Free A Summer To Remember (Seasons of Love & Lust Book 1) by Selene Chardou

thought we were—and he was such a gentleman.
    My parents loved him and thought he was the best invention since sliced bread. He came from a solid family and we were each mad about the other. It didn’t matter if we attended schools that were almost eighty miles apart. We could make it work because it was only for four years.
    “It was near the end of the final semester and we were all graduating in about seven weeks. I hadn’t been feeling well and Talia finally convinced me to visit the clinic on campus.” I stopped there and breathed deeply. “The nurse ran some tests and discovered I was almost nine weeks pregnant. I should have known since I hadn’t had a period in ages, but I just chalked it up to graduation nerves and finals coming up. I was on the pill so I didn’t understand how this could have happened.”
    Paul slid an arm around my shoulder and squeezed me closer to him. “Let me guess. When Kevin found out he went batshit.”
    I nodded silently. “He acted like a crazy person and accused me of trying to trap him into a marriage he didn’t want. He wanted to play the field. He wanted to live it up in New York and he certainly wasn’t ready for a shotgun wedding or a baby he didn’t need in his life because they both would be an imposition.”
    “He made you get an abortion?”
    “It was the only way,” I whispered. “I would have rather given the child up for adoption because there are plenty of childless families out there looking for babies, but he wouldn’t hear of it. I had to have an abortion and that was final.”
    “But you couldn’t do it through your parents’ health plan because then they would have known…”
    “Exactly. So he gathered up the cash and sent me to one of those public clinics where the Pro-Lifers always boycott. I have never been so humiliated in my life, and the only support I had was Talia. She was my rock. Without her, I could have never gone through with it.
    “I got the abortion and everything seemed fine until one night I started to hemorrhage. By this time, I’d been spotting for over two weeks and the doctor and nurses at the clinic assured me this was normal and said I’d be fine. I couldn’t go to the hospital because then they would have asked me about the abortion, so I just dealt with all the pain and the discomfort.
    “The night I started bleeding profusely, Talia called the paramedics and I was rushed to the hospital. Apparently, I wasn’t in good shape because they immediately prepped me for surgery and…it turned out a mistake was made during the initial termination procedure. I had to have an emergency surgery to correct what the abortion doctor botched. They were able to save one of my ovaries, though the chances of me having children naturally are slim to none.”
    Paul kissed my forehead. “Surely you saw specialists once you graduated university and settled here?”
    “Every expensive and overpriced one on the West Side. Hell, I even consulted some acupuncturist who specializes in women who have a hard time getting pregnant. He said the chances are small, but I might have a baby of my own. All the others said flat out to start freezing my eggs and when my future husband I were ready, they knew some great surrogates who had worked for patients of theirs in the past with a great success rate.”
    “Please don’t tell me you froze any eggs?”
    I wiped a stray tear from my left eye and looked at him. “Are you mad? I couldn’t do that. I decided to take my chances and life would decide on its own. I know it’s a stupid way to think, but to be honest, marriage no longer was a high priority. I knew my parents would start to bother me after a while so I began to date a lot but it always led to sex and that was my way of pushing men away. I didn’t want a man to care about me and then have to tell him the heartbreaking truth. I’m a shell, and that is all I am.”
    “That isn’t true, Jer—”
    “I’m not normal anymore, Paul!” I