“I was a kid, and I had to make an impossible decision on my own, becauseyouleftme!” I wanted to lash out at him. To hurt him like he hurt me, but that was going to achieve nothing. I wrapped my arms tightly around my body, trying to protect something that was long gone. Something that never really was.
“What happened?” Kane gritted out through his teeth as he advanced on me. His height had always seemed comforting, a security blanket that could surround me with love, but in that moment, I was aware that he could very easily overpower me if he wanted to.
My lips trembled, tears dripping from my chin as I pulled myself up to my full height, small though I was. “I terminated the pregnancy.”
Kane reared back like he had been struck. “You…”
He wheeled toward the door, and I had the most uncanny sense that if he left now, I would never see him again. Desperate, I grabbed his arm, trying to regain something of what we had so quickly lost. He shrugged me off so violently, I lost my footing on the edge of the rug and cracked my head on the coffee table on my way down.
Stunned, I curled into myself, checking the back of my head for blood and wincing as the pain radiated through my skull. Tears blurred my vision as I sobbed, my emotions more concerned about the argument than any physical pain.
The click of my door closing was like a nail being driven home on the coffin of our relationship.
And how could I blame him?
I was a murderer.
Darcy
Five years ago…
“So,is your mom going to go with you?” Allie asked, hanging from the monkey bars I’d climbed up on top of. I shook my head, looking out over the park I’d asked Kane to meet me at a week ago.
“No, she has to work. Even more now. She almost had a handle on Dad’s medical bills, and now I’m adding to her debt.”
“It’s not your fault, babe,” Allie said, climbing up to join me.
“You shouldn’t go alone, though, it’s not right,” Evie protested from her seat on the swing set that stood kitty corner to our monkey bars. “How will you get home afterward?”
I shrugged. “Bus, I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
Evie scowled, and I marveled again at how good a friend she had been through everything. Even though it was my relationship with Kane that started our friendship, she had been solid through the breakup. She hadn’t said a word to Kane or even Cody about where I was, and had, under protest, agreed not to interfere even though she thought Kane was an “unbearable ass” and she couldn’t believe Cody could be friends with him.
“I’m driving you,” she decided, pulling her keys from her pocket and flashing the key fob with its three silver spikes.
“You don’t have to…” I started, but let the sentence drift. The reality was I was terrified, and I really didn’t want to be alone. The feminist in me screamed that my body meant my choice, but the teenage girl in me didn’t want to have to deal with such an adult problem at all. Kane got to pretend it hadn’t happened, so why couldn’t I?
My insides roiled and I lay flat along the monkey bars, breathing deeply and feeling the air move around me. I could do this. Especially with Evie by my side, I could get through it.
* * *
We parkedin an unassuming parking lot, circling the building to get to the front door of the clinic and found ourselves face to face with bright signs and angry adults screaming profanities at us.
Baby killers.
Murderers.
Sluts, and whores, and so much more.
“What if that baby is meant to grow up and cure cancer, but instead you murder it today?” an aging woman with a Pomeranian on her knee shouted from a lawn chair near the entrance.
Evie whirled toward her, fire in her eyes. “What if I’m meant to cure cancer, but I get stuck at home in a loveless household raising an unwanted burden because you want to tell me what to do with my own body? Fuck off.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I muttered as the crowd behind us screamed and shouted, riled by Evie’s response.
“Fuck them. They don’t give a shit about it. Not really. They’re spoiling for a fight and get off on making other people feel small.”
A surprised laugh bubbled out of me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse so much.”
