Page 30 of Known By You
My temporary hibernation from reality had been irresponsible at best, and I owed her an explanation.
“Yeah, so, Cliff’s Notes version? My nephew? For a while, I thought he was my son.” I exhaled a pent-up breath, eying Liz’s profile as she drove.
She blinked, focus on the road, but after a second asked, “How?”
She said it so softly, sogently, she clearly already knew something bad was coming. Like she was stepping onto an iced-over lake, trying to distribute her weight but knowing any second now, her foot would break through.
Just do it. Get it out there quick and then it’s over.
“So I was with his mom in high school. When I graduated, I proposed before I went to basic. We’d waited for years, but we were together before I left. About six weeks in, I got a letter telling me she was pregnant.”
I huffed out a breath, my lungs not sure whether they wanted deep breaths or to stop breathing altogether as I remembered the moment I’d received the letter—how my world tilted on its axis and everything in my life changed.
Liz stayed quiet, not interrupting or pushing for more. Just… here with me.
“I was shocked at first, but completely thrilled. She seemed happy, too, and even though we were eighteen and I was at the very beginning of a huge career choice, I felt like it was meant to be. We’d get married when I got home on leave and then she’d go with me to my first duty station. We’d have health care and a housing allowance, and she could work a bit before the baby came if she felt like it… it just seemed like things were lining up for everything I’d always wanted.”
“But.” Liz’s sentence was short, sweet, and the hinge on which it all turned.
“Yeah, major but. I got home and she seemed a little distant, but we’d literally never been away from each other for more than a few days, let alone weeks, so I wasn’t too worried. Chalked it up to the time apart and everything changing. We’d planned for a small wedding ceremony—I’d put a lot of it on my brand-new credit card because her parents had said they wouldn’t help and mine couldn’t.”
We didn’t need to get into those dynamics right now.
“When did you find out?” she asked, eyes still blessedly forward.
I didn’t want to see the pity in her gaze with this next part, so I kept my eyes on the desert landscape as we passed signs for Cedar City. The feeling in my chest now was faint, though. It was the memory of the way I’d felt shredded that lingered, a ghost lurking in between my ribs.
“I’d been home for three days. Went to her house to talk because she’d been distant and found her and Glen making out in his car.”
I didn’t feel the old twinge of pain anymore. My heart had been thoroughly shattered in that moment, and theones that followed, but it’d knit back together with time and attention. The distance of years had been a salve, and so had maturing and growing in ways that helped me learn what love did look like. It hadn’t been that, despite what my young heart had believed.
“Damn.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. It was messy. And the thing that has stuck between me and the family is how everyone defended Glen. I called off the wedding, which everyone was weirdly upset about, and then it was like all the negative feelings funneled toward me. It was my fault I’d left her and she’d needed Glen. It was my fault I’d been too trusting. It was my fault I was now facing down the bills from deposits we wouldn’t be using. It was my fault she was pregnant, even though she and I had only been together exactly once and by the time I got home she was having her twenty-week ultrasound.”
This was the part I couldn’t quite put to bed. I may have realized that my version of young love with Shay had been naïve and foolish, but the way my family had kicked me when I was down, had criticized me for trying to make something of myself in the military… it still stung. And having seen them, confirming their attitudes hadn’t changed, scraped me raw.
“I’m guessing it hadn’t been twenty weeks.” Liz’s words were low and dark.
The brutality of that realization had been devastating. So deeply cruel to a kid who’d dreamed of making a life both for himself and the girl he thought he’d always love. Sometimes, just thinking of how innocent and ignorant I’d been made me cringe and even cry, but I was also oddly grateful I’d had a naïve love like that at least once.
I wouldn’t ever have it again. Over the years, I’drecognized how flimsy our feelings really were, especially in light of what happened, but as much as it’d hurt, I got it. It was better.
Honestly, it’d freed me to pursue special operations and find my real family, and I never would’ve taken that route if Shay and I had stayed together.
It was the family element, the way they’d all rushed to Glen’s defense and refused to even attempt to see I might be hurting, that still pricked me with a thousand pins.
“Correct. And then it was my fault for joining the military and not sticking around to support my family. It was my fault I’d ever planned on leaving and if I hadn’t, Shay and Glen wouldn’t have gotten together. Everything was on me, and I’d never been so relieved to have a reason to go and not come back.”
The cab was quiet for another minute before she mumbled, “We’re stopping for a bathroom break.” She pulled the car into a gas station and parked.
Jack and Evie were out of the car before I ever even looked back, which made me wonder if they’d heard everything. Thus far, they’d used headphones, but their quick exit with zero chatting made me guess they might’ve been listening.
I wanted to stay here and… I didn’t know. See what else Liz might say? She couldn’t fix it or make it better. I was years beyond that. But I couldn’t deny the drop of disappointment in my chest when she slipped out and hustled after Evie.
It made sense. We were here to protect her and Jack. And speaking of, I hurried to find him, waiting just outside the men’s room. When he came out, his troubled expression told me he’d probably heard my tale of woe.
He patted my shoulder. “You’re a good man.”
