Page 26 of Stay

Tears I’ve held back for a long ass time, start flowing. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

He stares at me with so much hurt in his eyes, I can’t bear it. “Cole, I’m sorry.” I try to come towards him, but he holds his hand up to stop me.

“Tell me everything. Right now. Right the fuck now, Haley.” He sways. “I can’t feel my legs.” He squats down and buries his face in his hands.

“Cole.” I reach out.

“Don’t touch me.”

I yank my hand back and kneel in front of him. “It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to process it,” I confess. “It was just before finals. I was two weeks late, and took a test. It came back positive. I went into a fog.” My throat closes up. “I lost it three days after finding out. I didn’t know how to tell you. Or even if I should tell you.”

“Why would you keep something like that from me?” His voice cracks. “I could have been there for you, Hales.”

“I didn’t want to put that burden on you.”

“Burden?” He drops his hands and stares at me. “It’s not a burden to be there for someone you love. It’s not a fucking burden to help when someone’s hurting. It’s not a burden to lose a baby, it’s a fucking tragedy.”

“One I tried to spare you from.” I swipe my tears away and buck the fuck up. I’ve grieved over this a thousand times, and though this is the first Cole’s hearing of it, there are more reasons for my actions back then. “I was terrified when I found out. You were so excited about UCL, and I had that internship in Boston. All our dreams were within our reach and the pregnancy would have derailed all of it. You would have given UCL up for me. For… us.”

“Damn right I would have.” His hands shake as he scrubs his face.

“I thought of a million ways to tell you. I just needed to get through finals first, and then I was going to say something so we could figure things out. But I lost it. To tell you after the fact made me…” I blow out a painful breath. “I didn’t know how to handle it. I was all over the place with my emotions. It scared me.”

“All the more reason you should have come to me about it.” He reaches out and grabs my hand. “You should have told me.”

“There was nothing that could be done by then. To tell you would have crushed you and I didn’t want that either.” Turns out, I spared him for nothing because he’s still crushed. “I panicked. I went through a myriad of arguments in my mind, and they all landed on the same thing: I needed to cut ties with you before I dragged you down with me.”

Cole drops back on his ass. “How can you think that? Why did you always think shit like that, Haley?”

My parents have always drilled into my head that I was a burden to them. They made me the scapegoat for every failure they had in their life. I was a financial burden, an emotional one, and a physical one.

“You know why, Cole.” He’s heard my childhood horror stories. In fact, he’s the only one I ever told them to.

“It would have been different for us.”

“Maybe,” I admit, shaking my head. “But the chance vanished before we could find out.” And I couldn’t process the pregnancy fast enough, so I panicked and ran. “If I could go back, I’d do many things differently.”

A breath shudders out of him. “Like what?”

“I’d have told you how I felt.”

“Would you have still left?”

I’m not going to lie to him. “Knowing what I do now? Yes.”

His shoulders drop. “Jesus.”

“Only because I needed to work on myself, Cole,” I rush to say. “I was so toxic back then. And maybe I still have a long way to go, I’m not even sure. But I had to break away from you so I could work on being a better person.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You’re a great person, Haley.”

“I was fucked in the head about a lot of shit.” And he knows it, damnit. He just doesn’t want to admit it. “I went to therapy for three years. I cut my parents out of my life completely. I’ve worked my ass off to be the best I can be so that…” I take a deep breath. “So that when I saw you again, you’d get the best version of me and could decide from there.”

Without saying a word, he stands up and heads over to the sink to wash his hands in silence. He splashes cold water on his face in silence too.

Panic sinks its claws into my heart and starts squeezing. “Say something, Cole.”

“I don’t think words were meant for these situations.” He blots his face dry and tosses the napkin in the trash. “I need time to process this.”

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