by Alex Wolf
Grant grinned slightly, but still avoided eye contact.
“My parents expect me to come home. But I could stay in California.” Kristen stared at Grant, looking for some kind of reaction. She got nothing. “Still a little while to think about it, I guess.”
“We have to stop seeing each other.”
The words slammed into her chest like they’d been fired through a shotgun. At the same time, it was like a cold shard of ice stabbed into her heart. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. He still wouldn’t look at her. She wanted to say so many things, but all of them caught in her throat. All she could do was stare.
As the words resonated, it felt like the walls of the place were closing in, and gravity was pulling her harder to the ground. Her chest constricted, and her tongue became thick in her mouth.
“What’d you say?” She managed to keep her words calm and collected.
“Look, this has been a lot of fun, but we both know it’s the right thing to do. We can’t be together.”
This was all a disaster. It couldn’t be happening. What was worse was he wasn’t being cold and mean. His voice actually sounded tender and loving. She knew he felt something for her. He was weak for her. And now he wanted to end it all.
Her chest heaved up and down as she fought for composure. Was it a panic attack? The last thing she wanted was to cause a scene in one of the most expensive restaurants in town.
What made it even worse was she’d gotten all worked up for nothing. She’d allowed her thoughts to take her into the clouds with thoughts of a proposal, and it made the crash that much more intense. “Y-you brought me here to break up with me?”
She felt tears form in her eyes, and she blinked them away. Kristen didn’t cry in front of anyone.
Grant craned his head around the restaurant, scanning for anyone who might be watching them.
“I brought you here because I thought you at least deserved this. I knew you wouldn’t take the news well. I didn’t want to take the easy way out with you.”
She didn’t know what to say. Even when he was breaking up with her, he was trying to be sweet.
She grabbed her napkin from her lap and tossed it in the middle of the table while she stood.
Grant rose at the same time and reached out for her elbow, but she yanked it away.
“Don’t touch me.” She whisper-screamed out of respect for the others in the restaurant, but people were already looking in their direction. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.
She saw two men glaring at Grant.
“Let me take you home.”
The bridge of her nose tingled, and she didn’t know if she could hold back the tears. She couldn’t remember ever feeling something like this. Like he had her shoulders pinned down and was punching her relentlessly in the stomach.
She nodded at him. A nod that said get me the fuck out of here, now.
Grant draped her jacket over her shoulders and hurried her out as quickly as he could.
Humiliation, rejection, and a million other emotions slammed into her repeatedly as they walked toward the car.
He opened the door for her, and she stepped in, still managing to hold in the tears as he drove her home in silence.
Grant looked over like he might say something a couple of times but then would just stare back at the road.
She didn’t want to talk about anything. She didn’t want to speak at all. Her stomach roiled anytime she even glanced in his direction.
When Grant dropped her off, he attempted to lean in and give her a kiss on the side of her head, but Kristen held her hand up. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
Truth be told, she thought she’d handled the news quite well, considering she wanted to flip the table over and throw her drink in his face. He’d broken her heart—completely crushed her. She opened the door and stepped out, pausing briefly as he stopped her.
“I’m sorry.”
She closed the door in silence. Didn’t even slam it. She walked up to her room and slipped into her bed.
She clutched her pillow to her chest and finally let her emotions take over. A tear slid down her cheek and onto the bed.
He’d broken her.
Chapter Eighteen
Grant had to admit, he knew it was going to be difficult breaking things off with Kristen, but he’d expected a completely different outcome. Once he dropped her off, he went home and drank more than he could remember. He finished off his bottle of whiskey and tried everything he could to forget the events of the evening.
The way she’d looked at him continued to haunt him through the night. It was impossible to get any kind of rest. He wanted to call her, text her, see if she was all right, but he had to let it run its course over the weekend. It was going to be the longest two days of his life.
He knew it would’ve been better to wait until the end of the semester to break her heart, but he had no choice. The longer he dragged on what they were doing, the more difficult it would make things when they finally did break it off at the end of the year. He couldn’t send her home to her family completely shattered.
Maybe this way the damage wouldn’t be permanent, and she could salvage some of her freshman year. She could heal faster this way.
And so could he.
He fought the urge to check on her. It would only make the situation worse. Not being able to talk to her was torture. Even though he’d broken her heart, he’d done the right thing. The nice restaurant. She deserved that much, at least.
He knew Kristen adored him. She would do anything he asked. She had to be devastated.
Fuck.
Maybe the restaurant wasn’t the best thing to do. She’d probably gotten excited, thinking he was taking things to the next level.
Why would she think that, though? What did she think would happen? That he would openly say, “Look at us! Please fire me immediately,” as he gave administration the finger?
