Page 17 of Restrictions

“Their fucking loss.” I grab a hand full of popcorn. She doesn’t say anything and doesn’t even flinch as another camper loses their life on the big screen. “You know, I really didn’t have you pegged for a horror film lover. I figured you were more of a rom-com girl.”

She laughs at that. “Now those are the real horror.”

I laugh too. “No shit. Still, . . . horror?”

She lifts her shoulders and watches the screen intently, her makeup washed off and her hair up in a ponytail. “I like it. I hate reality.” Her eyes meet mine. “I know this stuff, most of it anyway, can’t ever really happen. It’s easy to get lost in it.”

“I get that.” So she does have an escape—in the form of homicidal, slow-moving murderers, but still.

“So what about thrillers?”

She shakes her head. “I prefer over the top, almost inhuman, horror movies. Slasher flicks. Ghosts. The kind of stuff that’s unlikely to happen.”

“Interesting.”

She laughs. “And now you think I’m even crazier than you did before.”

“Nah. I like horror movies too. I get it. I preferThe Texas Chainsaw Massacremyself. OrNightmare on Elm Street.”

I swear her eyes actually light up as she turns to me, seeing I’m not just fucking with her. “Those are good ones.”

“I know.”

She laughs and turns back to the screen, sighing. “I’m sorry about my parents. I know they’re horrible.”

“Don’t apologize to me. They suck, but that’s not your fault.”

Her small shoulders shrug. “They were never that great, but it got a lot worse when I got pregnant. They were so horrified and disappointed. They groomed me my whole life to be so damn perfect.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

Her eyes meet mine. “I was close. And then I got pregnant.”

“It’s really not the end of the world.” Jesus, they act like she murdered someone. Lots of people have sex in high school.

“You should have heard them. It was definitely the end of their perfect little world.” She turns back to the screen, mindlessly watching the horror flick, and I think we’re done talking. But then she says, “My mother begged me not to go through with it.”

I swallow, unable to think about that scenario because... well, Baz is the shit. Still, I imagine it’s something that was tossed around. “She wanted you to get an abortion.”

She nods her head slowly. “Every single day from the day I told them I was pregnant until my twelfth week, my mother would start the day off telling me she would make the appointment and take me. She’d tell me how horrible life as a single mother would be. She made threats.”

“What kind of threats?”

I wish she would look at me, but I can feel the shame she carries, and she won’t. “I guess they weren’t actually threats. I had received early acceptance to Harvard. I was still going to go, but she told me that there was no way they would pay for an Ivy League school if I had the baby.”

Fuckers.

She laughs sadly. “I mean, it was a crazy idea, but growing up the way I did, I thought it was still doable. I thought they would pay for a nanny and I’d go to school and still have time with my baby.”

They could have easily done that for her. I stay silent, feeling like she wants to be listened to for once.

“Then when I hit my twelfth week, my mom started in on a closed adoption.”

The thought of someone other than Viv raising Sebastian is unimaginable. She’s that kid’s mom, through and through. “You stood your ground.”

“I did.” Her voice is distant and sad as she stares at the screen. “When I was seven months pregnant, they finally gave up and then decided I would continue to finish school remotely. My freshman year of college I took mostly online courses until I fought hard the next year to go to class. Everything with them has been a fight, all punishing me for one night. What they call a mistake.”

I know she doesn’t see it that way. I’ve seen the way she looks at Sebastian, there’s no regret there.

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