Page 43 of The Forever Play

I close my eyes while my sister processes this bombshell. It takes about a minute of sputtering, and then she lets out an irritated huff.

“Why the fuck didn’t she tell you?”

“She said she tried, but?—”

“Wait, have you told Mom and Dad?”

“Fuck no. Can you imagine how they’ll react? I’ve done exactly what they told me not to.” I sigh, flopping back on my mattress and staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t tell them.”

She lets that hang in the air for a second before softly reasoning with me. “They have a granddaughter. Don’t you think they deserve to know about her?”

“It’s gonna shock the hell out of them.”

“It’s definitely shocking the hell out of me.”

I let out a gruff laugh and take my cap off, throwing it across the room. “Dad will be beyond pissed. I can’t tell anyone until I’ve sorted out this clusterfuck. I’m trying to talk it through with Sienna, but we keep getting into arguments, and then she takes off.”

Monica snorts. “I still can’t believe she didn’t tell you. I mean, what the actual fuck?”

Clenching my jaw, I try to clamp down the dark dread in my stomach. It hurts, like a viscous tar coating my insides, burning me and reminding me what a shit I used to be.

“It’s so out of line, Zander. You have every right to be pissed.”

“She said she came to see me,” I admit, my voice sounding dead and lifeless. “She wanted to tell me in person.”

Monica pauses, and I can picture her face as she considers this. “Do you think she’s lying?”

I wish I could say yes, but?—

“No. You should have seen her face, Mon. She said I was…otherwise occupied.” I can barely get the words out as my mind floods with images, each one nastier and more brutal than the last.

Please, God, no. Don’t let her have walked in on the worst of it.

Monica sighs. “She probably saw you getting it on with another chick.”

“Fuck!” I bark, sitting up and hating myself.

“But you’d broken up. It wasn’t like you were cheating on her.”

“It doesn’t matter. If I’d walked in on her with anotherguy, I would have fucking lost it. We belonged to each other.”

“Zander.”

“No! Don’t try and fucking justify this. She was still in love with me and carrying my kid… and I was screwing my way through Kelsey U. If that’s what she saw, it would have felt like total betrayal.”

“You were still in love with her too,” Monica murmurs. “In your senior year, when I was telling you that you were getting too intense and you should break up, I kind of didn’t realize just how deep the feels were for you two. I thought you were just in the throes of experiencing sex for the first time and all the goodies that come with that. I didn’t want you being tied down.” Her sigh is even heavier than the one before. “But when you came back at Christmas, and she’d just disappeared… you were so devastated.” She tuts. “And you really lost your way after that.”

I cringe, rubbing my forehead and muttering, “I was such a shit that year.”

“Yeah.” She kind of laughs. “Was it the fact that I had to bail you out of jail that gave it away?”

I snort, my tone getting dark and salty. “What did she see, Mon? What the fuck did she see?”

“I don’t know. I still think my guess is right.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I fist the front of my hair and give it a light tug. “I’m trying to figure out when she would have come by. That year is such a blur. I don’t know what she would have stumbled across. Fuck, this is bad.”

“Look, bro, maybe you should tell her everything?”

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