Page 16

CHAPTER 16

ZANDER

I walk back to Football Frat in a numb haze. I don’t remember throwing out my coffee cup. I don’t remember crossing any streets, but eventually I’m walking up our front path and in the door.

The TV’s on, but I don’t know what’s playing. I hear a muffled greeting but can’t respond as I haul my sorry ass up the stairs and shut my bedroom door. I even lock it, which is something I don’t normally do, but I can’t be interrupted right now.

I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself.

“What’d you see, Sienna?” I keep whispering. “What the hell did you see?”

My phone starts ringing and I wrench it out of my pocket, ready to hurl it onto my bed, until I see who’s calling me.

Before I can stop myself, I answer in a rush. “Mon.” I whimper her name, and there’s a thick beat of silence before she responds .

“Zander?” My sister’s voice is sharp and alert as always. “Are you okay?”

“It’s bad,” I rasp.

“How bad?” Her voice takes on that lawyer quality she uses every time she’s facing a crisis. “Talk to me.”

“I… she was… pregnant.”

“What? Who?”

“Sienna.” Plunking down on the end of my bed, I stare at my shoelaces. “She had a kid. A little girl. Zoey.”

“Wow, really?” Monica’s voice pitches with interest until the ball quickly drops. “Oh shit. No. You’re not saying…? She’s not the little girl you called me about the other day, is she?”

“Yes,” I croak. “The one I saw on the playground who looks just like you.”

“No, that can’t be. You’re… She’s yours ? You’re a dad?”

“Yeah.” It’s hard getting the word out, but there it is.

“Holy shit!”

I close my eyes while my sister processes this bombshell. It takes about a minute of sputtering, and then she lets out an irritated huff.

“Why the fuck didn’t she tell you?”

“She said she tried, but?—”

“Wait, have you told Mom and Dad?”

“Fuck no. Can you imagine how they’ll react? I’ve done exactly what they told me not to.” I sigh, flopping back on my mattress and staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t tell them.”

She lets that hang in the air for a second before softly reasoning with me. “They have a granddaughter. Don’t you think they deserve to know about her?”

“It’s gonna shock the hell out of them. ”

“It’s definitely shocking the hell out of me.”

I let out a gruff laugh and take my cap off, throwing it across the room. “Dad will be beyond pissed. I can’t tell anyone until I’ve sorted out this clusterfuck. I’m trying to talk it through with Sienna, but we keep getting into arguments, and then she takes off.”

Monica snorts. “I still can’t believe she didn’t tell you. I mean, what the actual fuck?”

Clenching my jaw, I try to clamp down the dark dread in my stomach. It hurts, like a viscous tar coating my insides, burning me and reminding me what a shit I used to be.

“It’s so out of line, Zander. You have every right to be pissed.”

“She said she came to see me,” I admit, my voice sounding dead and lifeless. “She wanted to tell me in person.”

Monica pauses, and I can picture her face as she considers this. “Do you think she’s lying?”

I wish I could say yes, but?—

“No. You should have seen her face, Mon. She said I was… otherwise occupied .” I can barely get the words out as my mind floods with images, each one nastier and more brutal than the last.

Please, God, no. Don’t let her have walked in on the worst of it.

Monica sighs. “She probably saw you getting it on with another chick.”

“Fuck!” I bark, sitting up and hating myself.

“But you’d broken up. It wasn’t like you were cheating on her.”

“It doesn’t matter. If I’d walked in on her with another guy, I would have fucking lost it. We belonged to each other.”

“Zander.”

“No! Don’t try and fucking justify this. She was still in love with me and carrying my kid… and I was screwing my way through Kelsey U. If that’s what she saw, it would have felt like total betrayal.”

“You were still in love with her too,” Monica murmurs. “In your senior year, when I was telling you that you were getting too intense and you should break up, I kind of didn’t realize just how deep the feels were for you two. I thought you were just in the throes of experiencing sex for the first time and all the goodies that come with that. I didn’t want you being tied down.” Her sigh is even heavier than the one before. “But when you came back at Christmas, and she’d just disappeared… you were so devastated.” She tuts. “And you really lost your way after that.”

I cringe, rubbing my forehead and muttering, “I was such a shit that year.”

“Yeah.” She kind of laughs. “Was it the fact that I had to bail you out of jail that gave it away?”

I snort, my tone getting dark and salty. “What did she see, Mon? What the fuck did she see?”

“I don’t know. I still think my guess is right.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I fist the front of my hair and give it a light tug. “I’m trying to figure out when she would have come by. That year is such a blur. I don’t know what she would have stumbled across. Fuck, this is bad.”

“Look, bro, maybe you should tell her everything?”

“No way.” I shoot off the bed and start pacing. “You’re the only one who knows. You and Coach Jones… and even he doesn’t know every little detail. I need to keep it that way.”

“But telling her the truth might open up some doors for you guys. Really break down the barriers, you know? If you let her in on this, you’re showing her that you trust her and?—”

“She can’t know about the fucked-up shit I got into. She’ll never forgive me.”

Monica tries to argue, “You weren’t responsible for?—”

“I was!” I cut her off before she says it out loud. “Sienna can never know. End of discussion. It’s a miracle it wasn’t publicized.”

“No, it was a hell of a lot of hush money from the right people that kept that quiet. The college couldn’t afford that kind of scandal, and the donors stepped up big-time. My point is you don’t have to be ashamed for?—”

“Yes, I do!” I bark, then pinch the bridge of my nose and mumble a string of curses.

My sister goes quiet, letting me pace and huff like a rhino.

My room is too fucking small sometimes! I feel like I’m back in that jail cell again, walking a trench into the floor.

“Do you want her back?” Monica finally asks.

I stop, staring at my reflection in the full-length mirror. “What?”

“Are you just after access to Zoey, or do you want to win Sienna back?”

“I…” I’d given up on that dream a long time ago—when she ghosted me and I thought I’d never see her again. “I don’t know. I just… I have to be there for my daughter. I can’t even explain why I feel so strongly about it, but it’s this burning in my chest, Mon. There’s a little human on this planet who I helped create, and I have to watch her grow. I just have to.”

“Okay.” Monica’s calm voice takes the panicky edge off mine.

“Okay.” I nod.

“Well, you’re going to need to find some kind of peace agreement with her mother… the woman who you are probably still a bit in love with.”

“Monica.” I close my eyes.

“I’m just saying.”

“Well, don’t just say anything. I have to focus on Zoey first. My love life has nothing to do with being a parent. And are you honestly telling me that I should be contemplating a relationship with the girl who totally ghosted me and broke my heart?”

“Sounds like you broke hers first, bro.”

A gut-wrenching groan fires out of me, my legs buckling as I crumple to my knees on the floor.

“But let’s keep the focus on Zoey, shall we?” Monica’s voice brightens, like she’s trying to shine a light into the dark abyss that I’m wallowing in. “Cute name, by the way. Nice that Sienna kind of went for a female Zander.”

“What?” I blink, glancing at my surprised reflection in the mirror.

“Zoey, it starts with a Z. Zander starts with a Z. I wonder if she did that intentionally.”

My lips part, and now I’m gaping at myself, my insides in chaos as my sister fucks with my brain some more.

“Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is… Sienna is the only thing stopping you from having a relationship wi th your daughter, which means you might have to compromise and open up a little. Let her in, so she’ll let you in? You get me?”

“Monica,” I groan. “I can’t.”

She tuts, her voice getting all clipped and businesslike. “Then you need to be prepared for the fact that you might lose her all over again. And this time will be way worse, because you’ll lose your daughter too.”