Chapter 61

Another morning, another backache. What else was new? Clarke had long ago become used to waking up feeling uncomfortable, but falling asleep upright wasn't doing her any favors. At this point, even her pregnancy pillow wouldn't help her, though. She was just so . . . huge. And lonely.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that the same Hallmark movie she'd watched last night was now airing again. It hadn't been good the first time, so she fully intended to flip the channel. But she got distracted when she noticed a piece of paper sticking out of her sketchbook. It'd been too dark to notice it last night when she'd gotten up to go to the bathroom. But now that it was morning, it drew her attention completely.

Sliding the paper out of her book, her breath caught for a moment when she saw drawings that were not at all her own. In fact, they weren't drawings so much as they were doodles. But they mimicked the ones she'd done of Bellamy last night. On one half of the page was the high school version of her, cheerleading outfit, hair in a half ponytail. On the other side was her nowadays with her shorter hair and a pregnant belly. And in the bottom right-hand corner, where an artist might normally place their signature or initials, were two words written in all caps, familiar handwriting: I tried, it said.

She smiled to herself. Bellamy. He'd been there last night. He'd seen her drawings. And he'd stayed long enough to attempt some of his own.

A knock on the front door disrupted her thoughts. "Clarke? It's Mom."

Clarke didn't bother to get up and get the door. Her mom could let herself in. Besides, she was still looking at Bellamy's doodles. He had no artistic talent whatsoever, but it was sweet that he'd tried. Dammit, she wished she would have woken up when he'd been there, though. She woke up all the time during the night. Why couldn't her bladder have timed it right just this once? Then they could have talked. They could have talked for a long time. They really needed to.

The doorknob twisted and turned, and her mom eventually did let herself in. "Hi, honey," she said. "Did you just wake up?"

Clarke almost felt too dazed to respond. "Yeah," she said, sitting up straighter. She accidentally knocked the remote control off the arm of the recliner, but she didn't even care to grab it. Her mom, however, bent down and did that for her.

"Well, I'm sorry to swing by so early," she said, turning the volume on the TV all the way down. "I have to be at work soon. But I just wanted to let you know . . ." She swallowed hard, paused dramatically, and then revealed, "I ended my friendship with Callie."

Clarke's eyebrows shot upward in surprise. "Really?" She didn't want to be insensitive, but that was music to her ears.

"Yes. I confronted her about . . . everything," her mom said. "She admitted she told people, even though I asked her not to. She said she only told two people, but I doubt that's true." She shook her head in disappointment. "You were right, Clarke. She's not a nice person. It's just that . . . I'm not like you. I don't have friends. I haven't had friends ever since we moved here." Sighing deeply, she looked down at the floor and mumbled, "Your grandmother used to tell me I had a prickly disposition and that I'd be lucky to find a man who ever wanted to put up with me."

Even though Clarke wasn't about to mourn the loss of Callie from their lives, she couldn't deny that her heart went out to her mother. Socializing really wasn't her strong point. Making friends didn't come easily to her. "I'm sorry, Mom," she sympathized. "I mean, I really do think you're better off without Callie Cartwig in your life, but I'm still sorry."

Her mother blinked back tears, obviously trying to maintain a strong front, and said, "It's for the best." Undoubtedly she'd get upset later, though, when she wasn't over here or at work. Kane would probably console her. "What's that, sweetie?" she asked, motioning to the paper in Clarke's hand. "Were you drawing?"

"Oh, yeah," Clarke said. "Last night."

"Can I see?"

Reluctantly, Clarke handed over the paper.

Her mom looked it over curiously and remarked, "Oh, that's . . . very good."

"I didn't draw that. Bellamy did," Clarke informed her.

"Bellamy was here?"

"I guess. I don't know. I was asleep." Clarke really wanted the paper back, so she held out her hand, and her mom gave it back to her. "That's a good sign, though, don't you think?" she said. "At least he was here."

"But he didn't stay," her mom pointed out.

"No, but . . ." It was a small victory, and she had to take small victories where she could find them. "Come on, Mom, can't you at least pretend to be happy that my boyfriend might still care about me?"