Did she think they were going to move on in their relationship—get married even? She wasn’t stupid. She had to know that wasn’t a possibility. Surely, she wasn’t that delusional.
He’d warred with his brain over the decision. If he was honest with himself, he knew he’d thought about it too—contemplated a relationship with her. It was all about sex in the beginning, but now there was another part of the equation. There was another section of his brain that’d fantasized at times about a scenario where they could be more.
Finally, he managed to close his eyes and forget about her long enough to fall asleep.
When he woke the next morning, he quickly reached for his phone to see if there was anything from Kristen. He knew it was stupid to think there might be, but he could hope. What would she say to him? That he was right? That she wasn’t angry with him for doing what was best, and they could be friends?
It was Saturday, and he’d slept in much later than normal. He blamed it on the whiskey. It had to be true the way his head throbbed. He felt groggy as he grabbed his phone, and he swore under his breath when he saw it was dead.
Fuck.
He grabbed his charger and plugged it in before stepping into the shower. He wished there was a way he could erase this whole nightmare.
By the time Grant got out of the shower, he was much better. He needed to think about his next move. Normally, he fucked Kristen senseless all day on Saturdays, and his brain wouldn’t let him forget.
He missed her already. They always knew they didn’t have to hide the things they did off campus, but they always planned a way to make it look as though they’d run in to each other on accident—something that could happen to anyone at any time. It was almost like role-playing, and he would miss that. He’d miss the way she’d stare at him, and her eyes would widen in surprise when she laid eyes on him.
He couldn’t stop thinking about everything.
But today was different. Today, when he looked at his phone, he wasn’t going to have a text from her. He would return to his life of nothing and
no one. A life spent pondering how things would end up for him.
His stomach continued to tie itself in a knot. He shook his head and poured himself some coffee. He wanted to believe he loved Kristen more than anything, but he told himself he just loved the company. The situation. He loved the way she made him feel. He loved being wanted by a younger woman who was attractive. He loved the things she did for him.
Under the right circumstances, would he go running toward her, or would he pull away? The phone on the table chimed and pulled Grant out of his thoughts. He’d forgotten he’d left it there to charge. It lit up again. One after the other, almost back-to-back. Rapid-fire text messages.
“What the fuck?”
He walked over to the phone.
Jesus, she finally went off her rocker. Let it go.
He expected there to be a text begging him to reconsider or apologizing for whatever she did that made him break up with her.
He yanked the phone up to his face, his irritation growing stronger each time.
Nothing prepared him for the first message he saw, though.
“I’m pregnant, asshole.”
His back hammered into the wall with a loud thud, and he slid all the way down to the floor.
He stared out at his feet as a wave of emotions rushed through him, all of them at the same time. How could she be pregnant? She was on birth control. He knew it wasn’t a hundred percent effective, but it was pretty damn close. How could this happen to him, again?
His hands balled into fists, and his face reddened. Was this some ploy, some stupid game, to send him crawling back to her? After all, it would take a while before she started to show.
Was she capable of lying about something like this?
He didn’t want to think about the real answer, but it was an absolute yes. She was crazy. It was something he’d loved about her, but at the moment, was something he also hated. She’d gone to the restaurant probably thinking he was going to drop onto a knee and propose to her. Put a ring in the dessert. All that stupid shit had probably gone through her mind, and now he was paying for it.
He hadn’t told her about his past. If she’d known, he didn’t think she’d be capable of something like this. She’d know how it would hurt him. He had to consider her ignorance on the matter. But it still didn’t make it a less shitty thing to do.
Maybe she was pregnant, and it wasn’t his. He didn’t think that she’d fucked anyone else, but when you’re in the middle of a crisis, your brain goes to the worst possible places. Anything can be imagined. Was this some kind of trick to get child support out of him? The entire time, had she been setting out to trap him? Maybe the real father was a deadbeat, and she wanted to find someone with a job and something to lose to hold hostage.
Text after text came through, begging him to call her. He hesitated. It really could be his child, in fact it was highly likely.
He thought about the trouble he would be in from the school, news stations. They’d be all over this.
Even after thinking about all of that, there was a part of him that came alive in side. The thought of being a dad. Spending the rest of his life with Kristen, starting a family with her. In a perfect utopia, where people didn’t judge, he could easily imagine that life.
He didn’t want to stir up more issues between them, but if she was pregnant and he was the father, he had to do what was right. He had to step up and be there for her. At the same time, they had to sweep this news under the rug until school was out, or it would end him professionally.
Rumors about them having sex were one thing, but there was no way he could hide the fact that he’d gotten her pregnant.
His breathing became labored as he tapped the screen on his phone, and it felt like the world was suffocating him.
“Hello?”
“What do you mean you’re pregnant?” The words came out harsher than intended.
