Color of Forgiveness (33 page)

His throat tightens. “Are you… you’re…
what…?” he stutters, his eyes furtively darting from her eyes to
her stomach. He can’t breathe. He can’t get any air into his
lungs.

She nods, a tear streaking down her cheek,
and his world shatters.

CHAPTER 10

“Dylan,
please,
” Myra cries as she
steps closer to him, her eyes fixed on his stricken face. Her
trembling hand reaches out towards him, so desperate to touch him;
to reassure him that everything will be okay. But instead, he
recoils from her, stumbling backwards and landing hard against the
side of his truck. She sucks in a quick breath as the sharp pain of
rejection stabs her in the center of her chest.

As she pulls her hand back, tears leave wet
streaks down her cheeks. This is
not
how this was supposed
to happen. She was somehow going to break the news to him slowly,
gently. But she’s ruined any chance of doing that by throwing up on
the side of the road.

Dylan turns away from her and hunches over,
gasping for air as he leans his shoulder against his truck. His
eyes scrunch tight as one arm curls around his stomach. His mouth
hangs open as he heaves in gulps of air. Myra knows what’s
happening.

Clenching her fists tightly to keep herself
from automatically reaching for him, she tries to talk him through
it. “Dylan?” she asks her voice thick from crying. “It’s all right.
Calm down.” Her fingers quickly swipe at her cheeks. “You’re okay.
It’s just a panic attack. Can you sit?”

He ignores her and continues gasping like he
can’t get any air into his lungs. “Dylan!” she shouts. He reacts,
his frightened eyes darting to hers. “Sit down.” Her voice is firm
as she points to the ground. He sinks to his knees, and Myra drops
down into the dirt beside him.

“Try to slow your breathing. Deep breath in
and blow it out slowly.” She demonstrates for him, hoping he’ll
copy her. “You’re okay. Everything’s going to be all right.” The
words hurt because she knows they’re lies on her lips, but Dylan
needs her right now, and she’ll do anything to help him. After a
few more minutes of soft, calming words, his breathing starts to
return to normal. Once she sees that he’s going to be okay, she
scoots away to give him some space, not wanting to make him feel
crowded. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she wraps her arms
around her legs and watches him closely.

With a groan, he moves into a sitting
position with his back against the truck, one leg pulled up to his
chest, the other one sprawled out in front of him. He sits like
that with his eyes closed for several minutes before he slowly
opens his eyes. He just stares, unblinking, a strange, blank
expression on his face, void of any emotion. Myra searches his
eyes, desperately trying to read something in them, anything. But
she sees nothing and it hurts so much. Her eyes drop to her knees
and the tears start again. All she can do is just sit and wait.

Time passes. How long they sit there by the
side of the road she doesn’t know. It feels like hours, it could be
only minutes. From her peripheral vision, she sees him shift,
trying to get into a more comfortable position. He breaks the
deafening silence by clearing his throat. “How long have you
known?” he asks his voice rough.

Quickly wiping her eyes, she looks up at
him. “I just found out… this morning.”

His eyes darken instantly. “What?”

“Natalie… she had a test…”

“
Natalie knows
?” he shouts, his face
livid. He stands and Myra scrambles to her feet as he continues
shouting. “How the
fuck
is it that Natalie found out before
I did?”

“She
guessed
that I was. I didn’t
tell
her. Dylan, I would never do that to you, never. She
heard me throwing up and… she was so nice to me,” Myra says, her
voice trembling before a sob breaks free. Swallowing hard, she
quickly uses the back of her hand to wipe her eyes again. “She had
a test, upstairs. We went up there, and I took it.”

“This is fucking unbelievable,” he growls as
he turns and leans both hands against his truck, his head hanging
down. “I can’t believe this shit!” he roars before he angrily kicks
the door of his truck, leaving a huge dent in it. “Goddamn it!”

Myra winces as tears flood her face.

He turns, his eyes narrowing in anger. “So
you weren’t even on birth control?” he asks, his voice incredulous.
“Was this your way of
helping me
get over Mel?”

“No!” she shouts. “I was on the pill, I
swear.”

