The Right Way Read online

  The Right Way

  Katie Ashley

  Author’s Note

  Eleven years ago when I was still a teacher, I experienced the loss of my first student. The grief I felt as an educator, along with what I saw my male students experience, propelled me to write Don’t Hate the Player…Hate the Game. Although I’d written two books previously, I wouldn’t be where I am today without that book.

  All these years later, I never imagined I’d still be writing about Jake Nelson, or the journey a manwhore on the road to redemption would take. Yet his memory lives on in The Right Way as well as The Hard Way.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Dedication:

  Chapter One: Presley

  Chapter Two: Presley

  Chapter Three: Jonathan

  Chapter Four: Presley

  Chapter Five: Jonathan

  Chapter Six: Jonathan

  Chapter Seven: Presley

  Chapter Eight: Presley

  Chapter Nine: Jonathan

  Chapter Ten: Presley

  Chapter Eleven: Jonathan

  Chapter Twelve: Presley

  Chapter Thirteen: Jonathan

  Chapter Fourteen: Presley

  Chapter Fifteen: Jonathan

  Chapter Sixteen: Presley

  Chapter Seventeen: Jonathan

  Chapter Eighteen: Presley

  Chapter Nineteen: Jonathan

  Chapter Twenty: Presley

  Chapter Twenty-One: Jonathan

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Presley

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Jonathan

  Epilogue: Presley

  Epilogue: Jonathan

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Don’t Hate the Player

  Excerpt from The Hard Way

  Dedication:

  Since writing this dedication nine years ago, I’ve lost several other former students. Although I’ve been out of the classroom for seven years, I treasure the lasting relationships I’ve had with the teenagers I taught. They’ve now grown into young men and women with families of their own.

  I would have never written this book without the loss of one of my students. Cooper Newsome—you were taken far too soon, and while you were far from the character who became Jake Nelson, your tragic loss planted the seed for this novel. And for Lindsey Norrell—whose sweet smile could light up a room and is sure to be lighting up heaven now. This book is in loving memory of you both.

  And special gratitude to all the students of Liberty, Creekland, and Adairsville Middle Schools along with Creekview, LaFayette, and Cass High Schools who touched my life in so many ways. Although writing was my dream since childhood, I know being a teacher was what God called me to do for eleven and a half years. The lessons you taught me, the laughter you brought me, and the tears we shed together will live bright in my memory for all my life. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and hope God richly blesses you all the days of your life.

  And finally to the memories of Travis Appling and David Wheeler—the Cherokee High Class of 97’ was never the same without you guys. All these years later, we still desperately feel your loss and like the Kenny Chesney song, we wonder who you’d be today.

  Chapter One: Presley

  Peering around the doctor’s office waiting room, I couldn’t help feeling slightly out of place. Women of varying ages and various states of pregnancy sat in the uncomfortable straight back chairs around me. From time to time, I caught one of the them stealing a glance from their phones or magazines to throw a curious glance my way.

  I guess I couldn’t blame them since I stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe it was the strapless sundress that hit just at my knees that set me apart from the others. Or the intricate tattoo on my ankle that was on display in my strappy sandals. More than anything else, I’m pretty sure it was my age.

  And the fact I was pregnant.

  While the age post MTV’s Teen Mom might’ve normalized teenage pregnancy, it still didn’t feel in anyway normal in my hometown. When I’d walked across the stage at my high school graduation, the robe hid my slight four-month bump. Now at five months, I’d officially popped, and there was no hiding it anymore, especially since it was the dog days of summer in Georgia and bulky clothes left me drenched in sweat.

  A hand reached over to rest at my knee—the one that had been bouncing with anxious energy.

  “Nervous?” Evelyn asked.

  Tearing my gaze from my lap, I met her concerned blue eyes—the same eyes that belonged to my baby’s father.

  “A little,” I lied.

  With a reassuring smile, she replied, “I’m sure everything is just fine.”

  I wanted more than anything in the world to believe her. However, the events of the past few months had turned my usual optimistic self into one of debilitating pessimism. Desperate fear spread through my chest of all the things that could go wrong with this baby.

  As I swept my hands over my bump, I shuttered my eyes. Please be okay. Please be healthy. Please be…alive. “I hope so,” I muttered in a choked whisper.

  Evelyn squeezed my knee. “It will be. You just wait and see.”

  “Presley Patterson?” a voice called from the doorway.

  My eyelids snapped open at the mention of my name. “That’s me,” I replied to the nurse staring expectantly around the waiting room.

  “You can come back now,” the nurse said.

  With a nod, I slid out of my chair and got to my feet. At five nine, I somewhat resembled a scarecrow with my growing belly and spindly arms and legs. Although Evelyn shoveled food into me constantly, I’d barely gained any weight.

  Grief will do that to you.

  Shaking my head free of the thought, I joined the nurse in the doorway. After making our way back into the office, she led me to the first door on the right. A brown-haired woman with a long braid and wire rimmed glasses met me with a smile. “Hi there, Presley. I’m Marcia, and I’ll be doing your ultrasound this afternoon.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Evelyn replied pleasantly as I nodded in agreement.