"Oh, I'm sure he still cares about you," her mom said, sitting down on the arm of the couch. "And I know you still care about him."

"I love him," Clarke said. No matter what happened, she'd never stop loving him. Not ever. But she wondered if, on some level, that was what her mom still wanted, for the feelings to just disappear so that Bellamy could be out of the picture. "You don't want me to get back together with him, do you?" she asked quietly.

"No, if that's what you want, then I want that for you," her mother said. "But I'm . . . wary. This is a lot for any couple to overcome."

But we're not just any couple, Clarke thought stubbornly. She and Bellamy had overcome five years apart. They could get past this, too. Couldn't they? "Dad thinks we can overcome it," she said.

Her mom nodded silently, a contemplative look on her face, and when she spoke again, it was with a question Clarke didn't want to hear. "What if you don't?"

No, we will, she thought, dead-set on that. We have to.

"I know it's not fun to think about it," her mom said, "but I need you to know that, no matter what, you'll be okay."

Instead of getting angry that her mom would even put such negative thoughts out there into the universe, Clarke remained calm. She knew that this wasn't coming from a place of hostility. Her mom just wanted her to be strong on her own and to have faith in herself, which wasn't a bad thing. "I know," she said. Regardless of what happened between her and Bellamy now, she did still have things to look forward to. Motherhood, mostly. "But I don't wanna be alone," she said, unwilling to entertain the possibility that they wouldn't be able to get through this. Right now, she needed to believe that they'd get back together somehow. "And I don't wanna raise Avery alone."

"You won't be alone," her mother assured her. "I'm here. I'll help you."

"Look, Mom . . ." Clarke didn't want to hurt her feelings, but she couldn't take Bellamy's place. "Not that I'm not grateful, but . . . it's not the same." Bellamy wasn't just her boyfriend; he was her best friend, her soul mate. He and Avery were the two most important people in the world to her. "I think I'm gonna try to talk to him today," she decided, feeling a rush of determination. Knowing that he'd been there last night energized her. "It's time."

"What're you gonna say?" her mom asked.

"I don't know. It's not the kind of thing I can plan out." Whatever she said to him had to come from the heart. And it would. Because her heart had burst open a couple nights ago, and she hadn't bothered to stitch it back together yet.

"Right," her mom said, standing up. "Well, I should be getting to work." She glanced into the kitchen, though, and something on the counter caught her eye. "What's this?" she said, making her way over there.

"What?" Clarke asked, sitting up straighter.

Her mom picked up a large manila envelope, opened it, and peered inside. "Clarke," she gasped. "These are stunning." She pulled out one photo, and even from a distance, Clarke recognized it as one of the pictures from the maternity photo shoot. Murphy didn't have a key to her place, so he couldn't have been the one to bring those by.

"Bellamy," she realized quietly as that rush of determination intensified. He hadn't just shown up to doodle and leave.

...

There were more rooms in Arkadia high school than Bellamy had ever imagined. Back in the day, he used to think that he knew all the best places to sneak away with girls and make out, but now that he was a janitor and had the master key to every nook and cranny of the place, he realized how limited he'd been. There were more hidden spaces to that building than he'd known, and one of his personal favorites was this room tacked on to the library, full of old desktop computers that no one had any use for anymore. They just sat there collecting dust, so it was the perfect space for Bellamy to slip away and do a little . . . drinking. He thought he'd be alone there, but his boss Steve was the kind of guy who was everywhere at once on the job, and he walked in and found him when he wasn't even halfway finished with his beer.

"Hey, Bellamy, I need your help with-" Steve stopped abruptly when he saw him with a bottle in his hand. "What the hell are you doing?"

Wasn't it obvious? He was drowning his sorrows. "I was just taking a quick break," he said.

Steve motioned to the bottle and asked, "What is that?"

"Beer." It was usually only beer. None of the real hard stuff. He limited himself.

"I know," Steve said, "but why is it here?"

"Because I'm thirsty," Bellamy replied.

