“I don’t know! You didn’t give me a chance to find out!” He grunts and slams his hand against the barn door. “I can’t believe you, Presley.”

“I wasn’t perfect. I was eighteen! Eighteen, Zach. I was alone in a strange new place, pregnant, with no family, and a boy who just wrecked my world. Was I wrong? Yes. But dammit, I was so scared.”

This was handled wrong, and quite honestly, I was so angry I didn’t care about him. I felt completely alone. I couldn’t think straight, and when he got on that bus, he broke me. Everything that I thought made sense, no longer was what I thought. It was as if the shift in my universe was so severe, I was walking upside-down.

“But you had no problem blaming me for leaving?” He takes a step forward. “How easy for you to say it was my fault. I would’ve come back if I knew you were pregnant. I would’ve stood by your side, finished college, gotten married, and seen where the world took us.”

There’s a part of me that wants to laugh. “So a baby would’ve changed your dreams?”

“No.” He pushes back from me. “I still would’ve—”

“You would’ve, what?” I ask, agitated. “Huh? I told you when you left I wanted a family, and you said you didn’t even want to think about that. You would’ve given up your dream?”

As much as Zachary knows me, I know him just as well. He had two passions, baseball and me. I saw what happened when he had to choose before, I don’t think that baby would’ve made a difference.

My anger mirrors in his eyes. “We don’t get to know that because you kept it from me!”

“Here’s what would’ve happened,” I say, stepping toward him. “You would’ve kept on playing ball just like you already were. Nothing about our situation would be any different. You’d have taken that job, and I would have stayed in school. Were we wrong?” I pause. “Maybe. But it was the choice we made. I didn’t know about the baby before you left. Maybe then it would’ve gone a different route, but I wanted to be reason enough for you to stay, not because you knocked me up.”

“So you knew for how long?”

“I only knew I was pregnant for about four weeks.”

“Four weeks!” he screams. “Do you know how many times I called you over those four weeks?” Zach steps closer. “Do you?”

I hate myself right now. Everything inside me is breaking exactly like it did all those years ago. “I was wrong, but by the time I was ready to tell you, I was bleeding!” Tears fall as I remember that day. “I lost that baby. I lost him! I called Angie, but she wasn’t there. So Todd took me to the hospital. I cried for hours as they explained what was happening. I called you that day, Zach.”

His eyes snap to mine. “When?”

“Some girl answered your phone. I called when I was sitting in that hospital bed getting ready for them to remove everything from inside of me.”

The feeling of betrayal was so strong, I vowed never to speak to him again. It wasn’t rational. I don’t know that many of our choices at eighteen were, but thinking about him and another girl was the end of my rope. My hormones and emotions were all over the place.

“I wasn’t with anyone.” He strides closer. “It took me years to even look at another girl!”

“She wasn’t the issue. It was that I needed you.” He doesn’t get it. “I called and some chick answers a month later?”

“Fucking hell, Presley! That was seventeen years ago and there was no one else.”

“Jesus!” I throw my hands in the air. “So now the seventeen years ago is fine for you, but not me?” I cry out. “You know what? I don’t care! I’m just explaining why I never called you again.”

He looks away and then back to me. “It’s bullshit! And not only that, but what does that matter? You ended things with me! You chose to walk away and be done because you didn’t want to wait the three years.”

“I didn’t think you’d move on so fast.”

“I didn’t! Maybe it was my agent who answered the phone, did you ever think about that?”

I sure as hell didn’t at the time. And I don’t care because that’s not the damn point. That was the argument we could’ve had back then. “No, but that’s not what this fight is about. I didn’t think that because I was pregnant and losing a baby.”

“How do two people remember the same thing so differently?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m so fucking mad,” he admits.

I understand his feelings, but neither of us were perfect. If I’d told him about the baby a few months ago, what would it have done? It was a million years ago, and losing that baby was the single most lifealtering moment until Todd’s death.

“So you get drunk and show up at my house? Decide you want to yell at me? Tell me how wrong I am? You don’t think you could’ve handled this a little different?”

“I handled this wrong?” He chortles. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

“We both did!” I yell back. “I’m not saying I was right, but how is this helping us?”

This is the Presley and Zachary of old times. Two hot-headed and emotional people. Yes, he’s sweet and loving, but he has an angry side. When you poke the bear, he roars loud. Funny thing is that I’m the same. He’s pissed me off by coming here yelling at me.

“No, you know what’s wrong, Presley?” The rage rolls off him in waves. “Getting back to my house last night, ready to see you, and then finding out we had a baby and you’ve been lying to me for seventeen years.”

“How did you hear about this, Zachary?” Now I’m angry. He wants to be a condescending prick? I’ll go right back at him. The only person who knows is Angie, and she didn’t tell him. “Huh? Who opened your eyes to the lying bitch that I am?”

He winces slightly. “I never called you a bitch.”

“Who told you?” My voice is eerily calm. Almost sweet, but there’s nothing sweet about this.

“It’s irrelevant.”

“The hell it is!” I yell while marching toward him.

He buries his hands in his hair and moves away from me again. “I need to know why you didn’t tell me.” Zach’s anger has dissolved. The hostility that was there has morphed into disappointment. “After everything we’ve talked about, how the hell could you keep this from me?”