I don’t know how long we lay there. Alex was so quiet I thought she had fallen asleep. But then she shifted in the bed. Propping her head on her elbow, she gazed up at me. “Tell me something about yourself—something you’ve never told anyone else.”

Scowling down at her, I replied, “You can get the fuck out of here if you think I’m going to do that.”

“Why not?”

I laced my fingers behind my head. “Because that ain’t me, babe. That ain’t who I am or who I’ll ever be.”

“Why are you so afraid to open up to someone?”

“I’m not,” I growled.

“Yes, you are.”

Giving her a hard look, I said, “If you don’t stop the emotional bullshit, I’m out of here. I swear you’re the most lucid drunk I’ve ever seen. Why can’t you be giggling and acting stupid?”

“After the initial buzz, alcohol usually makes me sharper.”

“Lucky me.”

“I just thought we could talk a little. I mean, I’m here every day, but I barely know you.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way.”

Both fury and hurt flashed in her dark eyes. “You’re such an asshole.”

“It’ll do you some good to keep remembering that,” I replied.

“Fine. You know what? I’ll share something first to establish trust.”

“You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but it ain’t going to get me to tell you shit.”

“You wanna know why I decided to become a teacher?”

“No, I fucking don’t.”

Ignoring me, Alex said, “When I was sixteen, I got pregnant by my boyfriend.”

My eyes widened, and I stared open-mouthed at her. That was the last fucking thing I expected to come out of her mouth. “You mean a Goody Two-shoes like you got knocked up?” When she nodded, I couldn’t help but ask, “But I thought you said you didn’t have a kid. You give it up or something?”

“Or something,” she replied in an agonized whisper.

The electricity in the room changed. I realized that we were standing on the emotional equivalent of a cliff. If I continued talking to Alex about this, I might as well take her hand and watch the two of us jump off the edge. With the stakes that high, I don’t know why I wanted her to continue the story. Cupping her chin, I tilted her face to look at me. “What happened, Alex?”

“No one ever knew I was pregnant. I didn’t tell my boyfriend, and I didn’t tell my parents. I wasn’t very far along when I found out.” She shuddered. “I was scared. So fucking scared. From the moment I saw the positive on the pregnancy test, it shattered me emotionally. It felt like I was outside my body, watching myself like I was a stranger. Everything I said or did from that moment on was someone else. I’d always loved babies. I volunteered in the church nursery and babysat for everyone on my street. But in that moment when it came to my own, I couldn’t accept it.” She glanced up at me to gauge my response—her eyes weary like a battle-worn soldier.

“Did you have an abortion?”

A mirthless laugh escaped her lips. “Go to a clinic and have someone kill my baby? No. I could have never done something like that.” She shook her head. “I did something far, far worse.” She glanced back at me, her dark eyes almost soulless. “I killed my baby.”

I sucked in a breath of shock at her admission. “You did what?”

“It was during rehearsals at my ballet studio. We were practicing lifts with our male partners. There was this really high one where I was practically over his head. And when the idea came crashing down on me, I didn’t even take a moment to try to talk myself out of it. I just acted.” She drew in a ragged breath, her eyes staring past me like she was seeing into the past.

“You would think it would have to be something pretty momentous to rip a life from your body. But it was so simple. … Just one slip of my leg, one missed position I’d executed flawlessly time and time again. And even as I started to fall, it still wasn’t too late. I could’ve changed my mind, twisted my body to where I could’ve fallen on my back. But no. I made sure I came down as hard as I could on my abdomen.”

Her eyes closed like she was once again experiencing the physical pain along with her emotional torment. “With the wind knocked out of me, I lay there, gasping and wheezing for breath. Everyone came rushing over, asking me if I was all right. When I could finally breathe again, I felt sick at what I had done, so I excused myself and went home. The rest of the evening I waited for something to happen, but it never did. As I lay in bed that night, I put my hand over my sore abdomen, and then in that instant, the strangest thing happened. The most absolute acceptance and love for my future child pulsed through me. I went to sleep that night ready to tell my parents about the baby first thing in the morning.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes, and I could tell she was close to losing it. “I woke up in a pool of blood. When I screamed, my parents came running. I pretended that I had screamed in pain because of really bad period cramps. After shooing my embarrassed father out the door, my mother started caring for me like I was a little girl again. She stripped me down like a child and put me into the shower. While I washed the innocent blood of my baby off of me, she changed the sheets. If she suspected anything, she never said. She just called in to work and stayed in bed with me all day, giving me the comfort I so desperately needed.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, unsure of what the hell to say to such a story. Part of me wanted to get the hell out of there—put as much distance as possible between me and Alex’s pain. Somehow being in that room with her was harder than facing down a thug with a gun.

“A year later, on the very same day I killed my baby, my parents were killed. Sometimes I think it was a punishment for what I did—a karmic retribution that I threw away what I was given, so I had something else I loved taken from me.” My mouth gaped open that she could honestly believe that. For a minute I wondered if it was the alcohol talking, but then I remembered how sharp it made her.

“Hey, now, don’t be thinking shit like that.” When Alex didn’t look at me, I took her face in my hands, enjoying the softness of her skin. “Did you hear me? Your parents’ dying had nothing to do with the baby. Bad shit happens all the time.”

She didn’t acknowledge anything I said. “After they died, I changed my major to education. Not only was it to honor their memory, but I thought if I could love children, I could somehow repent for what I did.”