Steve groaned impatiently. "Would you use your common sense for a minute? You're in a school. You can't have that here."

"I used to have a flask in my locker," Bellamy pointed out. "They never caught me then; they won't catch me now." He wasn't a kid anymore. He was an adult, and if he wanted to have a drink throughout the day, then he could do it.

"Just go home then," Steve told him, sounding . . . fed up.

Shit, Bellamy thought, fearing that another firing would be on the horizon if he didn't pull his shit together. "No, it's fine," he said, setting the bottle down at his feet. He stood up and declared, "I'm here to work."

Steven shook his head decidedly. "Not today you're not. I'm serious, go home. You're no use to me when you're like this."

When he'd first sat down to drink, Bellamy hadn't thought about this, about the possibility of losing another job. But he was pretty sure he couldn't handle the humiliation of that. "Steve, I'm sorry," he apologized. "Look, forget about it. What do you need help with?"

Steve was having none of it, though. He muttered, "I'll see you tomorrow," and left the room. When Bellamy was alone again, he bent down, picked up his bottle, and drank the rest of it. He told himself it was because he didn't want some high schooler wandering in there and finding it, but really, it was just because he wanted it. Maybe even needed it.

Having the afternoon off meant that he didn't really know what to do with himself. So he drove around aimlessly for a while, then stopped and got a few groceries before finally heading home. When he got there, his mom's vehicle was already in the driveway, but he wasn't sure why since she usually didn't get home until later.

"Mom?" he called when he walked inside with a sack of food in his hand.

She sat on the couch and peered over her shoulder at him. "Hi, honey," she said.

"What're you doin' home so early?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

He wasn't about to tell her the truth, that his boss had sent him home for being worthless, so he lied and said, "I got my work done fast."

"Well, good for you," she said. "I didn't get much work done at all. I twisted my ankle this morning. Now it hurts to walk on it."

Crap, he felt like an idiot for not even noticing that she was sitting with one leg elevated on the coffee table, and she had ice on her ankle. "Are you okay?" he asked her, concerned as he set the sack down on the floor and moved closer to her to get a better look. "You need me to take you to the doctor?"

"No, I'm fine," she said. "It's just a little swollen, that's all. It could be worse."

Swollen was maybe an understatement. Underneath the ice pack was a swirl of black and blue. "Well, I'll make dinner tonight," he offered. Least he could fucking do. "I stopped and picked up some groceries."

"Thanks," she said, smiling gratefully at him.

"Maybe I could just keep getting groceries for a while," he said, bringing the sack of food into the kitchen. "That can be how I pay you back for . . . you know, the loan you gave me for that ring."

"You don't have to pay me back, Bellamy," his mom assured him.

"No, I will." Even though that ring wasn't on Clarke's finger, he'd still bought it. Partially with his mom's money. He owed her, and he wasn't about to just take her money. "You want anything to eat?" he asked as he quickly began unpacking groceries. He'd kind of forgotten where everything went. His and Clarke's kitchen was set up differently.

"Not right now," she said.

"To drink?" he asked.

"Maybe some water."

He grabbed a glass out of the cupboard, filled it up with some cool water, and then opened up the refrigerator, not for her, but for him. To grab himself a Budweiser can. Not a bottle this time. Just a can.

"There you go," he said, handing the water to her when he returned to the living room.

"Thanks." She took a sip, then gave him a look when he popped the tab on his can. A worried look? The same way he'd surveyed her ankle, she was now surveying him.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. "It's just . . ." She trailed off, looked down at her lap as though she didn't want to finish, and when she did, her voice was quiet. But she looked right back up at him. "You've been drinking a lot lately."

Yeah, he thought, not seeing it as a big deal. So what if he had been? "Well, I've been upset," he said. Under normal circumstances, he didn't drink as often.

"It's a little much, though," she said, "don't you think?"

Was it? Yeah, probably. But in his mind, he could justify it. In his mind, it was no big deal. He'd had his first taste of alcohol back in middle school, at a Halloween party where the parents hadn't supervised things as closely as they should have. He'd been drinking for half his life, and it'd never caused him any problems before. It'd never been that big of a deal at all.

