Shelter You by Alice Montalvo-Tribue Read Free Book Online

the father?”
    This is the question I don’t want to answer, the one that sends me spiraling into depression every time I think about it, every time I remember him. I answer the question as calmly as I can. “He knew, he… He didn’t want anything to do with it, Logan. He had his whole life ahead of him and didn’t want to get tied down with a baby and I just figured I got myself into this mess. Why drag him down too? Why take away his brilliant future because of my fuck up?”
    His eyes go wide. He looks angry again and I guess right now anger is better than indifference. “It doesn’t work like that, Mia.”
    “Why not?” I challenge. “I’m fine with it. My parents tried to get me to tell them who he was. They grounded me, threatened me, did everything they could think of but I never told. And you can’t force me either, Logan. I won’t do it. It’s my choice— mine , and I chose to give him his freedom.”
    “Mia…”
    “No!”
    He places his face in the palms of his hands and scrubs, obviously frustrated with my stubbornness. “Fine. What happened next?” He probes after finally looking up at me.
    “They made me keep quiet and hide my pregnancy until I graduated. After that, they kept me a prisoner in the house. They rarely let me leave unless it was to go to the doctor’s appointments and they were with me the entire time.”
    “What about your friends? Didn’t they wonder why you just disappeared?”
    “My best friend Kelsey left right after graduation. Her family sent her to Europe for the summer as a graduation present. The rest of my friends would call and they’d ask me to go out sure, but it was easy enough to blow them off. After a while they just stopped calling.” I pick up the sugar spoon which lies on the table and start twirling it between my fingers, using it as a conduit to channel all of the nervous energy in my body. “When I was seven months along, my parents sat me down and told me that they’d decided adoption was the best choice for us. That I was too young and irresponsible to care for a child and they were not willing to take on the responsibility of a child after having raised me or explain to people how their only daughter wound up pregnant with a bastard child.”
    “Mia,” he says softly, reaching over the table to wipe a stray tear I didn’t even realize I’d shed off of my cheek.
    I didn’t think that telling Logan my story would be this difficult, this painful, but I can almost feel the same emotions I felt as I was going through it all. I guess in reality I’m still going through it. Every day with Lily is a new struggle, a hardship that I was not prepared for.
    “It’s okay,” I say, lowering my head to look down at my hands—still twiddling with the spoon. “I told them I wanted to keep my baby, that I had spent seven months bonding with the life growing inside of me and I was not willing to hand her over to strangers.”
    “How’d they take that?”
    “They were furious. I’d never seen them so angry and it scared me. They told me that I didn’t have a choice. This was their decision and it was final, and if I even thought of defying them or embarrassing them I could not live there anymore. They wouldn’t pay for me to go to college, they’d take away my phone and car, and they’d let me fend for myself. I didn’t know what else to do, Logan. I didn’t know my options or my rights. I was a minor and they were my parents so I agreed.”
    “That’s understandable.”
    I nod my head and wipe away more tears. “I spent the next couple of months mentally preparing myself to give away my baby. I didn’t let myself think about her, talk to her. I barely even looked at my stomach. I knew that detaching myself emotionally and mentally from her was the only way I’d be able to go through with it without going crazy. My parents had taken care of everything, found the adoptive parents and arranged for them to take Lily from the hospital after