The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,117

she was a little girl. She didn’t care if she was being immature; she couldn’t help it. “I’m pregnant,” she sobbed, throwing herself into her mother’s arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to screw up my life. I don’t know why I slept with Oliver Hancock. I don’t even like him.”

* * *

Just hearing her daughter’s voice come through the door had almost given Autumn a heart attack. Quinn had barely had time to get up, grab his clothes and slip into the bathroom, where he was hopefully hiding in the shower, while she turned off the light so that Taylor couldn’t see two naked bodies spring into action. Painfully aware of her nudity under her robe, she tried to calm herself.

Quinn had managed to get out of the room in time. But calming down proved futile when her daughter’s words began to sink in. “What’d you say?” she asked.

Mary came hurrying up the stairs behind Taylor. “Why don’t we all come back to the house and have a cup of hot chocolate?” She sounded slightly desperate, and breathless besides, giving Autumn the impression her mother knew Quinn was over and had been trying to chase down Taylor before she barged in on them.

Too bad she hadn’t been successful. That was Autumn’s first thought. But in her next thought, she realized how trivial that was in comparison to what her daughter had just revealed.

“I’m going to have a baby,” Taylor repeated. She was clinging to Autumn so tightly that her words were muffled by Autumn’s robe, but there could be no mistaking them. It was essentially the same thing Taylor had said only seconds before.

“Mom?” Caden called. “Mimi?”

Her son was now clomping up the stairs. Soon, her mother, daughter and son would be in the small apartment—while Quinn was hiding in the bathroom. Autumn needed to get them all out, but she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t do anything except hold her sobbing daughter.

“Did she just say pregnant?” Mary asked, her mouth hanging open as though she hadn’t been prepared for this news, either. “Can that be true?”

Caden shoved a hand through his hair, which was already sticking up. “Yeah, it’s true,” he said.

“How long have you known about this?” Autumn asked.

“A while.”

“How long has she known?”

He shrugged. “A while longer.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I was pretty pissed off that it was Oliver who got her pregnant, but she begged me not to say anything.”

The shock of this revelation had created a fog in Autumn’s mind. “Oliver Hancock is only sixteen.”

“Yeah. He used to be my friend, remember?”

The echo of that statement brought back the morning Caden had been so upset with Taylor. Now she knew this was why. At the time, she’d assumed their squabble was over Taylor’s sexuality—or Taylor’s general grumpiness because she was going through such a difficult time.

Holy shit. What were they going to do? She was just beginning to adjust to the fact that her daughter was gay. How could Taylor be both gay and pregnant? While Autumn understood how that was technically possible, the combination had to be unlikely—in a seventeen-year-old, at least.

“That’s why I was so upset,” Caden was saying.

Autumn could feel the pressure of Taylor’s embrace but was otherwise numb, except for her hands and feet, which tingled. She’d just gotten over what’d happened to Nick, was finally happy again.

“I think she should get an abortion, don’t you?” Caden blurted. “That would solve everything.”

Autumn flinched. Just the word seemed to have sharp edges. “That’s not a decision to be made lightly. How did this happen?” She was asking Taylor, but once again, Caden answered.

“How do you think it happened?”

Autumn lifted a hand to signal for him to stop talking. She was already upset, and his involvement was only making matters worse.

“Taylor?” She pulled back, catching her daughter’s face between her hands. “I need you to answer. Talk to me.”

Even in the darkness, she could see the shine of tears on Taylor’s cheeks. Then Caden snapped on the light, making his sister’s misery even more apparent. “We were...we were at a party,” Taylor choked out, crying so hard she hiccoughed between some of the words.

As Autumn listened to how Taylor had bumped into Oliver, that they’d been drinking, that he kept coming on to her, that she was hurt and angry even though she didn’t know why and that she finally went into the back bedroom with him, Autumn had to ask herself if she