Jensen

I LEAD HER OVER TO THE COUCH and she tucks her legs beneath her when she sits next to me. I grab her hand, placing it in my lap, and draw circles on her palm while I gather my thoughts. When I look up at her, I see that she has pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She's nervous. I blow out a breath, not wanting to drag this out any longer.

"You remember Caroline?"

The name startles her, and she tries to pull her hand free from me, but I don't allow her to take it. Instead, I enclose it in both of my hands on my lap.

She looks away from me, her jaw clenching. "Yeah, J. I remember your high school girlfriend."

Caroline was my first serious girlfriend. We started dating in the beginning of our junior year and continued until everything imploded at the end of our senior year. She was my first for many things, including sex. In fact, the whole thing revolved around our physical relationship, my raging teenage hormones taking charge.

At the time, I had thought it was love. Now having felt what true love is, I realize it was infatuation. Lust. The excitement of experimenting with new sexual experiences. Although it wasn't love, it still had the power to destroy me; and that it did.

"Teddy," I say softly, trying to draw her attention back to me. "Please look at me."

Her eyes are wary when she turns to me, and she blinks rapidly. I cup her face, running a thumb across her cheek. "I don't really want to hear about your past relationships, Jensen, especially her. I realize we both have a past, but she is the only girlfriend I had any direct contact with, and you know she wasn't very nice to me."

That was an understatement. Caroline hated my friendship with Teddy. It was a constant argument between us. Somewhere in the middle of our junior year I stopped trying to get them to befriend each other and accepted the fact that they'd have to be two separate parts of my life. Unfortunately, that put a huge strain on my friendship with Teddy as I often made choices with the wrong head. I wasn't completely oblivious to the way Caroline treated Teddy behind my back either, but I tried to diffuse it the best I could and then just ignored the rest.

"I know, baby. I'm sorry she was such a bitch to you and I'm even more sorry that I didn't do more to stop it."

I blow out another breath, squeezing my eyes shut momentarily. When I open them, I feel the resolve to get the conversation back on track. "But that's not what I wanted to talk about. Something happened our senior year. Something big. And it kind of messed me up for a bit. And I need to tell you. I need you to know because it has the potential to impact us, our relationship, and I don't want it hanging between us. I want to be completely honest with you and let you know so you can understand where some of my decisions about us come from."

She scrunches her face in confusion, but she doesn't say anything. I squeeze her hand before continuing with my confession. "At the end of our senior year," I begin and then pause, nerves fluttering around my stomach, "Caroline got pregnant."

Teddy's mouth opens in a soft gasp, her eyes wide as she looks at me. Still, she doesn't speak, so I continue. "She didn't want to keep it, but I did. I couldn't wrap my head around any other option than keeping it. We got into a big fight. Well, lots of big fights actually. But the biggest one was when I said we should tell our parents so they could help us with this huge decision. She wouldn't even consider it, acted like I was such an insensitive, selfish, stupid asshole for even suggesting it."

I pause, running my hand down my face. Now that I started talking, it felt good to get it out, but her trembling hand in my lap forces me to slow down. I don't want to overwhelm her. I glance at her, and it looks like she is holding her breath as if bracing herself for whatever I'm about to lay at her feet.

"Teddy," I say, caressing her cheek with my thumb. "Breathe, baby."

A breath whooshes out of her and the simple act seems to startle her, like she wasn't aware that she had been holding her breath. "Shit, Jensen. I was not expecting this. I had no idea. You never said anything. I'm kinda freaking out a bit."

I caress her cheek again. "I know, baby. It's a lot. I'm sorry. I've never told anyone but Kelly. He's the only person who knows. Maybe I should have told you sooner. It's been weighing on me. I wanted you to know. I just...I don't know...worried a bit, I guess. I don't want it to change things, but of course it does. I mean, it changed me. I suppose it's part of the reason I've wanted to take things slowly with you. Not that I'm scared you'll get pregnant. It isn't that. And I know we'd handle it differently if you did. It's not about that either. It's just...fuck, this is hard."

"Jensen," her voice is a soft whisper in my ear as she hugs her arms around me, massaging her fingers into my hair. "Hey, take your time."

