Chapter 58
Bellamy didn't feel particularly rested the next day, but he'd finally gotten to the point where he'd fallen asleep for a couple of hours. It was better than nothing. He woke up and got out of bed when his mom did. She had to head into work to make up for taking the day off yesterday. But she still found the time to make him breakfast. Nothing fancy. Just a bowl of cereal. But it was still breakfast, and he hadn't been motivated to make it himself.
"Do you want anything else to eat?" she asked as she wiped down the kitchen counter.
"No, this is fine." He was mostly just down to the milk now, but there were still some soggy bits of cereal left. If he got hungry later, he'd find something to eat. She didn't need to wait on him. She had a job to get to.
His mom, of course, kept being the best mom ever, and instead of grabbing her purse and heading out, she sat down at the table with him and asked, "How are you feeling?"
He shrugged and mumbled, "Got a headache. Not surprising. I spent all day yesterday drinking." He wasn't exactly hungover, though, so he wasn't opposed to a few more drinks today.
"Maybe you should go see Clarke," his mom suggested, "talk to her."
He'd thought about that, but he couldn't envision it going well. "I wouldn't even know what to say," he admitted. "Any ideas?"
She sighed. And she didn't offer any ideas up.
The door opened, and in came Octavia, dressed in either pajamas or sweatpants. He couldn't really tell. Either she'd just woken up, or she was on her way to work out. "Hey," she said. "Sneakin' breakfast, huh? Or did you just stay here all night?"
He didn't even look up at her.
"Octavia, now's not really a good time," their mother said.
"For what? Brother/sister bonding? Didn't think so." She plopped down in the chair next to him and tapped her fingers against the table impatiently. She waited a few seconds, then said, "Bellamy, this is driving me crazy. I'm really worried about you. Will you please, please just tell me what's going on?"
He'd meant it last night when he told her she didn't wanna know. After he told her, she wouldn't be able to look at Clarke the same way again.
He met his mom's eyes for a split second, and she just nodded encouragingly. He knew he had to tell her. Octavia had almost become an aunt back in middle school. She deserved to know.
...
"Clarke, sweetie, wake up. Wake up."
Clarke didn't want to wake up. Somehow, she'd managed to have a pretty good dream. She dreamt about Bellamy, just being with him. They weren't even anywhere, specifically, but . . . they were together. At least they were in her dream.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she thought about was that they weren't together. He wasn't the one waking her up; her mom was. "You need to eat something," she said softly.
"Mom?" Clarke squeaked out. What was she still doing there? Had she stayed all night?
"I'm here," her mom said. "Look, I made you some breakfast." She held up a plate of eggs and pancakes and sausage.
Normally, Clarke wouldn't have hesitated when it came to food. But her appetite just wasn't there right now. "I'm not hungry," she said.
"Honey, you need to take care of yourself," her mom said. "You're still pregnant."
"This time," she whispered, just loud enough for her mom to hear it. She was still pregnant this time.
Her mom exhaled heavily, set the breakfast plate up on the nightstand, and sat down on the floor next to the bed. "Clarke," she said. "I need to tell Marcus about all of this."
Clarke had almost forgotten that he didn't know. Part of her had just assumed that, somewhere along the line, her mom had probably confided in him but made him promise not to ever speak about it. "Go ahead," she said, slowly pushing herself up into a sitting position. Kane's reaction was one of the ones she wasn't dreading. He worked with plenty of girls who got pregnant in high school. He wouldn't judge.
"You can be there if you want," her mom said.
"No. No." Even though she knew her future stepdad wouldn't shun her for this, that didn't mean she wanted to be there when her mom told him. Besides, maybe it was a conversation that was best for them to have privately. "I'll have to tell Raven," she decided. "And Harper. Everybody." Now that the secret was out, her friends deserved to hear about it from her. "Everybody's gonna know." What would they think of her after they found out? The stigma of having an abortion was bad enough, but what if they felt betrayed, too? Bellamy wasn't the only person she'd kept secrets from.
"That's not something you have to do today," her mom said. "What about your father? Have you talked to him?"
Clarke shook her head wordlessly. "Have you?"
"No." Her mom looked down at her lap, and Clarke knew she was dreading that inevitable conversation. Still, she offered anyway, "Do you want me to call him, tell him what's going on?"
