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“What’s going on?”
She twisted her hands together in her lap where she perched on the side of my bed. “Um. I don’t… I don’t even know where to begin. I… I fucked up.”
Instead of arguing with her and trying to convince her yet again that she hadn’t done anything wrong, I stayed quiet and let her finish.
“I’m pregnant.”
I stared at her, suddenly second-guessing my math. What the hell did I know about how long it took someone to look pregnant? Wait. I actually knew enough. And that wasn’t possible.
“How?” I blurted. “We haven’t had sex since the summer!”
Tears spilled out as she squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. “It’s not… it’s not yours.”
Oh, thank fuck. Thank fucking Jesus. I wasn’t a religious person, but right about now, I certainly considered it.
“Okay?” I leaned forward on my elbows, blowing out a long breath. “And I take it this isn’t a good thing, right?”
She blinked her eyes open in surprise. “You don’t sound very angry.”
I shrugged when I realized she was right. I didn’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other, besides feeling sorry for her having to deal with it. “I mean, we broke up, so…”
She started crying again, and I realized she looked guilty as fuck.
“Unless… did you cheat on me, and that’s when it happened?” I guessed.
She shook her head, but more tears leaked out. “Not exactly. But… it happened the night we broke up. I’m sorry,” she croaked. “I’m so sorry, Bett.”
Wow. That was… honestly, I had no emotion about it whatsoever beyond relief it wasn’t my baby.
Maybe I should have cared more that she’d gone and fucked someone right away. Maybe it said a lot about my relationship with Arden that I didn’t.
Because if Vaughn were to put an end to our… whatever the fuck this was… and immediately go sleep with someone else, I would lose my fucking mind.
“Hey, it’s okay.” I sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her, trying not to care that she might get tears on my game-day suit. “Is he… I mean, is the guy being a dick about it, or…?”
The way she looked up at me made me feel weird, like there was something I wasn’t understanding. “Bett.”
I started to feel a tremor of dread. “What?”
She scooted away, angled her body toward me, and took my hand. Hers was cold and clammy. I wanted to drop it and move further away.
“Bett. I made a terrible mistake. Do you remember the night we broke up? There was the campaign event at Ivy Hall…?”
I nodded numbly. “Yeah. Of course.”
“I stayed at your parents’ that night, Bett.”
“So then who did you…?” I began. My eyes widened in horror, and my breath caught. “No.” I shot to the other side of the room, crawling onto Vaughn’s bed until my back was pressed against the wall, and I was crushing his pillow between my fingers. “No.”
My chest felt heavy and strange, my stomach like it was going to upend and turn inside out, spilling all of its contents in the process.
“No,” I said again, more firmly this time, like the word alone could change the truth.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” Her words were garbled by sobs now. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Did he…?” I couldn’t even say the words. They were too awful. My father was a fucking monster, but was he that kind of monster? “Did he force—?”
I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t… this wasn’t happening. Was it?
