Random Acts of Hope by Julia Kent

at me. “You always just said you knew. How’d you know? I figured it was because of timing, like you hadn’t slept with her during the dates needed to know it was yours, or something like that.”
    I c ouldn ’t stop once I open ed my mouth. And right there, in front of a bar filled with customers about to watch Random Acts of Crazy do its thing, I shared the one thing I’d never told anyone else in the world. Ever .  
    “Because I’m sterile.”

Chapter S ix
    Charlotte
    I stared at the order screen. My fingers shook as I pressed “order delivered” and closed out Liam’s entry. Mission accomplished. Delivery confirmed.
    At least I delivered something of Liam’s from start to finish, even if it was just a sex toy order.
    Maggie had been a rock that night, getting me home and just listening. Being shredded like that wasn’t new. It was, in fact, a very old feeling.
    Having the scar ripped open and my insides turned out for the world to see was new , though.
    Liam kissed me. Kissed me! The memory of his lips against mine, the lust and grief and an g er and want that I felt pulsing from him mixed with the completely insane reality of his actions five years ago and his silence.
    My therapists asked why I never tried to call him. Why I didn’t tell him about the miscarriage. Why…why I did or didn’t do something.
    Years later I realized that important detail. I talked solely about what Liam didn’t do. He didn’t call. Didn’t check up. For all he knew I had a child—a child!—of his, a grandchild to Sybil and Garrett, and he didn’t bother with so much as a text.
    And yet those questions…why didn’t I reach out to him?
    Five years of being asked that question still d id n’t make it any easier to try to explain. The coldness in his voice, the way he had no reaction to my fear, my tears, my sheer horror at being a freshman in college and preg n ant—pregnant!—while on the pill. I’d been a good girl, taking those pills faithfully. I never strayed, even took the damn things within the same hour every day, like clockwork, and when I got pregnant I’d been on them for two years.
    I knew being pregnant wasn’t anyone’s fault. We’d had enough sex ed drummed into us in middle and high school to know that all forms of birth control (except abstinence!) had some kind of failure rate.
    No one ever believes they’ll be in that one percent. I certainly didn’t. We didn’t use condoms because we were each other’s firsts.
    Liam was sti l l my only. Oh, the irony: the celibate sex toy party hostess. Then again, if anyone was an expert in using these devices…
    A soft knock on my office door shook me out of my thoughts. “Yes?” I calle d out . It was office hours again and I was stationed at my desk, ready for whatever the residents threw my way, from shampoo-stealers to boyfriend-haters to balcony climbers .
    Maggie. “Hey.” She touched my shoulder briefly before sitting in the hot seat, where students came for counseling or discipline. Mostly something in between.
    “Hey, yourself.”
    She studied me. “You okay?”
    “No.”
    She just nodded. “I wouldn’t be either after last night.”
    All I could do was blink. A lot.
    “You know,” she said softly, a sapphire in her eyebrow winking at me as sun danced over it, “I saw my rapist once . One of them, at least.”
    My breathing stopped.
    “I’m not equating it to your seeing Liam. I’m not.”
    “I know.”
    “But there’s a…similarity. T he surprise of seeing someone who was the cause of so much pain.”
    And love, though, I thought. And love, for me .
    “But Liam was about love for you, too. So that’s the big difference,” she added. Sometimes we really did share the same mind. She could be amazing.  
    My lips twisted into something that felt like a pathetic smile. “The love part is what I can’t get over.”
    She sighed. “In my therapy groups people used to tell me I was ‘lucky’ because it wasn’t a date rape.