...

Bellamy missed the parking lot. Those parties had been lit. This college party, so far, wasn't living up to the hype. Of course, it was summer, so campus was kind of deserted. But still, he'd expected the kind of drunken antics he'd seen in the movies. He wasn't gonna get too drunk, of course, because he couldn't risk getting caught and charged with something and then having his playing time reduced. But he'd enjoy watching other people get wasted.

A couple of guys from the team dragged him out to a frat party that night. The main activity seemed to be beer pong, which he wasn't horrible at, but he was better at throwing a football, so he kind of hung back and let his teammates have at it. He filled up a glass from the keg and roamed around the fraternity, interested to see if that was something he'd ever be interested in. Dorm life wasn't working out very well for him so far. Dexter spent more time listening to screamo rock than he did bothering to get to know him. How had they ever been paired up as roommates?

While he was wandering, a girl with curly dark hair approached him and struck up a conversation. It was casual enough. Her name was Sarah . . . or Shawna. He couldn't quite remember. But it was something that started with an S, and she was a sophomore. She lived in a sorority down the street and was taking summer classes. She was easy to talk to. She was friendly.

"So how are you enjoying your first college party?" she asked him.

He wasn't. Not really. Still just longing for the days of the parking lot. "It's loud," he said. Whoever was handling the music was blasting it so loud that he felt like he had to shout just to be heard.

"Yeah," she agreed. "You get used to it."

So she went to a lot of parties then. Maybe he'd see her around at a few more. "It's good, though," he said. "I don't really know anyone besides the guys from the team, so it's good to get out and meet people."

"You don't seem like you'd have a problem meeting people," Sarah/Shawna commented.

"No, not in high school." Back in Arkadia, he'd known his place, and it'd been a place at the top of the social hierarchy. Here, he thought he would be more outgoing than he actually had been so far. He'd never been shy before, and he wasn't technically shy now. But in the couple of weeks that he'd been at UCF, he'd spent more time reading than he ever had before. That was his nightly routine now. He sat up in bed and read for an hour. He told himself it was because he didn't want to seem like an idiot in all these college classes, but . . . it was more than that. Truth was, he sort of felt like he was struggling to find his footing here. Everyone back in Arkadia knew him and looked up to him, for one reason or another. But here, he was just another face in the crowd. And it wasn't even as crowded as it would be when the fall semester started up.

"Were you popular?" his female companion asked, keeping the conversation going.

He decided to answer modestly. "Kind of."

"How popular?" she asked. "Homecoming king or prom king?"

"Both."

She smiled. "Nice. I almost got prom queen, but there was just one girl more popular than me. So I ended up being the princess."

Immediately, he tensed. In fact, he nearly dropped the cup in his hand.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I just . . ." That one word, princess . . . it made him think about Clarke, and he'd been trying really hard not to think about her. When he heard a song that made him think of her, he changed it. When he saw someone on TV who looked like her, he went to another channel. He'd resisted the urge to call her or text her on more than one occasion, and he'd managed to stop thinking about her in the shower. But now, she was all over his mind again, every version of her. The cheerleader version, the beach version, and of course, the prom princess version.

Dammit.

"I better go check on the guys," he said, motioning to the beer pong table. "Our coach will kill us if we show up to practice hungover tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," she said, sounding mildly disappointed. "Well, find me again later."

He smiled at her and nodded as he walked away, but he had no intention of doing that, so he didn't commit to it. Sure, Sarah or Shawna or whatever the hell her name was . . . she was cute. And nice. And if he'd met her a month from now, maybe he would have moved on enough to keep talking to her, to flirt with her, maybe to even kiss her or do more than kissing. But right now, Clarke still felt like his girlfriend, and he had to wait for that feeling to go away before he moved on.

...

