Ritual (Palm South University #5) - Kandi Steiner Page 0,2
the parents of your best friend taking you in as their own, like my little brother and Mac. Like me and Skyler.
It can mean never really feeling like you had a family at all, and so you build one at the college you go to, surrounding yourself with fraternity brothers and sorority girls and making your own dysfunctional unit.
Or it can mean a baby, one of your own.
One never born.
One you never knew existed — not before it was too late to have a say in whether it stayed that way or not.
It’s the Saturday before fall semester, and I should be happy. It’s my senior year, my fraternity is finally off suspension, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in, and I’ve got the hottest, smartest, kindest girl I’ve ever known wrapped around me in my bed. Skyler is here, too, sitting in the bean bag on my floor with her feet propped up on my desk as she relays her summer to us. She and Becca have become friends — my two favorite girls — and yet, still, there’s a hollowness inside me.
Because down Greek Row, there’s a girl who carried my child inside her.
A girl who never let that child be born.
“I will say this,” Skyler says, letting her legs drop to the floor as she sinks even lower into the bean bag. “I am so glad rush is over. I usually love Bid Day, but I was exhausted today.”
“Maybe you’re getting old,” Becca offers
“I am. I most certainly am.”
“And you’re still considering running for president?” Becca asks
Skyler frowns, a strand of her long, brown hair falling into her face. “As crazy as it sounds, I am. I know Erin and I went through a lot of shit last year, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to have anything to do with the presidency after that. But… I love KKB. That’s my family. And to lead them for a year? That would be an honor.”
I listen to them talk in a sort of numb daze, broken up time to time only by them saying Erin’s name. Every time I hear the two syllables, a zing of something hot and uncomfortable assaults my chest.
“You okay, babe?” Becca asks me quietly when Skyler pulls out her phone. I bet money she’s texting Kip. With him being at school in California, they’re committed to the long-distance relationship thing — and I am not envious of the work that goes with that.
“I’m good,” I assure her, rubbing her back before I press a kiss to the sunshine yellow bandana tied around her hair and covering her forehead. “Just going to run to the bathroom real quick.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling at me, but I see the worry etched in her eyes.
When I slip out from under the covers, Skyler whistles.
“Hot damn, Bear,” she says, eyeing me from head to toe. “I didn’t think it was possible for you to get more beastly than you already were. What the hell have you been eating?”
“He eats like The Rock now,” Becca answers for me. “I swear, I counted one morning, and the man had eight whole wheat pancakes. And a half a pound of turkey bacon.”
Skyler whines. “Not fair. If I ate like that, I’d have an ass the size of Texas.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Becca says, smacking her own ass.
When I don’t so much as chuckle, Skyler eyes me warily, but I avoid her eyes.
“He’s also been working out like a mad man,” Becca continues, but I snuff out her next sentence with the gentle snick of the bathroom door closing, reveling in the time alone.
After I piss, I wash my hands and dry them before splaying them on the bathroom counter. My eyes find those of my reflection, and I hold my own gaze, searching for the man I used to be in the mirror. But he’s not there, he’s not anywhere — not anymore.
They say there are moments in your life that change everything. I could look back and name a few in mine — when Mom first asked me for money, and when she and my older brother bailed on life, leaving behind my nephews and my little brother, Clayton. I could even peg my breakup with Shawna as one that changed me, and the night I saw Erin raped definitely fell into that category, too.
But finding out I had fathered a child with her, one that she never told me about, one that she aborted