  “And are you her mom?” Marcia asked.

  I wish. My life would’ve probably been a lot different if Evelyn Nelson had been my mom. She was the classic sitcom mom who stayed home while her boys were growing up and cooked dinner every night. She volunteered at the school and baked brownies for the teachers.

  As for my mom, she had never wanted to be a mother. Sure, she’d never come right out and told me that, but it was pretty evident from the way she embraced motherhood, or I suppose I should say how she didn’t. It wasn’t like she was young and didn’t know any better—she was almost thirty when I was born. Having a kid later in life didn’t stop her wild, partying ways. Through the miracles of modern science, Botox, and plastic surgery, she kept herself looking young. Now that she was pushing fifty, she only looked thirty.

  While I’d known my fair-share of step-dads, I’d never actually met my biological father. Growing up, the less than kind rumor mill loved to churn the lie that in my mom’s teen years, she had been a groupie of Elvis Presley, and that’s how I’d gotten my name. But whatever dumbasses started the rumor apparently couldn’t do math since my mom was just a kid when Elvis died. The truth was far less salaciFor the early part of my life, my grandmother was more of a mother than my own mom. I was fourteen when Gram died and the only stability I’d ever known came to a shuddering halt.

  At my hesitation, Evelyn said, “Her mother is out of state at the moment. I’m the father’s mother.”

  “How nice. Do we need to wait for him?”

  Evelyn’s strangled gasp caused me to shudder. “He isn’t coming,” I whispered.

  Since she was busy tweaking dials on the machine, Marcia didn’t notice our disco
mfort. “No problem. I’ll be sure to send you home with pictures and a recording of the heartbeat for him.”

  “No. You don’t get it. He won’t see them.” When Marcia cut her eyes from the machine, I added, “He can’t be here because he was killed three months ago.”

  Her eyes widened in horror at the same time her mouth gaped open. “Oh my. I’m so very sorry. I wish I had known, so I wouldn’t have said anything.” She gave me a sad smile before extending it to Evelyn as well. “I hate for anything to ruin such a joyful day.”

  I bit down on my lip and willed myself not to cry. Don’t you get it? Now that Jake’s dead, there aren’t any truly joyful days. The greatest moments of my baby’s life will always be weighed with sadness because its father isn’t here.

  “It’s okay,” I lied.

  Marcia’s expression told me it was far from okay. Regardless of how hard she tried, she would think of me for the rest of the day…maybe even longer. I could only imagine that although she was somewhat battle worn from delivering devastating news to prospective mothers, this was a new one for her.

  After glancing between Evelyn and me, she said, “Right. Well, let’s take a look at your baby.”

  Motioning to my dress, I asked, “Do I need to change?”

  Shaking her head, Marcia replied, “You can just bring your dress up over your stomach.”

  When my fingers reached for the hem of my dress, my hands momentarily faltered. Normally, I was the farthest thing from modest. While Jake had seen me in my underwear and much less numerous times, his mother had not.

  Once I eased the dress over my hips, my thong-clad ass crinkled along the white paper. After lying back, Evelyn reached her hand out for mine, and I gladly took hers. Because of my prior wild days, Evelyn had a good reason not to like me, but I’d never doubted she cared for me. If she’d heard the rumors about me, she’d never let on. There wasn’t a time I was at her house that she didn’t make me feel at home. With Jake gone and my mother emotionally unavailable, Evelyn had volunteered to accompany me to all my doctor appointments. Not a day went by where I didn’t tell myself how much I’d never deserve her kindness. She’d always been there for Jake when he was growing up, but now she was willing to be here for me.

  As Marcia slid the wand through the slick, sticky gel on my growing belly, a grainy image began forming on the screen. With the first images of my baby before me, I couldn’t help going back to that day…

  The Past

  As I paced around the plum colored walls of my bedroom, I fought the rising panic that threatened to overtake me. My lungs compressed like I’d dived into the deep end of the swimming pool, and I found it harder and harder to breathe. “You can do this, Presley.” I shook my head. “You have to do this.”

  My pep talk did little to calm my rising nerves. Staring at my reflection in the oval-shaped mirror above my dresser, I stated matter-of factly, “Jake, I’m pregnant.”

  I wrinkled my nose at my tone and delivery. Well, that epically sucked, didn’t it? Right. I needed to try it again. Forcing a smile to my face, I said, “Jake, are you sitting down? Well, you better be because I’ve got some crazy ass news.”

  Ugh, that didn’t feel right either. Of course, I didn’t know if there would ever be the right way to break the news you were pregnant to the guy who knocked you up. When I told Jake, it would be the first time I’d uttered the words aloud to anyone. While I’d gotten home from the doctor hours ago, I hadn’t reached out to any of my girlfriends, least of all my mom.

