Violet: IS THE BABY JAKE’S????

There are surprise emojis and a range of mind-blown gifs, along with a picture of Bishop frowning and holding a sign that reads I KNEW IT.

I send one message in response:

The baby is Jake’s. He’s here with me now. Queenie and Ryan know, but can we keep this on the DL, please? I promise we will have a video chat in a couple of days.

I leave my phone in my room and find Jake in the living room. He, too, looks freshly showered based on his damp hair and change of clothes.

I offer him something to drink, and even though I picked up the scotch he likes, he declines and opts for ginger ale, which happens to be what I’m drinking.

There are several boxes sitting on the coffee table.

“As you can see, Queenie got click-happy.” One corner of his mouth quirks up and his cheeks flush. “She tried to send me with more, but I told her she should hold on to them for a bit.” He hands me the first box.

By the time I’m done unwrapping, I have several new cute shirts with sayings like Momster in the making and Mama to be and carrying precious cargo. I pull my current shirt over my head—I’m wearing a tank underneath—and replace it with one of the new shirts that reads ICE ICE with an arrow pointing down. It’s a couple of sizes too big at the moment, but in a few months, it’ll fit perfectly.

“This was really sweet of her.”

“Do you mind if I take a picture and send it to her?”

“Not at all.” I hop to my feet and pose for a picture, which he sends to Queenie before I take my seat on the couch again.

Thirty seconds later, he gets several messages from Queenie in return, full of heart-eye gifs.

“It’s sweet that she’s excited.”

“She tends to look at the positive side of things.” He taps the armrest and gives me a chagrinned smile. “She’s been very clear that she’s Team Jake and Hanna. And I apologize if that’s been . . . awkward at all for you.”

“I feel like that’s the word of the year for us.” I prop my cheek on my fist. “And it’s not awkward. I mean, I think we can agree that this whole thing is pretty weird as a whole. But it’s also very different from my other experiences.”

“Can you tell me more about that? I don’t really know much about how things went for you with Ryan.” Jake stretches his arm along the back of the couch, his attention on me. “I know the basics, that you got pregnant as a teen and your parents adopted him and raised him as theirs, but that’s a very tidy version of a complex situation.”

Jake and I talked about Ryan finding out, but not about how I ended up in the situation in the first place. And maybe telling him will give us both some perspective, because for as long as I can remember, this has been a closed subject. One to be put in a box and tucked away. It came with shame and fear, both of which I don’t know I’ve ever truly come to terms with. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was over four months along.”

Jake’s eyes flare with surprise. “You were almost halfway through the pregnancy.”

“I was.” Memories surface, taking a trip backward through time, to the day I finally figured out what was going on with my body. And how my entire life basically felt as though it had fallen apart. “I didn’t start getting a period until I was fourteen, and my cycle was never very regular, at least not for that first year, so what should have been a red flag wasn’t all that uncommon. Plus, I was involved in all kinds of sports, which can affect regularity. I didn’t have any of the usual symptoms, or at least not the kind I expected.” I blow out a breath, aware now of things I hadn’t been back then.

“You were only fifteen, though, right?”

“Just barely. Way too young to be having sex,” I mutter. “At the time, my parents had their hands full with Gerald. He was younger but such a troublemaker.”

“King mentioned that he used to get up to a lot of no good.”

“He tried to take our dad’s truck on a joyride. He couldn’t reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel at the same time so all he managed to do was ruin my mom’s rose bushes. I wasn’t an angel, but I didn’t give my parents the same kind of hard time he did.”

“So they didn’t pay much attention to what you were doing and who you were doing it with?” Jake asks.

“Exactly. In my freshman year I started dating a senior.”

Jake’s brow furrows. “That would make him almost four years older than you.”

“Yup. And when you’re in your twenties and thirties, or even your forties, those four years don’t mean a lot. But when you’re fourteen and he’s eighteen . . .” I trail off.

“I would have lost my mind if Queenie brought home a senior when she was fourteen years old.” Jake clenches and releases his fists. “What the heck were your parents thinking, letting you date that guy?”

I shrug. “It was different times, I guess? We lived in a small town, Kurt was captain of the football team, and I was a cheerleader. Before he went off to college, I was invited to go with his family on a mission trip. I’d just turned fifteen. Gerald had just been caught shoplifting, so my parents were dealing with that. Kurt’s dad was a pastor, so of course, my parents thought it was safe to send me with them. But we were camping in a trailer and his parents spent the entire trip at church events.”

“You were left to your own devices,” Jake says knowingly.

“We were teenagers with nothing to do for hours every day and a lot of hormones. And sex education back then wasn’t what it is now.”

“Which is how you ended up pregnant.”

“Yup. And by the time I was sure, Kurt had already moved out of state for college and his family had followed. We’d broken up a few weeks after we got back from the trip. I honestly thought the nausea and being tired and emotional was heartbreak.”

“I can see how you could make that mistake.” Jake slides his fingers under my hair, his thumb smoothing up and down the back of my neck. “How did you figure it out?”

“My cheer coach pulled me aside and asked if I’d had my period.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. It was . . . not the best. I guess she noticed the weight gain and sort of put two and two together. She gave me a pregnancy test and I took it into the girls’ bathroom.”

“What the hell was your cheer coach doing with pregnancy tests?”

“Would you be surprised to hear that I was not the first girl in cheer to end up pregnant?” I lean my cheek against his forearm. “Anyway, the test was positive. I had no idea what to do. The coach called my parents, and the next thing I knew, my dad transferred offices from Ohio to Tennessee.”

“What about Kurt? Did you tell him?”

“Oh yeah. I called him before we moved and begged him to let me move in with him. In my head we were going to get back together and raise the baby. But he wanted me to terminate the pregnancy. He didn’t want a baby ruining his chances at a pro football career. Plus, his dad would have killed him if he found out.”

Jake’s lip curls up in a silent snarl. “He’s an asshole.”