“That we make a cute couple,” I answered wryly.
Cole looked surprised. “You think?”
“Something I’ve learned watching the women around me fall in love… it makes them want everyone else to fall in love.”
“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
I laughed weakly. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in falling in love. We can fight any attempts at matchmaking together.” I felt a stab of pain in my abdomen and flinched.
“I kind of have a girlfriend anyway,” Cole confessed, distracting me from the pain. “I haven’t told Jo yet.”
I smiled. “Yeah? What’s her —” Violent pain shot through my abdomen and I bent double, sucking in my breath.
“Hannah.” Cole wrapped his arm around me. “Jo!”
More pain. Agonizing. I think I screamed. I felt a rush of wetness between my legs.
Pain. Nausea.
Fear.
Black spots in my vision, hundreds, thousands… until all was just black.
There was a beeping sound.
It was bloody annoying.
Pushing through the dark of sleep, that beeping sound grabbed hold of me and pulled me into consciousness. My eyes fluttered open slowly, my vision hazy. I took in the fading cream-colored walls of the room. The polystyrene ceiling.
Where the hell was I?
I felt weird. My mouth dry. My body weighted.
Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head on the unfamiliar pillow to find my mum sitting on a chair beside the unfamiliar bed I was in. Her elbow was braced on the arm of the chair, her chin braced on her hand.
Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks pale.
The beeping behind me seemed to speed up.
“Mum?” I tried to say, but it just came out as a croak. “Mum.” I tried again, more successfully.
Her lashes fluttered and then she was looking at me in surprise. The surprise immediately disappeared as her face crumpled and she started to sob.
“Mum?” Scared, I lifted my arm a little to reach for her hand and I spotted the IV stuck in the bend of my elbow. “Mum?” My voice shook now.
She grabbed my hand. “Oh sweetheart, you’re okay.” She smiled through the tears.
“What happened?”
“Hannah?”
I turned my head to see my dad standing in the doorway. His features were strained, his eyes bloodshot. He rushed toward the hospital bed and leaned over me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Sweetheart,” he whispered hoarsely.
I started to cry. Silent tears. “What happened?”
A little while later a doctor arrived to explain. She introduced herself as Dr. Tremell, my surgeon.
She stood on my right, while my parents stood in each other’s arms on my left. Dr. Tremell stared down at me kindly. “Hannah, you had what is called an ectopic pregnancy.”
What? Pregnant? No. I turned to look at my parents in denial. “No… I would have… known.”
The doctor shook her head gently. “Sometimes with an ectopic pregnancy there is bleeding, spotting, that is often confused with menstruation.” She must have seen on my face that that’s exactly what had been happening these last few weeks. “An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants itself outside of the womb. In your case, Hannah, the egg implanted inside your left fallopian tube. Unfortunately, because you were unaware of your pregnancy, any symptoms you might have had were not picked up on.”
The sickness. The pain.
I closed my eyes in disbelief.
“The egg continued to grow inside your fallopian tube until it ruptured the tube. You were bleeding internally when you arrived at the hospital. We had to perform surgery immediately. As I explained to your parents, we lost your heartbeat but managed to resuscitate you.”
I’d died?
I looked at my parents and saw it written all over their faces.
“Hannah.” Dr. Tremell’s voice had grown softer. “We removed the damaged tube and you should make a full recovery from surgery. We’re administering pain medication to you, but if you feel any pain, please let your nurse know and we’ll administer more if needed.”
I looked up at my parents and saw in their ragged expressions what the last forty-eight hours had done to them.
I closed my eyes.
This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.
Two months.
I sat on the end of my own bed, staring around at the things in my room, feeling strangely detached from the person who owned them. I didn’t feel like that girl anymore.
Nearly dying, weeks of pain and recovery, missing school, dealing with the rumors at school… all without him, all without Marco by my side. The one person I needed.
It had been a long two months.
A life-changing two months.
And I still hadn’t explained anything to anyone.
I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.
My eyes locked on a photograph of Jo and me last Halloween. I’d convinced her to dress up with me. She was a sexy nurse and I was a mischievous angel of death. I had my arm around her shoulders and I had pouted dramatically at the camera, laughter and joy in my eyes.
Who was that girl?
I blinked away the tears, refusing to give in to any more of them.
A light knock sounded at my door and I looked up to watch Cole slide in. He was taller than Cameron now.
Without saying a word he walked into the room and sat down beside me.
“I know everyone has tried talking to you about what happened and I know you keep blowing everyone off, but today you aren’t going to.”
