Two Blue Lines (Crossing The Line #1)

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E.M. Tippetts Book Designs

Crossing The Line Series

Lines in the Sand

Two Blue Lines

Blurred Lines
(Coming 2015)

Between the Lines
(Coming Late 2015)

For Jacob.

I love you to the moon and back. Always.

Pregnant Pause

W
ho wants to be a father at sixteen?

No one.

Especially not me.

But that’s the incredibly painful, incredibly confusing, incredibly stupid position I found myself in the summer after my sixteenth birthday . . . three years to the day after I found Lettie’s dog collar and mysterious remains buried deep in the Texas sand, sending me and my best friend, Jonah, on an adventure that turned into an emotional roller coaster and changed my life forever.

It was the day I found out the truth about my mom’s past. The day I finally understood some of her secrets . . . the day I grew to love her even more. Lettie may have only been a forgotten dog who I found by chance, but she was a hero. She was the reason my mom was alive and that I existed. And her little spot of sand on the dunes of Surfside beach had since become my sanctuary, where I go to think.

And I thought I’d grown up that May afternoon we found her—it was nothing compared to this.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Melissa looked at me with tears spilling from those big, luminous black-brown eyes that had sucked me in the first moment I saw her in middle school. “Please, Reed, say something.”

I glanced out to the waves pounding the shore of my favorite beach. It was all silent to the pounding in my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

She sniffled and wiped her face, guilt and fear all over her like a stain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I guess the condom broke or . . .”

Yeah, or that one stupid time we thought we could get by without one
. “Shit.” I bowed my head as pure emotion that I had no name for roared through my body, doused every cell.

“Shit?” she echoed, fresh tears choking her voice. “That’s all you have to say? Are you mad at me? I said I was sorry. . .” Misery coated her words like paste.

I swallowed. It wasn’t her I was mad at. Myself. This stupid situation, maybe. “No, of course not. Don’t be sorry, babe. It’s not your fault. You weren’t there alone.” I reached for her hand, struggling to find the right words, the right thing to do, even as I wanted to rage against all of it. Well, at least now I had some idea why she’d been acting strange and hormonal the last couple months. Quit touching me. “We’ll figure this out.” My mouth suddenly felt dry. Too dry.

She squeezed my fingers and I realized her hand was freezing. I scooted over and drew her close against the fierce ocean breeze; brushed a kiss to her temple. “I love you, Mel,” I whispered, but I thought it might’ve been carried away in the rushing air.

It wasn’t.

“I love you, too,” she said.

We sat in the cool, salty wind, contemplating—without a clue—our predicament. My gaze fell upon the worn white cross that my family and I had placed, along with Jonah, to mark Lettie’s resting site.

As I watched the course, brown sand swirl in the breeze around the burial site of a forgotten, old, mangy stray dog, I wished like hell someone was here to save me now.

Melissa finally turned her face into my neck, her eyes unable to meet mine. “Do you think we could . . . I mean . . . what do
you
want to do?”

My heart clutched and I fought the automatic surge of panic as I wanted to run. Run far, run fast. Just get away from this nightmare of my own making.

Then her words surged through the fog like a beacon of hope.

Was she offering me freedom? A way out?

A choice?

Could I be free and clear to move on with my life without anyone having to know about our stupid mistake? Without it ruining every damn thing in our lives?

My gut seized in an agonizing grind. I knew exactly how these things went.

It was
her
choice.

And I knew my girl. Her past. Her pain. I knew exactly what her choice would be. I tipped her face up to meet my eyes. If only I didn’t love her so much. “What do you want, Mel?”

More tears, liquefied pain, collected and quivered on her lashes, and I knew her damning answer.

Just as I knew my life’s path was forever going to be altered.

May 29
th

I heard once that journaling your thoughts is therapeutic. I’m gonna give it a shot. I don’t have anyone else to talk to, not really. (My family doesn’t get me and my BFF, Roxanne, tries, but we’ve started drifting.) So, here I sit with this shiny new diary, wondering how I’m supposed to do this. If I put my thoughts . . . my secrets . . . onto paper, does that make them more or less real? I’m not sure.

But today was—how to describe it? Today was awfully, horribly, terrible. I finally had to fess up to the truth. Well, not the
whole
truth. I can’t tell Reed everything. And it kills me. I love him SO much.

Maybe I should start from the beginning . . . for both of us.

I’ve dreamed of nothing more than being with Reed Young since I was thirteen-years-old. From the moment I laid eyes on him in his faded black Deftones T-shirt, ripped jeans, and Vans, he stole my heart. And his perfect I-don’t-care mussed hair and hazel green eyes with flecks of gold and super long lashes didn’t hurt either.

I finally got him to notice me when I about dumped my lunch tray on him one day at school in eighth grade. He smiled his adorable, crooked smile and helped me pick up my food. I think I might’ve swooned, LOL. He asked me for my number and we went to the movies with friends that weekend. We’ve been inseparable ever since. For the past three years, my whole identity has been “Melissa Summers, Reed Young’s girlfriend,” and I’ve been more than okay with that because I’m over-the-moon crazy for him.

But today, I worried I’d lose him forever. God, that would kill me. I know they say sixteen-year-old girls are dramatic, but I’m totally serious. I think losing Reed now would truly kill me. He’s asked a few times lately about why I’ve been acting differently, if he’s done something wrong, but what can I say? I’ve been tortured, literally eaten alive with my shame, my secret . . . only to have another. I’m about to burst like an overflowing water balloon.

I had him take me to his favorite place, Surfside beach. Lettie’s cross, his refuge on the beach, is something very emotional for him that I can’t quite grasp. But, if I could make it easier for him, I was gonna try.

When I finally got the nerve, I told him.

I’m pregnant.

Man, that looks strange in print. More real maybe than those two torturous blue lines on what seemed like the thousand pregnancy tests I took.

He was wonderful about it, just like I knew deep in my heart he’d be. Asked me what I wanted.

What
do
I want?

To keep this baby.

I can’t, just can’t, have an abortion, and I definitely won’t put a child through what I went through being adopted. Yes, my parents are fine (only slightly naggy) and I know they love me and my younger brother, Chris. But I’m haunted by the fact that just as my adoption was going through, Mom got pregnant with Chris. Would they have gone through with it if they’d known earlier? If they knew what a perfect baby they could genetically create? He’s so perfect, he manages to do everything right and be close to my parents, but also close to me. Or, at least, we used to be close. I really miss the days of simplicity, before being adopted was a factor, before I was the one with less friends, only so-so grades, far from athletic . . . the inferior child. Back when Chris and I used to play hide-and-seek, and drink hot chocolate on the back patio in winter, when we’d dare each other to do dumb stuff. He even let me dress him up as a girl one year if I would climb the palm tree two doors down. I got a broken wrist from that expedition, but he hugged me and gave me his share of carrot cake after dinner the next night.

But those days are gone. They’ve drifted away and I’m not sure why. I can barely remember some of them. But I am sure that once I was old enough to understand the biological differences between me and my brother, I’ve felt unwanted. Rejected. Second best. Why didn’t my birth mother want me? What’s so wrong with me? I can’t tell you the times I’ve thought about finding her someday. What would I say? Will she care?

If I can keep one innocent child from feeling lost like that, I will. It’s not this baby’s fault what happened.