Every Little Piece of Me (Orchid Valley 1)

Cami’s smiling broadly in this school picture, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, and when Marston looks at it, I know he’s not going to see what I do. He won’t see the freckles she got by spending hours at the pool last summer. He won’t see that the crinkles around her eyes are absent—the tell that this isn’t her real smile. He won’t see the girl who’s always a silly joke away from a giggle or the fourth-grader who cares so deeply about her friends. He’ll see Roman Humphries’ green eyes and the perfectly even top and bottom lip that look just like her father’s.

“Who’s the father.” It’s not a question. It’s a demand for me to speak the words I owe him.

I would climb mountains and cross deserts to not be responsible for the look on his face right now. “Marston, can we not—”

“You fucked Roman right after I left?” His raw voice is like razorblades to my conscience.

“I fucked a lot of guys right after you left.” No reason to sugarcoat it. “My sister died, my boyfriend moved to the other side of the country, and my parents were like zombies.”

“You wanted me to move. You wanted me to leave.” He shakes his head. “I would’ve done anything for you, but you pushed me away and told me to stay gone.”

If I close my eyes, I can remember the day I told him to go. My sister’s body had just been lowered into the ground. My grief was a living thing, eating me from the inside out, my guilt right at its side, but the birds were chirping and the sky was blue. Down was up; left was right.

I can’t expect him to understand, and I’m not sure I want him to. He endured enough suffering of his own during those years. “That summer almost destroyed me,” I whisper. “I was a mess, and when I gave up on trying to make my parents love me, when I was consumed by grief over losing my sister . . . over losing you, I found escape in partying. In rebellion and booze and . . . sex.” I swallow hard, remembering those awful weeks. They’re little more to me now than a blur of shots, frat boys, broken curfews, and yelling matches with my parents.

“How could you?”

I can’t expect him to understand what that was like—how I’d just lost my sister and felt like I’d lose my parents too if I did one thing wrong. But after Marston left, I spent a week walking on eggshells and trying to be the perfect daughter. When my parents still wouldn’t look at me, I snapped. I got pregnant with Roman’s baby, but it could just as easily have been someone else’s. That Cami had Roman’s DNA was one more reason I could never be with Marston again.

He shakes his head. “Roman? Did you even wait for me to get out of town before you let him in your bed?”

Once, those words would have broken me, but I’m not the girl I used to be. “If you want to stand there and slut-shame me, go ahead, but know that my father’s ahead of you by almost eleven years.”

* * *

Marston

She has a kid.

Brinley has a child.

I left her house before our fight could grow into something more. Something worse. The moment she suggested I was trying to slut-shame her, I knew I needed to get out of there and ended up at Lake Blackledge. No surprise. This was always where I came to think when I lived in Orchid Valley, always the place where I could calm my mind enough to think clearly.

But this is a bombshell.

I guess I should blame the booze or the meds she was taking or the combination of the two, but she didn’t breathe a word about her daughter the night we were together in Vegas. She somehow didn’t think it was necessary to share that Roman fucking Humphries had gotten her pregnant within weeks after I left town.

That part burns. It’s not the thought of her having other partners, but the idea of her giving herself to him. It makes my blood run hot with rage. I was gone, but did she do it to hurt me on some level?

She has a kid.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I want to ignore it, but I promised Alec we’d catch up tonight, so when I see his name on the screen, I answer. “Hey.”

“From the tone of your voice, I’m guessing it’s not going well?” he asks.

When I texted him last night, I was all cocky self-assurance. Brinley loves me. She wanted to marry me. It was only a matter of time before we figured this out—before we somehow made it work. “She has a kid,” I say, and even out loud, the words still don’t sound real.