If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (179 page)

I want to shout at her that she doesn’t know anything, but instead I feel like a silly little girl. I nod. She doesn’t question which man is the father. She most likely doesn’t care.

“Have you told him?” she asks, and it sounds as though her anger is subsiding.

I shake my head.

She nods and lets out a long sigh. “Well, what do you want to do?”

“You mean I have a choice?” I ask with a small amount of sarcasm.

She nods. “Yeah, honey, you do. I won’t have you putting a death on my hands, using me as a scapegoat.”

I cringe.

“You’ve really screwed up though. Just like I did.” She chews her lip and sits next to me on the bed. “You have a chance to go to school, make something of yourself.” She shakes her head.

“It’s not like I have the money to go anyway,” I mutter.

“I don’t have money, but your grandparents do. They’ve had your college fund set up since you were born,” she says.

I frown at her. “What? Why didn’t you ever say anything? I’ve been working my ass off at the stupid coffee shop to save money.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a little hard work,” she counters. “They’re not going to pay if you’re knocked up though.” She looks at my stomach as if it’s an alien.

“So, so… you think I should get rid of it?” I ask.

“If you want to, that’s up to you, or you could take a trip to your aunt Dani’s,” she says and stands.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

She looks back at me and shrugs. “It may be a win-win situation if that’s something you’d want. Dani’s been dying for a kid. She’d take anybody’s.” She laughs before leaving the room.

I lie back on my bed and rub my stomach while looking at the ceiling, and I think and think. Then let out a deep breath. I pick up the phone in my room. “Hey, Aunt Dani, I have something to tell you.”

The very next day, my aunt Dani is back in Madison. We’re transferring my school records. I say good-bye to Amanda, who thinks Evie and I got into a huge fight and she kicked me out. We cry, we laugh, and I promise to visit her in the summer before she leaves for school. As I walk to my aunt Dani’s car, I see Chris in the distance, leaning against the school wall. I wave at him, and surprisingly, he waves back.

I
n nine months, no one knows that I had a baby. The secret of a fall that never should have happened.

And when I return to visit—with no baby—I’m surprised to find out that Gwen also has none.

Present Day

T
ime has a way of making you see things differently. After so long, you convince yourself of your own truth even if things didn’t happen exactly that way. Maybe it’s the mind’s way of helping you cope after you know you’ve really screwed up, when you’ve done so much wrong. I wonder if that’s what Will’s doing. If he’s looking back on what happened and his mind is convincing him that what he did wasn’t that bad, that he only acted out of goodness and love… or whatever he feels for her.

It’s hard for me to even look at Gia after telling her everything and even harder to stomach after remembering everything Will and I did to her. I expect her to look happy or smug, to say I told you so or how could you think he’d be faithful and loyal to you when he wasn’t to me. I expect to hear her say all those things, but it only comes from the voices in my head scolding myself.

She’s the opposite—she cries with me. After everything, my sister cries with me.

“You didn’t deserve what happened, Gwen. No one deserves to be hurt, to be betrayed,” she says, holding my hands as tears trickle down my cheeks.

“I did it to you! We betrayed you and hurt you, and this is life’s payback, my karma come round!” I cry into her shoulder and feel terrible for it. After everything I did, she forgave me. It took years, but she forgave us both, fully and completely and never ever threw it back in my face.

“Look at me,” she says, holding my chin up so that I face her. “Love can make good people do bad things.”

My heart hurts, falling into a thousand pieces, and I feel as if it’s never ever going to be fixed. “How long—how long before the pain goes away? When will I wake up and not feel like I want to die?”

She looks away. “It will take as long as you make it. If you hold on to the hate and the anger, if you guard it, cherish it, and feed it, it will stay with you forever.” She takes my hands. “Trust me, it isn’t easy to forgive, and you never forget, but you have to try to let it go, or you’ll be miserable for a very, very long time.”

I hug her, but I don’t know if I’m ready to let go of my pain. I need to hold on to it a little bit longer.

I stay in Illinois with Gia for three days to clear my mind, to think and think and cry and cry and try to understand. I try to understand what he was thinking, how it could have happened. After what happened with us, after Gia told me she hated me, I wished she could just understand, that she could know that deep down, I never meant to hurt her. I know now that it doesn’t matter if the person meant to hurt you or not—what matters is the fact that they did.