Page 12 of Open Secrets
He shrugged. “I’m just saying, going home for Christmas might have been the best thing I did.”
I just kept staring at him until he said, “Right. I should go.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He leaned in, hesitating like he didn’t know if he had the right. His lips brushed my cheek, soft, lingering for a second too long. Not a lover’s kiss. A goodbye.
When he pulled back, his breath ghosted against my skin. I stayed still, unmoving.
Lyle straightened, shoulders stiff, eyes already somewhere else. Without another word, he slipped out the door and disappeared into the darkness, swallowed by it.
I sat long after he was gone, the silence pressing in until I felt hollow. I’d been feeling off for days—ever since I got back to Austin. At first, I thought it was the flu, I was powering through the exhaustion until the nausea hit in class. One moment I was scribbling notes, the next I was bolting into the hallway, collapsing against the wall as my stomach heaved. I was still crouched there, head between my knees, when the janitor found me. His muttered comment about “pregnant whores”—landed like a stone in my chest. And I knew. I was one of them.
I had never thought going home for Christmas would mean coming back with an unwanted present. Lyle and I had run into each other at Conner’s Christmas party, gotten drunk, and ended up at his parents’ place. They hadn’t been home. We’d laughed too much, reminisced too long, and then—well, you can guess the rest.
I had been doing everything I could to avoid thinking about what it meant. It did mean something. At least to me. Apparently not to him, considering how fast he bolted, like pregnancy was contagious. That was the thing, right? He got to walk away. We both made the mistake, but I was the one left with the consequences.
If I kept it, I was white trash—single mother, waiting tables, living off food banks.
If I gave it up, I was the whore who abandoned her baby so she could party.
And if I ended it… then I was a murderer.
So, I did what most women in my situation did—quietly dealt with it, no matter how much it destroyed me. I wasn’t ready to be a mom. Worse, no child deserved to be born unwanted, resented. If anyone knew that, it was me.
My mom had left when I was four. I met her once, when I was fourteen—old enough to look like an adult, young enough to still want a mother. I asked her why she left. Naively, stupidly.
Her answer?
“I never should’ve had you.”
God, it killed me.
And now there I was, standing in the same place she once had.
Pregnant. With a man who would have married me if I had told his family—but never forgiven me.
By the time I rolled back into Austin, morning light was bleeding across the sky. I had been driving for eight hours straight, running on nerves and bitter coffee. Sleep hadn’t touched me since the test, and I knew it wouldn’t.
Instead of heading to my dorm, I made a call. Within minutes, I had an appointment. Too fast. Too real. I couldn’t just sit in my car any longer, so I pulled into a diner.
The coffee came steaming, but I stirred it until it cooled, never drinking more than a sip before ordering another. I kept imagining life with this baby, each scenario ending the same. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.
The thing was, I hadn’t been pro-choice. I had believed abortion was wrong. But everything changed when it was my body, my life on the line—not some irresponsible idiot who got herself pregnant.
An hour disappeared before I knew it, and I found myself parked outside Planned Parenthood. My knuckles ached from gripping the wheel. But I forced myself out of the car, legs trembling, breath shallow.
I hadn’t taken two steps before a man blocked me, his face red, spit flying as he screamed. “Murderer! Murderer!”
I flinched back. A woman hurried toward me, and for a second I felt relief—until she thrust a pamphlet at my chest. “You don’t have to do this. There are families who would love your baby—”
I tried to push past, but the man shadowed me, stepping wherever I moved. His voice was a wall I couldn’t climb.
Then—an arm, strong and familiar, slid around me. I didn’t need to look. I knew it.
Lyle.
He stepped in front of me, shoving the man back. “Back off.”
