A Fighting Chance (35 page)

“He wanted you to get an abortion?”

“Wanted? He demanded it. He said if I didn’t get one, then they wouldn’t pay for college anymore. We were arguing a lot while I was home. It got to the point where I was afraid they would just slip a pill in my food or something. Oh, and he threatened to kick me out for good, too. You remember my aunt Michelle? She said if any of that happened I could stay with her and figure out what I wanted to do. I had packed up a few things to take to Michelle’s on my way back to school, in case I couldn’t come home again. Michelle was so angry about my parents’ reaction that she called and chewed my dad out. I guess he didn’t like that I was telling people, and that set him off. They attacked me—”

“Your parents?”

“Yeah. Both of them. They woke me up in the middle of the night and basically dragged me down the stairs. My dad was screaming that no daughter of his was going to have a baby by someone like you…” Drew shakes her angry expression away. “I tripped near the bottom of our staircase. I barely caught my balance, and I guess the sight of me almost falling and crying and struggling, snapped my mother out of her craziness. She had a change of heart right in our foyer and begged him to stop.”

“Shit…” I speak calmly but rage is building in my heart
, and I have to take several deep breaths to keep it from spreading to the rest of me.

“
Dad told me my choices were to do what he said or to get out. I told him it was my decision to make, and he held the door open and told me to go. I was begging my mom to help me. As betrayed as I felt, I just wanted my
mom
…” Drew’s voice breaks on the last word, and the vulnerability and irreparable hurt in her eyes are a blade to my soul. My beautiful Drew looks so fragile, clearly still reeling from the wound that hasn’t stopped bleeding, even after all this time. I envision myself punching out the window next to my head; my fist is clenched and poised on my lap. But what good would it do? I can’t turn her emotional pain into my physical pain.

She bites her quivering lip. “
Mom didn’t budge. The last thing I saw before I drove off was her comforting him, and then she shut the door. I was only at Michelle’s a few days before it happened…the miscarriage. I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a mother, but it was
ours,
you know? I just wanted more time to figure it out. And I didn’t even get that. Then every piece of you I had was gone. And every time I see my parents, it all comes back to me. My mom always buries a halfhearted, cryptic apology in a card she sends to me at Christmas, but my dad still thinks he had good intentions. You should’ve seen the look on his face when I told them I lost the baby. I swear to God he was
relieved
. Even today, I keep wondering how far they were willing to go that night. Would he have pushed me out of the house if I hadn’t left on my own?” She can’t hold back her sobs anymore. “I had to face who my parents
really
were that night but, truthfully, I have always known. It was so clear in the way they treated you, even though you were so good to me, and you made me happy. Pretty houses can hide some ugly secrets.”

“
And Buck was there for you?”

She nods. “I started spending time with him
when I would come back to visit my friends in Glory. It was a friendship at the beginning. I wasn’t even attracted to him at first. And it just grew…out of habit or necessity. I don’t know.”

“I’m glad he helped you…” I say. As much as it hurts, I mean it. “Uh, so, what time does your bus leave?” I don’t
really want to remind her of her plan, but I don’t know what the hell else to say.

“Oh crap…” Drew brushes her palm against her wet cheeks as she looks at her cell phone. “It’s gone. Dammit. It’s the only one that goes to Monterrey. I was going to spend the night and leave there tomorrow.”

“I’ll drive you to Monterrey.” I swing the door open and walk to the front seat.

“It’s a long way, Jesse,” Drew says but she gets
into the front passenger seat.

“It’s okay…” You would think learning that Drew was pregnant and
then lost our baby would have drained me emotionally, but I have so much nervous energy stirring in my gut and nowhere for it to go because I can’t punch anything. I pull out of the parking space and trail the slow queue of buses to the road. The silence between us is acidic, and may be worse than it was the first day we got to Mexico.

This whole time I thought Drew was just mad at me for cutting her out of my life, but I had done it at a time when she needed me to be there. She has every right to hold a grudge against me
, but she needs to know everything.

