W HILE ZACH SLEEPS IN THE barn, I go back inside to get ready for the day. I feel that growing pit in my stomach festering and eating me alive. I was wrong for not telling him about the baby, but I was eighteen. I wanted to tell him. So many times, but it seemed irrelevant. I didn’t know if we would last, and it was something that was so painful to remember, I couldn’t say the words. Each time I’d remember what it was like when he left, I focused on that. Not the baby.

I head out to the barn, but he’s not here. How could he leave like this? We need to talk.

I look around, but he’s definitely gone.

No, he’s not going to do this to me.

“Looking for me?” his deep voice calls from behind me.

“Zach.” I turn to face him.

He moves toward me with purpose. “You lied to me.”

He knows.

Zach challenges me with his eyes to deny it.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way. I was going to tell you.”

“When?” he bellows. “When were you planning to tell me we had a baby?”

Neither of us moves. I want to tell him everything, but how do I explain this? I was young, dumb, broken, and then I was completely wrecked. “I-I . . . it was a long time ago.”

He takes a step back. He doesn’t really look at me. His eyes dart around. “I can’t.” Zach turns and heads past me.

I grab his arm. “Please. I was going to tell you so many times. Then . . . I didn’t want to. I know that makes me a bitch, but you have to understand just thinking about it made me hurt. I was hurting so much already.”

Telling him this is futile. I was wrong to keep this from him, but I had my reasons. Loss has surrounded me for the last year. All I do is lose people, things, jobs, children, life. I want to gain for once. Bringing up that baby is only reminding me of another painful checked off box.

Zach faces me. “You had a baby. We had a baby.”

“No.” I look down and this time there’s a flood of tears. “I lost him.”

“Him?” he chokes.

“I found out I was pregnant two weeks after you left. I carried him for seventeen weeks, and then I miscarried.”

His eyes bore into mine as he breaks down. “You couldn’t tell me? You didn’t think I deserved to know?” I’ve broken his heart. “Fuck, Presley! How could you keep this from me? How could you look at me after all these years and not fucking tell me?”

I lost myself when that happened. The anger, sadness, feeling of complete failure loomed over me for months. Each night I would wake up crying, clutching my stomach, and begging for Zach to come back. My life was so dark and ugly at that time.

“I couldn’t tell you. When you left, part of me died. A big, huge, aching hole was punched through me. Then I found out I was pregnant. I was so mad. I hated you for leaving,” I explain.

“You should’ve fucking told me! I would’ve come back!”

This is exactly why I didn’t tell him. “Not for me!”

My tears fall as my pain from seventeen years ago surfaces again. I’ve buried it, but it’s back with a vengeance.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I wasn’t enough for you! I needed you. And you left. So what? Because we had a baby that would’ve altered things? I lost that baby, and I lost you. What do you think I was feeling?”

“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?”

There are a variety of answers I could give him. My life has been a road paved with spikes and nails. I’ve plugged, patched, and replaced the tire, but the car has never ridden the same. The loss of a child isn’t a patch job.

Zach’s back is against the wall, so I walk toward him until we’re touching. “I never speak about it. Somewhere deep inside of me, it lives, but for the most part, I don’t think about it ever. You were the one man I dreamt my whole life of sharing a child with. When that dream became my worst nightmare, I became hollow.” His eyes lock on mine. “When I got back here, I was dealing with Todd’s suicide, my debt, my boys, and the last thing I wanted to do was go back to that pain too. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but honestly, I didn’t want to live in the past once we’d made the decision to start over.”

“You had no problem throwing the past in my face,” he says with frustration.

He’s right. I didn’t. “I was wrong.”

“I’ve lived with guilt for all these years from walkin’ away from the girl I loved more than anything. I’ve struggled with forgiving myself. I’ve fought every damn day to prove that I’m better for you!” He moves forward, forcing me to retreat. “I’ve given you every part of me, Presley.” His chest heaves as tears form in his own eyes. “Me! Only me! I’ve kept all your secrets! I’ve stood by your side. Held you when you’ve cried over everything that Todd put you through!”

“I didn’t ask you to keep secrets,” I scream. “So now you’re going to use Todd’s suicide against me?” I push him back. “I was leaning on you. Do you think it was easy for me to tell you that he killed himself?”

“Don’t talk about my daddy!” Logan rushes forward, pushing against Zach.

My stomach drops. I don’t know when he got here, but this wasn’t supposed to be how my son learned the truth.

This is all my fault. Secrets come to light no matter how hard we try to bury them.