I smiled. “Yeah? What’s her —” Violent pain shot through my abdomen and I bent double, sucking in my breath.

“Hannah.” Cole wrapped his arm around me. “Jo!”

More pain. Agonizing. I think I screamed. I felt a rush of wetness between my legs.

Pain. Nausea.

Fear.

Black spots in my vision, hundreds, thousands… until all was just black.

There was a beeping sound.

It was bloody annoying.

Pushing through the dark of sleep, that beeping sound grabbed hold of me and pulled me into consciousness. My eyes fluttered open slowly, my vision hazy. I took in the fading cream-colored walls of the room. The polystyrene ceiling.

Where the hell was I?

I felt weird. My mouth dry. My body weighted.

Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned my head on the unfamiliar pillow to find my mum sitting on a chair beside the unfamiliar bed I was in. Her elbow was braced on the arm of the chair, her chin braced on her hand.

Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks pale.

The beeping behind me seemed to speed up.

“Mum?” I tried to say, but it just came out as a croak. “Mum.” I tried again, more successfully.

Her lashes fluttered and then she was looking at me in surprise. The surprise immediately disappeared as her face crumpled and she started to sob.

“Mum?” Scared, I lifted my arm a little to reach for her hand and I spotted the IV stuck in the bend of my elbow. “Mum?” My voice shook now.

She grabbed my hand. “Oh sweetheart, you’re okay.” She smiled through the tears.

“What happened?”

“Hannah?”

I turned my head to see my dad standing in the doorway. His features were strained, his eyes bloodshot. He rushed toward the hospital bed and leaned over me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Sweetheart,” he whispered hoarsely.

I started to cry. Silent tears. “What happened?”

A little while later a doctor arrived to explain. She introduced herself as Dr. Tremell, my surgeon.

She stood on my right, while my parents stood in each other’s arms on my left. Dr. Tremell stared down at me kindly. “Hannah, you had what is called an ectopic pregnancy.”

What? Pregnant? No. I turned to look at my parents in denial. “No… I would have… known.”

The doctor shook her head gently. “Sometimes with an ectopic pregnancy there is bleeding, spotting, that is often confused with menstruation.” She must have seen on my face that that’s exactly what had been happening these last few weeks. “An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants itself outside of the womb. In your case, Hannah, the egg implanted inside your left fallopian tube. Unfortunately, because you were unaware of your pregnancy, any symptoms you might have had were not picked up on.”

The sickness. The pain.

I closed my eyes in disbelief.

“The egg continued to grow inside your fallopian tube until it ruptured the tube. You were bleeding internally when you arrived at the hospital. We had to perform surgery immediately. As I explained to your parents, we lost your heartbeat but managed to resuscitate you.”

I’d died?

I looked at my parents and saw it written all over their faces.

“Hannah.” Dr. Tremell’s voice had grown softer. “We removed the damaged tube and you should make a full recovery from surgery. We’re administering pain medication to you, but if you feel any pain, please let your nurse know and we’ll administer more if needed.”

I looked up at my parents and saw in their ragged expressions what the last forty-eight hours had done to them.

I closed my eyes.

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

Two months.

I sat on the end of my own bed, staring around at the things in my room, feeling strangely detached from the person who owned them. I didn’t feel like that girl anymore.

Nearly dying, weeks of pain and recovery, missing school, dealing with the rumors at school… all without him, all without Marco by my side. The one person I needed.

It had been a long two months.

A life-changing two months.

And I still hadn’t explained anything to anyone.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.

My eyes locked on a photograph of Jo and me last Halloween. I’d convinced her to dress up with me. She was a sexy nurse and I was a mischievous angel of death. I had my arm around her shoulders and I had pouted dramatically at the camera, laughter and joy in my eyes.

Who was that girl?

I blinked away the tears, refusing to give in to any more of them.

A light knock sounded at my door and I looked up to watch Cole slide in. He was taller than Cameron now.

Without saying a word he walked into the room and sat down beside me.

“I know everyone has tried talking to you about what happened and I know you keep blowing everyone off, but today you aren’t going to.”

I scowled at my lap.

“Hannah, you passed out in my arms. There was blood. Jo and I didn’t know what was going on. You were dying. I was scared shitless,” he confessed, his words thick with emotion.

Surprised, I looked up at him. Cole cared about me.

Sighing, I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. Just tell me who got you pregnant so I can kill him before Braden, Adam, Cam, and Nate get to him.”

Still, despite feeling betrayed by Marco’s departure, angry at him, so angry at him for leaving me to deal with all this alone, I felt fear more than anything else. Fear of my family discovering he got me pregnant. Fear they’d hurt him. Fear they’d think less of him.

“Hannah, you almost died,” Cole reminded me harshly.

“I know.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I made a massive mistake. At the beginning of the school year I went to a party with Sadie. I got really drunk.” I looked away from him. “I slept with this random guy I met and I took off afterwards because I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I don’t even know his name, let alone where he lives. And if I did, what would be the point? I had a miscarriage. He didn’t know I was pregnant, I didn’t know. We were both to blame for acting irresponsibly.”

“But you’re the only one who had to deal with the consequences. How is that fair?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think God’s a woman, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He choked on laughter. “You’re joking about this? Really?”

“It’s either that or I cry.” I felt my lips tremble. “Shit. I’m going to cry.” The tears fell before I could stop them, the sobs shuddering out from the very depths of me.

Cole wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him, his T-shirt instantly soaked where I laid my head on his chest. “You’ll get through this, Hannah.”

“I keep seeing my mum’s and dad’s faces. I watched them go through hell when Ellie was diagnosed with her tumor and I saw it in their eyes again when I was lying in that hospital bed. Their whole world nearly disappeared along with me and it’s my fault.” I sobbed harder.

“Ssh,” he soothed, pulling me closer. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The truth was, I was scared. I was scared one wrong move could rip life away from me. Suddenly pregnancy was something that could do that to me. It wasn’t rational. I knew the doctor had told me I could go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, but the fear of another ectopic pregnancy was too great. My fear forced me to grieve too young for what I always took for granted would be in my future.