The Hardest Fall

by Ella Maise

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m certainly not offering for you to be my roommate.”

  Grudgingly, I walked inside. The only reason I was accepting her offer was because I didn’t want to burden Kayla with all my drama by going back there in the middle of the night.

  Ms. Hilda closed the door behind me.

  “I’ll make some tea and get you some frozen peas to calm down that cheek of yours. Then we can sit down and have a nice talk and you can tell me what you’re planning to do now that you’re homeless. I couldn’t hear everything so you’re gonna have to go over some of it.” The look on my face must’ve said it all because she waved me off and headed toward her kitchen. “Oh, don’t worry, I heard most of it, I just have some questions. While I’m in the kitchen, why don’t you stop standing next to the door like a harassed broomstick and check the drapes for me?”

  The next day couldn’t come soon enough, because I’d already figured out what I was going to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Zoe

  Finals passed in a blur. I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I told you it was the worst time of my life. Ms. Hilda was her usual overbearing, nosy self, but she’d opened up her home to me and I was grateful for that. Me staying at her apartment for two more days might have had something to do with lying in wait for Dylan so I could catch him when he came back to pick up his things, but I never got the chance because he never showed. After the two days passed, I moved my stuff to Jared’s. When Kayla had moved into a hotel with her parents, an air mattress had opened up and it had my name on it. It was temporary, just until I could find a new apartment, and maybe some roommates.

  Kayla decided to stay for finals, and her parents never let her out of their sight. It was hard saying goodbye to her, and I’m not ashamed to admit that the three of us had a lengthy cry-fest, but knowing we’d see each other as soon as possible helped lessen the pain. I chose not to tell Kayla what had gone down with Mark, but Jared knew all about it. I was a complete mess, and he was my rock through it all. What hurt the most, though, was knowing it was all my own damn fault. If I had told Dylan everything from the beginning, or at least the moment I knew I wanted him to be mine, I could’ve avoided all the heartache I had gone through.

  But, they always say nothing in life worth having comes easy, and Dylan Reed sure wasn’t going to make it easy on me.

  It was the last day of finals and I was a bundle of nerves as I stood next to the black Challenger. The last time I’d checked the time on my phone, it’d said eight PM, and I refused to check it again since I knew only a minute or two had passed since then.

  I was pacing the length of the car when I saw him coming. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, my heart going a mile a minute, and I was only seconds away from puking my guts out—not the first impression I wanted to make at all. I cleared my throat in preparation and cracked my knuckles.

  This is it.

  It was the moment I’d waited years for, and all I seemed to be capable of feeling was horror.

  Christopher Wilson slowed his walk when he spotted me and stopped next to his car to give me a quick once-over. I couldn’t see his eyes because of the hat he had on, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t happy about finding me waiting around for him.

  After giving me a long look, he just shook his head, opened his car door, and chucked his backpack inside. I stood frozen, waiting for him to say the first words so I’d know how to proceed, but he didn’t do that. He got into his car and was about to slam the door closed when I unfroze and grabbed it.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, my heart still thumping wildly in my chest.

  He looked up at me, and then I saw his eyes—my mother’s eyes. “I don’t think I’m the one you should be talking to.” He pointedly looked at my hand, which was holding his door open. “Now, if you’d step away, I’d like to leave.”

  His car was parked just outside campus. I’d done a little stalking and it had taken me a few days to find out where he usually parked it; there was no way I was going through all that again. This was the day I was going to tell him everything. No more delays.

  I had no idea what Dylan had told Chris, but it seemed like he knew enough to be upset.

  “No,” I said, finding my voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  “This has nothing to do with Dylan. I want to talk to you.”

  “I swear to God, if this is you coming on to me right—”

  “No,” I burst out. “God, no. Just ten minutes—I need to talk to you for ten minutes, that’s it. I promise I won’t bother you again, but I’m not gonna go away until you talk to me.”

  It was true; I was not planning on bothering him after I said everything I needed to say. If he didn’t want anything to do with me, that was just fine. I wasn’t going to force him to have a relationship with me, but I was done waiting for the truth to be known.

  After a half-hearted invitation, I got in the passenger seat and suffered through a painfully quiet car ride to a diner a few minutes away from campus. I assumed he didn’t want anyone to see us together, and when he’d told me to say whatever I needed to say, I’d flat out refused to do it in a car.

  I sat in the booth and waited for him to settle across from me.

  He took his hat off and placed it on the table, messing with his hair. “I’m listening.”

  I licked my lips and leaned forward. My hands were shaking in my lap under the table, but I thought I looked pretty zen on the outside, at least I hoped so. “This is not gonna sound good, but I’m gonna try to—”

  “Hello, I’m Moira. What can I get you kids?”

  I closed my eyes, willing my heart to slow down and not make a mess of everything.

  “I’ll have a coffee, please,” Chris said.

  Moira’s smiling face turned to me, and the warm smile shifted into a frown. “You feeling all right, honey?”