  It wasn’t like it was happy news. At eighteen, there was nowhere a baby could fit into my world. I partied, and I did it hard. I didn’t even have a boyfriend. Just random hookups besides the one semi-committed hookup I’d experienced on and off since freshman year. That consistent hookup had somehow led to the glaring red line on the pregnancy test yesterday and then an emergency visit to the clinic today.

  I’d spent the last twenty-four hours going back and forth between hysterical crying and then outright denial. There was no use in making any type of pros and cons list. In the fall, I was starting college. Yeah, it was just the local community college, but for a girl like me who spent very little time studying, I wasn’t left with many options.

  There was also the fact I’d gotten pregnant by Jake Nelson—Homecoming King, football and baseball letterman, and A-crowd hottie who every girl was desperately in love or lust with. On a good day, I was on the outskirts of the in-crowd. I didn’t play sports or have school related extracurricular activities. Somedays I wondered what he possibly saw in me. Sure, I was considered a ten by most guys, Jake included. Since people seemed to like me, I guess you could say I had a pretty good personality. In the end, I was far from the perfect type of girlfriend people might expect Jake to have. Sometimes I couldn’t help wondering if it was the imperfections that attracted Jake to me. Let’s be real. Getting pregnant the last half of senior year was as far from perfect as you could get.

  But in spite of the glaring negatives of becoming a teenage mother, I’d spent the last several hours determined not only have it, but keep it. How the hell I was going to do that, I didn’t know. Something within me just kept saying it would all work out.

  When my phone rang, I jumped out of my skin. With my heart beating like the percussion section at a football game, I warily peeked at the ID. At the sight of Jake’s name, I fumbled with the phone. “H-Hello?”

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  Although my brain shouted at my lips to move and speak, I was frozen. All I could mutter was a squeak of acknowledgement.

  “Presley? Are you there?” Jake asked.

  Yes. But I wish I was miles and miles away from here and a different person. One who didn’t have a baby growing inside. A baby who wasn’t fathered by a guy who would never really love her. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “What’s up? You’ve called me like a million times.”

  “Well, you didn’t answer.”

  “I’d left my phone in the house when I went out into the woods.”

  I shouldn’t have been too surprised. When Jake visited his grandparents up in the boonies, he legit went off the grid with hunting, hiking, and fishing. Usually, I never expected to hear from him the weekends I knew he was gone. But this time I couldn’t wait for him to get home. I had to talk to him now.

  “Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but I really needed to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  Maybe I was reading too much into it, but irritation seemed to tinge his tone. Like I was the last person he wanted to be dealing with at the moment. It was really out of his usual character, but there was a lot that had changed with him over the last few months.

  ImhavingababyandImsoscaredyouregoingtohateme. In spite of all the scenarios I’d practiced, I finally just blurted, “I’m pregnant.”

  “Holy shit, Presley.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I just…wow….holy fucking shit!”

  A nervous laugh bubbled out of my lips. “Yup. That’s pretty much how I feel. Oh, and that birth control is supposed to fucking work.”

  It wasn’t like I was new to using contraception either. I’d been on birth control for the last three years. It had been one my mother’s fifteenth birthday gifts to me. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want me getting pregnant young, but that she didn’t want to be a grandmother at her age.

  “Uh…like…how far along are you?”

  I had to give Jake credit for not questioning if the baby was his. Considering my “reputation” at school, any lesser guy would have. They would have demanded a paternity test before hanging up on me. Guys who slept around were never slut-shamed like girls were. While I was no angel, I think most of Creekview vastly overestimated my number. “Five or six weeks.”

  I could almost hear the mathematical wheels spinning in Jake’s mind as tried calculating the last time we were together. “Prom,” he murmured.

  “Right.”

  Since we both f
ound ourselves single, Jake had invited me to prom back in March. Considering how our relationship was rooted in the physical side, we’d spent the night together. Of course, I hadn’t thought a thing about it until my period never came during the week of placebo pills.

  Time crawled by as I waited for Jake’s response. His silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. It was so quiet I could hear the television from another room. I could almost imagine him desperately jerking a hand through his blond hair. It was something he always did when he was nervous.

  I’m not sure how I expected the phone call to go down. I didn’t think any eighteen-year-old guy would jump for joy at finding out that he was about to be a father, least of all a guy like Jake. He blew through life without any real commitments. There was also the fact we weren’t a couple. Although I loved Jake, I knew the feelings weren’t entirely reciprocated. No matter how hard I tried, I’d never managed to make him fall in love with me. Jake wasn’t the kind of guy who fell in love. He hadn’t been faithful to me or any girl he’d ever dated. It just wasn’t in his makeup. There was one thing he loved besides himself, and that was sex.

  Staring down at the phone, I shook my head. “Look, I get it. I was scared as hell and shocked out of my freakin’ mind when I found out. I think I sat in the bathroom for hours, just staring at the test. I get you need more time to process this. I just thought you should know.” I exhaled a ragged breath. “But regardless of what you eventually have to say about the whole thing, I’m keeping it.”