“
I’m sorry I never gave you a chance to tell me you were pregnant, back then. Right before I left for Hamilton, your dad came to see me. I was going through mom’s stuff that night, deciding what I wanted to take to college with me. Photos. Music. Stuff like that. I answered the knock on the door, and there’s Doctor Hallisay standing in my doorway. I must’ve looked like shit and I was drinking pretty heavily. You remember what those last days being in Glory were like for me. I wasn’t eating or sleeping normally. I was basically just trying not to intentionally walk into oncoming traffic most days.

“I saw sympathy on your dad’s face for just a minute
, and I invited him in. We talked. Trivial stuff. The house was falling apart. I hadn’t washed dishes in days or taken out the trash. I didn’t know how to function anymore. I was so lost.” Drew touches my cheek, and it’s only then that I realize a tear has slid down.

“Your dad helped me clean up and I thought, ‘Wow for the first time ever, this guy is being nice to me.’
But it wasn’t what he was doing. I was down and he had come over to kick me. He was there to throw in my face how my life was shit. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Son, it’s not your fault. There’s nothing you can do.’ I thought he meant mom’s cancer. But he kept talking. ‘It’s not your fault, Jesse. You were just born into a screwed-up situation. No one expects you to overcome that. How could you, anyway? The world is unfair. As you know, our screw-ups can affect the ones we care about. We can ruin lives when we’re being selfish, and some people are lucky enough to have someone else to protect them from that. Don’t you wish someone could’ve protected you from your parents’ selfishness? Taken you away from all of it? Well, I have to protect my daughter. You can’t give her the kind of life I want her to have, and it would be selfish to keep her, knowing that, don’t you think? And how would I explain your background to people, to my friends? Your parents can’t come and mingle with the people I know.’

“
It was like being punched over and over in the chest. It was the way he looked at me, too, like I had done so much damage by falling in love with you. Like us being together was changing the way he was seeing you. Like I was taking something of his. It was all over his face. He was giving me an ultimatum, and he knew I would give in because he knew we both had something in common. We both loved you more than—”

“My father was protecting his reputation.”

“He said, ‘She’s my only child.’ I told him I wasn’t who I had been before. I was just feeling like shit right then because of Mom. I told him that we weren’t really together; we were giving each other the chance to figure out the world on our own. I said that I wasn’t going to stop you from doing anything you wanted to do. I told him I loved you. He didn’t care. He said, ‘Don’t kill my dreams for my daughter.’ I guess he knew we’d never really let each other go, no matter where we were. And all I could think about was my mom and her dreams for me. I didn’t want you to lose your dad. I knew what that was like. He said, after my mom died, after the funeral, I wouldn’t have any ties to Glory anymore, so that’s when I should just let you go. And I just gave up. I said, ‘Drew won’t have to worry about me anymore. Neither do you.’ He didn’t say anything after that. He just put his hand on my shoulder again and then he left. I had a feeling that you would choose me and it
did
feel selfish. And the longer I stayed in your life, the easier it would have been for him to start looking at you the way he was looking at me. He knew I would never want that for you, and he used it against me. And I knew if I answered any of your calls I would have to tell you this, and you’d never forgive your dad. Seemed better for you to not forgive
me.
”

“I asked him for weeks if he had said something to you, and he never
admitted it but he didn’t deny it, either. The only thing he ever said was, ‘Maybe that Chance boy finally realized his future and yours aren’t the same.’ That was it.”

“
But I think he was right about me. I disrupt your life.” Doctor Hallisay’s words had destroyed me years ago, but now they bring on surprising clarity as I reflect on everything we’ve been through here together. Miguel shouldn’t be dead. Drew shouldn’t be injured. We shouldn’t have had to run from cops. She shouldn’t have given up her life to be here. The true realization of everything I’ve cost this woman I love so much is crippling. I’m her Kryptonite. I’m her poison. Maybe if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she and her parents might’ve found a way to work out all the strife between them that had come about because of me. There’s no way Drew would’ve hung on to me forever, right? She would’ve hated me, but she would’ve let me go eventually. All I’ve ever wanted for Drew Hallisay is a good life. “Maybe going home really is the best thing for you.”

