She sits down across the coffee table from me, and my father drops down at her side, arms crossed, glaring the glare he uses to intimidate his PE students.

They don’t speak for about three minutes. Which feels, under the circumstances, like an entire lifetime, and I’m so uncomfortable I don’t even know how to sit.

I love my parents. I don’t like hurting them. I’d wanted to tell them the good news, face-to-face, that I’m in love and that Remington and I are having a baby. The last thing I want is to make them feel let down, to treat this as the tragedy that they seem to be taking it as.

“Hello, Mom and Dad,” I say first.

I shift and shift until I plant my elbow on the couch arm, put my head in my hand, and curl my legs under me, but even when I’m finally comfortable, the tension in the air could be cut with an axe.

“Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Dumas,” Melanie says. “I’ll let you have your family reunion and check in with my job.” She looks at me and makes the sign of the cross to ward off vampires, then she tells me, “I’m back at seven. Nora texted that she’s on her way.”

I nod, and then there’s an awkward silence in the room.

“Brooke! We don’t even know what to say.”

For a moment, I really don’t know what to say either, except “I really want this baby.”

They both give me that look of disappointment parents have been giving their children for eons.

But I won’t let them make me feel shame.

I felt shame when I tore my ACL. My father said sprinters didn’t show those kinds of tears, but I did. I fell from grace with them after that, and now I can sense that I’ve fallen even further.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to tell you in person, but it seems somebody already did.”

“Nora,” my mother says. “And she’s worried about you—all three of us are. She tells me she had to learn it from somebody else? How could you hide something like this from us? Let me tell you that despite you being somewhat mature, you were always too sheltered from boys. Boys . . . they just use and discard . . . especially when something inconvenient happens. Nora says this boy is known to be a troublemaker and linked to all kinds of problems?”

I am reeling from the way Nora’s presented Remy to them.

If I weren’t sitting down, I swear I’d have fallen on my butt.

My betrayed, stupid, foolish butt.

So it seems that Nora is home, acting the perfect princess, doing what’s right after my boyfriend helped her out of the worst relationship in the world and could have died saving her ass.

Her betrayal rips through me with such force, I can’t even talk for a moment. Hell, if anyone should know what kind of a man Remington is, it should be Nora!

“The father of my baby is not a boy. He is a man.” I clutch my stomach when it begins to hurt under their accusing gazes. “And we, this baby and I, are not inconveniences.”

My father has not said one word. He just sits there, looking at me like I’m a gremlin that got wet and turned ugly and has to be contained.

I feel like there’s a continent between us. Like I am going north, and they are determined that south is the best path for me and will never, ever be happy that I went the opposite way.

“But Brooke, this is so reckless and so unlike you. Look at you!” my mother says in complete agony and despair.

“What?” I ask in confusion. “What’s wrong with me?”

Then I realize I probably look like shit. I haven’t slept. I’m worried to death I’m losing this baby. I don’t want to be here. I haven’t showered and my face is swollen from all my tears.

“You look . . . depressed again, Brooke. You should stop wearing that athletic gear, now that you’re no longer a sprinter and put on a dress . . . brush your hair. . . .”

“Please. Please don’t come here and hurt me. You’re saying things you don’t mean to say because you’re confused. Please be happy for me. If I look depressed it’s because I’m dangerously close to losing this baby, and I want him, I want him so bad, you have no idea.”

They stare at me like I have lost it, because I’ve never, ever, opened myself up like this, and I feel so misunderstood and so unloved and so hungry to be comforted because I hurt inside. My hormones are out of whack and I am feeling angry because I am here instead of where I want to be. I am here, misunderstood and judged, instead of with him, loved and accepted.

I don’t even know how to tell them they’re being unfair to me, but I’m trembling as I suddenly get to my feet, go get his iPod, and set it on the speakers I have in my living room. Then I just click PLAY and raise the volume high, letting a song speak for me. Orianthi’s “According to You” begins, a little bit angry and rebellious, describing something of the tumult I feel, how they see me one way, as less than perfect, but he sees me another way, as beautiful and strong.

“Is this how we deal, like a teenager with loud music?” my mother yells.

