THE SECOND MOON

Chapter One - The Choice

The ball left Drake's fingers with less than two seconds on the clock. He knew it was good before it hit the rim, and the gym exploded when it dropped through.

Marcus slammed into him from the side, nearly knocking him into the bleachers, and then the rest of the team piled on before Drake could even breathe. Someone grabbed the back of his jersey.

Someone else shouted directly into his ear. The scoreboard flashed the final score above them while half the student section screamed his name like they had personally helped him make the shot.

"Twenty-eight points!"

"You saw Hayes, right?"

"Drake, tell me you saw him!"

Drake laughed and shoved Marcus away, but his eyes had already gone past his teammates. Third row. Gray suit. Still standing.

Mr. Hayes had actually stayed until the end.

The university scout had come to Blackridge specifically to watch him play, and that thought made Drake's stomach flip harder than the final shot had.

Ronan pushed against him from inside, excited enough that Drake had to take a slow breath and force the wolf back down. Ronan had been restless since warm-up. Every fast break had made him want to run harder, and every collision under the basket had made him want to shove back twice as hard, and his eyes flashed gold.

Marcus leaned closer. "Dude. You're doing the eye thing."

"I know."

"Would be hilarious if you got recruited and exposed the whole pack on the same night."

"Glad my future entertains you."

Drake elbowed him and looked toward the bench, where Coach Dalton was already talking to Hayes. Coach glanced across the court, spotted Drake, and lifted one hand.

There it was. The conversation Drake had been waiting years to have.

It meant a scholarship, college, and basketball somewhere bigger than Blackridge. He started toward them and then he saw Maya.

She stood just inside the gym doors, still wearing her coat, both hands wrapped tight around the strap of her bag. She should have been halfway down the bleachers by now, yelling louder than everybody else.

She wasn't smiling.

Something inside Drake shifted. Not Ronan this time.

"Maya?"

She turned and walked out.

"Drake," Coach called.

"Two minutes."

He followed her through the doors. The noise from the gym dropped the second they swung shut.

"Maya."

She didn't stop until the trophy case. Her hands wouldn't hold still, twisting the strap of her bag over and over like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Her eyes were red. Whatever was left of Drake's smile disappeared.

"Who made you cry?"

"Nobody."

"You were crying."

"Drake, I need you to go back in there." Her voice was too fast, too high.

"Not until you tell me what's wrong."

"The scout is waiting. You've been talking about this for months."

"And you look like somebody died."

Her mouth twitched, gone before it finished. Ronan had gone still inside him, a silence that felt wrong after two hours of the wolf bouncing around his ribs.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a small white box, holding it toward him with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking.

"What is that."

"Just look." Her voice cracked on look.

He took it. A pregnancy test. Two lines.

For a second his brain gave him nothing at all. No thought. No sound. Just the two lines, and Maya's face, and the two lines again.

"I took three," she said. "All positive." She was already talking faster, like if she kept going she wouldn't have to stop and feel it. "I don't know what to do, Drake. I can't tell my parents. They'll... I don't even know what they'll do to me. I've been sitting with this all day and I couldn't make myself say it."

"Hey." He had nothing to put after it.

"I'm fine," she said, the same lie he'd been about to tell her.

He swallowed. "You're pregnant."

It was a moot point. Ronan surged so hard against him it was almost a bite. Drake's mind felt stuck in neutral.

"Since when?"

"Drake." Her voice broke clean in half. "We only did it that once."

"Okay." Too fast, too easy, the voice he used on free throws. "Okay.

We'll figure it out."

"You don't have to say that."

"I'm not saying it because I have to." He didn't know if that was true. He didn't know anything.

Her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. "I've been scared to tell you all day. I kept thinking you'd walk in there with Hayes and I'd never get the chance. I don't know. I don't know what I thought."

"I'm right here."

"I know. I just." She shook her head, couldn't finish it, breath catching hard enough that her shoulders shook with it.

He looked at her stomach. Nothing there. Same jeans. Same sneakers. The silver necklace he'd given her at Christmas. And under all of it, somehow, a person now.

He dragged both hands through his hair, still hanging onto the easy voice, the twenty-eight-point voice. "It's fine. People do this."

"Drake."

"I'm serious. It's fine."

"You're shaking."

He looked down. She was right.

It went out of him all at once, the bravado. What was left was just a kid in a hallway with a test in his hand. Seventeen years old. Forty dollars in his wallet. Owed Marcus five for gas. His mother still had to remind him to take out the garbage.

He was going to be somebody's father, and for the first time all night the word landed like it meant something.

Ronan surged again, not scared, just awake, like the wolf had finally found something worth the trouble.

"You don't have to decide anything tonight," Maya said, quieter now.

"What am I deciding?"

"Go talk to Hayes."

"You're pregnant and terrified and you want me to talk to a scout right now?"

"I want you to not throw away six years of work in ten minutes because you're panicking."

"I'm not panicking." His hands hadn't stopped shaking. "I'm not."

She almost smiled at that, thin and wet, gone fast. Then her eyes filled again. "I don't want you staying because you think you have to."

The gym doors opened. Coach Dalton stepped through.

"Drake. Hayes needs to leave in ten."

Drake looked at the door. At Maya, still holding herself together by a strap of nylon. At the box in his own hand.

"Go," she said, and he went.

Coach's office smelled like burnt coffee. Hayes sat with a folder open on his knees.

"Quite a game. We've been watching six months. Tonight confirmed it." He looked up. "We want you."

The sentence Drake had imagined his whole life, and it barely touched him.

Hayes talked. Tuition, housing, summer training, a real shot at something bigger than Blackridge. Drake caught maybe half of it.

"I can't take the offer, Mr. Hayes."

Hayes studied him. "Why?"

"Personal reasons."

"This kind of offer doesn't wait around."

"I understand."

Coach shifted by the door. "Drake, maybe sit with it a night."

"I don't need a night."

Hayes closed the folder slowly. "Change your mind, call me." He didn't push it further.

Drake shook his hand and walked out.

Maya was on the floor against the wall, arms still wrapped tight.

"Well?"

"I told him no."

"Drake."

"It's fine."

"It is not fine."

"It will be. I love you, Maya Sanches. I want to be with you. We'll make this work."

He didn't know that. He didn't know anything. Only that she was shaking and scared and there was a baby now and leaving didn't feel like something his legs would let him do.

The gym roared behind the doors. Somebody was still chanting his name.

Drake reached for Maya's hand. She let him take it.

He didn't go back inside.