Page 72 of Hidden Memories

Two years. That’s all it took for her to move on. Meanwhile, I spent a decade lying to myself. Telling myself time would do the work. That if I kept riding, kept pushing forward, the ache in my chest would fade. But time didn’t erase shit. And now, sitting next to her, hearing her say it like she’s recounting some history lesson, I wonder if our past meant the same thing to her as it did to me.

“Like you waited,” she scoffs. I saw photos of you with buckle bunnies all the time.”

I used to tell myself I was glad when those pictures got around. That maybe if she saw them, she’d think I was doing fine. That maybe it would sting her the way losing her wrecked me. But hearing her say it now? Knowing for sure she saw them?

It just leaves an ache in my chest.

“Yeah… well…” I don’t know if I should admit this but I do. “It took me finding out you were pregnant to do more than mess around after a drunk night out.”

She soaks in my words. We both do. There’s a sadness in knowing we both were still thinking of one another for years after the split.

But she clears the intensity with a joke. “Are you taking the moral high road here? You waited longer?”

She’s sitting right here, and I still want to reach for her. Still want to know what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. Still want to be the one she tells everything to. So no, I never moved on. I just learned how to live with the ghost of her.

But I can’t say any of it. I just respond with a smug flash of my dimple. “I’m absolutely the biggerperson.”

She laughs sarcastically. “Aren’t you a saint?”

We could move on. We should. But I want to know. I need to know how she was able to do it. “So… tell me what happened at the two-year mark?”

She rolls her lips and stares out the windshield. “I went out with some people from the apartment block. My neighbor drove us somewhere south of Santa Cruz, but I was too drunk to even remember where I was. I couldn’t find my neighbor. I was so wasted. And I made the fatal error of calling Nic to find me and take me home. It was him or my dad, so…”

She trails off, then checks on Theo in the back to make sure he’s still sleeping. The rest of the story is weighed down by the past and unable to make its way out.

“Was it… mutual?” I say, low.

“I was trashed, but I won’t pretend I wasn’t aware of what was going on. I asked him to use a condom, so that wasn’t a no. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I knew Nicholas as a friend of my father’s for a long time. Maybe I hoped it would shock my system into moving on from you once and for all.”

“And that’s when you got together?”

“No. He asked me on a date the next morning, but I said we should be friends. Not that I meant it exactly. Even though Nicholas was always charming toward me, I was wary of anyone who could get along with my dad so easily. You know?”

I nod.

“But when I missed my next period… well, that’s when my life changed forever. I was in shock. Did the condom split? Did he even wear one? I hardly remembered any of what happened that night.” She sighs. “People think when a woman gets pregnant, she knows immediately whether she wants the baby or not. I didn’t. But I did think it was the right thing to do to contact Nic. Firstly, if I had the baby, he would need to be involved, and if not… I could hardly ask my dad for money… not for something like that.” She reflects. “I cried on that phone call. I was so… ashamed.” She laughs humorlessly. “Nic soothed me, telling me not to worry. Said he’d be there for me for anything I needed.”

Her long exhale is so heavy it fills the car like smoke.

“He said all that, but when we hung up, he sent out a company-wide email telling everyone he was going to be a father. That we were having a baby.”

I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles going bone white. If I don’t, I might just hit something. Because hearing her say these things—hearing how she got trapped, how she was pulled under while I was out there trying to forget her—it makes me want to rage. At Nic. At Paul. At myself. At every fucking moment that led us here instead of where we were supposed to be.

I park up at Julia’s and am thankful we’re here because I can’t concentrate on the road anymore.

I swallow dryly. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“You know, my regret looking back isn’t having Theo. Yes, on some level, Nic forced my hand, but I’m grateful for that part. I didn’t need my twenties the way some people do—to party and get to know themselves. I wanted pure connection. I wanted something real, like what I have with my son, because my dad only loved me when I performed for him and my mom only loved me because I listened. With Theo, it’s something so incredibly pure. Innocent. Unconditional.

“But I do wish I’d resisted marrying Nicholas just so Theo would have a so-called stable family. But… there was a part of me that thought… get real, Kat. True love is for fairy tales… Little did I know that company email was just the beginning of proving me right.”

For years, I told myself she was better off without me. But now I know the truth—she wasn’t better off. She was surviving.

Just like me.

I think of young Kat and know she was strong and independent. She managed to stand up to her dad many times, but even the hardest gems grind down eventually. If Nic was the kind of man to do something so low, I hate to think of how he treated her in the years that followed.

That bastard had no right to touch her. No right to claim her, to use her, to twist her life into something she never asked for. But he did. He fucking did. And I wasn’t there to stop it. I could spend a lifetime hating Nicholas Petras, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

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