Bellamy looked down at the beer in his hand, knowing that it was different for the people around him. The college girls at UCF hadn't been able to understand why he'd been more interested in drinking by himself than making a move on them. Steve didn't understand why he needed to 'take a break' instead of just powering through his job. Even his mom, knowing everything that was going on in his life, couldn't help but be concerned about what she was seeing. "Yeah," he agreed with her. "You're right, I should . . . I should have some water, too." He didn't want her to worry about him, so anything he could do to put her mind at ease, he'd do it.

He headed back into the kitchen, beer in hand, and despite how much he wanted to down it, he poured it down the drain of the sink instead. And then he poured himself a glass of water.

...

It took Clarke all day to work up the nerve to go see Bellamy. Determined as she was, she was still anxious. Because there were so many things that could go wrong. He could tell her that the only reason he'd brought those pictures by last night was because he didn't want them anymore. Or he could say that his little doodle had meant nothing and wasn't something to get sentimental over at all. Or, worse, he could just slam the door in her face and refuse to talk to her. She didn't feel like he'd do that, though. If he wanted to completely shut her out, he would have had Raven or Murphy deliver the photos, and he wouldn't have stayed long enough to draw anything.

She drove over to his mom's house and knocked on the door and rang the doorbell, but no one came to answer. "Aurora?" she called. "Bellamy?" His car wasn't in the driveway, so he probably wasn't there. Which was a bummer, because she didn't feel like they could talk properly if he was out at Eligius or somewhere else.

The lights were on in the living room, but that didn't mean anyone was home. Feeling defeated, Clarke stepped down off the porch, took her phone out, and called her mother. "Hey, Mom," she said. "Do you think I could come over for dinner? I really don't wanna eat alone again tonight."

"Actually, I'm still at the hospital," her mom replied. "Double shift."

"Oh, fun." Clarke sighed, figuring she could always go eat with Kane. But that was kind of weird. Her friends were always an option, but they probably all had plans.

"I, uh . . . I heard that someone brought his mom in for an ankle injury," her mother revealed suddenly. "Someone you might wanna see?"

Clarke froze in her tracks, and for a moment. What the hell? Bellamy . . . was there? At the hospital? And her mom was actually cluing her into that fact? What other explanation could there be but a miracle? She had to go there. Talking to him in a public place was still better than not talking to him at all.

...

It felt weird for Bellamy to be at the hospital for something so . . . mundane. An ankle injury. Probably a sprain, but maybe a fracture. His mom had really resisted coming in, but she couldn't put any weight on it at all without nearly bursting into tears. He'd refused to just let her be in pain, so he'd insisted on bringing her in. They had a twenty-four hour emergency room in town for a reason. No need for her to suffer through the whole night.

They were the only ones there, and while she went to have her ankle X-rayed, he sat out in the waiting room and . . . well, waited. Tried not to think about how many hospital visits he'd logged with Clarke. Appointments, check-ups, ultrasounds . . .

The large doors of the emergency room made a loud noise whenever they slid open. Which wasn't often. Bellamy looked up whenever someone came in, though. It was usually a nurse or doctor, but he thought he was seeing things when Clarke walked in. The wind had blown her hair everywhere, and she was definitely wearing two different shoes but didn't realize it.

"Oh, my," the woman at the front desk said. "Is it time?"

Bellamy clung to the arms of his chair. Is it?

"No, not yet," Clarke said. "If it all goes according to plan, I've got another week and a half to go."

The woman smiled. "So close now."

"Yeah, it's crazy."

A week and a half, Bellamy thought. What was that, ten or eleven days? Then she'd be back in that hospital, as a patient this time. And where would he be? Would she even want him back in the delivery room with her anymore?

Clarke glanced into the waiting room and made eye contact with him. She excused herself from the woman at the desk and came in to sit down next to him. "Hey," she said softly.

"Hey." He tried not to look at her, but still, he had to ask, "Are you doin' alright? You and Avery."

"Yeah. We're good." A few seconds of silence descended upon them, until she said, "I heard you brought your mom in. Is she okay?"

"Yeah," he replied. He could have left it at that, but . . . it felt good to talk to her. About anything. "She hurt her ankle at work, and it just kept getting worse. She was just gonna tough it out, but I made her come in. Better safe than sorry."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Did she break it?"