  I managed a nod and had to clear my throat before I spoke. “Can I have some water, please?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right back with those. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  When Moira walked away, I looked at Chris again. He was watching me, eyes judging.

  After years of waiting, I should’ve been ready for the talk, but there was still a big part of me that was afraid of rejection, and then there was the rest of me that was done with the whole thing.

  I reached into my bag and took out the envelope. Squaring my shoulders, I placed it on the table and smoothed it with my hands.

  “Here you go. Coffee for you, and water for you.” Moira placed a big mug in front of Chris and a gigantic glass of ice water in front of me. “You let me know if I can get you some tea with honey, okay? And maybe a slice of pie to go with it? It works wonders for me when I’m feeling off.”

  I gave her a genuine smile and she left us alone.

  “I can’t help you with Dylan. I have no idea what you did to him, but I’m not going to get—”

  “This is not about Dylan. I told you that.” I smoothed the envelope again and his eyes dropped to watch me do it.

  “Then I have no idea what you want to talk to me about, and I can’t really say I feel comfortable sit—”

  Fuck it. I decided to just go for it.

  “You won’t believe me, so I thought bringing this would help.” I pushed the envelope toward him and clasped my hands on the table when he reached for it.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  I watched him read the single sheet of paper with bated breath. With every passing second, his frown got deeper and deeper. After he was done, he pushed away his coffee mug, put his elbows on the table, and leaned toward me, reading it again and again.

  “Is this some sick joke?”

  Before I could answer, he started reading it again, only this time he was reading it out loud.

  “The alleged father, Mark Wilson, is not excluded as the biological father of the child, Zoe Clarke. Based on the genetic testin
g results obtained…the probability of paternity is 99.9999%.”

  He glanced up at me.

  “He wanted to make sure I was his, so we had it done three years ago.”

  His brows moved up toward his hairline. “You…had it done three years ago?”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  He licked his bottom lip and leaned back, the test result still clutched in his hand. He read it again and again, and I waited patiently. I took a sip of my water and placed it back on the table, getting ready to tell him the rest. What surprised me the most was that I no longer felt like the world was about to end. I also didn’t feel light and happy, or anything close to it. Sure, I needed to pee very badly, but that always happened when I got really nervous about something. I was just relieved that it was happening and he finally knew at least fifty percent of it. The rest would be harder to hear and accept, but I wasn’t scared to tell him.

  When he finally looked at me, I was ready to explain the rest.

  “This…” He shook the paper in his hand. “Three years?”

  I nodded.

  He threw the paper on the table and rose to his feet.

  “Chris, I—” I started, surprised that he was leaving. I scrambled to my feet, but he lifted his hand to stop me.

  “Give me a minute.” He slowly backed away from the table, from me. “Don’t leave. I’ll be back.”

  I nodded. “I won’t. I have more to say.”

  Without another word, he walked out of the diner.

  Trying to calm down, I patiently folded and stuffed the document back into the envelope then put it back in my bag.

  Moira caught my eye and winked. God knows what she thought was going on.

  I checked my phone. I sat back and listened to the family sitting behind me for a few minutes. They were talking about which movie they were going to watch that weekend, the little girl trying to convince her brother to go with her choice and the dad and mom weighing in. They sounded happy.

  The little bell over the diner door chimed and drew my attention. A second later, Chris slid in across from me again. His face looked slightly flushed, his eyes wide and stunned, though it might have been because of the wind. I didn’t ask him where he’d gone, but…

  “You didn’t call Mark, did you?”

  His head tilted as he tried to read me. “No.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” I moved back in my seat a little and reached for my water.

  “You said you have more to say. Tell me,” he ordered.

  I placed the glass back on the table and licked my lips. “I’m not sure where I should start.”

  “You’re my half-sister—start from there.”

  “Actually…” I winced. “Actually, I’m not.”

  Over the next few minutes, I told him everything—everything that had been told to me, everything that had happened after I came to Los Angeles. The second I started, I couldn’t hold any of it back. He listened without asking a single question.

  Chris was rubbing his temple with the fingers of his left hand while the other held the edge of the table in a white-knuckle grip. Once I was done, I kept quiet and watched him try to process everything. He reached for the mug and downed half of the lukewarm coffee in one go.

  A few minutes of complete silence had passed when he finally spoke. “Why are you telling me this now? Why would I even believe you?”

  “Why would you believe me?” I shrugged and stopped playing with the salt shaker I had latched onto at some point. “This isn’t how I imagined it would happen, trust me, and I wasn’t the one who wanted to wait. I came here three years ago and I was ready to tell you then. Your father—”

  “Don’t you mean our father?” His voice was harsh, and I hoped his words were not intended to hurt.

  I shook my head. “Not really. Sure, he is on paper, but that’s about it. He’ll never be my dad. He doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I’m fine with that. I already have a father, and he is more than enough.”

  “What do you mean he doesn’t want you?”

