“Do you remember how I told you I was sick and had to go to the hospital…right before my mom died? Well, that’s when I learned that I was pregnant. My dad took me away. I was four hours away from her father. I didn’t want a fight or problems, so I did what I had to do. I had the support of my new family, and that’s all that I needed.”

“So he doesn’t even know about her?”

She licked her lips and sighed. “No. And I don’t regret that decision.”

“Who is he?” I knew once I had a name there would be no stopping me from finding him and making him start contributing financially to her.

“Just someone from school. I was in a place where I needed him. I needed to feel secure and safe. And he gave me that. He gave me exactly what I needed.”

I felt sick, knowing that my leaving had pushed her into the arms—the bed—of another male. I broke her heart and left her to seek the comfort of someone else, when it should’ve been me. I should’ve been the one taking care of her, fathering her children when the time was right for both of us. Not some douchebag that went about his life without the knowledge of his own kid.

“Stop, Axel. I can see your brain working. Don’t worry about me. You have no reason to feel sorry for anything. In a way, you leaving saved me. With you, I had no reason to fight back, no reason to grow a backbone and become strong enough to stand on my own two feet. I had you. You were my defender. But without you, I had to learn to do it on my own. Had you stayed in my life, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to leave my mom’s. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to my dad’s and be four hours away from you. I won’t lie, the road I took to get me here has been bumpy and sometimes unpaved, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t give up or back down. And I did it all without leaning on anyone—well, I occasionally leaned on my family, but that’s what they’re there for.” The way she spoke told me that she meant every word.

I relaxed on the mattress as my shoulders slumped forward, feeling defeated. All I’d ever wanted to do was protect her. Be there for her when she needed me…when she needed anyone. But hearing her now, I realized I would’ve never been able to do any of those things. I’d held her back. I’d ruined her. And the only reason she survived was because I had turned my back on her. Abandoning her is what saved her. The realization hit me hard and made me feel weaker than ever before.

“What about you? How did you end up here?” she asked with concern and curiosity in her tone.

I didn’t want to tell her my whole sordid past, but I had to. She needed to know the road I’d taken to get me to where I was. After all, she’d told me hers. “Well, after the whole fallout with the school, I packed everything up, put it all in storage, and stayed with my parents for a little while. I ended up telling them everything, and even though they were disappointed in me, they said they trusted me, and if I’d fallen in love with a student, it couldn’t have been careless. And they trusted me enough to know I wouldn’t have put you in harm’s way. But even with their support, I began to drown in my own grief. I thought you threw me under the bus, so on top of losing my job, moving back in with my parents, and essentially starting all over again, I had to do so with a broken heart.

“They finally kicked me out after two months of me doing nothing but moping around the house. They said they needed to be firm with me, otherwise I’d drift away into nothingness. I moved one town over, got a job that my dad helped me get doing landscaping, and spent my weekends at the bars. Weekends went from Saturday nights to include Fridays as well. Then I added Sunday afternoons. At some point, whether I got drunk or not, I’d pour a drink every night. Sometimes it was just something to drink, and other times, it was to numb the pain.”

“Pain from what?” she asked hesitantly.

I shrugged. “From everything? From you, not teaching, being alone. Take your pick. I literally fell down the proverbial rabbit hole. When I was really lonely, I searched for someone that I could at least pretend made me feel the way you did. But no one ever could. No one laughed with me like you did, or made me smile like you could. After so long, I started to think you were a facet of my imagination. Every time I’d tell someone about you—about us—they’d say ‘women like that don’t exist.’ I started to think you were nothing but a dream that I’d always wake up from.”

“I don’t understand, Axel. You left me. Why were you so heartbroken?”

I leaned forward with my hand on the bed next to her, needing to be close enough to see the look in her eyes. “I didn’t want to leave you, Bree. That wasn’t by my choice. I never wanted to turn my back on you. But the way the school sounded that morning, I had nothing else to believe except that you’d told them everything. Well, mostly everything. I left thinking you’d turned your back on me.”

“But I didn’t,” she whispered, her warm breath hitting my face.

“I didn’t know that then.”

“You could’ve asked me.”

“As far as I knew, Bree, if I had gone to you, asking you what’d happened, you’d run back to the school and I’d look like a stalker. You have to remember, I was under the impression that you’d gone to them first. So going to you, asking you what you said, was not an option for me. Your mom would’ve come after me, and I wouldn’t have been able to get by unscathed.”

“It’s weird how things work out, isn’t it? Because of a misunderstanding, both of our lives changed dramatically. You were always the strong one, and that one thing made you crumble. Yet the weak one grew wings and flew.”

God, the image of her with wings like the angel she is, soaring above the tragedy, did something to me. It healed one of the many broken pieces inside. I locked eyes with her, our heavy breaths mingling in the small space between our faces. The heat surrounding my body grew, making my skin tingle. And then she spoke, her words dousing me like a bucket of cold water.

“So you drank a lot? Do you still?”

I shook my head before slowly backing away, realizing just how close our lips had become. “No. Almost two years ago, I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore. It wasn’t like I drank all day every day, but I knew if I kept going the way I was, it wouldn’t be long before I’d get there. I didn’t want to completely waste my life or get to the point of no return. I missed teaching, and I’d never be able to do that again if I didn’t make a change. So I stopped drinking with the support of my sister. She and Danny ended up moving and took me with them. I lived with them, spending time getting my life straight, and helped them with their kids. Tracii’s the one that actually convinced me to teach primary age.”

“How many kids do they have now?”

“Two. Their oldest is six, just started first grade, and damn that little girl is smart. They had a little boy, who’s now three, and he’s one of the reasons I wanted to be a better person. Tracii and Danny stopped visiting me because they said they didn’t want the kids around my drinking. I guess I’d reached the sloppy stage, and they didn’t want the kids to remember me that way. So when I called Tracii and told her how I wanted to be sober, she didn’t even hesitate to offer her support. She offered me a room in their new house and told me that as long as I stayed away from the drinking, I could live there and work on getting my life back on track.

“I spent the first bit helping out around the house…cooking, cleaning, helping with the kids. Kind of like the housekeeper and nanny,” I said with a laugh, remembering that Danny had oftentimes introduced me to his friends as his manny. “And then I took the test to teach primary education. I loved being around my niece and nephew, and knew it was something I wouldn’t mind doing forever. Plus, it alleviated those pesky lines of right and wrong.”