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Riale guides me to the highest vantage point on the property. I blink.

He wants to leave, but not before I?—

No. I can’t.

I turn, one last look. And there he is outside the gate on the other side of the street.

Lakeland.

Perfectly pressed. Not a speck of ash on him. Calm as ever.

Even from the distance, he smiles.

And that’s when I know, he’s coming for me and everything I love.

My destruction is next.

34

SHAE

Happyby Clinique wraps around me before my mother’s arms do. I’ve been in bed for almost a full day, and my mom cuddling behind me is a better anchor than a weighted blanket any day.

At first, I took to bed from overwhelming emotions. Once Yennifer and Ezra pulled me off the bathroom floor where I’d collapsed into tears after receiving not one, not two, butfourpositive pregnancy tests, Yenn’d plugged my details into a pregnancy tracker website and determined that I’m approximately eight weeks pregnant.

Oh, and the baby is the size of a raspberry.

But now I can’t get out of bed because it’s hit me that I’m twenty-three, pregnant, and I have no idea where the hell my baby’s father is. He was supposed to call me, but he never did.

Nor is he answering my calls.

Is it because I’d asked him to move with me to Boston?

Ezra foretold it. I’m in a Tyler Perry production.

“Yennifer didn’t tell me anything except that you needed help, so I came as soon as I could. But I have to be honest, baby, I’m thinking the worst.”

I sniff, biting my lip to keep myself from crying again. I’m pretty sure if I tried to produce more tears, my tear ducts would simply revolt.

I click the side button on the phone that hasn’t left my palm the entire night. Still no word from Storm.

While I didn’t tell him the news that he knocked me up via text, I did send him a text or two or thirteen letting him know I needed him and it was important.

So what’s so important in his world that he can’t call me back?

That’s because he doesn’t actually care.

Storm’s face when I asked him to come with me to Harvard has my tears starting up again, and they fall into my pillow.

“Is it about that boy you’ve been seeing?”

I sniff but manage to nod my head.

“Did he hurt you?”

I shake my head, but then think better of it and nod, before shaking my head again.

“Physically? Emotionally? Some…other kind of way?” An edge of tension starts to stew in my mom’s tone, so I pull my big girl panties up and roll over to face her.