I wrenched open the door and hurtled into the hall. He’d follow me, and I had to lose him, had to think. I darted down the corridor and flung myself through the exit to the stairwell.

I slipped on the third step and began sliding, but managed to clutch the rail before I hit the ground. I pulled my backpack around to avoid crunching anything I couldn’t afford to replace. This was crazy. I had to pull myself together.

My sneakers found a solid step, and I wriggled back to standing. The door blew open above me, no doubt Gavin. I sat down. If he wanted to talk, we would talk. It wouldn’t kill me. Hell, he was the one who deserted me on the worst day of my life.

I heard his footfalls on the stairs and sensed him sitting beside me even though I looked away, down the hole of the stairwell.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “Did you come for me?”

I whipped around at that. “Is that what you think?”

He frowned. “I just assumed you found out.”

“If I had known you were here, I never would have come.”

His jaw tightened. “Right. Makes sense. Stupid kid thing, us wanting to teach by the sea.”

I could see he’d changed, was jaded inside. I couldn’t blame him. I fought the urge every day to hate everyone and everything, to hate life.

The air grew stuffier, hotter, as if we brought too much emotion inside the concrete walls. My chest hurt from holding it all in, the anger threatening to dissolve into grief.

Stay mad, I warned myself, but all the things I wanted to forget came back, moments I’d shoved into the back of my brain. Impulsively, I touched my stomach, still bearing stretch marks, tiny white rivers like lightning bolts from my hips to my navel. And without wanting to, I saw that little face, his sweet cheeks and nubby nose, the tiniest perfect fingers.

I sobbed out loud, a horrid sound that echoed against the walls.

“Corabelle. Come here.” Gavin tried to put his arm around me.

I jerked away and stood, accidentally smacking his face with my backpack as I went up. Damn it, who cares, I had to GO.

I raced down the stairs again, trying to be more sure-footed this time. I couldn’t take a class with Gavin. I couldn’t be around him at all. Even if I could find a way to suck it up, to stuff our past down and away, he’d be a distraction. We never were able to keep our hands off each other, back when we were together. Of course our birth control failed. We pushed every limit.

Then pregnancy had failed. Then parenthood itself.

This was too much. I couldn’t be in his group. Stargazing. Spectrum lab. Graded together. No way. No no no no way.

I couldn’t help but look up as I descended the stairs. Gavin was above me, blue eyes piercing in the yellow light. He had so much rage coming off him, like he had earned it. Well, I had too.

“Why did this happen?” My voice was powerful in the chamber, stronger and bolder than I felt.

“Which part?” he asked.

I knew what he meant. The baby or his death? Gavin’s desertion or finding each other again?

Disgust with him burned in my belly. Gavin had been my best friend since I was a child, the one person I thought would be there for me all my life. But he walked out of our baby’s funeral, shucking his jacket and tie as he stormed out, missing graduation, disappearing completely. Gone from my life, just like little Finn.

He came down the stairs, slowly, like he wasn’t sure he should. “Do you believe in second chances?” he asked. His voice had gone soft, losing its edge.

No way. Our baby had not been given a second chance. And Gavin had left me, discarded like his clothing in the aisle of the church. A person capable of that was not the sort of man I could depend on for anything.

But he was holding out his hand, those fingers I had once known so well. My gaze moved up his arm, darker and hairier than it had been, to the sleeve of his T-shirt, and his shoulder, broader now, like a man’s instead of a boy’s. Then back up to that chiseled face. And those eyes, piercing blue. I was sure the baby would have them. But I never got to see. He never opened his eyes.

Life rushed at me too hard then and I felt light, like I was floating. My old habit of holding my breath too long when I was in distress kicked in without my thinking about it. I was going to faint, escape into black oblivion, my one safe place.

My knees buckled and I bent over the rail. Gavin rushed down the last steps and held on to me, pulling me into that familiar embrace. He smelled of outdoors, boyish soap, and the life I once loved.

As my vision turned to spots, I realized that maybe I’d arrived at the college by the sea just to come home. 

Corabelle had to have known I’d be here. She HAD to.

I held her against the rail, making sure she didn’t fall. Her black hair was all tied up, and her face was so pale. She’d never been super sturdy, and the whole time she was pregnant I feared she would just slip away.

I had no answers for her. Why I left. Why I stayed away. Or why I came to UCSD, which was a risk. It had always been our plan, and we were both accepted our senior year. But then we found out about the baby. New Mexico State had been closer to people who could help us out as we navigated work, college, and family.

Her breathing was shallow and fast. I held on to her, waiting for her to come back around.

I figured I knew what she was seeing behind those closed eyes, her lashes curled against her cheek. Finn. Despite what Corabelle might think, that I wanted to erase the memory of him and those seven days we had him, I still had his picture. One was always with me.

When she began to move around again, I used my free hand to tug my wallet out and flipped it to the center. “I never forgot.”

Corabelle’s eyes fluttered open, but when she saw the picture I held out, she pushed away from me, despite her unsteadiness. “Why do you have that? You don’t deserve it!”

I jumped in front of her and took her arm. “I was Finn’s father. I do too deserve it.”

“You didn’t do ANYTHING! You took off!” Her eyes were going red, like she’d cry. Damn it, I hated it when she cried. But I had nothing to say to that.

She jerked her arm away from me, and I actually felt relief that she was angry rather than in tears. Anger I could deal with.

“I’m dropping this class,” she said. “But I can’t leave here. I have to finish my degree.”

“Wait. You didn’t finish in New Mexico?”

“How did you know where I went?” Corabelle stood straight as a crowbar.

“I assumed. I planned to find you.”

“But you didn’t.” Her brown eyes flashed with little sparks of light, like they always did when she got mad. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known, something I’d taken for granted when I was a numbskull teen.

“It was too late by then,” I said. Too late on all counts, even the ones she didn’t know about.

Her hand shook a little as she gripped the metal slats of the railing. “Probably so.”

I wanted to ask what happened at NMSU, but she had changed from upset to fear, as if she had something to hide. She never did have much of a poker face.

I didn’t want to be the cause of any more distress for her. “I’ll drop the class. Hell, I’m on the ten-year plan already. It won’t matter.”

“Why aren’t YOU finished yet?” she asked.

“Work. I have to pay every dollar for school myself.”

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said. “I thought you’d be done with college.”

“Yeah, well, when you ditch the school that was giving you a free ride, it’s hard to convince another one to cough up any dough.”

She nodded, and I figured something similar had happened to her. At least she was calm again.

“Can I walk you somewhere?” I didn’t really want to leave her alone after all this.