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She leans back against the couch and sighs, crosses her arms under her breasts, then uncrosses them. The move just makes me aware of the fact that she is not wearing a bra under that top. I hate myself when I feel my cock getting hard at the realization of it.
“Seven years ago,” Hunter finally starts, and I want to groan in distress. I don’t want to hear it, but I did promise her that I would listen. “I felt a lot of pressure to leave. I didn’t want to. But I felt guilty when my mother reminded me how much money they had spent on me to go to NYU.”
“That’s why you want to pay them back?”
“Yes,” she nods and plays with an invisible dot on her leggings. “She reminded me that I had wanted a career in PR. And she thought I’d be throwing it all away by not going. We fought. It was ugly,” she laughs with sadness in her tone. “I still hate her for it, you know?”
The mask on her face finally falls and all I see is despair. Hunter is suffering. And if what she says is true, she’s been holding this in for the last seven years.
“I went back and signed up to take all my remaining courses online. I wanted to finish early, I didn’t even care about walking down on graduation day. I was still mad at my parents, and I didn’t want to give that to them.”
“Did you graduate early?” I ask even though it doesn’t seem to be an important thing right now.
“No,” she sniffles and wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. “It was two months after I got back. I wasn’t feeling well.” My heart starts beating uncontrollably fast knowing where she’s going with this. “I called Mattie. My roommate. Mattie is a girl,” she explains when she notices my frown. “She rushed home and found me sitting in a puddle of blood.”
Fuck.
“She took me to the hospital. They ran tests. They told me I was having a miscarriage.”
“You didn’t know…” I choke out.
“I didn’t know,” Hunter confirms, then starts crying. I can’t move, I can’t say another word. I can’t even blink for that matter. My heart hurts for her and what she must’ve gone through.
“That day at the hospital, when I ran into you… It was three days later. I was there to pick up my meds,” she whispers. “I wanted to tell you…”
The memory of that day hits me like a train. I see it all in my head. The nurse mentioned birth control pills, and I naturally assumed the worst. Just like when she told me about the baby, I automatically assumed that she’d gotten rid of it. It never crossed my mind that there could’ve been any medical issues.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice sounds cold and far away. This is all too much for me to process.
“I was scared. I was alone there,” she tries to explain. “I mean, I had Mattie, but I didn’t even tell her anything.”
“I thought she was with you at the hospital,” I try to recall what she just said not ten minutes ago.
“She was, but she stepped out of the room when they gave me the news. I told the doctor that I didn’t want my information shared with anyone,” she further explains. “I never told my parents.”
“You never told anyone at all?” I am in complete and utter shock.
“I told Chloe,” she whispers, tears running down her face. “Before we went to Las Vegas. It slipped.” She presses a hand to her chest, like her heart hurts. I want to take her into my arms, hug and kiss her, and tell her that everything will be alright.
“Does she know I was the father?”
“She guessed after seeing us together in Vegas,” Hunter shakes her head. “I only told her I was pregnant once, and that I lost the baby.”
I continue staring at her, not sure of what I’m feeling. I just can’t believe that I read things this wrong. That encounter at the hospital shaped the next seven years of my life until now. With the knowledge that she had no problem going to the doctor for birth control, I felt no remorse in starting to see other people.
It was hard at first. I needed a few more months after that because everywhere I turned, I only saw her. I kept on running into all these dark haired girls that reminded me of Hunter Montgomery. Then, one day, I was at a party, and a blonde girl approached me. She looked nothing like Hunter, and when she stuck her hand into my jeans and enclosed her fingers around my cock, it was game over. I hadn’t had any action in a while, and I felt entitled to it. I had punished myself for long enough, and I wasn’t even guilty of anything.
However, as it turns out, I was guilty then, and I am guilty now. In my quest to punish Hunter, I abused her trust, and I may have destroyed any chance we might have had at a normal relationship. How do we come back from that?
“Zach?” She looks at me with worry in her eyes, and I feel like an even bigger asshole. “Are you okay?” She repeats the words I said to her upstairs only hours ago. When I hurt her. When I put my hand around her throat and squeezed.
I am not okay. I will never be okay, I think. Problem is, now that Hunter is back in my life, that she is back inmy bed, I don’t think I can let her go. I need to think of a way to fix this. Fixus.
“I’m sorry,” she starts crying again when I don’t say anything.
“What are you sorry for?” I can’t help but asking. She’s got nothing to be sorry for. She did nothing wrong.
“For breaking us before,” she whimpers through her sobs. “For being too worried about not disappointing my parents to stand up for us. I loved you so much. I still do,” she cries into her hands, covering her eyes.
