Two Blue Lines (Crossing The Line #1)

  Formatted by 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

  Who 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 29th

  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 ho
t 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.

  But, still now, I’m twisted up like a pretzel, wondering what will happen if Reed ever finds out the truth. This baby might not be his.

  The Miracle of Demon Genetics

  Mel and I waited almost two weeks to tell our friends. I mean, really, how do you digest something like that, much less tell people? That makes it real, doesn’t it?

  A baby.

  Jezus.

  In our miniscule little beach town outside of Freeport, Texas, this kind of thing hardly ever happened. Okay, well, it happened. Just not to us. And in Brazosport High School, where our graduating class next year would be less than three hundred kids . . . yeah, we were gonna be news.

  So, for two weeks, we spent every day staring at each other in a shock-induced haze, just sort of pretending it wasn’t real. Each lost in our own personal hell. Mine, because it was just one more day of feeling guilty for what we’d done. Pissed off. Worried about the future. Wanting her and not being able to have her—talk about a Catch-22. I wanted her but I shouldn’t. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place, you idiot!

  Oh, not to mention I was going to be a father. Holy shit.

  But, for Mel, she’d had enough after another run-in with her mom over an upcoming visit with her grandparents, who she always said made her feel uncomfortable because she was adopted, and treated her different than the other grandkids. Even her brother, Chris. But, then again, he was her parents’ biological child.

  No more procrastinating. It was time to come clean. We sure couldn’t wait until she was showing . . . or delivering!

  We were having our first dry run with my best friend, Jonah, who neither of us had seen in a few weeks. For some reason, Mel was skittish when I mentioned telling him, but she relented. Probably sensed I needed to get this off my chest.

  I gripped Melissa’s hand in my clammy palm as the three of us sipped melting Icees and walked the sand dunes of Surfside one Saturday afternoon, me between them.

  “You told your parents yet?” he asked, his face downturned. Serious.

  “No,” I answered for both of us. That was a hurdle we’d yet to figure out how to leap. Honestly, we were scared shitless and Mel was hurting on a level I had yet to breach.

  He nodded, his concentration on a piece of seaweed at his foot. “So, what’re you gonna do? You gonna keep it?”

  The wind whipped up, whirling Mel’s ponytail around her shoulder like a loose rope. I swallowed, trying to form a coherent sentence, but Mel jumped in, her voice slightly shaky. “Yes, we’re keeping it! Of course we are. Why would you even ask that?”

  I turned to study her. I’d never seen such vehemence in her eyes before. Where had that come from? I knew she felt at loose ends, wishing she had that “I was chosen” security of other adopted kids, but honestly, I’d been too afraid to have the conversation with her now that we were in a position to choose that destiny for ourselves. And I couldn’t help but wonder when had the baby come to mean something more to her than an end to our childhood? A reason to fear our parents? An unknown, scary, amoeba-like ‘it?’

  Because I sure didn’t feel it.

  All I seemed to feel lately was confusion, fear, and a carefully masked, simmering anger. It was all so unfair.

  Jonah looked just as taken aback. He held up his free hand in mock surrender. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just asking. You guys are only sixteen. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you.” He let his arm fall limp. “Just thought you might’ve considered . . . I dunno, other options?”

  Mel stopped and stared at the water. “I did. We did.” She caught my gaze, her eyes never meeting Jonah’s. “But I couldn’t do that. I won’t do to this baby what my parents did to me. And abortion is just . . . No. I can’t. This baby is innocent.” Her last words rose on the sea air like a prayer.

  I swallowed against my dry throat. What about us? I wanted to scream. Aren’t we innocent?

  We were silent a while as the ocean pushed and pulled along the shore. A gull cried mournfully overhead, mirroring my pitiful, pained thoughts. I toed the sand and chanced a quick glance at Jonah to try and puzzle out what he might be thinking. Did he think I was a complete dumbass?

  The breeze lifted the hair from his forehead as his dark eyes caught mine. I saw nothing but sympathy mirrored back.

  Relief rushed through me in a dizzying wave.

  He understood.

  We both glanced at Melissa’s downturned head then our eyes clashed again. We knew. We both knew. Thanks to Melissa’s demons, my life . . . hers . . . would forever be linked by whatever concoction genetics and DNA had created that fateful night in the backseat of my ratty, hand-me-down Toyota.

