Page 43 of Draft Pick

Grief had robbed me of a special moment, but rage at the situation gave me the strength to succeed in college. I liked to think my mom was watching me from heaven, cheering me on.

How would she feel about me becoming a single mom? I know she wanted so much more for me. No parent wants their kid to struggle like they had.

And somehow, I'd inadvertently stumbled right onto the same track.

A tear oozed down my cheek. I wiped it away, sniffing back the tingle in my nose. Was I making a mistake cutting Cason out? I hated not knowing what the right decision was. I was uncomfortable with the idea that I was making a knee-jerk reaction based on emotion instead of logic.

Cason might've bruised my pride, but I didn't think he was a bad person. He might even make a good father when he was ready to be a father — like after he achieved his football dreams — but not before.

I was doing the right thing for everyone.

Even Cason.

In time, he would realize that and probably be grateful.

Although, I probably couldn't say that I used a sperm donor to get pregnant because someone had already spread gossip about my baby's paternity. If word had already reached Cason, it was probably all over the campus by now.

I hated people knowing my business.

Anyone who said you leave behind the immature politics of high school when you get to college was an idiot.

Petty people with shallow holes where their empathy should be could be found in every pocket of society.

And college was a perfect breeding ground for their particular brand of cruelty.

So, I had to find a way to be indifferent to their bullshit because I had a feeling a lot of it was about to come my way.

I stoodin the locker room, toweling off after practice, trying to find the words to come clean with my buddies. Everyone else around us was up to their usual bullshit, but Lincoln was the first to notice my reserve.

"Everything okay?" Lincoln asked, his question catching Zay's attention.

"Your dad being a dick again?" Zay guessed with a commiserating expression.

I didn't even want to think of the conversation that was coming with my parents. For now, I needed to focus on Starlie. I shook my head, diving right into the deep end of the pool. "I might as well get this over with so here goes…uh, so, turns out Ulysses wasn't talking shit. I just found out that Starlie is pregnant."

Lincoln blanched with shock, the news hitting him as hard as it hit me. "Seriously?" was all he could manage. I nodded, still reeling from the news, myself. Lincoln shook his head with a commiserative, "Damn, that's intense," which was an understatement.

For Zay's part, he looked behind on current events because he couldn't even remember who Starlie was. He searched his memory, dragging her name from his brain, "Hold up, is that the singer girl you were talking about a while ago?"

"Yeah, her name is Starlie Morris. We met at a karaoke bar a few months ago, before school started."

Lincoln was still in a state of shock. "What the hell? Are you sure it's yours?"

"She's agreed to a paternity test but yeah, I'm sure it's mine."

"How do you know? Girls lie about that shit, man," Zay warned.

"Because Starlie isn't that kind of girl. She's…uh, not like most of the girls we've been around," I said, trying to put it delicately that Starlie was the antithesis of every girl I'd ever spent time with at San Jose State. "She's sweet and smart…"

"Not so smart if she got knocked up," Zay countered derisively. "Or maybe she's fucking brilliant hitching her wagon to a safe bet for a comfortable financial future."

I scowled, taking exception to Zay's shitty interpretation of Starlie's character. "Watch it," I warned. "I already said, she's not like that."

Lincoln shot Zay a quelling look before saying, "How far along is she?"

"I don't know, we haven't had a chance to really talk about details. I only found out the other night. After Ulysses dropped his little bomb, I went straight to Starlie after leaving the club."

"I knew you didn't seem right," Zay said, snapping his finger as if congratulating himself for being spot-on with his intuition. "What'd she say?"

---