"Sure," Clarke said. "But try not to fight about it all over again." Her unplanned pregnancy had basically ended her parents' marriage, so she doubted her dad was going to be any happier to talk about it than her mom was. Even after the decision had been made, they'd just continued fighting about it, with her mom insisting that an abortion had been the right thing to do and her dad insisting that it shouldn't be used as a form of birth control. At first, Clarke had assumed they would eventually stop fighting about it, but they never had. It'd been an ongoing argument all the way up until their divorce.
"Can I ask you something, Mom?" she inquired.
Her mom looked at her with tired eyes. "Anything."
Anything? That really opened up the door then, so Clarke went right for a big question. "Why didn't you try to get me to keep that baby?"
Her mom inhaled shakily, blinked back tears, and answered, "I was scared for you. I wasn't sure what would happen if you did."
"But you're a doctor." Out of all the professions, she assumed that someone in the medical field would be a strong advocate for keeping a baby.
"That's right, I'm a doctor," her mom said, "which means I know the statistics. I know that half of teen moms drop out of high school, and most of them don't have a college degree by the time they're thirty. I know that twenty-five percent of them have a second child within two years. I didn't want that for you."
"Yeah, but adoption . . ." She really wished she'd entertained that idea more, especially now that she actually knew what it was like to feel a baby kick. "Dad tried to convince me to put it up for adoption, but . . ."
"Do you really think you would've been able to go through with that?" her mom countered. "Do you think Bellamy would have let you?"
At the time, that was what she'd used to justify her lack of consideration for adoption. Bellamy. The fact that Bellamy would want to raise the baby, whether he was with her or on his own. His own father had never made an effort to know him; he wouldn't have allowed himself to be an absentee parent.
"Look, Clarke, I'm not trying to say that what we decided to do was right," her mom acknowledged. "But it wasn't wrong, either, and I don't want you feeling like it was wrong. It's your body. You get to choose what happens to it."
"But it was a bad a choice," Clarke argued. "I should've just had the baby." She put her hand on her stomach, and her voice became tearful once again. "I see Avery on the ultrasound, or I feel her kick, and I love her so much. But she wouldn't even be here if I . . ." What even happened to a baby when it was that small? It wasn't developed yet, so could it think? Or move? When it got sucked out of her body . . . did it hurt?
"I know," her mom said. "I know, sweetie. It's normal and natural to feel guilty, even though you don't have to."
"No, this is more than that," Clarke said. "I feel like a monster."
"You're not the only woman who's had an abortion," her mother reminded her. "And you are not a monster."
"But I kept it from Bellamy. We all did. You, me, Dad . . ." That was what differentiated them from the other people who had gone through this. "What's wrong with us? He didn't deserve this. He's a good person. He's the best person I know. And he's a good father." Here he was stepping up in every way imaginable with Avery, after she'd robbed him of that chance with a child of his own. "Face it, Mom," she said. "We can justify the abortion all we want, but there's nothing we can tell ourselves to feel better about lying to him. There's no excuse for that part. There's not even a good explanation."
"We were trying to move on," her mom said. "We thought it was for the best."
"But it wasn't." This secret was ruining everything now, so she hated herself for ever keeping it. "I should've told him," she said regretfully. "It's not like I ever forgot about it. I tried not to think about, but every once in a while . . . I couldn't help it." She'd gotten pretty good at blocking out all thoughts of it, but subconsciously, when she'd been sleeping . . . that's when they'd yelled at her the loudest. So many dreams, dreams about Bellamy leaving her . . . it'd all been leading up to this.
"Did you ever think about telling him?" her mom questioned.
It would have been nice to lie and say yes, she had. But . . . "No." The longer she'd kept it a secret, the more vital that secret had become. "But when he proposed . . . I couldn't keep it from him anymore." That was another thing she would have loved to be able to say yes to. "God, look at us, Mom. You don't even like him, and you still feel bad for him."
"It's not that I don't like him," her mom corrected.
"Oh, please."
"No, I'm serious," she said. "He's really grown up and proven how much he loves you."
He really has, Clarke thought. Was there anything that proved a guy's love more than what Bellamy had done for her?
"It's just that . . ." Her mom hesitated, biting her lip, then said, "From the second you told me he was back in town, I knew we'd end up here. So if I didn't welcome him back into our lives with open arms, it wasn't because of him. It was because of you. Because I wanted to protect you from all of this."
