I looked up at my parents and saw in their ragged expressions what the last forty-eight hours had done to them.

I closed my eyes.

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

Two months.

I sat on the end of my own bed, staring around at the things in my room, feeling strangely detached from the person who owned them. I didn’t feel like that girl anymore.

Nearly dying, weeks of pain and recovery, missing school, dealing with the rumors at school… all without him, all without Marco by my side. The one person I needed.

It had been a long two months.

A life-changing two months.

And I still hadn’t explained anything to anyone.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.

My eyes locked on a photograph of Jo and me last Halloween. I’d convinced her to dress up with me. She was a sexy nurse and I was a mischievous angel of death. I had my arm around her shoulders and I had pouted dramatically at the camera, laughter and joy in my eyes.

Who was that girl?

I blinked away the tears, refusing to give in to any more of them.

A light knock sounded at my door and I looked up to watch Cole slide in. He was taller than Cameron now.

Without saying a word he walked into the room and sat down beside me.

“I know everyone has tried talking to you about what happened and I know you keep blowing everyone off, but today you aren’t going to.”

I scowled at my lap.

“Hannah, you passed out in my arms. There was blood. Jo and I didn’t know what was going on. You were dying. I was scared shitless,” he confessed, his words thick with emotion.

Surprised, I looked up at him. Cole cared about me.

Sighing, I reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. Just tell me who got you pregnant so I can kill him before Braden, Adam, Cam, and Nate get to him.”

Still, despite feeling betrayed by Marco’s departure, angry at him, so angry at him for leaving me to deal with all this alone, I felt fear more than anything else. Fear of my family discovering he got me pregnant. Fear they’d hurt him. Fear they’d think less of him.

“Hannah, you almost died,” Cole reminded me harshly.

“I know.” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “I made a massive mistake. At the beginning of the school year I went to a party with Sadie. I got really drunk.” I looked away from him. “I slept with this random guy I met and I took off afterwards because I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I don’t even know his name, let alone where he lives. And if I did, what would be the point? I had a miscarriage. He didn’t know I was pregnant, I didn’t know. We were both to blame for acting irresponsibly.”

“But you’re the only one who had to deal with the consequences. How is that fair?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think God’s a woman, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He choked on laughter. “You’re joking about this? Really?”

“It’s either that or I cry.” I felt my lips tremble. “Shit. I’m going to cry.” The tears fell before I could stop them, the sobs shuddering out from the very depths of me.

Cole wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him, his T-shirt instantly soaked where I laid my head on his chest. “You’ll get through this, Hannah.”

“I keep seeing my mum’s and dad’s faces. I watched them go through hell when Ellie was diagnosed with her tumor and I saw it in their eyes again when I was lying in that hospital bed. Their whole world nearly disappeared along with me and it’s my fault.” I sobbed harder.

“Ssh,” he soothed, pulling me closer. “It’s nobody’s fault. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The truth was, I was scared. I was scared one wrong move could rip life away from me. Suddenly pregnancy was something that could do that to me. It wasn’t rational. I knew the doctor had told me I could go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, but the fear of another ectopic pregnancy was too great. My fear forced me to grieve too young for what I always took for granted would be in my future.

Sitting up from the cold tiled floor of my bathroom, I swiped at my wet cheeks, and pressed my back against the bathtub, wrapping my arms around my knees to draw them into me.

My miscarriage, my near-death experience, and my grief changed me. It made me a bit of a loner. I lost most of my high school friends and I created a distance between myself and my family. Partly because I felt to blame for it all. I had acted recklessly that night with Marco, and in doing so I scared the utter crap out of the people that meant the most to me. They all became super-overprotective. To the point of suffocating me. That only made me internalize everything more.

I was depressed for months. Heartbroken.

In an attempt to try to pull me out of the dark, my parents were actually the ones who surprised everybody by suggesting I stay in student accommodations at university. They believed it would force me to start living again.

And it did.

Suzanne was crazy. She was never serious. She liked to party, and I found her carefree attitude addictive during a time when I really needed that.

I soon discovered, however, that my parents were worried about me getting pregnant again. Although they’d never admonished me for my stupidity, since nature had done enough reprimanding for the both of them, I knew I’d lost something from them. I’d lost their certainty in me. They worried that I’d make the same mistake all over again and that I’d put myself in danger.

So I went with Mum and I got the pill.