I rip the page from his file and rush back to my room, not even bothering to close the office door behind me. There’s no time to waste right now, not with the threat of a baby hanging over my head. It’s a good thing I never went on that shopping trip with Penny, because I need to book a flight, and then I need to sort things out with Bennett.
The door to my room bursts open behind me only moments after I close it.
“Mom, Jesus!” I yelp, rushing to hide the paper beneath my blankets. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“What thehellis this, Maggie?”
She tosses a stack of stapled papers at me, my bag clutched in her other fist. All of the blood in my face drains away when I see the logo on the papers.
It’s from Dr. Mulaney’s. My test results. Information on the stages of pregnancy. A list of clinics that specialize in obstetrics.
Fuck.
I was in such a rush to get Bennett’s information that I left my bag in the car. Did she seriously look through my fucking medical records? I would expect it of Dad, but I thought she respected me more than that.
“It’s nothing,” I say, tossing the papers back on my bed with the vain hope that she didn’t look through them.
She wouldn’t be this pissed if she hadn’t seen the results already.
“Nothing?” Her eyes widen in disbelief, flitting between me and the papers on my bed. “You call thisnothing, Maggie?You’re pregnant! How dare you try to hide something like this from me?”
“It’s not like I knew!”
Both of us are hissing out our words, voices hardly over a whisper to prevent anyone else from hearing. I should count myself lucky she didn’t go straight to Dad, but I’m too fucking scared to think straight. I haven’t even had a second to myself to figure out what to do, much less think about anyone’s reactions to this, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get a chance.
“Maggie, you have totalkto me!” she says, the sharp edge of her voice softening into something almost pleading. “I just want to help you. You’re my daughter, I don’t want you to go through this alone. We won’t tell your dad yet, okay? Let’s just talk and figure some things out.”
She’s probably trying to be supportive, but my mind is going a million miles an hour, and I need to be alone, need space to breathe. I snatch my bag from her hand, ignoring the way my whole body buzzes with bone-deep terror.
“Get out.” I don’t meet Mom’s eyes, and the words come out weaker than I want them to. “They just gave me the wrong paperwork. I have a cold. Just leave.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but I shake my head violently, the first stream of tears breaking free.
“Leave!”
My voice breaks around the word.
I only manage to stay standing until the door clicks closed behind her. The second I’m alone, I crumple straight to the ground, chest heaving as sobs rip out of my chest. Pain and fear well up in an unstoppable wave, cresting and drowning me beneath it.
I clutch at my stomach, horrified at the thought of there being apersongrowing there, at the thought of being alone for this. What am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to do this without Bennett around?
How am I supposed to do anything without him here?
Time blurs, much like it has for the past month, the whole evening rushing by in what feels like seconds. I flip between hysterics and staring at my wall until my eyes burn. Bennett doesn’t answer any of my calls, everything going straight to voicemail. My texts go undelivered, but they’re so riddled with typos from my fingers trembling that he probably wouldn’t be able to read them anyway.
The sunset takes so long it feels like days, and then I blink, and total darkness has fallen outside my window. Tears sit wet on my cheeks, hopeless fear heavy in my chest. I can’t handle this alone. I shouldn’thaveto. This is just as much Bennett’s fault as it is mine.
I pack a bag with trembling hands, my vision too blurry with tears to even really see what I shove in. Nothing gets folded, chargers and deodorant tossed haphazardly into the mess of rumpled clothes. I’m sure I forget plenty of important things, but I can just pick up whatever I need when I get to Lubbock.
The only thing that matters right now is getting to Texas.
I order an Uber and sneak down the driveway, bright pink suitcase in tow, the house just as silent as it was the last time I snuck out to see Bennett. All of this is going to get sorted out, and I’ll figure out what to do once I talk to Bennett. He’ll know what to do, and we can deal with my Dad once this whole baby thing is dealt with.
Chapter Seventeen
MAGGIE