But this was all her fault. Her mom couldn't protect her from something she'd created.
Her mother wiped her eyes and got to her feet. "Excuse me," she said as she left the room. "I'm gonna go make a phone call."
To my dad, Clarke thought. That was gonna be . . . something. That was a conversation that had the potential to be almost as emotional as her conversation with Bellamy had been.
She forced herself to get up and out of bed, even though it was tempting to just stay there, and she went about her morning routine sluggishly. Bathroom. A quick shower where she didn't even wash her hair because she didn't feel like it. Brushing her teeth. Usually, this was the day of the week where Bellamy would have her stand up against the wall and would snap a picture of her belly from the side view.
She only ended up eating a few bites of the breakfast her mother had made for her, so she brought it downstairs and set it on the counter for her mom to eat when she came back inside. She was out on the back porch in the midst of what appeared to be a very heated phone call. She kept whirling her arms and hands and talking very exaggeratedly, so unlike she did when she was in doctor mode. When she was in ex-wife mode, her tone was a lot more . . . agitated.
When the doorbell rang, she stupidly got her hopes up for a moment and thought that maybe it was Bellamy. It wasn't until she actually pulled open the door and saw his sister standing there that she realized how dumb she was. Bellamy wouldn't ring the doorbell. He lived there, too. "Octavia," she said, quickly assessing the look on the younger girl's face. Octavia wasn't pleasant in the typical sense, but she usually at least cracked a smile when she saw Clarke or said hi to her or something. But there was no smile and no greeting this time. Instead, Octavia just asked, "Can I come in?"
He told her, Clarke realized. Of course he had. Despite whatever little arguments they may have had, Bellamy and Octavia were as close as siblings could be. Clarke stepped aside, holding the door open, and let Octavia into the house. "I'm guessing you know," she said, shutting the door.
"Yeah." Octavia folded her arms, roamed into the kitchen, and said, "Bellamy told me and my mom everything."
Clarke's chest tightened. Of course he'd told his mom, too, but . . . Aurora? Aurora knew? Oh god, she thought. That was a woman she had so much respect and admiration for, someone she hoped to emulate in the motherhood department. She hated feeling like she'd let her down, too.
As concerned as she was about what Bellamy's mom might think about her now, it still paled in comparison to how concerned she was about Bellamy himself. "How's he doing?" she asked his sister.
Octavia grunted, "He's a mess, Clarke. Obviously."
That makes two of us, she thought. But she didn't say it, because she didn't want it to seem like she was looking for sympathy. She knew she didn't deserve that.
"Look, I'm not here to judge you for having an abortion," Octavia said, her voice low and serious. "We live in a day and age where you have a choice. And if that's the choice you made, then that's the choice you made." Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head in disbelief. "But how could you make it without Bellamy? I mean, here I am, only Aunt Octavia, and I feel devastated. I can't even imagine how he feels."
"I . . . I made a mistake," Clarke stammered.
"Yeah, you're damn right you did. But then not telling him about it for all these years, especially after you guys got back together . . ." Octavia's face contorted in . . . what was that look? Disgust? Disapproval? Both? "That wasn't a mistake; that was a choice," she said. "A really horrible one."
Clarke couldn't even disagree with that. Because it was true. A mistake had been having so much sex in the first place, not making Bellamy wear a condom every single time, even though everyone knew the pill wasn't a hundred percent effective. What she'd done to Bellamy, though, wasn't even comparable to that. It wasn't an accident or something that had just happened because of carelessness. It was a conscious decision she'd made and stuck to for nearly six years now. "You're right," she admitted. "I know what I did was wrong. And it's okay if you never forgive me."
Octavia hesitated, as if she were thinking about that for a moment, and then she said, "I can forgive you. If Bellamy does."
Right now, the prospect of getting forgiveness from him seemed . . . almost impossible, or at the very least, far away. "Do you think he will?" she asked, praying, hoping he could find it in his heart to do so.
Octavia's response wasn't a particularly reassuring one, but at least it was honest. "I don't know, Clarke." She shook her head, walked past Clarke, and let herself out.
Clarke shivered, even though she wasn't cold. She was scared, though, scared that this was something she and Bellamy couldn't overcome. It wasn't like she'd cheated on him. No, that would have been easier than this. This was a deeper betrayal, the kind that could possibly cause her to lose him forever.
Wouldn't be the first time, she thought sadly. She'd lost him before.