After breathing in the comforting scent of her hair for a few moments, I pull back and sigh. "I don't want anything that happened in the past to come between us. You're too important to me. I'm not dumb enough to think that this doesn't affect us. But I want you to know—no, I need you to know—that the reason I wanted to take things slow with you isn't because I'm scared. Not in the way you might think anyway. I don't have any doubts. You're it for me, Teddy. I'm 100% in this with you. I'm not afraid of committing fully to you. I'm just a little damaged, I think."

"Stop it, Jensen," she says, cupping both her hands on my face forcefully. "You're not damaged. Just because a traumatic event causes you to be cautious does not mean you're damaged. It's normal. It's understandable. And I kind of love you even for more it. You're being careful with our hearts, baby. So stop beating yourself up. You are not damaged."

A soft chuckle escapes my mouth. "I love it when you're all fired up, baby." I press a soft kiss to her lips, lingering there for a moment, our breaths intermingling. "I'm not done with the story yet."

Sighing, she sits back against the couch, bringing my hand into her lap this time. "I know," she says softly. "Tell me what happened with the baby, Jensen."

"She wouldn't budge. Completely refused to see things through my eyes. She wanted to have an abortion, to just get rid of the problem. Poof. It's gone. Then we could go back to our lives like nothing happened. There was nothing I could do to convince her, so I finally gave in. I didn't want her going alone and doing it in secret. That felt even worse. So I took her to the clinic. I drove her there, Teddy, and I waited in the waiting room while she aborted our baby."

I collapse against the couch as if the confession drained the energy from my body. I close my eyes, scenes from the day popping in my memory without permission. I try to shake them away.

"Since she was 18," I continue, turning my head to look at her, "she was able to take care of it without any interference whatsoever from an adult. She could just walk in and do it. And I realize as I say this that I'm acting like I'm against abortion, like I'm bitter about the very act of it. But I'm not. I'm just upset that my baby could be taken so easily. If she were 17, things might have been different, you know? But she was a legal adult, allowed to make such a big decision on her own. Just a few weeks before that she couldn't figure out how to pop the hood of her car when it was smoking. But she was allowed to just..."

I feel Teddy's hands on my face before I realize I'm crying. She's wiping my tears away as they fall, smearing the moisture across my cheeks. She presses her lips to my damp skin and when she pulls away, I see her own tears streaking down her cheeks. I brush them away with my thumbs.

"Afterwards," I continue the story, wanting to get it all out, needing to share this with the woman I love more than anything, "she vanished. She just left town without a goodbye and ghosted me. I didn't hear anything from her until weeks later when I woke up to a voice message from her that she had left late at night. I could barely understand what she was saying either. She was whispering and crying and mumbling. Something about being sorry and saying goodbye. After all of that, all we went through, that's all I got from her? A stupid voicemail I could barely understand?"

Teddy crawls into my lap, straddling me, and wipes away all my tears. "I'm sorry, Jensen. You didn't deserve that. It must have been so hard. And to only have Kelly for support? It must have been so scary and lonely and hard."

I comb my fingers through her hair to pull her down to me and kiss her roughly, pouring all my emotions into it. She sinks into me and returns the fervor of the kiss. I grip her ass in my free hand and squeeze hard, grinding her over my growing erection a few times, and then I roam up her body to grope her tits hungrily. I'm suddenly ravenous for her.

"Teddy," I whisper urgently. "I want you."

"Wait, J," she says breathily, trying to break free of my strong embrace. "Just wait a minute."

Her chest is heaving, her eyes wild, as she clamps a hand over her mouth. When she removes the hand, she sets it on my shoulder and leans her weight against it.

I wait while she composes herself. "We can continue this in a minute...if it's really what you want...but let's just catch our breath and think it through, ok? I don't want to do anything you aren't ready for just because your emotions are really high right now and you're vulnerable. Let's not do anything that we might regret, ok?"

She slides off my lap and sits beside me. I squeeze my eyes shut, head resting against the back of the couch, trying to settle my ragged breaths. She's right. I know she's right. I haven't slowed our pace all these weeks just to throw it away after an emotional confession.