I stared unblinking at the face of the boy I loved. The one who’d been my first everything. From holding his hand in a darkened movie theater to letting him have the piece of myself I’d held onto for eighteen years. He’d made me feel special, cherished, wanted. And for a girl who’d spent so much of her life feeling like a castoff, being wanted was everything.

“You knew how scared I was of this. Of being like my mother. Of people thinking I’m like her.” I didn’t regret my little bean, not one bit. I was going to love him or her with everything I had in me. But that didn’t change the betrayal of Grant’s actions. Apparently, he didn’t care enough about my fears to protect us both.

He straightened. “If you were truly on the pill, it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t use a condom a few times. Hell, maybe you cheated on me. This baby probably isn’t even mine.”

“How can you say something like that? You know me. You know that I would never do anything to betray you.” My heart was cracking. As if the organ had been submerged in subzero temperatures.

The boy I thought I knew better than myself suddenly seemed like a stranger. I’d always known that Grant had a short temper. He was used to getting things the exact way he wanted. But I never expected that he’d turn on me. I was the one who listened when his parents were too busy with work and charity galas. I was the one who explained where he was coming from when Harriet lost her patience with him. I made sure he stayed on top of his schoolwork. I cheered him on at every football game. I’d held him as he’d cried when his grandfather died. How could he forget all of that in the blink of an eye?

Grant began pacing back and forth. “You heard about Lacey, didn’t you? The parties? You think you can trap me?”

I blanched, my mouth falling open, but I couldn’t seem to form words, and my mind rapidly spun. The sickly-sweet scent tickled the back of my brain. Lacey. It was the perfume of the girl who had made my growing up years on the island torture. Throwing my mom’s drunkenness and abandonment in my face more times than I could count. Tripping me in the hallway. Writing nasty things on my locker. The boy who was the love of my life, the father of my baby, smelled like…Lacey.

I closed my eyes, trying to block out the pain slicing at my chest. “How could you?”