mistake || c.h au

|| chapter twenty-six ; tunnel ||

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|| april 26, 2015 ||

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"I'm on the train right now, Calum," Stella spoke into her phone. "The connection is kind of bad."

"That's okay," Calum replied softly, his thoughts focused somewhere else other than the phonecall to his girlfriend. "This shouldn't take too long."

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to speak to you I guess," Calum sighed. "It's been a while and quite a lot has happened."

"Why do I feel like I'm not going to like the sound of what you're about say?" Stella asked lightly.

"Because you probably won't," Calum admitted with a grimace.

"Okay," Stella nodded. "Let me prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

"Stella," Calum started, but the line went dead and Calum let out a sigh , putting his face in his hands while still clutching his phone.

He jumped in startled surprise when his phone began to vibrate against his forehead a few minutes later. It was Stella.

"Hey," Calum answered.

"Sorry, there was a tunnel," Stella explained.

"Right," Calum agreed.

"What were you going to say?"

"Where do I start?" Calum asked himself, before continuing. "It wasn't fair of me to bring you here at Christmas and meet all my family, Stella."

"Why?" she frowned from the other end of the phone. "Did they not like me?"

"No, no. They loved you," Calum chuckled lightly.

"Then I don't understand."

"Stella," Calum sighed. "I wouldn't still be alive if it wasn't for you - you saved me, and fùck knows what would have happened if it hadn't been for you. But being home just reminded me of why I left."

"Why did you leave?" Stella asked, desperately seeking the answers she had been wanting to hear for so long. "You said you would explain everything to me after that race, but then, well, y'know."

"Yeah, I know," Calum agreed with another with.

"Calum, please."

"I didn't really want to have to explain it all over the phone," he said, adding to himself lowly: "If at all."

"Thank you," Stella replied, as she waited on her boyfriends explanation.

"Okay," Calum started with a deep breath. "So you know Tegan? The girl who was there that day when you came to visit me in hospital before your flight back to England?"

Stella hummed in response of her positive memory.

"Well, we used to date back in high school - we were together for a while actually," Calum paused and thought about the fond memories for a moment. "The Christmas before I moved and started college, she told me she was pregnant."

He paused again momentarily, half expecting Stella to say something, but she didn't.

"And being the stupid kid I was, I freaked out and panicked and couldn't wait to leave and start over fresh somewhere new, because, shît I wasn't ready to have a baby," Calum continued. "We broke up pretty much straight after I found out and reacted so badly. My mom and dad never found out that she was pregnant - they still don't know."