...
Clarke had never been one for superheroes, or imagining she had superpowers or anything like that. But when it came time for Bellamy to leave, she'd never wanted a superpower more. If she could have, she would have frozen time just to keep him there.
They stood out in her driveway next to his truck, holding hands, neither one of them saying much. He'd stopped in and said goodbye to her mom and dad, not that they cared. Clarke could practically picture her mom inside right now, dancing with joy. The day she'd been waiting for was finally here. She'd try to act sympathetic when Clarke went back in, but deep down, she'd be celebrating.
Bellamy's thumb grazed the back of her hand, a simple touch that somehow felt so electric. She couldn't imagine holding hands with some other guy, kissing him, dancing with him. Nobody else at school, guy or girl, sparked anything in her like this. And she was starting to get so worried that, once he was gone, nothing would ever spark again.
"So this is it, huh?" she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. "It doesn't feel real."
He breathed out a long sigh, gave her hands a gentle squeeze, and said, "I can call you when I get settled in."
She shook her head. "No, you shouldn't." If they started talking on the phone, she was just gonna lull herself into thinking nothing had changed. But he was moving to another state, so of course things were changing. "I'm not your girlfriend anymore," she reminded him. Technically, this was a break-up.
"Yeah," he said, "but you're still . . . you."
Her breath caught for a moment. When he said things like that, she wondered just how much she meant to him. Just how much did he like her? How close had they gotten? Instead of asking those questions, though, she said, "This is supposed to be a new chapter, though, remember?" He had a whole athletic career ahead of him. And she had . . . junior year.
"Yeah," he said unenthusiastically. "Well, I'll be back for a couple days around Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. We can hang out then."
"Yeah," she said, although she wasn't sure what that would entail. "Maybe." Hanging out would probably lead to sex, and sex would just complicate this whole thing even further. It might delude her into thinking they were strong enough to make the long-distance thing work. Might even make her believe that she could still hold his interest, even when he was surrounded by thousands of beautiful college girls.
"Maybe," he agreed. His eyes flittered down to her lips, and then he lowered his head to kiss her. She tried to savor it, the feel of his mouth against hers, the taste of his lips. Because it had to last.
When he pulled back from the kissed, he managed a half-smile and asked, "Are you glad you lost your virginity to me?"
As sad as she was, that made her laugh. Just a little. "Best decision I ever made." Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that it would end up amounting to . . . this. Whatever this was.
He kissed her again, a bit more insistently this time, and it was the kind of kiss that could have gone on for hours. If they'd still had hours to spend together. Which they didn't. He had to get home so his mom could drive him to the airport. He had a plane to catch. He had places to be.
As hard as it was to tear her mouth away from his, that was exactly what she did. "You have to go," she told him.
Eyes staring straight into hers, he echoed, "I have to go," slowly. But he still didn't move. "Right."
For a moment, she wondered if he was reconsidering. And she felt horrible for wanting him to reconsider, for wanting him to decide that what he had going here with her was more important than anything UCF could promise him. But for a moment, that was exactly what she wanted.
Gradually, his hands slipped from hers, until only their fingertips were touching. He stepped back, and even those came apart. He kept his eyes on her the whole time he opened up the door to his truck and stepped up onto the ledge to climb inside. "Bye, Princess," he said quietly, still never breaking the eye contact.
She couldn't say goodbye back. She couldn't say anything. The lump in her throat made it impossible to speak, so she just forced a small smile and waved goodbye to him.
Finally, he lowered his head, got into his truck, and shut the door. She stepped back, watching him closely as he jammed the key into the ignition and twisted it to start the truck up. With one last glance at her in his side-view mirror, he shifted into gear and drove out of her driveway. He paused for just a second or two once he was out on the road, but then he continued forward.
Clarke stepped out onto the street, watching him go, watching the truck get smaller and smaller as it got farther away. She wondered if he was looking at her in the rearview mirror, or if he was just looking ahead now. It'd be better for him to just look ahead. And not look back.
When she could no longer see the truck, that was when it hit her that he was really gone. And sure, he'd come back whenever he could, but those would be really short breaks. And he'd need to spend time with his mom and his sister, too.
It's over, she thought, staggering back from the road. It's really over.
Pathetic as it may have been, she sat down right in the middle of that driveway and looked down at her hands. Hands that had been all over him last night and this morning while his had been all over her. They were just empty now, and she'd probably never be able to touch him like that again.
