26. Eli
26
ELI
T his isn’t right.
Haley didn’t come to her first class. Davina texted me back and said Haley wasn’t at her second class either. I checked with Finn and my friends on the football team too.
Haley hadn’t come to school today.
When I finished my quiz in my lab, I left early to check the library. Then the food court, too.
She wasn’t on campus at all, and it bothered me.
It wasn’t a sign of how clingy I was. And hell, maybe I was getting overly attached to her. That had to be common when two people were in love. I loved her and wondered when we’d have a peaceful moment to talk about that, where I could express those feelings to her and make sure that she believed me. My past of bullying her would always stand between us. I felt like I would do well to go above and beyond to show her, tell her, and demonstrate to her how profoundly she had my heart. For the rest of my life, I would make up for my stupid bullshit of treating her like an outcast.
But I wasn’t going to be able to work on that crusade today.
Not if she wasn’t here.
“Maybe she just needed a day to chill and relax,” Finn said when he found me after I looked at the library and food court.
“If she did, she’d tell me,” I argued, showing him my phone that showed multiple unread messages.
“Dude. You’re hovering.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not like that. We text nonstop. She’s never out of reach. This isn’t some stupid control thing or whatever you’re getting at.”
“But maybe that’s it. You guys are always with each other. It could be suffocating, right?”
I shook my head harder. “No. Not like this. I…” I sighed, hating that I couldn’t know whether she was all right. “I don’t like this. After that day that Preston?—”
“I know.” He patted my back. “Worrying after that is totally understandable. But we know he’s not going near her. We’ve all been helping you keep an eye on her. And Preston isn’t even here. He’s been posting about his trip in the Bahamas all week.”
I knew that, and it helped. But I still worried about her. I couldn’t stop thinking about the worst-case scenarios because that was how much she mattered to me. How much I had to know she would be there for me and be waiting for me to take care of her.
“It just doesn’t sit right with me,” I admitted. “If something is wrong. If something happened…”
He exhaled a long breath. It wasn’t a sigh of exasperation but something more like pity. Or sympathy. “You’re going to make yourself crazy if you keep at it like this.” After he dug into his pocket, he extended his arm toward me, offering me his keys. “Just go. Take my car and go over there. Having peace of mind is better than freaking out and obsessing about why she might have wanted a day off from school.”
I smiled for the first time today. Taking the keys, I patted his back once. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”
“Go on while you have a break before another class.”
I nodded, taking off at a jog toward the parking lot.
I didn’t drive often since I didn’t have a car, but some things never changed. Like riding a bike. Yet, as I drove toward Haley’s house, I tried to resist the urge to speed too fast. Impatience was a curse at a time like this, but I knew better than to act like a reckless driver. I was still lucky that Mr. West wasn’t trying to get the cops involved with how I’d damaged his car in his driveway. But I didn’t need to test my luck in any other way.
As soon as I got onto the road that led to Haley’s house, I saw the problem.
“Fuck.” I gripped the steering wheel tighter, furious that they would dare to come here and bother her. That my parents would dare to return to Cindy and Haley’s house and bother her again. I was still livid that they’d come at all, but this was going too far.
Raging with the need to protect my girl, I parked to the side of my mom’s car, turned off the car, and ran up to the front door.
I didn’t want to know why they had the guts to interfere with Haley’s life.
I didn’t want to imagine the stupid shit they were saying.
It was one thing for them to track me and come to my dorm to warn me away from her. I could handle it. I could take it. But not for one second was it all right with me that they’d approach her directly.
Running up the front steps, I tried to keep my temper in check. My usual method of dealing with my parents was to stay silent, nod blankly, and wait for them to run out of steam. They’d give up to try again later. Haley might not have that same in-one-ear-and-out-the-other mentality, though.
“How dare you be so selfish?” my mother screeched as I burst through the front door, still open from when my mother must have arrived. “How dare you be such a selfish little whore and trap him with a baby?”
I ran into the living room, finding them standing there and facing each other down. Haley stared at my mother, eyes wide open with alarm but that familiar need to fight burning in her defiant eyes. Her lips stayed in a firm, thin line. My mother raised her arms, her fists clenched tight as she shook them, her classic furious stance when she thought screaming and shouting would get her what she wanted. It never did.