  “He doesn’t want to have a relationship with me. After everything we’ve been through—after everything I’ve been through, thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want a relationship with him.” I paused and looked up. “He wasn’t the main reason I wanted to come here in the first place, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “But you two have been talking this whole time. He was spending time with you.”

  “Yes, but not really—”

  “Does my mom know? Does she know about you? About everything after the adoption?” His voice rose as he sat up a little higher.

  “No, not about me. I don’t mean to say anything bad about your mom, but from what I can tell, they were basically having an affair right in front of her. I have no idea what was going through her mind, but from what she—from what my mom told me, they stopped speaking after she learned about the affair, but she was completely on board with adopting you. Maybe she already knew about it and when the pregnancy came up, she jumped at the idea because she couldn’t have kids? I seriously have no idea, but I do know Mark told my mom they would be together eventually, said he’d leave his wife and they’d raise you together.”

  I lifted my tense shoulders in a shrug and gazed outside.

  After a short pause, I continued. “It sounds so stupid when you say it out loud, doesn’t it? After adopting you, why would he go back to her? I’ve learned firsthand how convincing he can be, so I get it to a degree, but at the same time, I don’t. Mom said he told her it wouldn’t be good for his career if he had a personal scandal like that, but I don’t think she was giving me everything. I still don’t understand how she could give you up like that.” I winced and averted my eyes. “I’m sorry, I’d rather not go into more detail because it wasn’t really fun hearing it the first time. Mom told me their marriage was just for show—I think your mom is his old coach’s daughter.” I huffed and leaned back. “She was just so in love with him, and so sure he was in love with her, I think she believed anything he said. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting all the blame on him. I hate that they were cheating on your mom and that’s how we came to be.”

  “And you? How did you happen? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one. You’re only a year older,” I replied with a small, pathetic smile. “I was the mistake, you see—Mark’s mistake at least. Mark wanted my mom to have an abortion, gave her the money to do it, but I think that’s when she realized he was never going to leave his wife. Skipping out on the abortion, she moved away.” I let out a humorless laugh and raised my hands. “Obviously, since here I am. She got married to my dad, but I think she always held out hope that Mark would return to her. We didn’t have the best relationship in the world, so I think I’m just a big fuck you to Mark, if that makes any sense.”

  We fell silent for a few beats.

  “I thought Mark didn’t know about me—that’s what he said in the beginning, and that’s what my mom said. Turns out he did, and I just learned about the abortion part. I guess he didn’t know she hadn’t gotten rid of me.”

  When the silence grew uncomfortable and Chris just kept gazing outside with his jaw ticking, I looked down at my hands and swallowed thickly before speaking again.

  “I feel so selfish right now.” I looked up to find his eyes on me, so I looked away. “Like I said, this wasn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

  “What was the plan?”

  “The plan? I don’t think there was ever a plan. That first year I came, he told me he’d like to have some alone time with me, get to know me before he introduced us. He was also worried about how his wife—your mom—would react…to me, to you learning about it all. I thought that was a good idea, to learn more about you and him before, you know…this happened, but then a year passed and he wanted more time because it was important that you focus on your football career, and I said okay because I didn’t know how I’d do it without him. Then this year was your last year and it was even more im
portant for you to focus on football, but then last week everything kind of went to hell and I just wanted to get it over with.” I paused to take a breath. “I completely understand if you don’t want…actually, I won’t understand if you don’t want anything to do with me, but it’s not like I’m going to beg you to have a relationship with me. Mom died, and I was so angry at her because that was soon after I learned that my dad wasn’t my biological dad. All I have is my dad. Neither he nor my mom had any other close family, so it’s just the two of us. I thought I could have more. I thought I’d love to have a brother, to get to know you.”

  Chris released a long-suffering sigh and smoothed his hair back with both hands. His jaw was still ticking away and his face looked tight, like he was barely holding it all together. The conversation itself hadn’t been as awkward as I’d thought it would be, but our reaction to each other was. Whenever our eyes met, one of us looked away. I didn’t know what else to say, or what he’d want to hear.

  “This is all too fucking much.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.

  “It’s not your fault,” he countered, surprising me. He shook his head as if he was trying to wake up from a nightmare. “He should’ve been the one to tell me, and not now. The time to tell me was when he learned about you, and my mom…she won’t handle this well. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’d be the best idea to tell her I know everything, and definitely not a good idea to let her know Dad kept sleeping with your…ah…your mom. She has her issues, and this would be too much for her.”

  “Not my decision, and really, I just wanted to meet you. I just wanted to tell you I existed. I didn’t come here to mess with your family.” I gave him a shy smile and pulled my hands down to my lap. “Just wanted to meet you, that’s all.”

  He cleared his throat and looked away. My stomach dropped. Maybe he wouldn’t want anything to do with me either. I knew that was a possibility, but after the week from hell, I hadn’t had much time to think it over, to think about what it would mean if he never wanted to see me again.