She felt touched. Not just physically, but . . . emotionally, too. On the inside.
Her body shook, and she began to cry.
...
Clarke wiped tears from her eyes, pissed at herself for this inability to stop crying. Pregnancy hormones didn't exactly mesh well with huge life drama. She didn't even know how she had any more tears left at this point, but she did.
When her mom came in from the back porch, she pulled herself together as quickly as she could and asked, "What did Dad say?"
"He wants to talk with you," her mom replied. "But I told him you'd call him later."
Thank God, Clarke thought. She was too worked up to talk to him right now.
"He's not happy with me. Imagine that." Her mom rolled her eyes and made her way over to the counter, where she picked up one of the now cold sausage links and took one bite out of it. "I saw Octavia was here," she said.
"Yeah." At least that was one more uncomfortable conversation down. "She and Aurora know."
Her mom nodded slowly and decided, "Then I think it's time I go home and tell my fiancé. Are you gonna be okay for a while?"
"Yeah." She wasn't incapable of taking care of herself just because she was pregnant and . . . in crisis. "I think I'm gonna go tell Raven."
"Are you sure?" her mother asked.
"Yeah. No more secrets." It was time to rip off the Band-Aid, so to speak, and inform everyone who was close to her that she'd been hiding something for a very long time.
...
Raven alternated between sitting down on her couch and listening and then standing up so she could pace around while Clarke revealed everything. She just took it all in and didn't say anything until Clarke was done talking. Then, she sat back down on the couch, covered her mouth up with her hands, and whispered, "Oh my god," in disbelief.
"Yeah." Clarke was expecting the same reaction from Harper, who, if she was home today, was the next stop on the honesty tour.
"Oh my . . . god, Clarke," Raven gasped, staring at her with a gaping mouth. "I had no idea."
"Only my parents knew," Clarke reminded her. Anything else, she would have told Raven. But some things were just too personal even for a best friend.
Raven dragged one hand through her hair, shaking her head in astonishment. "Sorry, I—I don't really know how to react," she admitted.
"You can be angry with me. Or disappointed," Clarke assured her. "It's fine."
Raven didn't deny being either one of those things, but she didn't get upset, either. "Is Bellamy disappointed?" she asked.
"Bellamy's furious," Clarke replied. "And heartbroken. And probably never gonna be able to forgive me. Not that I deserve forgiveness."
"Bellamy loves you," Raven said.
"Not right now he doesn't." And she couldn't blame him at all for that.
Raven sighed heavily and kept shaking her head. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Clarke, this is bad," she said. "Really bad. I'm kinda shocked right now." Her brow furrowed, and she seemed to be thinking about things, maybe wondering if there were any clues she could have picked up on, any hints or signs. "That's why you changed so much junior year, though, isn't it?" she said. "Why you withdrew from things. You quit cheer because . . ."
"There wasn't much to feel cheerful about," Clarke filled in. "I wanted out of the high school spotlight. I just wanted to . . . forget. So I threw myself into the academic stuff. Didn't date. Finished out high school on a studious note instead of a social one." She just hadn't wanted to draw attention to herself, but that hadn't stopped people from talking about her. In fact, her last two years of high school had actually been . . . pretty miserable. And very lonely.
"I always wondered," Raven said. "But I just figured it was all because you were missing Bellamy. But turns out, you were . . ."
"Missing Bellamy's baby?" That hurt to say. Bellamy had made a baby. With her. And as much as she did believe in a woman's right to choose . . . she really had ended up getting rid of it, hadn't she?
"Oh, my mind is, like, blown right now," Raven said, pressing her fingertips to her temples. "I should've known. I've been an awful friend."
"No, there was no way you could've known," Clarke said. "I had the procedure done before I ever started to show. And my parents and I were really good at not talking about it. Too good."
"So . . ." Raven gave her a confused look. "So what made you finally decide to tell him then? Was it just too much?"
Clarke looked down at her lap, ashamed that she'd let it get this far, let it get to this point. "He proposed," she said, her voice cracking on the word. "I had to say no. And then I had to tell him why I said no."
"Oh god, Clarke." Raven pressed her whole face into her hands, maybe to conceal the tears in her eyes that Clarke had already noticed. When she lifted her head, they were still there, shining. "What're you gonna do?"
