Second time lucky

9

Rileys Pov

Good, Did you tell him yet?" I heard Kyle say as I approached the door to her room.

He got up and kissed the side of her head as I stood out of sight in the doorway. "You need to tell him Britt, you can't hide that your pregnant forever." He told her as my heart ached. She was pregnant and I didn't know. We had never had secrets until I left her and now she was hiding a big one from me.

"I know," I heard her sigh as I tried to calm my breathing.  "its just every time I try, something interrupts. I'll tell him, Thanks Kyle, It means a lot that you've been by my side these last few months." She sounded a little too happy for my comfort as I tried to piece together what she meant about him being by her side.

Were they together now? Wait, I'm an idiot. Of course she moved on, and she's pregnant.

"I always will be." Kyle replied to her as my heart shattered into a million pieces. Her and Kyle. A Baby.

I couldn't even wait to figure it out, I felt like my chest was about to explode. I needed to get out of here. I quickly rushed past the door to get to the exit as quickly as possible.

Why? Why him?

All I could think about was getting home, back to my empty room. My roommate wouldn't be there, him and Courtney had decided to go on some exotic vacation for their anniversary so at least I could grieve the loss of the love of my life privately.

I sped out of the parking lot and hit the interstate pushing the pedal to the floor. The more distance I put between myself and them, the more reality set in, crippling me until I finally got home and slumped into my room, locking it before collapsing on my bed.

My Mind was racing as I tried to process everything.I didn't understand it. She had sworn to me that they were just friends, and somehow I knew I only had myself to blame for this.

I had left her and ignored her for months, afraid of what she would say, whether she would hate me for leaving how I did. Yet when we finally talked on the phone or texted she gave no indication that she was mad, only the false hope that she still needed me in her life.

Even today in the court she looked at me the way she always did, with longing and love. I felt it too when my eyes caught her distressed face on the stand, the feeling that my only purpose in life was to protect her and love her with everything I had.

Then when I held her in the back room I felt the butterflies in my stomach, the same ones that only she gave me. I had been an idiot the last six months but I had never stopped loving her.

I hated that it took her collapsing in front of me, and then carrying her limp body to the car as I raced her to the hospital. Her golden auburn hair splayed over her pale face as I laid her on the gurney and they wheeled her into the hospital.

The last time I had been that scared was the night Carl attacked her. A part of me knew that I should have put off college for another year, sure the scholarship was nice but I didn't really need it, too bad it was too late.

I looked at my phone through my watered down eyes. I was glad I was alone, I could only imagine what my roommate would say if he saw me crying in my room. He would probably bring one of Courtney's trashy friends here in an attempt to distract me, but Courtney and her friends were a little too promiscuous for my liking.

"Riles I promise it's not what it looked like, please call me." She had texted me.

A small part of me knew I should call her, trust her and give her the chance to explain, the same way she had let me explain my actions when I left. The bigger part of me didn't want to risk her confirming my fears, so instead of replying I looked at the other messages that had appeared.

Brett, Ava, my parents, and even Levi had all texted me. Clearly she had told them what happened. The one that caught my attention was the one from my mother that explained the jury would be reconvening  in the morning.

I knew she wouldn't sleep tonight, neither would I if I was being honest with myself. It didn't matter to me that my heart felt like it had been ripped from my chest, or that I was the cause of my own pain, but it did matter that knowing she would be hurting and scared tonight, made the pain inside my chest ten times worse.

I needed the pain to go away. It was consuming me as I sat on my bed and thought about her. Her soft hair, blue eyes and freckles that covered her nose when she didn't have makeup on. She hated them but I thought they were cute.

I grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the closet, I had to hide my stash thanks to Courtney's friends. They would drink whatever they could find, thankfully my room was off limits to everyone. I removed the cap and sipped on it until everything faded into a haze.

And so that became my trend, my coping mechanism over the next few years, especially when images of her invaded my mind, or thoughts of her with him.

I hadn't spoken to her since then, I didn't need to hear her tell me she chose him, or that they were happy with their family. I coordinated my visits home around the days when the twins confirmed she was with her parents, costing me a pretty penny for each request.

One day right before graduation while I was drinking heavily I brought myself to finally open that envelope she had stuffed in my bag before I left and ruined everything.

What was inside made my knees weak, my heart ache more than it ever had, and a new found determination to win back my girl.