"I don't know. They're doing X-rays. Could just be a sprain." He'd had a few sprains back in the day, and sometimes they took longer to heal than breaks did. It was gonna suck no matter what for her, so he was gonna have to make sure he stepped up and helped her out more.

"Well, I wanted to come check up on her," Clarke said.

"Yeah, thanks." He wondered how she'd even heard, but . . . it didn't really matter. She was there. And he was there. And they were actually talking. Not about anything that mattered, of course, but it was at least a conversation.

She hesitated a moment, then added, "And I wanted to see you, too. Of course."

"I'm fine," he said, trying not to put the attention on him. People had been paying enough attention to him all day. His boss, his mom . . .

"You know, Bellamy, we haven't really gotten to talk since . . ." She trailed off.

"Yeah, I know." If she was anything like him, though, she hadn't stopped thinking about it. "But I don't really think we should talk here."

"Well, you could've woken me up last night," she pointed out. "We could've talked then."

He shook his head. "No, I couldn't. You looked so peaceful." If he could have drawn better, he would have drawn what she looked like when she was sleeping.

"I haven't been," she admitted. "Not since . . ." Again, she let her sentence fade. "I miss you," she told him.

Yeah, he knew that. And he missed her, too. But missing someone didn't just fix everything. "This is really hard for me, Clarke," he said quietly. "I'm not trying to make things harder, but . . . I can't shut off what I'm feeling, either."

She nodded slowly, and out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw tears in hers. "Do you hate me?" she asked fearfully.

He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since she'd walked in those sliding doors. "No," he said. That wasn't possible. "But it's still hard. You were the one person I trusted more than anyone else in the world. I still can't believe you'd do this to me."

She swallowed hard and said, "I thought I was doing it for you. I thought it'd screw up your whole life to have a baby. I thought it'd hold you back."

"Yeah, well, I only made it through one year of college anyway, so it wouldn't have held me back from anything," he pointed out. Hindsight and all that. She couldn't have known that at the time, but it still made the whole situation sting just a little bit more. "Look, I'm not gonna lie to you and say I'm okay with you having an abortion," he said. That word caused her to shift uncomfortably, but he made sure to keep his voice low so the woman at the desk wouldn't overhear. "I wish you hadn't," he admitted. "I wish I would've known so I could try to talk you out of it. But you were pregnant, and you had a choice, and you made it. That's your right, and even if I don't agree with it, I can still respect it. Because it's your body; you're the one who gets to decide. But that's not even the biggest issue. Keeping me in the dark about it all this time?" He winced. "That's what I can't wrap my mind around. Because I haven't kept things from you, Clarke. What happened at UCF with that girl at that party . . . that was the biggest regret of my life, and I told you about it. I opened up. But you didn't open up to me."

Blinking back tears, she said, "I was scared you'd hate me."

"Well, I don't. We already covered that." So where did that leave them, then? That was what he was struggling with.

"But now you don't trust me," she recognized. "And that's just as bad. Bellamy, I've thought a lot about this over the years."

"You have?"

"Yes."

He wondered how often she'd thought about it, how many times he'd been holding her or kissing with her that she'd thought about what she'd done. "Then tell me about it," he said, feeling like he needed to know, like he needed to be able to picture it in his mind since he hadn't been there to go through it with her. "What was it like?"

She bristled a bit. "What?"

"When you went and had it done," he said. "What was it like?" If he was anyone else, he wouldn't have asked, but he'd been that baby's father. He felt like he had the right to know.

"It was . . . awful," she said. She hesitated a bit, for a few long, drawn-out seconds. Her eyes glazed over with sadness, and he saw a look on her face he'd never seen before when she started to remember. A haunted look. She didn't make eye contact with him. She just stared ahead at nothing. "It was a gloomy day," she recalled. "My mom went with me, but my dad didn't."

"Where'd you go?" He needed more. He needed to know.