“Then how in the hell did you get
that,
” he spits, his eyes flicking to her stomach as he
waves his hand towards it, “if you were on the pill?”

She feels bile rising in her stomach and
swallows hard, desperate to keep it down. “Remember when I fell? On
the ice?” she says, breathing heavy. “And got stitches?” He doesn’t
answer so she continues. “I missed a couple of pills. But I took
them as soon as I realized it.”

His look is scathing. “Then why the hell
didn’t you tell me about that? How in the hell could you do this to
me? When you knew about everything I’ve been through.”

“It was an accident, Dylan, I swear. I
didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I would never,
ever
hurt you like that.”

His eyes are cold and unrelenting. “But you
still did, didn’t you…?”

“I didn’t even know about Mel when we slept
together that first time. You didn’t tell me about him until later
so I didn’t even know at that point. And you sure didn’t seem to be
worried about birth control since you never bothered to ask me
about it!” she shouts. “Not even once!”

“That’s because I thought you had that shit
taken care of,” he snarls.

“Seriously? You just
assumed
that it
was my responsibility to take care of the birth control?”

“Yeah, you’re the woman.”

“What?” Myra shouts, her hands curling into
fists. “I cannot believe you just said that to me.” Myra’s hand
itches desperately to smack his face. Her anger ignites. “If not
having any more kids was so important to you, why didn’t you use a
condom?”

“Because I wasn’t thinking straight back
then and because I’ve never used a condom in my goddamn life!” he
shouts at her. “Sabrina was always on the pill and I—”

“I’m not Sabrina!” Myra shouts back. The
reality of those words hits her so hard it almost knocks her flat.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not Sabrina,” she says again,
her lip trembling. “I’m Myra.”

They stand there silently for a few minutes,
the tension thick and heavy between them.

“How far along?” he asks his voice
tight.

She sniffs, shifting uncomfortably. “I’m not
sure. Natalie said maybe six weeks. I think it happened that first
night; the first time we were together.”

Dylan’s eyes widen as his breathing picks up
again. His face turns white. “What? No.
No…
”

Myra frowns. “What’s wrong?”

“That…” He can’t get the words out for his
panting. “The date… The
date
,” he mumbles as he sinks back
to the ground.

Myra drops on her knees beside him. “What
date?”

“Mel. It was Mel…” he mumbles, bending
forward and gasping.

She desperately searches her memory for any
significant dates. The slept together the first time at the end of
February, the night he rushed back from Boise after visiting
Mel’s... And that’s when it hits her. And her blood turns to
ice.

The date she saw on Mel’s tombstone and the
date they first slept together are the same date. The date she got
pregnant.

A heavy breath escapes her lungs as her
chest tightens painfully. She gasps for air, feeling on the verge
of a panic attack herself. But she has to get control because Dylan
needs her. Her eyes shoot to him, and she immediately gasps in
horror as she watches him collapse onto his side on the ground.

* * *

Dylan sees flashes of Myra’s worried,
tear-stained face. First, she was frantically talking to someone on
the phone. Then, he’d felt the touch of her skin on his as she
rubbed his cold hands in hers, warming them. Her soft voice had
whispered sweet words. But then, his thoughts are hazier. Why had
his dad helped him into the back of his truck? And why did he see
Chad hugging Myra? It seemed that somehow Sabrina had been there
too, crying. Why was his mom hugging her? None of it makes sense.
Still confused, Dylan groans and tries to shift, his neck and back
aching. He frowns when he feels something in his hair, and his eyes
immediately fly open. His head is on Myra’s chest, her arm wrapped
around him as she runs her fingers through his hair.

He sits up quickly.

“It’s okay,” Myra says softly. “You just
fell asleep.”

Frowning, he turns to look at her and finds
Myra sitting next to him in the backseat of his truck. She looks
like a mess with red splotches on her cheeks and swelled, bloodshot
eyes. His eyes shift to the front seat. His dad’s driving his truck
and his mom’s in the passenger seat. He has no idea what the hell
is going on.

“Dylan, honey?” Sherri asks as she turns
around, her face pinched with worry, her eyes swelled. “How are you
feeling? We’ve been so worried about you. I wanted to take you to
the hospital, but your dad wouldn’t let me.”