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I have no-" But before she could finish, into the apartment walked Murphy, a box of pizza in one hand, soda in the other.
"Hey, look who it is!" he exclaimed. "My leading lady." He set the pizza down on the coffee table, took a gurgling swig of his soda, and babbled excitedly, "Are you seeing the reaction to this trailer? It's already the fourth most-viewed video I've ever put out. And it's only been out for a day. I'm telling you, people are stoked. It's gonna be huge."
When he mentioned that trailer, all she could think about was Bellamy calling her his constant. The perfect words to end the perfect movie trailer about the perfect couple, right?
"What's wrong?" Murphy asked, alternating questioning looks between her and Raven.
Poor guy, Clarke thought. He had no idea what a shit-storm he'd walked into with this documentary. But he was about to find out.
...
That night, Bellamy stood out on the beach, looking at the reflection of the moon on the water. He hadn't intended to stay at the beach house this long, but when he'd found that Clarke wasn't there, he'd decided to just go stand out there. And think. And remember.
Months ago, he and Clarke had had a conversation right out there on that beach. An intense one. He remembered it vividly, because he'd been trying to convince her to be his girlfriend again, to let him be her boyfriend and let him step in as a father figure for her baby. But she'd been resistant. And now he knew why.
"For the past five years, I've tried to . . . forget. And move on."
Those words rang out in his head, louder now than they had been at the time. He knew now what she was referring to, but he hadn't known then.
"This isn't fair to you. I can't ask you to do this."
No wonder she hadn't thought it was fair.
"You make one choice, and it can just—it can influence everything."
She hadn't been talking about his choice to be with her now; she'd been talking about the choice she'd made when she was sixteen. The choice to have an abortion. Maybe even the choice to start sleeping with him in the first place.
"We can't just be together the way we used to be. We were just kids, and . . . We were so stupid, Bellamy. We were so stupid."
It all felt so obvious now, but it hadn't been at the time.
"I don't deserve this."
He kicked at the sand with his shoes, wondering what other things she'd said could have tipped him off. There were probably so many things, things he'd forgotten about or just not been paying close enough attention to. But even if he had been paying attention, he would never have imagined that she was hiding something so big, so damaging.
Staring at the ocean wasn't helping him clear his head. If anything, it was just making him feel like an emo son of a bitch, so he decided to head back inside and get what he had come for. Some clothes. Shoes. Things that he could take home and put in his high school bedroom.
As he was walking in the back door, Clarke walked in the front. They both stopped when they saw each other, frozen like two deer caught in the headlights. She was the first to say anything when she said, "Hey."
He didn't respond.
"You're here."
He didn't want to give her the impression that he was staying, so he said, "I just came to get a few things." He'd already put a few things out in the car, so he didn't have to run upstairs and get any more clothes. He was fine.
"Octavia came to see me," she revealed to him. "It's good that you told her and your mom. They deserve to know."
Yeah, they sure as hell did. His mom would have been a grandmother right now if . . . things had gone differently. And Octavia would have had a niece or nephew. The biological kind.
"I told Raven and Murphy and Harper, too," she said. "So they might call you or try to see you."
"Yeah, I'm really a sight to see," he muttered sarcastically. He hadn't showered in two days, and he was still wearing the same clothes he'd slept in last night.
"Well, you can stay for a while," she said, "and . . . maybe we could talk."
"No, I can't . . . I can't do that right now," he said, shooting that idea down right away. Eventually, he'd get to that point, but he was still trying to get a handle on how he was feeling. If they tried to talk right now, it wouldn't go well.
She frowned sadly. "You can't talk to me, but you can go talk to my mom?"
"It's simple with her, okay?" he said, not bothering to point out that he'd fought with her more than he'd actually just talked. "With her, I can just be angry. But with you . . . it's different." Part of him just wanted to put his arms around her and hug her and hold her and tell her everything would be alright. But another part could barely even stand to look at her. "And seeing you right now," he said, "pregnant with someone else's child . . ." He stared at her stomach for a few seconds, imagining what it would have been like to see her carrying his baby. "That really doesn't help," he said, walking past her on his way out the door. He felt like an ass for saying that, though, and when he got in the car, he actually debated going back inside and apologizing for it. Maybe it wouldn't have even been an apology to her as much as it would have been to Avery. Avery hadn't done anything wrong. None of this was her fault.