“Don’t be an asshole.” She sniffled as if she’d spent the morning in tears.
“Listen. If you’re playing some kind of game to—”
“Oh, fuck you! You know me better than that.”
Grant cringed and held the phone away from his ear. His head still throbbed from the gallon of whiskey the night before.
“Well, you’ve done some pretty crazy shit. How am I supposed to know?”
“This is real. I wouldn’t make up something like this. How could you even think that? You’re a real piece of shit.”
Grant thought back to her running to the bathroom at the restaurant.
Fuck.
He ducked down when he spoke and covered the receiver, as if there were someone in the room watching. “I thought you were on the fucking pill?”
“I was.” Her words came through gritted teeth.
“Then how the fuck did this happen?”
“Jesus. The pill isn’t a hundred percent. And you put your dick in my pussy and came inside of it. And here we are, genius. You’re a college professor. Surely you know how reproduction works.”
His jaw set, and he squeezed the phone in his fingers. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want anything from you. I just thought you should know you have a child growing inside of me before you toss me in the gutter like a piece of trash.”
Her words stung, and for a brief moment, the letter he received from Mercedes flashed through his brain. He sighed.
“If it’s true. I want to do what’s right.”
“We don’t need anything from you. This was a courtesy call. You won’t hear from us again.”
Grant cringed at her words.
“Kristen, look—”
The line went dead in the middle of his sentence.
Chapter Nineteen
It’d been nearly a week since she’d told him about the baby, and she still couldn’t believe his response. She didn’t know what to do. How could she be responsible for another human being when she could barely get her own shit together?
Kristen took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. She’d have to. That’s the way it was.
Her hands moved down to her stomach. There was no way she would give her baby up.
“It’s just me and you, kid. We’ll figure this out.”
It was funny, but she hadn’t said anything out loud about Grant in the last week. He was a fucking asshole and hadn’t even come by to check on her or tried to call her again. But she wouldn’t talk bad about her baby’s father. Not now. Not ever.
They didn’t need him. She would figure it out. At the same time, it felt like her world was falling apart, but the baby gave her hope she could do better, be better.
Failing her baby wasn’t an option. It hadn’t asked to be brought into the world.
She hadn’t tricked Grant, no matter what kind of bullshit he’d conjured up in his mind. She’d taken her pill, had checkups. She took all the precautions, other than him coming inside of her, of course. But it’d felt so right in the moment.
She’d thought about what would happen plenty of times, if she did happen to get pregnant by him. This was the last way she’d envisioned things going.
It was always a passing thought, though—dismissed as impossible due to his age and her being on birth control.
In her own little fantasies, she’d thought about different romantic ways to give him the news. Maybe at a nice restaurant, like the one he’d taken her to, or with a card in the place where they’d made their little miracle.
Each time she pictured the scene, it was full of happiness and love. He’d lift her up and twirl her around, kiss her, and promise to be the best dad in the world.
Sure, she thought he’d be shocked, and maybe a little concerned. He’d ask questions and what not.
But she never dreamed he’d react the way he did. Never would she have thought he would blow her off for a week or accuse her of lying and trying to manipulate him.
The man she’d fallen in love with had completely changed. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was sh
owing his true colors and really was a self-centered asshole who only thought of himself.
He hadn’t acted like his usual self as he’d driven her back the night of their date, either. Something was going on with him. Was there something else?
The old Grant never would have accused her of making up a pregnancy.
Various thoughts ran through Kristen’s mind, and she wondered how much of it was panic and how much was her seeing the situation more clearly.
Was he seeing someone else? Did he have multiple girls like her on his arm? Booty calls? Was it another girl in the class? Did he find out something that scared him away from her? Was it Bailey?
That bitch.
Maybe she’d gone to him and made threats or scared him away, just to be a dick. She wouldn’t put it past her.
Perhaps there was something that she’d done that threw him for a loop, but instead of talking to her about it, he decided to break it off completely.
The pregnancy was making her an emotional basket case. She’d never felt so many emotions rip through her body at once. One minute she’d be fine and the next want to tear someone’s head off. She’d forget things she’d just done or where she’d just put her phone. She’d already spent most of the morning crying, something she never did. The tears started up again and streamed down her cheeks.
She shoved her hand against her mouth, stifling a sob. It was the best she could do just to sit up in bed, let alone try to eat anything. It was three in the afternoon, and she hadn’t moved in hours.
Stefani walked in the room. “You all right?” It looked like it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, but once they did, she saw Kristen still lying in bed looking miserable. “You sick?”
“I need to leave.”
Stefani stared and then set her purse down and flicked on a light.
Kristen’s hands shot over her face.
“Are you crying? What happened?” Stefani ran over to the desk and grabbed the chair, then pulled it up to Kristen’s bed.
