My body takes over and I’m scrambling away from him.

Jason walks toward me, but I can’t make myself back away any more. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know, Brynn. How could you not? I played your game because it made you feel better, but you know who I am. You always knew how old I was. Everyone else will know it, too. They’ll know you wanted to trap me. Or they’ll think you lied about your age. You wanted an older guy because you were messed up after your mom died. It happens all the time.” He shrugs.

“You’d tell them I lied?” He said he loves me, but now he’d tell them I wasn’t honest about my age…

It hits me, knocking the air out of me, how much I don’t know this Jason, when he says, “Get rid of it and I won’t have to.” He’s so to-the-point. So cold that I don’t know if I want to keep crying or hurt him. I can’t believe I fell for him.

“I hate you!” I yell. They’re the most immature words in the world, but they’re all I have. “I hate you, Jason!” Stumbling, I run toward the door, but he grabs my arm. A pain shoots through my stomach. My eyes water. My ears feel full, almost echoey.

“You’ll break your dad’s heart. He’ll know his little baby is sleeping around and got knocked up. That you lied to sleep with a local baseball player. After losing your mom, can you do that to him? Everyone else will hate you for trying to trap me, too. Do you want that? Do you want everyone to know you’re a slut?”

I rip my arm away from him, covering my mouth with a shaking hand. He’s right. I know he’s right. Everyone will hate you. Haven’t I lost enough?

It’ll be my word against his.

Jason… I love him, but he never loved me. How will I tell my dad? How will I be a mom?

“Be smart, Brynn. I swear to God, you’d better be smart and get rid of it.”

Ignoring his words, I run from the house. I don’t remember driving home. I don’t remember starting a fire in the woodstove and throwing in that stupid red dress. All I remember are his words. He doesn’t love me. Never loved me. He saw someone young and naive and he used me. He wants me to kill the baby.

I know I can’t, but I never get the chance anyway. The cramps start in the middle of the night. The rush of blood quickly afterward.

Dad hears me crying.

He takes me to the hospital.

His anger came the next day. The yelling, the disappointment.

He hasn’t looked at me the same ever since. No one has.

Jason was right.

Chapter Two

Before

“So, you and your mom were close?” Jason slips his hand into mine, interlocking our fingers. My heart’s mixed up, not knowing if it wants to jump for joy at the contact or break in a million pieces because he brought up Mom. It’s been two months, and it feels like two decades and two seconds at the same time. How can she have been gone this long? Time feels like it’s never-ending.

So many conflicting feelings, but none that I want to focus on, so I give my attention to Jason instead.

“Yeah…she’s…” I can’t bring myself to speak the word “gone.” It’s wrong…bad, the worst thing she can be. “We were very close.” Ugh. How can “were” suddenly be a bad word, too? “She was my best friend. Everyone loved her.” I feel myself smiling, which is a miracle. I haven’t smiled when it came to Mom since it happened. Dad is in his own world and even if he wasn’t, I’m not sure I could go there with him.

Ian, my ex-boyfriend, doesn’t understand. He’s too busy with sports and having fun to take time to care about much.

Ellie and Diana try, but they don’t understand, either. When you haven’t experienced it, it’s easy to think you fully get it, but you don’t. It’s hard with them, because they knew her so well. They loved her so much. Not nearly as much as me, but as much as best friends can love another mom. She had that kind of power, though. My friends were jealous she was my mom.

Maybe that’s why I can’t talk to them about it—she was the one thing I had that they didn’t, and in the blink of an eye, she was taken away from me.

My chest starts aching again.

“I’m sorry.” Jason uses his other hand and pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s so hard to lose someone close to you. I lost my grandma. When I was young, I always wanted to be at her house because it was calm there. I could be happy. She was more like a mom than mine is—I loved her more than anyone else. Nothing’s been the same since she’s been gone. Just another thing we have in common.” He gently squeezes my hand.

“Just another thing,” I repeat. Jason knows what I’m going through because he’s lived through losing someone he loves. I hate feeling comfort in that, because it means he lost his grandma, but he makes it so I don’t feel alone.

“We can talk about her if you want. Or we don’t have to. It’s up to you. I don’t want to push you, but I want to be here for you, too.”

That’s exactly what I need. Everyone else tells me how to feel. But Jason lets me go at my pace. Feel what I feel and talk when I want to talk. It’s like he’s filled a void inside me I never thought would be filled again. Makes me feel when I never thought I would want to feel again.

I snuggle against him as he leans back on the old, bumpy tree. We’re at our spot, the quiet, out-of-the-way piece of heaven where Jason likes to bring me. No one bothers us here. No one comes here. It’s ours and only ours.

“You’re amazing,” I tell him, and I mean it. Sometimes I can’t believe I found him just when I needed him. Maybe Mom sent him to me, to help me get by without her. She always knew the right thing to do, and I can’t see this being any different. If she couldn’t be here for me, I know she would find a way to send me someone who could.

