Page 104 of Glorious Ruin
“I’m pregnant.”
The two words fell into the quiet living room like a grenade. The silence that followed vibrated with the weight of her reality. Still a kid, still floating through the uncertain transition of high school graduation, completely stranded on the edge of a mountain she had no idea how to climb. She looked utterly distraught, her fingers trembling against the blanket as she waited for the judgment she’d been bracing for all morning.
I didn’t let a single trace of shock or hesitation cross my features. I had lived through too much horror in my own youth to ever let a kid feel the cold sting of rejection when they were bleeding out. I reached for her, my hand covering bothof her shaking ones, squeezing hard enough to let her feel the unyielding gravity of my presence.
“Okay.” My voice was a solid, unbending pillar of calm. “Josie. Look at me.”
She lifted her head, her eyes wide and searching mine behind the lenses.
“You haven’t let anyone down, you hear me? Things happen. Life happens. It doesn’t mean your life is over, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you’re a disappointment. We are going to handle this.” I paused, holding her gaze. “I need to ask you a question, and I need you to be completely honest with me because there is no wrong answer here. Do you know what you want to do? Have you thought about your options?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said.” My voice was entirely devoid of any judgment. “I will put you in my truck right now and take you to do whatever it is you need or want to do. If you want to keep this baby, I will stand between you and anyone who has something to say about it. If you don’t want to keep it, if you aren’t ready and you want to look at other routes, I will drive you to the clinic myself, I will pay for the procedure, and I will hold your hand through the entire thing. Nobody will ever hear a single word about it, if that’s what you want. It’s your body, and it is your choice.”
She stared at me, a profound, breathless shock crossing her face.
“I want to keep it,” she confessed. “I thought about it. I’ve been staring at the test for three days, and… I could never get rid of it. I couldn’t do that. I want this baby. I do. I’m just… I’m scared. I’m so scared of how Dad is going to look at me.”
“You aren’t going to be alone,” I promised her. “I’m in your corner. Silas will be, too. But you have to talk to your parents. You can’t carry this secret forever. You need to tell them before you get too far along that you can’t hide it..”
Josie let out a small, miserable groan, dropping her forehead against my shoulder. “I think it’s already starting. I’ve been fighting horrible morning sickness. I wake up at four in the morning, and I can’t even look at the kitchen without gagging. And the fatigue… I feel like I haven’t slept in a month. I have these intense, weird cravings that hit me out of nowhere, and if I don’t eat right then, I get so sick to my stomach.”
I frowned, my hand automatically smoothing over her strawberry-blonde hair. “Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“No,” she mumbled. “I’ve just been using the drugstore tests.”
“Alright, we’re leaving.” I stood up. “We’re going to the urgent care or the outpatient hospital downtown. We need to make sure you’re healthy, and we need to know exactly how far along you are so we can map this out.”
She blinked, a small flash of relief crossing her eyes. “Okay, okay.”
The atmosphere was quiet, and a bit awkward at first. I had lived on the Reed land for less than a year, but the reality was, I had never been completely alone with one of Silas’s relatives before. Usually, we were a pack, a loud, chaotic sea of bodies at Sunday dinners or training sessions in the garage. Sitting in the enclosed cab with his cousin felt entirely foreign, but I was trying my absolute best to make her as comfortable and relaxed as possible.
Jesus,I thought to myself, a sudden realization hitting my gut as I checked my mirrors. The last time I took the twins off the Reed land without giving a heads-up, we ended up at a courthouse, and Maverick almost tore mine and Silas’s heads off.
“Cal?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Can I ask you something? Just…to get my mind off things?”
“Ask whatever you want.” I kept my eyes fixed on the highway.
“How did you meet Si? And…when did you know you were in love with him? Like,reallyin love?”
I smiled, a soft, warm nostalgia flooding my chest. “We met at the Performance Center in Orlando. It was my first day there. Everyone was treating me like I was some kind of hazard, but Si didn’t look at me that way. I think he saw potential in me before anyone else did, our trainers included.”
I chuckled, the memory vivid. “We were scripted to hate each other from day one. But the second we locked up in that ring…it was like the whole world went quiet. I knew I was falling in love with him when we wrestled our first Man Overboard. We were at this insane resort. Si fell asleep as soon as we got to our room, and I went looking for any excuse to wake him so we could spend time together. I ended up stumbling across the resort pool. It was at least two AM when I woke him up. He was so nervous we were going to get caught and get in trouble, but he went with me for God knows what reason. He kissed me for the first time that night, and I knew I would never be the same again.”
She watched me, her eyes shimmering with soft, romantic awe. The conversation was doing exactly what I’d hoped, pulling her out of the vacuum of her own terror.
“He loves you so much. The way he looks at you… iI’s like nobody else is even in the room.” She paused, her voice dropping into a quiet, heavy register. “I hoped I would have that someday.”
I glanced over at her. “Do you want to talk about the dad?”
“It was a one-night stand at some stupid college party in Wilmington. I met this guy. I thought he liked me. The second the test turned pink, I called him. I told him the truth.”
She swallowed hard, her voice cracking. “He ghosted me. He blocked my number, deleted his social media profiles, and vanished into thin air. I’m completely on my own from a relationship standpoint.”
