Page 91 of False Start

“I just… I thought you and I could make it through anything,” I confessed. “I waited in my room just thinking of how you’d open the door, how you’d see me and your face would crumple, and I’d run to you and you’d hug me and we’d hold each other and whatever you’d been angry at me for that week would just disappear. It wouldn’t matter. It…”

Goddamnit.

I scrubbed a hand over my mouth and looked away from her, my eyes on the ceiling as I tried to regain my composure.

“When you didn’t come, I ran downstairs. And my parents told me what you’d said to them, what you’d asked of me.”

“They said I wanted you to stay away from me,” she whispered, the first words she’d said since I started speaking.

I nodded.

“It fucking killed me,” I said through the thickness in my throat. “My parents knew it would. They said we were going to move, that I wouldn’t have to live in the hurt. They told me to pack my things. And when I saw you on Monday, when I showed up to get my stuff from school… I thought maybe you’d run to me. I thought maybe they were wrong, that you’d change your mind, that you wouldn’t let your parents control you. But I saw it in your eyes. I saw how…”

I cursed, nostrils flaring as the memory resurfaced.

“I saw how fuckingscaredyou were of me. It was like you saw my father when you looked at me, and that gutted me more than anything.”

Madelyn covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head, her eyes squeezing shut.

“I hated you,” I whispered. “I did, Mads. I hated you with everything that I was foryears. Until I saw you again.” I laughed then, the sound just a huff of air leaving my chest. “And then I realized that the only reason I could hate you was because I couldn’t see you, couldn’t touch you, couldn’t remember what it was like to be in your presence. And the moment I was around you again, all that was eviscerated. Because the truth is I can’t do anything but love you.”

Those words broke her, and I hated it — the way her shoulders shook, her hands covering her face as little sobs left her. But it was the truth, and she needed to hear those words as much as I needed to say them.

“I’m about to prove you wrong,” she said after a moment, dropping her hands into her lap. Her red, blotchy eyes met mine. “You’re going to hate me after what I tell you.”

My chest hollowed out.

“I never could—”

“You will,” she argued. “Because I didn’t tell your parents that I wanted you to stay away from me, Kyle. I told them I was pregnant.”

A blink.

A heartbeat.

And then my stomach bottomed out.

The room turned upside down. My entireworldturned upside down.

My pulse kicked loud and heavy in my chest, in my ears, and I stared at Madelyn willing myself to comprehend what she’d just said.

But it felt like she’d spoken to me in a foreign language, or like she’d garbled out some nonsense that didn’t equate to anything.

I didn’t breathe for the longest moment.

And then, I sucked in a breath that burned my lungs and made my eyes sting. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. My lips trembled until I pressed them together again, and Madelyn broke at the sight of me, rolling her lips together as her eyes welled with tears that spilled down her face.

“You…” I started, but stopped immediately, my stomach flipping so violently I nearly lost my dinner. I stood, shaking my head, hands flying into my hair as I walked away from her in denial.

When I was on the opposite side of the room, I froze, numbness invading every inch of me as I tried to process.

I turned slowly to face her, and I didn’t know what hurt more — the crushing weight on my chest or the sight of her falling apart.

“I wasn’t mad at you that week,” she said, her voice trembling as she fought back tears. “I was terrified of losing you.”

“Losing me?” I let out a breath, shaking my head in disbelief. “Why…howcould you ever lose me?”

“You were sixteen,” she cried. “You had your whole life ahead of you. You had football and a dream.”