Without a word, Drew and I dance around each other as we get ready in a motel room in Linares, preparing to leave for Monterrey the next morning. I’m wired, even after driving all of yesterday and part of this morning’s wee hours. We should be there in an hour and a half, and she’ll have tons of buses to choose from to get her to Brownsville. But once we’re in the car a sickening feeling curls in my stomach every time I look at her.

We take a twisty, narrow stretch of highway
and plunge through the sun-drenched day, dusty mountains and lush farmlands quickly shrinking behind us. Drew’s bouncing her knees, and I’m kneading the steering wheel, so it feels like sandpaper on my palms.
The two of us are still carrying on the morning’s quiet. No radio is playing and there’s barely an audible exhale. But it’s hardly cold and empty silence. The Mexican heat is permeating the car and kindling a strange energy between us. The air is churning with
something.

Something
flammable. Something volatile.

I can feel it beneath my skin. In my lungs. In my blood.

“You’ll be happy in Glory,” I say finally. “You’ll probably end up with that job you want. If you go back and be with Buck, you will make a great life there, even without your parents’ help. Even without your parents. You will put this behind you and never have to think about it again. And that’s why letting you go is the best idea…” I make a reckless swerve into a U-turn, angering every driver in the vicinity as I pull off to the side of the road, where it abuts an expanse of farmland. I get out of the car, walk around to the other side, and open her door. “But I can’t let you go. Not again. Because I want to be really selfish for once. I love you, Drew Hallisay. I don’t want anyone else to know what that’s like ever again. I don’t want anyone else to love you. And I don’t want anyone else to ever know what it’s like to be loved by you. I’ve fought for so many fucking things…a lot of the wrong things. This—
you
—is the first thing that’s felt right to fight for. The thing my mom told me about five years ago. So you can’t go home. Not without me. I will throw my fucking keys across the road if I have to.” I’m panting, jittery, and so tense my hurt shoulder is aching.

I’m scared.

I’m actually fucking scared right now.

Drew stares at me, unbli
nking, like none of my words make sense. She focuses her gaze back on the windshield. “Get in the car, Jesse.”

“What?” My voice is so buried in my breath
s the word barely forms.

“
Goddammit, just get in the car, Chance.” She grips the door handle and pulls it so that I’ll move away. She slams it shut and still won’t look at me, even when I’m back in my seat. Then she turns a teary-eyed smile to me. “Don’t ever wait that long to tell me something like that again.” Her hand hits the back of my neck, and my abs contract in anticipation as she brings herself closer.

Her lips touch mine
, warm and eager, before her tongue slips into my mouth. She smiles right after I do. I kiss her back, slide my tongue over hers, suck on each of her lips, and drown myself in that sweet, familiar taste of her mouth. I feel the fierce beat of my pulse at my temples as I’m flooded with lust. Frenzied, possessing lust. I maneuver her into my lap, and adjust the seat back, once she’s straddling me. She’s biting her lip and glancing between my mouth and eyes, and the sun’s no match for the impatience burning in her gaze. I run my hand from her thigh to her waist. My fingers inch up her skin, under her top, and follow the curve below her breast. As her lips part slowly, she shudders my name. Drew’s chest is inches away from my face, her nipples round peaks under her shirt. I lift my stare to hers because I need her to see my hunger, and I need her to know I want to fuck her until neither of us can move.

A noisy muffler
drones by, and the desire shining in Drew’s brown eyes almost makes me forget that we’re way too comfortable being exhibitionists. A flirty smile pulls a corner of her mouth to the side, and it’s the kind of look that asks a question that’ll land us in jail for indecent exposure later. “Shit. We can’t do this here…”