been told. In reality he had no idea what women liked. Ever since the day Paige Wheeler had told him, “I’m pregnant,” his fascination with the opposite sex had come to a screeching halt.
Paige. They’d discovered sex together and to him it was better than sneaking a beer with the guys or riding his horse or swimming in Yaupon Creek. It was better than anything he’d ever experienced in his life. Every spare moment, he’d spent with her, and they’d been inseparable. Until...
He shoved the memory back in place, tucked away in a dark corner of his mind. Never Never Land, he called it. A place he never wanted to visit again.
His phone lay on the bathroom vanity and he tapped it just to reread her message.
Tonight at seven. Can’t wait.
Annabel Hurley—blonde, twenty-five and about the prettiest thing he’d seen in a long time—had asked him to dinner. She was one of Zane’s teachers and they’d spent a lot of time together in the past year trying to figure out ways to keep Zane interested in school other than letting him play video games nonstop. His son was gifted and in the Pre-Advanced Placement program. He was still bored in class because he always completed his assignments before the other kids. Not wanting to move him up a grade for a second time, Jude searched for other answers. Annabel had been a godsend. She was so patient with Zane.
Going out with Annabel was his first step in putting Never Never Land behind him and not having to shove it to the back of his mind to keep from enduring the pain.
Jude had a day of work ahead of him and then he was going to get back in the game of living and experiencing life again. He walked into the bedroom and grabbed a T-shirt from a drawer and pulled it over his head. Shoving his arms into a Western shirt, he thought about Annabel. He liked her and enjoyed her company. He’d have to be dead from the waist down not to.
As he sat on the bed to put on his boots, his eye caught the photo on his nightstand. He picked it up. It was a photo of him holding Zane on the day after he was born. Jude looked so young and scared cradling the tiny baby wrapped in a blue blanket. All the fear of that day showed in the sad darkness of his eyes. Memories floated across his mind like gray thunderclouds about to dump a lot more tears on him.
What are we going to do, Jude? We don’t know anything about babies.
Jude hadn’t had an answer. He’d been shell-shocked and was trying to grasp what this meant for their future. So they’d done what naive, scared teenagers do: they ignored the problem in hopes it would go away. It didn’t.
Paige started to show, but she’d never been slim and wore big bulky blouses so no one could tell she was pregnant. But he knew. They would sit in his truck while Paige talked about what they needed to do. Jude listened. But he never said anything.
I’ve been talking to the school counselor and I told her about the baby. She knows about my premed scholarship to Berkeley and how I dreamed of this for years. She said I had choices and I should consider them.
Choices? To him there were no choices. Just one—the baby was theirs and they had to raise it. But he never said so.
Of course, abortion is out of the question. The counselor said adoption might be an option for us. She knows a couple who wants a baby. They’re educated and have a nice home and they would love and care for our baby, something that we can’t do.
Why not? They were young, but his brother had raised his daughter on his own, so why couldn’t Jude? But he never said so.
We have to make a decision, Jude. We have to do something. The baby’s due in August and we graduate in May. What do you think?
He’d shrugged.
You always do that. You never say anything and that makes me so mad. This is your baby, too. What should we do?
They were sitting in his truck at the high school and he stared out to the vacant parking lot. He knew what he would do, but so many things kept him silent. Paige had had an awful childhood and her dream was to get out of Horseshoe and live a better life. Her mother was an alcoholic and spent most of her time down at Rowdy’s Beer Joint drinking and picking up strange men.
Many a night Paige would call Jude and he would go pick her up because she was scared of the men her mother brought home. One night a man had come into her room and she’d run outside and slept in the yard. Ever since then she’d been afraid when her mom had a man friend over. No one should have to live like that. Especially someone as sweet and gentle as Paige.
“Can you give up our child?” was the only thing he could say.
“I don’t know.” She started to cry and he took her in his arms and told her that whatever she wanted to do, he would be okay with it. He never said what he really thought.
Paige took care of everything and the adoption was set up. Jude hated the whole thing and he tried not to think about it. As August drew near, Paige gained a lot of weight all over and no one, not even her mother or sister, suspected she was pregnant. And everyone in Horseshoe knew Paige ate when her mom was on one of her drinking binges.
A week before the due date Jude told his mother he was taking a few days off to get away with his friends. Instead he picked up Paige and they drove to a clinic in Austin, one the adoptive parents had chosen, to have the baby. They would induce labor so Paige could have the baby early and continue on with her plans to go to California.
Not a lot was said on the drive. Paige had made up her mind and Jude wanted her to have her dream. She deserved better than the life she had and he didn’t want to take that away from her.
They went into an office and signed papers. They would sign the adoption papers after the birth. The adoptive parents’ lawyer had set everything up. Jude and Paige would never meet them, nor would they see their child. Jude’s hand shook as he wrote his name and he fought tears that stung the backs of his eyes. But he was a Rebel and he wouldn’t cry.
They hugged tightly and Paige was taken to an operating room. He waited. And waited. He wanted to talk to his brother Quincy to tell him what was going on, but Quincy was in the army and stationed in Afghanistan. And he couldn’t heap another burden on his mother. He had to endure this alone.
It was hours later when the nurse came out and told him the baby had been born and he could see Paige. They had been asked if they wanted to see the baby and the counselor had advised against it. And against knowing the sex. It was best to make a clean break, she’d said. They would never know if they had a boy or a girl. Paige had listened to everything the woman had said and Jude had felt powerless.
Paige lay in a bed, pale and crying. That shook him. He sat by her bed, holding her hand as she continued to cry. They didn’t say anything. Words now were useless. That night he slept in his truck and the next day, after they signed the adoption papers, he drove Paige back to Horseshoe.
She had her things packed and they loaded them into his truck and drove away. Paige had already said goodbye to her sister, so she didn’t look back. There was nothing left for her in the small town where she’d grown up. Not even Jude.
Paige cried all the way to the airport. Being young and scared himself, he had no idea how to comfort her. They’d made a decision and now they had to live with it. As he stopped at the terminal, she leaned over and hugged him and whispered, “I’m sorry.” Then she grabbed her bags from the backseat and ran into the airport. He never heard from her or saw her again.
Placing the photo back on his nightstand, he drew a heavy breath. On the way to the ranch Jude kept thinking, I gave my child away. The closer he got to home, the more those words hurt and the more he thought about his father, who had told him in the girls/sex speech to always take responsibility. Be a man. Be a Rebel. A Rebel never shirks his responsibility and I expect my boys to never let me down in that respect.
He’d let his father down. He’d given away his child.
By the time he crossed the cattle guard to Rebel Ranch, he knew he couldn’t live with that decision. He’d thought he could, but he soon found that blood was thicker