Ignoring the scene and dismissing the setup of their stand-off, I tried to get past what she’d said.
My mother was the only one here. My dad wasn’t chiming in to be her backup.
It was just her.
And the thing she’d said…
Baby?
I blinked, seeming to react in slow motion despite the frantic, fast pace of my heart thumping in my chest.
Baby?
Turning slowly to face Haley, I waited for the comprehension to kick in and slot into my brain as a fact.
Baby.
Haley was holding a pregnancy test in her hand.
A baby. Our baby.
I was so stunned, I couldn’t breathe right. My chest felt too tight. My head spun. But it wasn’t from panic that I locked down with this unexpected news.
It was joy.
It was excitement.
It was the thrill of learning I had a brand-new gift to enjoy and take care of.
“A baby?” I asked.
Both of them spun to face me. My mother snarled with disdain. Haley’s mouth dropped open with too many emotions crossing over her face. Fear, surprise, joy, relief, annoyance. I bet she couldn’t have planned to share this news with me like this, with my mother shouting it out so cruelly.
It didn’t matter how I got the news. The message was all that I cared about.
Haley was pregnant.
We were having a baby.
“You tell her,” my mother said, seething as she pointed at her. “You tell her to get rid of that bastard baby or?—”
“No.” I shook my head, brushing past her to approach Haley.
“You get rid of her and that bastard?—”
“Shut up,” I growled. “Shut up, or else I will make you shut up.”
This was my mother, the woman who gave birth to me and should’ve loved me no matter what. This was my parent, and of course, she deserved some elementary level of respect. But she’d lost it. She began losing it long ago, but this was the final straw.
If she opened her mouth to tell me to get rid of Haley or our child again, she would meet the full extent of my wrath.
A defensive need to protect the only person in this room who loved me had me vibrating with rage. Instead of acting on this dark urge to send my mother away, I hugged Haley and held on tight.
“Eli,” she whispered as she clung to me, shaking and breathing so choppily.
I shushed her, embracing her as if my arms wrapped around her meant she wouldn’t suffer anything from anyone. I would shield her forever. Any threat, any danger. They would all have to get past me to hurt her or our baby.
“Eli!” my mother roared. “You can’t be this stupid. You get away from her right now! I insist!”
I didn’t budge, rubbing my hand over Haley’s back and willing her to calm down now that I was here.
She hadn’t stayed home to want a break from me or school. She wasn’t sleeping in and having a ‘me’ day. She was grappling with this surprise that she was pregnant, and she didn’t need my mother here harassing her.
“Leave,” I ordered. This wasn’t my house to call the shots in, but I was protecting my woman. My child.
My family.
The furious woman scowling at us wasn’t my family. She would always be the woman who brought me into this world, but she was no mother of mine.
“This is it, Eli,” she warned, slashing her arm through the air as if marking a line as a boundary to heed. “This is it. You’re going to end this nonsense now.”
Fuck you.
“You are going to leave this whore with her bastard.”
“No. I’m not. The only one leaving is you. From this moment on, you no longer have a place in my life.”
“I’m your mother! You will respect me and listen to me!” She jabbed her finger at her chest, eyes wild with fury.
“No. You’re nothing more than a person who gave birth to me. You’ve never loved me, never respected me, and you never will. I’m done with you. I’m done with you and your husband.”
Saying those words felt so freeing. So fucking freeing. Liberating myself from my parents was like shedding a lifetime of the heaviest rocks. They tumbled off my shoulders, and for the first time—ever—I could stand tall and breathe freely. Their expectations didn’t shackle me anymore. The sad longing for their love or approval didn’t tether me to anxiety.
“I’m done,” I repeated, making sure she saw the seriousness on my face.
“Oh, you think you know it all, huh?” She crossed her arms. “This is the choice you think you want to make?” She gestured at Haley in my arms. “You think you want to choose being trapped with a whore like her, expected to pay for her baby and go nowhere with your life?”
“I don’t think this is the choice I’m making. It is the choice I’m making.”
I chose Haley.
I chose the baby we’d raise.
I chose to gamble on our love lasting forever.
I chose us .