Kate sat on the toilet shaking the plastic stick in her hand, but it didn't work like that unfortunately, that second blue line stared back at her defiantly anyway. It had been one time, I mean it literally had been the night she lost her virginity. A tear filled hoarse laugh escaped from her throat as she remembered the night it happened. It had been everything she had imagined it would be, more even. Everything she imagined it would be until the next morning that is, when she turned around to face him excited to see him and she still remembered seeing his face, feeling the smile die on her face when she saw the regret in his eyes and she just knew. She had felt ill, ashamed, embarrassed that it hadn't been the same for him as it had been for her. He had been kind to her of course, if anything he tried too hard to make it better but that night for him at least had spelled their end as partners in crime. He hadn't liked that she was underage, although barely, he hadn't liked that in a moment of inebriation some imaginary line had been crossed between them. She had fought for them as best she knew how, told him over and over that it was fine, good even that she had liked it. She told him repeatedly she had wanted him since the beginning, that she trusted him more than anyone left on this planet but no amount of telling him she had wanted it seemed to make any difference. Thinking back on it made her face flush that she had been so desperate to make him stay. He though, was just so convinced that he had fucked up and kept finding reasons for them to part ways.

In the end he had told her they wanted different things, she wanted to find Scott and Seth wanted to stay away from all things culebra. This part of the argument had lasted for days but it finally happened on the side of some dusty road in nowhere Mexico he finally snapped. He handed her almost all of the money they had made from their last heist, a fake passport with her picture in it and the keys to the car. The last image she had of him was seared into her skull; his black suit clad back walking into the distance. She had sat there in that stuffy car watching him disappear for minutes, fuck maybe hours she had no idea, as she cried, deep gut wrenching tears, but in the end it changed nothing. So in the end she picked the best direction she knew that headed towards the border and just start driving and went in search of Scott. Scott who could literally be anywhere, Scott who could literally be nothing but dust on a road somewhere by now.

Now, two weeks later, she was sat on a toilet in a gas station bathroom in the states staring at the same second blue line appear on her second test in the twenty minutes. She was pregnant and she had no one left in her life to turn to and had nowhere left to go. Bethel was out because it would be nothing but a world of questions and accusations and suspicious glances. Her family, they were gone and for all she knew Seth too could be dead by now.

So she did the only thing she knew she could do, she made a plan. Her life the past nearly four months had been nothing more than a series of plans, some good and some worse than awful. This one though had to be the kind to keep her afloat and steady and sane long enough to have a baby and then raise them. She stopped in the first decent looking town she found and got herself a job, booked herself a doctors appointment and went to the local community college to look up courses. She needed to start making some long term decisions and not just day to day anymore, she wasn't going to raise a baby on measly diner wages forever. So she got a copy of her graduation certificate and enrolled in all the coursework she could both manage and afford while working to get herself a qualification worth a damn. From that day on she worked every shift she could get and attended every lecture she could squeeze in to her schedule. It wasn't perfect and it meant she literally had a life no teenage girl would want for herself but this was not just about her anymore.