I scowled at my lap.
“Hannah, you passed out in my arms. There was blood. Jo and I didn’t know what was going on. You were dying. I was scared shitless,” he confessed, his words thick with emotion.
Surprised, I looked up at him. Cole cared about me.
Sighing, I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. Just tell me who got you pregnant so I can kill him before Braden, Adam, Cam, and Nate get to him.”
Still, despite feeling betrayed by Marco’s departure, angry at him, so angry at him for leaving me to deal with all this alone, I felt fear more than anything else. Fear of my family discovering he got me pregnant. Fear they’d hurt him. Fear they’d think less of him.
“Hannah, you almost died,” Cole reminded me harshly.
“I know.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I made a massive mistake. At the beginning of the school year I went to a party with Sadie. I got really drunk.” I looked away from him. “I slept with this random guy I met and I took off afterwards because I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I don’t even know his name, let alone where he lives. And if I did, what would be the point? I had a miscarriage. He didn’t know I was pregnant, I didn’t know. We were both to blame for acting irresponsibly.”
“But you’re the only one who had to deal with the consequences. How is that fair?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think God’s a woman, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He choked on laughter. “You’re joking about this? Really?”
“It’s either that or I cry.” I felt my lips tremble. “Shit. I’m going to cry.” The tears fell before I could stop them, the sobs shuddering out from the very depths of me.
Cole wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him, his T-shirt instantly soaked where I laid my head on his chest. “You’ll get through this, Hannah.”
“I keep seeing my mum’s and dad’s faces. I watched them go through hell when Ellie was diagnosed with her tumor and I saw it in their eyes again when I was lying in that hospital bed. Their whole world nearly disappeared along with me and it’s my fault.” I sobbed harder.
“Ssh,” he soothed, pulling me closer. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everything’s going to be okay.”
The truth was, I was scared. I wa
s scared one wrong move could rip life away from me. Suddenly pregnancy was something that could do that to me. It wasn’t rational. I knew the doctor had told me I could go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, but the fear of another ectopic pregnancy was too great. My fear forced me to grieve too young for what I always took for granted would be in my future.
Sitting up from the cold tiled floor of my bathroom, I swiped at my wet cheeks, and pressed my back against the bathtub, wrapping my arms around my knees to draw them into me.
My miscarriage, my near-death experience, and my grief changed me. It made me a bit of a loner. I lost most of my high school friends and I created a distance between myself and my family. Partly because I felt to blame for it all. I had acted recklessly that night with Marco, and in doing so I scared the utter crap out of the people that meant the most to me. They all became super-overprotective. To the point of suffocating me. That only made me internalize everything more.
I was depressed for months. Heartbroken.
In an attempt to try to pull me out of the dark, my parents were actually the ones who surprised everybody by suggesting I stay in student accommodations at university. They believed it would force me to start living again.
And it did.
Suzanne was crazy. She was never serious. She liked to party, and I found her carefree attitude addictive during a time when I really needed that.
I soon discovered, however, that my parents were worried about me getting pregnant again. Although they’d never admonished me for my stupidity, since nature had done enough reprimanding for the both of them, I knew I’d lost something from them. I’d lost their certainty in me. They worried that I’d make the same mistake all over again and that I’d put myself in danger.
So I went with Mum and I got the pill.
I’d been on it ever since, even though until Marco there had never been any real use for it.
By the time I turned nineteen I’d gotten through the worst of it, and standing on the sidelines, waiting for me to come back to them, was my family.
And I did.
They knew I would.
Waiting at the head of that line was Cole. He was the only positive thing to come out of it all. Since the moment I’d collapsed in his arms, a bond had formed between us, gradually growing until we counted each other as best friends. He had always been there in those dark days to assure everyone else that I was still in there and that day by day I was making my way back to them.
Eventually I moved on.
I tried to let it all go.
Until Marco. He came crashing back into my life. No one but my dad knew he was the one who had got me pregnant and left me. I felt all alone again. I couldn’t talk to my dad about it. That was too weird, too uncomfortable, and so it brought everything back.
I tried to fight through the hurt and disappointment to reach for rational thought. Marco hadn’t known I was pregnant. If he’d known it would have been a different story. I was sure of that. It wasn’t his fault any more than it was mine.
Okay, if he hadn’t left me I would have had him by my side when I needed him. Maybe the days wouldn’t have been so dark. However, he’d explained why he left. And Cole had been right. I might not like it, but his explanation was a good one.
I forgave him.
My fingernails dug into my knees.