"Baltimore," she answered. "It was a—a women's health clinic. There were protestors outside, holding signs. With pictures on them. Pictures of dead babies." She shifted around uncomfortably, and a few of the tears she was trying so hard to hold back fell onto her cheeks. "I almost changed my mind," she confessed. "But we got in there, and my mom handled all the paperwork. I couldn't even hold a pen; my hands were shaking."

He looked down at her hands and noticed they were shaking even now.

"When we got back to the room, I started to cry," she went on. "So she held my hand."

Part of him wanted to reach over right now and do the same.

"It was loud," she said. "The noise the machine made was loud and . . . I kind of felt this cramping. But it only took about five minutes."

Five minutes? he thought. He and Clarke had made a whole child together, and it'd only taken five minutes to . . . get rid of it? To get rid of a life forever?

"I remember thinking it should've taken longer," she said. "But after that, they took me to a room to recover for an hour. And there was a painting on the wall of a meadow with lots of flowers, and a farmhouse. I think it was supposed to be . . . calming. But it wasn't."

Hearing her recall a minute detail like that . . . it really did make him feel like he was there with her. He could picture it better now, and it actually made him feel . . . guilty. Because he should have been there with her. He should have called her or texted her once he got to UCF. He should have never given her up. If he'd still been her boyfriend instead of going off to chase his futile football dream, then she would have told him.

"How far along were you?" he asked her. In his head, he kept picturing a small bump, but maybe she hadn't had one.

"About two months," she said.

Yeah, no bump then. No wonder no one else had known. They wouldn't have been able to tell.

"It was a little too late to take the . . . abortion pill, though," she said. "They told me it might not have worked, so I had to do it the other way."

The machine way, he thought. It was like a vacuum, wasn't it? It just . . . sucked it out of there?

"A couple days later, school started, and I just acted like . . . like I'd just had a boring summer," she said, her voice cracking on the last word. "I didn't want anyone to know."

"Well, I think a lot of people know now," he said.

"Yeah. Callie made sure of that."

He frowned. "You told her?"

"No, but my mom did."

He grunted, pissed off that that was the source of their information leak.

"It's okay," she said, surprisingly calm about the whole thing. "I mean, it's not okay, but . . . I did it. And I'm not gonna deny it or hide from it anyone anymore. Besides, I really don't care what anybody else thinks. I just care about what you think."

"But I don't know what I think," he said. "I pictured everything in my mind when you described it just now, and part of me felt . . . sad for you. Like I wanted to be there with you. But then part of me is relieved I wasn't. And part of me's still angry. And then . . ." He stopped short of completing his thought, and shook his head. "This is so stupid," he mumbled. "Part of me just wonders if our baby would've had freckles like me."

Clarke's mouth opened, her bottom lip quivering, and she whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"No, don't apologize for that." He didn't need to hear those words from her anymore. He'd heard them enough. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm sorry for saying you killed our kid. I'm a guy. I have no right to judge you for that. You didn't kill anybody. You made a choice." He had to think of it like that, to put himself in her shoes and try to empathize. Otherwise, they weren't going to get anywhere. "It's the lie, though, Clarke," he said. "That's what gets to me."

"I know," she said. "And I'm sorry for that, too. But I realize how worthless an apology is."

As tired as he was of hearing her say she was sorry, he understood why she felt the need to say it. "It's not completely worthless," he said.

She looked at him with wide eyes, looking a little bit . . . hopeful. He didn't want to give her false hope, though, or make her believe that everything was just fixed now, so he got up and said, "I'm gonna go check on my mom." He needed a breather.

"Okay," she said. "I-I can wait out here."

"No, you should go home," he told her.

"But we could still-"

"Clarke." They couldn't still do anything. This was all he could handle tonight. "Let's just leave it." They'd talked. This wasn't an argument or a fight of any kind. It was just a conversation. And it eventually had gotten around to the stuff that mattered.

She nodded silently in agreement, and neither one of them said anything else. Personally, he felt talked out, so he headed out of the waiting room and back to the patient rooms to see if her mom was done with her X-ray. He was tired, and more than anything, he wanted to just go home and go to bed. But at least that was better than wanting to go home and drink.