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BLAKE COLLINS THOUGHT SHE WAS LUCKY. How could she not be when Tyler Owens, a Junior at the University of Arkansas, gave a Freshman like her the time of day?
It'd started out simple enough. The older meteorology students were volunteering to tutor the younger ones for some extra credit, and though Blake knew her stuff, she always craved the best grades she could get, and so she was paired up with Tyler, who was the top of his class.
Of course, she fell for him. He was gorgeous and charming and so smart despite the fact that he came off as a dumb, cocky blonde at first. He was so passionate about meteorology just like she was — more-so, in fact. To her, it'd be a career, but it was a lifestyle for him.
And Tyler was no better. He fell for her beautiful smile and sarcastic jokes and her mind that always soaked up knowledge so easily. He'd never met a more perfect girl, he was convinced.
And so after she aced her first test with his aid, he asked her on a real and proper date. He took her to a movie and out to Italian food — her favorite.
It was the beginning of a months long romance.
He picked up a job waiting tables at a diner just so he could get her little gifts and afford to take her out. She'd plan dates on the Main Quad on campus. He got her flowers every other week. Thursdays were reserved for pizza and movies in his room. They'd met each other's parents on different occasions when they were visiting the university. And just as important, she'd met Tyler's best friend Boone, who'd visited one weekend and approved of her.
It was perfect, just like the night when he told her that he loved her.
He drove a dinky white pickup truck at the time, and they drove it out to their favorite spot to just park and watch the sunset in the bed of the truck as they talked for hours about their dreams and a future together. And as the sun was casting a golden glow over her that made her seem so angelic, Tyler blurted it out.
He loved her. And she loved him too.
Maybe it counted as public indecency as they made love in the bed of the pickup truck for the first time, but no one was around for miles to hear them or interrupt a moment that was so impossibly perfect.
Both college students were so incandescently happy after that, always together and holding hands and curled up against each other in the library as they studied for finals together — it was sickeningly sweet how in love they were.
At least for four weeks.
That week when Blake was late and started getting sick in the mornings and had finals all at once.
Her roommate was the one to run to the convenience store to buy the pregnancy test. The one that sported two matching lines — lines she was convinced would ruin her life no matter how determined she was to keep it.
