“Should I come over tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Remi…”

She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know if she’d want to see him tomorrow or the next day or ever, for that matter. She felt the weight of his gaze on her, even though she sat with her back turned to him, sticky and wet between her legs. She listened for the clap of the door closing behind him. And then she fell apart.

She had never called in sick when she wasn’t sick, but Friday morning she did. Well, she did feel sick. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours and that sleep had been restless and disturbed. She could not function in the classroom and it was better that she’d found a substitute teacher and just stayed home. She had three whole days to try to deal with the mess her life had suddenly become.

It was almost too painful to even think about, but she made herself do it, like picking at a scab or worrying a sore tooth.

Brianne was pregnant. With Jason’s baby. The baby Remi had always wanted, with the man she loved, the man she now wanted to have babies with. She stood and kicked a chair. Hard. Ow.

She sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands.

She was in love with Jason. She’d actually been considering moving in with him. She thought she’d met the man she wanted to be with forever and he loved her too. Their future had stretched ahead of them, bright and shining and forever, maybe with…babies. Children. A family of their own.

And now this. She and Jason were done. How could she be with a man who’d gotten another woman pregnant? She started to cry yet again. You’d think the tears would have dried her right out, but somewhere, somehow her body was able to produce more and she cried and cried again until she lay down, exhausted.

She hated how she felt after a big crying jag. She hadn’t had one for so long, not since her parents had died. She hated the stuffy nose, the swollen, stinging eyes, the puffy lips, the feeling of being on the edge of starting all over again.

She sat up slowly on her bed and dragged her hands over her cheeks, shaking her head. The pregnancy had happened before she and Jason had met. It wasn’t as if he’d cheated on her.

So he said.

No, Jason wouldn’t lie. She knew him better than that. He hadn’t cheated on her, hadn’t planned this. When she thought about it logically, she realized it was just an awful mistake that happened to people sometimes.

Only she’d never thought someone else’s unplanned pregnancy would affect her.

She was responsible, used birth control. Why hadn’t Brianne? Why hadn’t Jason? It was both their responsibility. Anger at both of them flared up in her so hot and furious she couldn’t breathe. How could they have been so stupid and irresponsible? How many lives had been impacted by something so careless?

With a small burn of shame, she recalled how she’d been willing to forego a condom the last time they’d had sex, how she’d been willing to take the risk. And the burn turned into a shaft of agony remembering how she’d almost hoped she’d get pregnant.

When Jasmine called to see if she’d done anything about selling the house, Remi wanted to yell at her. Didn’t she know she had other bigger problems right now? But she bit her tongue and quietly told Jasmine she would have to talk to Kyle about it. It was his home too and he needed to be part of the decision. The school year was almost done for him. He’d want to come home for the summer.

“I want to go to Australia for the summer,” Kyle told her when she called him a while later. She sat down heavily on a chair. “A bunch of buddies are going and I want to go with them.”

She stared across the living room, the phone to her ear. “How will you pay for that?”

“Well, I thought you might help me out. But we’re going to work when we’re there. Some odd jobs or something.”

“But Kyle, I don’t have a lot of extra money for that. What about tuition for next year?”

“I’ll try to save enough when I’m working to help pay for that. Come on, Remi, I really want to do this.”

She told him about Jasmine and her wanting to sell the house.

“That would be perfect!” Kyle said, excitement coloring his voice. “I could use my share of the money for the trip and there’d be enough to pay for the rest of my college. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

True.

“But you’d have no home to come home to,” she managed to say. For some reason that seemed so important to her—to have a place her brother and sister could come home to if they needed. To be there for them if they needed her. Thinking of them floundering, in need, made her heart hurt.

“I know. But I’m older now, Remi, I’ll find a place in the summers. I’ll have enough money for that.”

Apparently she was the only one who wanted to hold onto the house.

Was she being overly emotional about it? Perhaps she was.

So she called a realtor and arranged for him to come over and look at the house. She might as well do it all—sell the house, give up their home, find some crappy apartment to live in by herself for the rest of her life. She even got so agitated, she started packing things in boxes, decorative things that served no purpose, clothes that were out of season, anything left behind in Kyle and Jasmine’s bedrooms.

She might as well do it all. Nobody cared about her or what she wanted, not Kyle, not Jasmine, and God, not Jason. Pain stabbed through her like a knife as she threw stuff into boxes, blinded by stinging tears.

And wasn’t that just the way it always was. Her sacrificing everything for everyone else. Fine. She’d do it. Just like she always had.

Oh for heaven’s sake. She paused over one of the boxes she was filling. She sounded like the biggest martyr in the world, all sorry for herself. Get over it, Remi. She rolled her eyes at herself and straightened her shoulders, then went to find the newspaper. She had a life to get on with.

She scanned the classifieds for apartment listings, looking for something near the school. Two bedrooms would be good, in case Kyle or Jasmine did in fact need a place to stay. But she bit her lip when she saw prices in the neighborhoods she’d like to live in. Eep. She’d had it pretty good, living rent-free in a house that was paid for. Maybe it was going to have to be one bedroom. If Kyle or Jasmine needed a place to stay, they’d have to figure things out.

The next day, the realtor was enthusiastic about the house. Remi knew it would sell easily. Her parents had bought the house many years ago and since then the neighborhood had become very desirable and house prices had escalated to the moon. They’d get good money for it. So she signed the papers and the For Sale sign went up in the front yard.

She cried when she looked at it, her emotions all ragged and shaky. But she swiped the tears away and pressed her lips together and returned to shoving stuff heedlessly into boxes. And while she did that she tried not to think about Jason.

Then the doorbell rang.

She froze with her hands in a box of sweaters, tears dripping down her cheeks.

It was Jason.

He eyed her face, which she knew only too well looked atrocious, then her baggy yoga pants and faded T-shirt. “Hi.”

She stood aside and held the door open for him to come in.

“I have a game tonight,” he said.

Oh, yeah. Life did go on. And he had to go play a game while their lives fell apart.

Then a hot wave of shame swept over her. That wasn’t fair. Jason’s career may be a game, but he was talented and dedicated and serious about it. So were a lot of other people, including a lot of fans who counted on him being there and winning. It really was a big business, despite being just a game.

“Oh. Okay.”

They walked into the living room and stood there on the carpet, facing each other. He actually didn’t look much better than she did. His face too was tight, with lines grooved around his mouth and eyes. He still had greenish and yellow bruises around one eye, still hadn’t shaved and now had dark circles under both eyes.