Still frowning, he shakes his head, having
no idea why she’d want to do that.

“Son, I knew you’d be upset if I let her
drag you to the hospital,” Dennis says, making eye contact with
Dylan in the rearview mirror. Thank goodness his dad put his foot
down. He nods at him to let him know he agrees.

He looks at Myra and clears his throat.
“What happened?”

“You had another panic attack,” she tells
him. Her voice drops to a whisper. “You scared me so badly. You
were kind of out of it, and I didn’t know what to do. So I called
Natalie.”

Some of his clouded memories start becoming
clearer.

Myra.

Pregnant…

February 23rd

He swallows hard, his heart rate speeding
up. His mouth feels dry and parched. “They know?” he asks, not
really wanting to hear the answer.

Pain crosses Myra’s face. She nods
slightly.

“Myra did the right thing, Dylan, so don’t
you dare get upset with her,” Sherri says. “She was stuck on the
side of the road with you and didn’t know what to do. You were
barely coherent when we showed up. Have you ever had that happen
before?”

“No,” he says, “and don’t give me any shit
about seeing a doctor because I’m fine.”

Sherri watches his face for a moment. Her
mouth opens and closes like she’s about to say something, but
instead, tears collect in her eyes before she turns back around in
her seat.

Dylan takes in a deep breath and stares out
the window, watching the trees and the landscape go by as he tries
to piece his thoughts together. So he had another panic attack,
which is no fucking surprising considering what he’d just found
out. Apparently he’d been out of it, which he knows to be a damn
fact since everything’s so hazy. Myra called Natalie who then told
his whole fucking family about their goddamn private shit and they
came running to the rescue.

His eyebrows crease in concentration as he
vaguely recalls seeing Chad hugging Myra. Did that really happen or
was it a hallucination? He looks at Myra. “Was Chad here?”

She nods. “He’s behind us. He’s driving your
dad’s truck.”

Dylan turns his head and sees his dad’s work
truck behind them, Chad behind the wheel.

If he didn’t hallucinate Chad then he
probably didn’t hallucinate Sabrina either. He scrambles to try to
remember. He remembers taking Myra to Mel’s grave and Sabrina
showing up, and their argument. He remembers leaving, and Myra
yelling at him almost immediately to pull over.

His heart starts pounding. They were barely
out of the cemetery when he pulled the truck over. “Sabrina? Was
Sabrina there? Oh shit, does she know?” His voice comes out in a
rush. Sherri turns around again. His eyes dart back and forth from
Myra to his mom as he waits on one of them to give him a goddamn
answer.

“She was there,” Sherri says, “but she
doesn’t know about the baby, and we didn’t tell her anything about
you and Myra. That isn’t any of her business. We had just gotten
you into the truck when she drove past. She stopped when she saw us
and… well, she was really worried about you. I merely told her that
you’d gotten sick and that we were going to drive you and Myra back
to Nyssa.”

His jaw tightens when he remembers Sabrina’s
pained face. Taking in a deep breath, he lays his head against the
cold window and closes his eyes, wishing that he could just make
everything go away.

* * *

Myra steals another glance at Dylan. She
wishes so much that she could read his mind. He’s been curled up in
the corner of his truck with his head against the window for the
last forty-five minutes. To her, it initially seemed like he was
trying to get as far away from her as possible. So with a painful
twisting feeling in her stomach, she had scooted over from the
middle seat to behind Sherri, giving him his space. It hurt her
heart to do it.

Nothing could have prepared her for Dylan’s
reaction. It had scared her to her core to see him like that. She’s
now faced with the reality that this might truly be something that
he can’t handle. It might be too much for him, and he may very well
leave her. She’ll have to start preparing herself mentally for
that. She knows she’s just barely pregnant, and there are so many
things that could happen in the first trimester, but it doesn’t
matter. She already loves this baby, and if she has to be a single
parent to it, she will. She’ll find the strength somehow.

Dennis speaks up, interrupting her thoughts.
“Myra?” he asks. “What’s your address?”