“Turn the volume down now!” my father yells.

I turn it down, and for a moment, just focus on this silver iPod, which to Remy and me could be a journal, or a microphone, or any other way of expressing any other thing. “You don’t understand.”

“Talk to us, Brooke!” my mother says.

When I turn, they look as forlorn as I feel. “I just did, but you’re not listening.”

They are quiet, and I drag in a breath, trying to calm down, even with all these hormones rioting in me. I want them to know that I am no longer a young girl. That I am becoming a woman, so I tell them. “I’m seven weeks pregnant. Right now, his little limbs are forming. And I say ‘his’ because I think it’s a boy, but it doesn’t matter, because a girl would be wonderful too. While we speak, his heart is growing stronger, and he’s generating about a hundred new brain cells per minute. In two more weeks, his heart will have divided into four chambers and all its organs, nerves, and muscles will be kicking into gear. He will have a nose, eyes, ears, a mouth, everything already formed, inside me. This baby is his. His and mine. And it makes me so, so happy you have no idea.”

My mother looks heartbroken. “We are worried. Nora tells me they use drugs in those places he fights.”

“Mama, he’s not into that. He’s an athlete, heart, body, and soul.” Coming over to them, I pat her hair and grab my dad’s hand in my other one. “He doesn’t have a family like I do, and I want him to have mine. I want you to welcome him into our family because you love me and because I’m asking you to.”

My mother visibly softens, but it is my father who speaks first. “I’ll welcome him into the family when he proves to me he deserves to be the father of my grandchild!” He stands up, huffing, and walks to the door, slamming it behind him. I hang my head.

“I shouldn’t even be up. I’m going to bed, Mom,” I whisper.

“Brooke.” Her slow, hesitant footsteps follow me to my bedroom. She stops at the door and says nothing as I climb into bed; instead, I feel her worried gaze on my back for a moment. “Didn’t you use protection, sweetie?” she asks quietly.

“God, I’m not going to even answer that,” I say.

She remains at the door while a heavy silence settles between us, and I curl into a ball and stare off into my pin wall, at the picture that Remington touched. I won’t cry. I swear, I’m sick of crying, and I’m trying not to hate them just because I’m lonely, misunderstood, and hormonal. I know they love me. All they know is that some guy got me pregnant and dumped me here and that this baby will be a challenge for me. They don’t know anything except that my life will change, and they’re afraid I can’t handle it. They can be so judgmental even though they love me, I feel myself building up my walls, refusing to share Remy with them. Refusing to share the most precious, valuable, and imperfectly perfect thing in my life. “Go home, Momma,” I say, and she quietly leaves as I remain in bed, staring at all the roses he sent me.

And I see those blue eyes. . . .

You’re mine.

Both of you.

My throat hurts, and my eyes follow.

“Brooke, I’m here,” Nora says from the hall.

I don’t answer her. I’m so angry. She seems to sense danger in the air, because she lingers by the door and doesn’t enter. “You okay? Did you lose the baby?” she asks. My rage roils inside me.

“Thanks for betraying me, Nora,” I mumble. “And thanks for showing your complete and utter appreciation for Remington and what he did for you!”

“They had to know you were pregnant, Brooke!” she cries.

“It was my secret to tell, not yours!” I burst out, shooting up to sit on the bed. “Why are you attacking him? He did nothing but save you! What, you wanted a chance to look good to them, so you screwed me over? Who told you? I know it wasn’t Melanie; she’d never do this to me.”

Nora’s eyes are also a shade of amber, just a fraction darker than mine, but that’s where all our similarities end. How can we be so different? She was always the dreamer, and I the realist, but even so we’ve never felt so apart as we do today.

“Pete told me,” she says.

I groan, forgetting they have something for each other.

“It slipped! He assumed I knew and I felt embarrassed I didn’t know! You wouldn’t be hiding it if it weren’t wrong, Brooke. He’s Riptide! You’ll be discarded just like I was, if not worse. Those men are dangerous, Brooke. You’re never free of them, never.”

“Remington is not like your sick asshole of an ex-boyfriend! I am freaking in love with him and he loves me and I will have his baby if it KILLS ME, Nora!” I scream.