Page 18 of Second Draft

“You’re not seriously considering it? Shit. This is your kid you’re talking about.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” he says, like some damn paper will just erase the fact that the baby is his. “I’m twenty-two years old. I’ve barely started to live.”

“So what? You’re just going to pretend like this never happened? Walk around like there’s not some kid out there wearing your face. Jesus, Travis. Mom and Dad would be so fucking proud.”

He glares at me, then leans back on the couch and pinches his eyes shut. “If she’d just get an abortion, everything would be fine.”

“Is she considering it?” I don’t know why, but the thought makes my chest tighten.

“No.” He throws his hands in the air and stands again, starting to pace. “I don’t get it. She’s not even religious.”

“You don’t have to be religious to want to keep your child. To have a family.”

“Here we go again. Saint fucking Carter on his moral high horse.”

“Don’t do that. We’ve both made mistakes.”

“Yeah.” He narrows his eyes on me. “Wehave.”

I know where his mind goes. The same dark memory that haunts my dreams. The one choice he’ll never forgive me for making.

“I’m just saying, this kid is your family.”

“Since when have you cared so much about family?” Travis’ lips curl up in a snarl, and there’s something almost feral in his expression.

His words bite, because I know there’s truth to them.

I haven’t been around. Maybe if I had things would have turned out differently.

It was a shit thing to do leaving him alone when he was only seventeen. No parents. No rules. No one to be accountable to.

But I had my career. And back then hockey was everything to me. I wasn’t about to give up my shot playing with the pros to come home and take care of a kid that was already practically grown.

“What do you want from me? An apology? I did what I had to do.”

“You did what you had to do for yourself. Don’t try and twist it any other way.”

I stay silent, because he’s right.

Travis pulls out a pack of smokes from his back pocket, and lights one.

“I’m just saying we aren’t that different. You were my age when Mom and Dad died. You didn’t want to be settled down with a kid. I get it now.”

“What I did was completely different. You were my brother, and you were seventeen.”

Travis shrugs. “Maybe.”

I shake my head at him. “So what’re your plans?”

“I don’t know. I just know I have to get out of here. Maybe travel a bit.” He butts the cigarette out in a dirty glass that sits on the fireplace mantle. “There’s a job up north I’m looking into.”

“What kind of a job?” He hasn’t been able to hold down a job for more than three months at a time. With the money from our parents’ accident, he’s been able to live pretty comfortably without having too.

Until recently.

The way our parents had it worked out, he’d only received small chunks each month until he was twenty-one, after that he had access to the whole lump sum, which he blasted through on God knows what over the past year.

“There’s a construction site up in British Colombia–”

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