“No, you are. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Brynn. I need you so much.” His words are so smooth, so perfect that I used to doubt them. But then, I could have seen Dad being like this with Mom. She used to reminisce about how he always said the right thing.

I turn to face him and Jason’s lips come down on mine, so soft, so gentle. He takes the kiss deeper, pushing his tongue inside my mouth. It goes straight to my head. He goes straight to my head, making my heart tap-dance and my stomach flutter.

I shiver when his hand edges under my shirt. His fingers tickle my stomach. My heart goes even wilder, but now for a different reason. Nerves push their way through, threatening this perfect moment between us.

Relax, Brynn. Calm down.

His fingers tickle my belly before going higher…higher, and then they tease the edge of my bra. It’s almost like an electric shock, making me jerk away. It feels weird to go from thinking about Mom to getting felt up.

Jason lets out a heavy breath and I automatically feel guilty. “I’m sorry…,” I whisper. He’s here for me; I should be able to do this for him. It’s not like it’s a huge deal.

He curses beneath his breath, but then looks at me and gives me a tight grin. “It’s okay. I don’t want to push you. I never want to push you, Brynn. You know I love you.”

The words cover me like a comfortable blanket, filling more holes and voids inside me. Pretty soon, he might have me all patched up.

“I love you, too.”

He stands and holds his hand out for me. I let him help me up. “Do you want to do something?” I ask. “Maybe see a movie or go out to dinner?”

He shakes his head. “I asked Sam if we could go to his house. He’ll be out for a bit today. I just want to spend time with you.”

I feel like I’m floating. I love that Jason wants to keep me to himself. That he loves spending time with just me because I’m that important to him. For me, he’s perfect.

Chapter Three

Late June

Now

“I don’t want to do this.” They’re the first words to spill out of my mouth all morning. It’s not the first time I’ve said them, but I’m hoping this time, they’ll matter.

Dad finishes parallel parking. He’s an expert at it, but I’ve never been able to do it. The whole pulling in backward thing freaks me out. I’m lucky I passed my driver’s test.

Once he kills the engine and lets out a sigh—one of the many he’s let escape the past couple weeks—he replies. “It’s for the best, Brynn. You might not see it now, but it’s true. I… It’s just the right thing. We have to do it.” I’m not sure if he’s trying to convince me or himself. Still, it’s the longest string of words he’s spoken to me at once since “the incident,” so maybe it’s progress. It’s not as if he ever spoke much anyway—Mom was always the vocal one—but words never seemed painful to him before.

Now they’re agony.

I hate that I did this to him. That the love of his life died from a stupid aneurysm and now the daughter she loved so much is breaking him again. Is he wondering what she would think? Wishing she had to deal with this and not him? Thinking that she never would have screwed up this badly? Or even worse, I worry that he wishes they didn’t adopt me. Maybe if he had a real daughter, she wouldn’t have screwed up as badly as I did.

“I’m scared.” My eyes dart down, suddenly interested in my lap. In the swirl of the blue fabric of my jeans.

Another sigh. “Me too, dolcezza.”

I can’t help but look at him. I haven’t been his sweetie in years. I’m not sure if it’s my fault or his; I thought it made me sound like a baby, and he never pushed it. He hasn’t pushed anything in so long. Until now.

“The right thing,” he mumbles again, climbing out. “Come on. Let’s go in.”

The slam of the door makes me jump. Then I get out of the car and follow him into the office of the lawyer he hopes will get my ex-boyfriend thrown into jail.

…

“So we have Jason Richter saying Brynn lied about her age. That she told him she was eighteen. We have her friends, who say she bragged about her new boyfriend. About how much she loved him. More than one of them says she told them she didn’t want anyone to meet him yet. That even though Mr. Richter wanted to meet her friends, she wanted to keep him to herself for a little longer.”

“He’s older than her. It’s obvious he lied. Brynn making up stories about their not being able to meet him was just a silly thing kids do.”

Just like Dad’s been so fond of doing lately, our lawyer sighs. “I understand that, Mr. De Luca. I do, but you have to look at it from the outside. We’re going to tell people she lied then, but ask them to believe her now. It makes her unreliable. With her friends all telling the same story and Mr. Richter saying she lied to him, it doesn’t look good.

“We have a girl who’s lied—” the lawyer continues.

“But—” Dad cuts in, but Mr. Rogers holds up his hand.

“I’m playing devil’s advocate here. We have a girl who’s admitted to lying. Who started acting strangely to her friends.”

“Her mother died.” This time, Dad doesn’t let himself be cut off. “That has to count for something.”

“It could account for her lying about her age to impress a boy, too.” The lawyer almost looks sad as he continues. “She spent months with Mr. Richter in secret, which they can very well argue she did because she didn’t want him to find out how old she really was. We have her ex-boyfriend Ian, who says she stopped calling him and then flaunted Mr. Richter, bragging about her new boyfriend. Which again, they will say is proof she knew who he was. She’s kept secrets. Lied over and over, and that’s what people are going to focus on.”

And I had. I’d lied about a lot to be with Jason.