Free Losing Gabriel by Lurlene McDaniel Page A

up and walked away. Sloan cringed, thinking of LaDonna’s coming scorn.
    “What do you want to do? If you want to get married…” He threw out the first thing that popped into his head.
    “No. No way. I don’t want to be married. I want to be a singer!” The words were determined and fierce. “Maybe I can get rid of it. At some clinic. Maybe your dad can…you know…help.” She broke down again.
    Get rid of it.
Her words felt like a slap. Get rid of it as if it were a hangnail. No harm, no foul. Problem solved. “I…I don’t know, Sloan….I need time to think.”
    “Don’t you get it? I don’t want it inside me. I don’t want a baby! I have plans.”
    The words were venomous, but they hit him like cold, sharp stones. “Can we…well, you know, talk about it? Not right now,” he hastily added. “But later. Tomorrow or the next day. After I…I talk to Dad.”
    She sagged and tears filled her eyes. “I feel sick.”
    “It’s okay. You should rest.” All he wanted to do was bolt.
    She swiped her eyes, hunched over, then looked up into his face. Her blue eyes, red rimmed and raw from crying, pleaded for a solution. She turned into a scared little girl. “You won’t leave me alone?”
    “Course not.” In truth, he wanted to run and not look back. “You want to go someplace? Out to eat, or something?” He was treading water, trying not to drown.
    She shook her head. “I want to go to sleep. For maybe a year.”
    He led her to her room. The bed, almost wall to wall in the small space, was a pile of wadded sheets and blankets. Clothing was heaped on the floor in one corner, stuffed partly into a closet. The air smelled stale. He straightened the bedding a bit, helped her settle, pulled the bedsheet to her chin.
    She clung to his hand. “Stay. Until I fall asleep, okay?”
    He eased onto the bed and held her hand until he felt her fingers loosen. When he was certain she was asleep, he rose on cramped legs, shakily left the trailer, and got into his car. The sun was setting and the sky was blood-red. An omen? He sat until the red faded to pink, then pale indigo. He forced the key into the ignition and backed out of the weed-strewn space. He only had one place to go. One person to help them both.

    Dawson drove home aimlessly, taking back roads, killing time, holding off the inevitable for as long as he could. The March sky was ink black by the time he came home and parked in the garage next to Franklin’s car. Inside, the house was silent. Dawson walked to the back of the house, to the den, and found his father stretched out on the sofa sleeping, his glasses shoved on top of his forehead, a medical journal open across his chest, warm lamplight from the pole lamp above the sofa pooling on him. Dawson leaned against the doorjamb, staring at the peaceful picture, printing the image into his brain. The last picture from the world he used to know. Once he woke Franklin, once he talked to him, the old order would pass away. Not with tornado winds, but with words from his mouth.
    Dawson took deep breaths, as if readying his body for a marathon. He sat in the club chair at the arm of the sofa and gently shook his dad awake. Franklin came up quickly. Doctors could do that, wake instantly. When he saw Dawson, he grinned sheepishly, stretched. “Must have dozed off. Long day.”
    Dawson locked gazes with his father.
    “Hey,” Franklin said, sitting upright, reading the look and letting the journal slide to the floor, where it made a
whap
sound. “What’s up?”
    Dawson blew out a breath, forcing away the knot of emotion clogging his throat. “Dad. We have to talk.” He took a second to gather himself, knowing his next words could never be taken back, so he said them slowly, solemnly, so that Franklin would know it was the absolute truth. No jacking around. “Sloan’s pregnant.”

CHAPTER 14

    S loan couldn’t stop crying. She huddled beside Dawson on the sofa in the Berkes’ den, the shadows of the