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“I am,” I said solemnly. “I’m taking it very seriously.”

“I still think you should tell the coach about this.”

“Listen, if I can’t cut it on my own, I’ll call Carter.”

I had the five month appointment and cried when I found out it was a boy. All I could picture was a miniature Carter, and it broke my heart all over again.

It was around then I found out Carter had deposited another fifty grand into my bank account. I was elated at first, but the more I thought about it, the worse it felt.

Was this him writing me off for good?

Or worse. I felt sick suddenly. Had he somehow figured out about the pregnancy? Was this his way taking care of it without having to deal with me or the baby? A payoff? Or some sort of a sop to his conscience?

I almost contacted him then. To do what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe to ask him what the money was for or even to turn it down. But I knew I couldn’t do that. I didn’t only have myself to think about now. I couldn’t turn down help for my son. I had to think of him first. I was all he had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CARTER

Having to tell my whole family what had happened was its own special little slice of hell. I did it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

Their reactions were all exactly what I’d expected and still it was a blow. My mother was shocked. My father was deeply disappointed. My siblings were as judgmental as I knew they’d be. I told them all myself, figuring it was the better option than having it come from someone else, as it inevitably would.

I knew it was the better option, but that didn’t mean it didn’t send me into an even darker spiral of depression.

Days went by. Then weeks. I slept a lot, watched a lot of nonsense television in my room.

I knew Nova graduated. She approached me briefly to tell me she’d passed all her classes.

I was relieved, but my reaction was an absent-mended, “Oh, that’s good.”

I knew time passed, knew there were things I needed to do, but I felt a little anesthetized to life, and eventually I realized I was depressed.

At some point Nova told me, “I found out who made the video and released it.” Her voice was dead. Gaze flinty. It was troubling to see her eyes go hard like that. I was only used to them soft, but I realized then, in a disjointed sort of way, that her soft side was all for me.

I was sitting at the desk in my office, and she hovered in the doorway as though even walking in the room was off-limits to her now.

I studied her, tried to see for a moment what she was going through, but her face was closed off to me by that point, utterly stoic.

“Who?” I eventually asked, only mildly curious about it.

“It was Michelle. She confessed to me, said she was sorry, that she only did it out of jealousy.”

I just stared at her. “Jealousy?”

“She always had a crush on you, too. She said she’d called dibs. She said I violated girl code.”

I didn’t even know who the fuck Michelle was aside from Nova’s worst friend. “That’s insane,” I said, but there was no heat in it. I was barely in the conversation, as significant as it was.

Nova nodded and I realized tears were running down her face, though her expression was still holding. “I told her I would never forgive her,” she said emotionally, a break in her composure. “I’m never speaking to her again. I can take when she does awful things to me, but what she did to you . . . that I can’t take, can’t forget.”

“That’s good,” I said, not so much feeling that way as knowing if I were in my normal mindset that I would. “You shouldn’t be friends with people that don’t treat you well. You gave her enough chances.”

She was sniffling now, barely keeping herself from openly sobbing.

I should have gotten up to comfort her, but I just . . . didn’t.

“I should have listened to you the first time you said that. Carter, I’m so sorry.”