Prologue
Summer
“You’re on in two minutes,” I look up to find the production assistant standing before me.
I only nod once in response, unable to find the words around the large lump that’s formed in my throat.
She leaves me, and I turn to the full-length mirror behind me to give myself a final once over before I take the stage.
I tuck some of my shoulder-length blonde hair behind my shoulders that’s managed to escape my French Braid and smooth out the wrinkles on my baby blue summer dress that matches my eyes perfectly.
I splurged for this occasion. Right now, I can’t afford to be spending a lot of money, but the dress was on sale, and I wanted to look nice for today.
Not every day you get to go on national television.
“Summer, are you ready?”
I look up once more to find the same red-headed, middle-aged woman, standing before me once more.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I respond.
I follow closely behind her, all the while, clutching the object in my hand tightly. My palms sweating profusely as I cling to the small object.
We walk down two hallways and a long corridor until we reach a curtain at the very end.
She holds the curtain open for me, and that is the moment I think about making a run for it. The deserted corridor behind me looks all too tempting right now.
The audience is packed today. I always knew this show was popular, but you never get an idea how large the audience is until you are here live and in person.
I strengthen my resolve to take the stage. I’m comforted by the knowledge that somewhere backstage is Michael, and soon I’ll get to tell him the news.
The entire audience hushes when I step up onto the stage and take a seat in the lone blue chair in the center of it.
I’m not worried about today. Michael told me I have nothing to worry about.
That helps to ease some of the nerves fluttering through my stomach and the rest of my body. I feel like a shaking tree as my hand crushes the object in my hand.
I blow out a breath and tuck the object into my dress pocket. The last thing I want to do is drop it and have the audience learn my secret before I have the chance to tell Michael.
I think about asking for a glass of water, but the second Amy Akers takes the stage, my body feels like lead and I’m glued to my spot in my chair.
Amy is one of those women that only gets more beautiful with age. She has strawberry blonde hair and a killer smile.
Rumor has it, the producers of the show were going to replace her when the show turned into a dull talk show, but she pitched an idea to add drama and fights to the line-up. It was a hit, and The Amy Akers Show was reborn.
“Welcome back everyone,” Amy’s voice has me looking up in her general direction to find her holding her microphone and facing the camera and audience.
I subtly clear my throat when she looks over in my direction.
“Our next guest is Summer,” her forest green eyes focus on me when she comes to stand beside me.
“Hi Amy,” I lick my lips when my voice cracks.
I wish I had asked for that water when I had the chance.
“I hear today is your birthday, is that correct?”
I feel like I’m being interrogated in the principal’s office the longer she stares back at me expectantly.
But why is she staring at me like that?
“Yes, today is my birthday,” I respond after several more moments of silence past.
Not even the audience makes a sound as they wait for my reply.
“How old are you today, Amy?”
“Eighteen.”
“Wow, the big eighteen,” Amy turns away from me and nods towards the audience, who in turn, applaud.
Amy holds her hand up for silence after a few seconds pass, the audience ceasing almost immediately. Amy turns back to face me, her gaze zeroing in on me.
“What better way to celebrate your birthday than with a gift that will change your life, correct?”
She raises her eyebrows at me questioningly. The show is the only people I’ve dared to tell about the baby. Them, and my best friend, Ryan.
I search for her in the audience and find her fire engine red hair out there, front and center, smiling at me. She makes a heart symbol with her hands, and that has me sitting up a little straighter in my chair, with renewed confidence. With her sitting out there, I know I can do this. With her by my side, I can do anything.
“That is correct, Amy,” I start to reach into my dress pocket, but her voice stops me.
“Who is Blaire?”
She looks up from her cue cards when I don’t respond to her question. I don’t know anyone by the name of Blaire. I search my brain, trying to think if perhaps that’s one of my classmates or a teacher at my school. I try hard, but still, come up empty-handed.
“I’m not sure who that is. I thought Michael was coming today,” I reply, confusion taking over.
“Well, let’s find out, shall we?”
I look at the bodyguard when he encourages me to stand so he can remove my chair from the center of the stage.
“Here she is, Blaire,” I step off to the side when the audience cheers.
Blaire is a tall brunette, has a model body, perfectly curled hair, expensive clothing, high cheekbones, and is closer to Michael’s age.
