Page 30 of Forgotten Prejudice

“Yeah, that’s my name.” She smiled. “Why are you acting like you just saw a ghost?”

Running my fingers through my hair, I shrugged. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect to see you here…”

“Ah.” She straightened up, placing her hands on her waist. “So you spoke to Kai.”

After a slight hesitation, I nodded. “I did. H-How are you?” Is that what you’re supposed to ask a pregnant girl?

“Well, the situation sucks, but that’s life. You know—” She paused when a group of our classmates passed us. After exchanging quick hugs with them, it was once again just the two of us.

“Got some time to sit down?”

Since my shift wouldn’t start until an hour from now, I had enough time to talk.

“Yeah, of course.”

“So, how are you dealing with the whole thing?” I asked after we sat on our regular bench underneath the old oak tree.

“At first, I was freaking out, but over the weekend, things changed.”

“How so?” Curiosity took over me.

“I thought Kai didn’t want the baby and that he’d break up with me, but on Friday morning, he came over and said we should get married,” she said with a faint smile on her lips while stroking her flat stomach.

Apparently, a weekend with Soren was still not enough to make me move on because, just then, Zoe’s words felt like a knife to the gut.

“On Friday?”

She hummed a yes.

A night before proposing to his pregnant girlfriend, Kai took out all his anger on me. First, he spat hateful slurs at me, then he rubbed his dick between my thighs until he came all over my ass, and to finish it off, he punched me to the ground. Now, I learned that after doing all that, he drove over to her? Not only did he not care about hurting me, but he asked her to get married right after?

How could he do this to me?

“Oh shit.” Zoe suddenly jerked up and looked at me. “Wasn’t your birthday last week?”

With a throat too sore to speak, I nodded. I already understood my relationship with Kai was over, so why was it still so hard to digest? To accept the fact that he was no longer mine.

He was never mine to begin with.

“How are your families with the whole thing?” I asked after finding my voice.

“You know how strict our parents are, so at first, mine were furious. But Kai’s proposal relieved them because God forbid their church hears I had a baby out of wedlock at seventeen.”

“And Kai’s?” Since he hadn’t told me, perhaps Zoe would.

I knew it wasn’t good when her face fell, and she slumped her shoulders.

“His dad beat him up, real bad.”

My stomach flipped, and I was struck by a strong urge to see Kai. To check how he was doing and steal him away from his awful parents. But it was cut short when Zoe continued.

“But I think that now, with the proposal and all, things will get better,” she said, her eyes full of hope.

Things will get better? Kai was walking down a lane that didn’t fit him. He was struggling, but instead of helping their son, his parents only pushed him to walk further down the gallows they considered an aisle.

“Speaking of beating, what on earth happened to you?” Zoe’s eyes studied my bruised face and bandaged wrist.

Should I tell her the one responsible for it was my ex-best friend and her soon-to-be husband?