was so young and confused, it was just something I had to keep buried inside.”