That’s the kind of woman he should be with. Someone his own age, not someone as young as I am.
I forgot to mention one crucial thing. Michael is thirty-eight years old and twenty years my senior. He’s a counselor at another high school in my hometown of Port Angeles, population nineteen-thousand. Small, but big enough that Michael and I managed to keep our love secret.
“Welcome to the show, Blaire,” Amy greets Blaire when she takes the stage and stops several feet away from me, keeping a small distance between us.
I fidget nervously in place when she eyes me over, her features full of contempt and disdain.
Why is she looking at me like that? As far as I know, I’ve never seen her before this moment.
“Pleasure to be here.”
God, even her voice is fancy. She’s polished in a way I could only dream of being. She’s a breed of woman that doesn’t belong anywhere near a girl like me, she belongs at a country club having drinks with other rich people.
As I watch her smooth her hands down her perfectly pressed, lime green dress, I can’t figure out what she’s doing up here on stage with me. This woman is from an entirely different world than I come from.
“Go ahead Blaire, tell her why you are here today.”
Blaire turns her attention away from Amy and focuses on me.
Even before she opens her mouth, I know that today will change everything and that nothing will ever be the same after this. Her eyes fill with an emotion akin to remorse, and I know, just know, that this will end badly for me.
“Do you know who I am, Summer?”
I shake my head no, unable to find words when she takes several steps closer to me, stopping just outside of my reach.
“Michael didn’t call you to come here today, I did.”
“That’s not possible, Michael told me it was his idea to come here, that he had a surprise for me,” I puff my chest out in pride, trying to exude a confidence that I don’t feel inside of myself right now.
Her laugh grates on my nerves as she eyes me up and down and circles me slowly, only speaking again when she completes her circle around me and stops before me once more.
“I’m going to give you a present today. Your freedom from Michael.”
Instinctively I clutch the object in my pocket and take a step backward when she advances towards me.
I’ve seen this show before. I know what women do to other women when they come on here. In my condition, I can’t afford to have her hit me.
The bodyguard steps between us and motions for Blaire to back away from me.
“I wasn’t going to hit her,” she says defensively, throwing her hands in the air.
“That’s not a risk we can take,” the bodyguard responds for me.
“I don’t want my freedom from Michael,” I tell her, looking around the bodyguard at her when he blocks her from view. “Why would I want my freedom when Michael and I are going to be having a baby?” I cross my arms over my stomach like somehow in doing so, I can protect myself from what is about to come my way.
She laughs, pacing away from me to the other end of the stage and only stopping once she’s standing next to the far wall.
“Even if that is true, you’ll never get to keep him, he’s been using you this entire time.”
“Who exactly are you?” I finally ask when she doesn’t elaborate after that.
“Why don’t we ask Michael who she is? Here’s Michael,” my attention turns away from Amy and Blaire, and over to the stage entrance directly behind her.
Walking out onto the stage, the Michael that comes out is not the one I have come to know and love over the past several months.
He doesn’t smile at me.
He doesn’t immediately run over to me like he always has when he sees me.
He doesn’t acknowledge me.
I don’t exist to him.
He instead, faces Blaire and tries to embrace her only to receive a slap in the face.
Immediately I know who she is. She doesn’t have to confirm it for me. That’s his girlfriend or his wife. It has to be. Ryan warned me not to get involved with him. Of course, I didn’t listen. I thought she was just jealous.
Michael lied to me.
He promised we would be together, that we could start a future together once I was old enough. He did wait until the day I was of legal age to bring me here to this show.
I thought he brought me here so he could tell the world we were going to be together. He brought me here because I wasn’t old enough before today.
When Blaire slaps him, that is the moment he decides to turn his attention over to me.
His eyes are full of sadness when he takes several steps in my direction, his brown hair in disarray from him running his fingers run through the locks on the top of his head. Something he only does when he’s extremely nervous.
I hold my free hand up in front of me to stop his advance. Wisely he stays in place.
“Who is she?” I ask him.
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth in place.
“Who the hell is she?” I shout at him.
I remove my hand from my pocket, revealing the object in my hand for the first time.
His sigh is audible over the silence filling the room.