  “So adoption’s out, huh?” Jonah asked when we were alone at my house the next day.

  I flopped down on my bed and stared up at the Misfits poster on my ceiling. “Looks like it.”

  “Did you even ask her?”

  “Kinda.” I turned and looked at him, still frustrated with her refusal to consider it. “Sorta. I hinted, she blew me off. But I can’t just come out and say, ‘Hey, Mel, I know you just found out you’re pregnant and all, but you wanna give our baby to complete strangers?’” I rolled my eyes. “That wouldn’t go over well. You know how she feels about adoption.”

  Jonah sat heavily and sighed. “Yeah, I guess. But just because she’s unhappy about being adopted doesn’t mean it has to be the same way for your kid. I think they do things differently now where you can pick who you give your baby to and stay in touch and stuff. At least I think that’s what my cousin Hannah did.” He shrugged.

  “Huh,” I said noncommittally.

  If only it were that easy . . . but I was the only person who knew the true depth of Mel’s pain when it came to being adopted. The nightmares. How she agonized over not being able to talk to her parents about, well, much of anything. How she felt she could never live up to Chris’s Golden Boy perfection. How she dreamed of finding her biological parents one day. How she felt abandoned, unwanted, unloved . . . no matter how much her parents and I told her different. And as cozy as Jonah’s plan sounded, I knew she’d never go for it. She believed with all that was within her, and maybe had since her birth, that a baby belonged with its real parents. No. Matter. What.

  Not that I agreed. I was kinda seeing the beauty of not having a kid. But who was I?

  I could talk until I was blue in the face, trying to get her to see reason—we had no jobs, no money, no education—she didn’t seem to be thinking about any of that. ‘We have love,’ she’d said the one and only time it came up, though for some reason I saw guilt behind her eyes.

  “So, Noah finally ships out for boot camp next week,” Jonah said, changing the subject, his solemn voice broadcasting that he didn’t like this subject any more than me.

  “Yeah. Finally, huh?”

  He glanced at me and nodded. “Damn straight.”

  His older brother had always been a real prick, tormenting us whenever he got the chance. But he was especially cruel to Jonah. And the sad irony of that was that they looked so much alike, they were like twins—one good, one evil. Hopefully the Army would straighten him out. At least it would get him out of our ha
ir.

  Weird thing was, Jonah’s family had been the epitome of dysfunctional for as long as I’d known them. I thought back to what he and I learned about my mom’s family three years ago. How neglected she was—making her all the more empathetic toward Jonah—how she’d nearly drowned at my favorite beach when she was a toddler, only to be saved. By Lettie. Sometimes I thought Jonah understood the best, living the nightmare he lived. But they’d both come out good people, so there was hope. I really thought it was a miracle that the rest of his Biblically named crew hadn’t turned out as rotten as his big brother, Noah. But they were acting like he’d won the freakin’ Nobel Prize because he’d joined the Army. They even threw a big party when he signed the official papers a couple months ago.

  Mel and I had gone, but that had been a mistake. The King family was only covering up their crap in streamers, balloons, finger food, and a keg, giving Noah the chance to act like a drunk prick. Fun times.

  In the hubbub, I got separated from Mel and Jonah for a while, and found myself nearly in a fight with one of Noah’s prick friends when he started mouthing off about Jonah. When Mel and I finally caught up with each other, she was super pale and tired. She just wanted to go, and frankly, so did I. We left without saying bye to Jonah. I tried to call him later and he said it was no biggie—his brother had only gotten drunker and meaner and the party went to shit anyway. Poor Jonah.

  Thank God dickhead Noah was leaving. I hoped the drill sergeant put a boot up his ass.

  But now I had bigger worries.

  Bigger worries than douches like Noah, or school, or fights with Mom. But were they bigger than me? I had heard how “gifted” I was my whole life. Above average. Smart. “Old for my age,” whatever the hell that meant. I guess I was just mature. I sure wasn’t feeling it now. I felt like an angry kid.

  A kid.

  About to have a kid.

  I sat up as reality crashed in, and stopped short when I found Jonah studying a photo of the two of us from three summers ago. The most momentous summer of my life. Until this one.