I don’t mention that Landon will probably be watching over me as soon as he sees I’m back at school. When we woke up together this morning, there wasn’t much time to talk about what happened. I had my doctor’s appointment, and he had to get ready for class. He asked if we could talk more tonight, and I told him yes. Right now, it’s hard to focus on anything else.
“Oh,” Court says. “Well, I can walk you to class.”
“Actually, I have to head to the office. I have an appointment with Mrs. Oaks.”
“Ugh,” she whines. “Career counseling sessions are the worst.”
“Yep.” I plop my backpack onto the floor and start rifling through it to see what I need. “But I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to be late, so we can just meet up at lunch.”
She checks the empty hallway again before agreeing. It’s been so long now I think everyone is finally starting to let their guard down, including me. You can only spend so long checking over your shoulder before it taxes your nervous system completely.
“Okay, I’ll see you in the cafeteria then. Text me if you need me.” She flounces off down the hallway, and I turn back to my locker.
When I unlock it, a nervous flutter erupts in my belly. Every day, Landon has left something in here for me. Admittedly, I expected him to give up, but he didn’t. And now things finally seem like they could be going our way. But I know there’s still a lot to talk about. We have to hash things out before we can move forward. Band-Aids won’t fix the gaping stab wounds we’ve left each other with.
With a sigh, I open the door. Just as I expected, there’s a decorative box full of tissue paper waiting for me inside. I wonder what it will be today. More sweets. Jewelry. Flowers. Those would be the obvious choices, even though he doesn’t need to get me anything. But when I tilt the box to examine the contents, instead of that warm fuzzy feeling I usually get, there’s a sick sense of foreboding.
I move aside the tissue paper with stiff fingers to uncover what I can already see is a pregnancy test. It’s positive. Hot acid burns my throat when I try to swallow. I want to throw the box in the rubbish and pretend I never saw it, but I can’t look away. I can’t pretend I don’t see the photo beneath the test. It’s an image of Landon and Audrey tangled up in the sheets of a familiar bed.
Everything inside me turns to ice when I flip over the photo and read the pretty, perfect handwriting.
I win, demon slut.
Choking back the bitter taste on my lips, I return the photo to the box and haul it to Landon’s locker in a daze. The bell rings, and the hall floods with other people. Everything around me is spinning violently. Someone bumps me, and I look up at what I know will be my biggest heartbreak.
Landon Blackwood.
“Kail?” He reaches out to touch me, and I shrink away, shaking my head in warning.
I can’t even speak. There are no words. I throw the box at his feet and dart away.
He calls after me in frustration. “Kail, wait. Please.”
But I’m already gone.
I didn’t go to my meeting with Mrs. Oaks. I just walked out the front door, got into my car, and drove away. Landon tried to call me. He left me voicemails and texts, but I couldn’t look at any of them.
I didn’t even know where I wanted to go. I just knew I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t think about him, and I couldn’t accept what I saw.
He lied to me.
You can’t deny a photograph. There are no excuses. No justification. He was with her in that bed. He told me I was the only one. The thought of Audrey carrying his baby makes me so violently ill, I pull over to vomit twice.
How could he do this to me?
In a daze, I navigate the winding mountain roads until I end up at Devil’s Bluff. This is the place people come to when they want to find some quiet during the day. On weekends, students from the surrounding schools show up in hordes, dragging in kegs and cases of liquor. They park their luxury vehicles along the edge of the gravel and stuff their pockets full of condoms and weed. They rage and dance and have sex,