Almost like we’re the only two people in this room.
Almost like time is standing still and waiting for his reaction.
“My wife,” he finally responds after looking down at my hand.
Something flashes across his face when he looks down at my hand, his eyes widening in shock the longer he stares at it. When he looks back up at me, guilt fills his eyes.
I don’t want his guilt.
I don’t want his remorse.
He’s broken the trust we had between us.
He’s stolen my future and robbed me of the life I thought we were going to build together. Of a love, I stupidly thought was unbreakable. A love I thought could withstand anything. A love that was an illusion. Something that never truly existed, to begin with.
I’ve been such a stupid girl.
Instinctively I shake my head no, turning to face Ryan who is now standing to her feet, her hands clenched at her sides, her murderous gaze fixated on Michael. If looks could kill.
“I’ve come to set you free, Summer.”
My focus turns to Blaire who speaks up for the first time since Michael has taken the stage.
“You deserve to know the truth. You deserve better than the man I married. I’m here to save you from the lifetime of sadness I’ve been subjected to. Unlike you, I’m strapped to this man and can’t break free. But you can,” I look up into her eyes and find nothing but honesty and truth there staring back at me.
I back up to the wall behind me, my heart clutching at my chest, the pregnancy test in my hand falling to the floor beside me when I lean back against the wall for support.
I feel like I’m falling. Like another moment here will be the one that breaks me. Like another moment here will shatter me beyond repair.
I fall to the floor and clutch my knees, rocking back and forth as tears stream down my face.
The crowd erupts into cheers, and that has me looking up through my sobs to the other end of the stage. Ryan has taken the stage and is chasing Michael across it, slapping at him wildly. Blaire has joined her, the two of them beating on him mercilessly. He runs around the stage trying in vain to avoid the two women chasing him.
Not once does he speak a single word to me.
Not once does he look in my direction to check on me as I fall to pieces.
“You are going to pay for this, you piece of shit. You are going to go to jail and lose everything,” Ryan is being held up in the air by security, her legs flailing wildly, her entire face beet red.
Ryan has always been my ride or die. That girl would die to protect me.
I shouldn’t have been so stupid.
I should’ve listened to her.
My world broke after that day. My heart shattering into a million pieces as I watched the last few months of my perfect life apart around me.
Blaire stayed with Michael because she claims she loves him despite what he did. Even after he was carted off to jail for child molestation, she stayed by his side. I guess he assumed because I was seventeen when we got together that he was in the free and clear, the police said it didn’t matter if we had sex one day before I turned eighteen, I was a minor either way.
Ryan was there for me every day after that, trying to prevent me from losing it altogether. Trying to prevent me from flying off the deep end. What she doesn’t understand is I’ve been standing on that ledge since that day. One more wrong thing was going to send me over the edge and change me forever.
No, I didn’t kill myself. I have no desire to die. I wish I did, it would’ve made everything so much easier for myself.
I decided not to keep the baby after that. Blaire was right, that day she gave me my freedom.
But God punished me anyway.
There’s always a price to pay for the sins we commit.
Michael went to prison, I lost everything. More than just my virginity and innocence to a man who lied to me, more than the baby I gave up.
I had an abortion, it was the least I could do. I knew in the future I would have another chance to have a baby with a man who actually cared about me and wanted to be with me. One who could offer me everything he has to give.
What I didn’t count on was what happened after that.
Fate had a sick and twisted plan for me, karma was a bitch that slapped me in the face shortly after that.
You shouldn’t covet things that don’t belong to you.
You shouldn’t take things that aren’t meant for you.
In being with Michael, God took out the ultimate punishment on me.
How was I supposed to know what was going to happen to me? I was just an innocent girl trying to get by one day to the next.
I contracted the Human papillomavirus, more commonly known as HPV. I got it from him, he was the only man I was ever with.
You think that’s the worst part, right?
No, the worst part was when the doctor told me I had cervical cancer and I had to have a hysterectomy. The moment that shattered my heart was when the doctor told me I’d never have a baby of my own.
I’m broken beyond repair and no amount of time will ever change that for me.
No amount of time repenting will ever bring back what I’ve lost.
Sometimes there is no coming back from the sins we commit.
In an instant, my heart shattered.