“Excuse me,” I tell her once we’re in the house.

For the next fifteen minutes I hide out in my bathroom, my sobs silent.

I don’t respond to the knock on the door. I know who it is. And she already knows something’s wrong, even if I try to hide it. Because she knows me.

She knows me better than anyone. Even Josh.

“Sweetheart, open the door.”

I unlock the door, wiping my eyes as I do.

I can’t speak. And right now, I don’t want to.

“You bit your thumb when Josh was there.”

I sniff back a sob but don’t respond.

“Becca, please be honest with me. Are you and Josh…” She breaks off on a sigh before continuing. “Are you having sex with him?”

I shake my head but I can’t look at her. “Not yet,” I whisper.

She inhales a sharp breath and starts to speak but I cut her off. “It’s not like that, Livvy. You have to believe me,” I plead.

She closes the door behind her and folds her arms over her chest. The air in the room’s so thick I can barely breathe.

“Why didn’t you say something earlier? Or when he introduced himself?”

“Because I don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

“Becca…”

I look up, letting my tears fall freely now. “I know how you feel and I know what you’re going to think, but I swear it’s not the same…” I hold a hand over my heart, unable to breathe through the pain. “I’m in love with him.”

“Oh, baby,” she whispers, taking me in her arms.

A sob bubbles out of me, followed by another, and another, until I’m crying in her arms. I cry so hard I fall to my knees, completely overwhelmed by my admission and my fear and my shame, and my love.

“Does he know about your past?”

“I can’t…”

“Does he at least know about your future?”

I shake my head.

“It’s just going to make things worse the closer you get,” she says, like I don’t already know that.

I try to push her away. “I can’t. I don’t want to!”

“Okay,” she says, trying to calm me.

She tugs on my hand, pulling my thumb out of my mouth. I hadn’t even realized I’d been biting it.

“It’ll be okay, Becca. Everything will be okay…”

★★★

Olivia sets herself up in the guest room while I stare out my bedroom window waiting for Josh to come home.

Minutes turn to hours and by the time he pulls up at four in the morning—my thumb’s completely numb from the aggressive onslaught, not just from the physical pain I’d caused, but from my shame.

My regrets.

And most of all, my past.

16

-Joshua-

I see the handle on my front door turn for the third time while I stand behind it, fighting a war in my head trying to decide what the right thing to do is. I’ve been hiding all day, skating the hours away at the half-court because I didn’t want to face her. “Josh?” Becca says, her voice barely audible. She knocks again.

I curse under my breath and finally open the door, just enough to slip outside and close it behind me. For the first time since she moved here—I don’t want to see her and I sure as hell don’t want to be near her.

I keep my head lowered, my hands in my pockets, and I wait for her to speak—too afraid of what will come out if I do it first.

She takes a step back, then shuffles on her feet.

The silence between us so fucking deafening I almost turn around and go back inside. But then she speaks, and what she says makes me wish I had. “Where were you last night?”

I sigh, shaking my head slightly. “Is your friend gone now?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“So it’s cool for you to acknowledge me now?”

“That’s why I came here…”

Finally, I look up at her, but she’s looking down at my feet, just like I had been. And I can feel it—the wall slamming between us. “You know, one of my biggest fears in life is that Tommy’s going to grow up being ashamed of who he is because of me. Because I couldn’t keep it in my pants and that’s how he came to.” I sniff once and push down the hurt she’d caused. “The thing is—it’s not me who’s going to make him feel like that, Becca. It’s the people around him who are going to judge him, who are going to belittle him, and who are going to make wrong assumptions about him. And it fucking destroys me to know that I’ll be the cause of that.” I lean against the door, my emotions making me too weak to stand. “So I try really hard to give him a life that’s better than all those shitty judgments. And when he starts school and has his friends over, I don’t want them to see the struggle that’d been his life—the struggles I’ve tried so hard to hide, the ones I’ve overcome to be who I am.” My voice strains against the pain of my words but I push forward, because she needs to know what she did and how much she hurt me. “I just want them to see me—a dad who’ll do anything for his kid. But people are assholes and they’ll choose not to see that. It’s going to be hard enough for him to make friends—not because he’s not an amazing kid—because he is, Becca, and you know that—but because the other kid’s parents are going to look down him because of me. And as much as it isn’t fair—as much as I wish it weren’t the case—it’s the truth. It’ll be hard for him to have friends over because of the stigma that comes with being a male looking after kids—and that’s going to be hard on him. I know that. And I don’t want that for him.” I clear my throat, barely able to speak. “I don’t want to have to hide who I am and what I’ve made of my life. I just want to be respected. That’s all. I know it isn’t always going to happen and I expect that.” I look up at her now, right into the eyes that had me falling for her from the first moment I saw her. “I just never expected that it’d be you—that you’d be the first to make me feel like that.”