But to know now that he’d not only returned to Edinburgh without looking me up, but that he’d returned and gotten some other girl pregnant and been there for her… It was devastating.
All that pain was back full force again.
It didn’t matter if it wasn’t rational. I felt it. I felt it scoring my insides.
The hardest thing I’d ever been through and he wasn’t there for me.
But he’d been there for Leah.
I knew I shouldn’t have let him back in.
I couldn’t forgive him this.
CHAPTER 19
“T
he turkey looks burnt.” Dec made a face at the dead bird as he approached the dinner table.
Mum had gone all out¸ just as she did every year, and the table looked beautiful.
The turkey did not at all look burnt.
“What?” Mum squawked as she hurried into the room, carrying a bowl of potatoes. Her eyes flew to the bird in panic.
I shot my brother a dirty look, ready to reprimand him for teasing Mum when she was anxious, but Dad beat me to it.
“Declan, stop being an idiot and go help your mum get the rest of the food through from the kitchen.”
Dec grunted at the order but didn’t argue with it.
As soon as he was out the door, I made a face at my dad as I rounded the table to take a seat next to Ellie. “Do you think he’ll be passing that irritating stage of teenage idiocy anytime soon? He is eighteen – shouldn’t he be over it by now?”
“I heard that!” Dec shouted from the hallway.
I bugged my eyes out at Ellie as she giggled. “Ears of an owl.”
“An owl?” Joss smiled, amused, as she helped Beth, Luke, and William settle at the kiddie table.
“Yes,” I said. “I do believe they have the sharpest hearing in the world.”
“I do believe you know a whole lot of crap that no one cares about,” Dec said as he returned to the room with a bowl of steamed vegetables.
“Ha.” I greeted him with a grimace. “I do believe I know whose Christmas vouchers are getting canceled if he doesn’t stop being an irritating d-i-c-k.”
“Ah.” Adam sighed contentedly, sitting on Ellie’s other side. “Now it feels like Christmas.”
Ellie giggled into her glass of water.
Mum glared at us both as she set down the last bowl of food and slipped into her seat at the head of the table across from Dad. “Both of you zip it and eat.”
“She’s the one that started it earlier on,” Dec huffed, sitting down next to Braden. “She’s been on my back since she got here. I don’t understand why she stayed the night when she has her own place. And it’s not my fault she’s in a shitty mood because she got dumped.”
I sucked in my breath and everyone with the exception of Braden and Dec tensed. Braden’s reaction was to smack Dec lightly across the back of the head. “One, don’t swear in front of the kids. Two, she didn’t get dumped, she did the dumping. And three, you’re eighteen. Grow up and stop being a pain in the a-r-s-e to your sister. Apologize.”
I was too busy avidly staring at my empty plate to see Dec’s reaction to that. I was attempting to regain control of my breathing after my brother’s words had winded me.
All day I’d been doing my best to forget.
The last few weeks had not been easy, to say the least. I’d had to explain to everyone that Marco and I had broken up, but of course I couldn’t explain why. I didn’t get into it, and I tried my best to appear as unaffected as possible. However, no matter what I said they were all convinced that I was the devastated party in the breakup.
“I’m not devastated,” I’d lied to them on more than one occasion. “We were barely together two months.”
Yet the truth was I missed him so much I was in pain. All the time.
I was completely at war with myself.
In the mornings I would wake up alone but I would feel the press of his warm body against mine like a phantom in the room. I’d remember Marco was out of my life and that warmth would disappear and I was left alone in my flat. My flat that had once been home and now just felt empty and cold.
Like its owner.
When missing him became too much, I’d reach for the phone, and just as I was about to dial his number, I’d remember. How much it hurt. Why it hurt. And why we were no longer together.
Of course it made things easier that Marco didn’t call or come around. I’d packed up the things he’d left at my place and had Nish return them to him. She did it for him. Not for me. Nish and I weren’t really speaking to each other, which made for a very wintry atmosphere in the staff room. I discovere
d she’d known all along that Marco had a son. He’d asked her to stay quiet on the subject until he had the chance to tell me. Nish was equally pissed off with me for reacting to the news the way I had. She was under the impression I was a selfish, coldhearted bitch.
Nish and Marco could think what they liked, as long as I had space to lick my old wounds and try to make sense of everything.
Being around family helped. I’d stayed with my parents on Christmas Eve and I intended to stay with them right through until the day after Boxing Day. Although Liv, Nate, Jo, Cam, and Cole were celebrating Christmas with their own families, my parents’ house still felt full, it still felt warm, and it felt safe.
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