Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different if I could go back in time and never have met Laney. She was this slow moving hurricane that destroyed everything over a huge area, leaving nothing in her wake.

I met Laney when I was a senior in high school. She was always around. This interesting girl with dark red hair and the greenest eyes.

Laney was loud during class; she had been loud her whole life. She spoke whenever she wanted to and disagreed with everyone but in this way that made people smile, or at least made me smile. She wasn't this plastic girl with too much makeup and not enough clothes.

Laney wore bright colored dresses and scarves or colored tights under cut-off jeans. Her hair either wavy like she just came out of the ocean or piled on top of her head with a headband.

She made me laugh when I didn't think I was capable. She was light and beautiful.

We ran in different social circles. She was sort of friends with everyone but the people I was friends with.

And I was friends with the guys on the baseball team and the girls that were obsessed with us. It wasn't a cliché high school setting, exactly, but somewhat like that. Looking back, I know that Laney lived her life in a way that I could only dream of.

I was so busy trying to fit in at school because that was the only part of my life that was normal. It was the only time of the day that I wasn't this parentless, poor, loser taking care of his younger sister.

I was a guy that everyone wanted to be friends with and college scouts were already looking at because of my fastball.

Laney came up to me after baseball practice one day. She had her all of her up and a blue dress on. I looked around me to see who she could possibly be waiting for because I had never seen her around the baseball fields before.

"Hey," she said simply with a dimpled smile that I immediately fell for. It was a smile that made my mouth water and left me wanting so much more. "I think you've been wanting to talk to me for quite some time now, am I wrong?" She raised her eyebrows.

I laughed. Not hysterics or anything just a small laugh because this girl was everything I dreamed of and more and she was standing right in front of me.

"Yeah, Laney, I have."

"Are you going to make the next move or do you want me to do that too?" She asked and blinked up at me, innocently.

"Let me shower and change then do you wanna get out of here?" I asked.

"Yes, Finn. Great job. I'll be in the parking lot." She was sarcastic and sexy and so unlike anyone.

She smiled again and started off towards the lot. She was mysterious and too open for someone like me. I've been hiding who I really am for most of my life. So why get involved with a girl I know won't just be a hookup?

I asked myself that question so many times as we continued doing whatever we were doing. Laney wasn't into defining relationships and I didn't give a shit as long as I was with her.

Laney showed up on my doorstep at 2:00 in the morning one night. The air was breezy and the street was wet with the thunderstorm we just had.

"What's up?" I said rubbing my eyes and trying to figure out why she was standing in my doorway in shorts, a giant sweatshirt, and tears running down her face. "Are you okay?" I asked then pulled her inside the house because she almost seemed frozen.

"No." She sat on the couch then let go of my hand like it was burning hot.

"What happened?"

"You happened," She answered.

Laney played games.

Something I learned after only a few weeks with her. She wanted fun all the time and sometimes I couldn't keep up. But I tried so damn hard.

"I need more of an explanation, Laney." I sounded angry, angrier than I felt. It was probably exhaustion mixed with her need to mess with my head when she already had me so wrapped around her I couldn't find my way out.

"Do not yell at me," she said as she hiccupped from her never ending tears.

"I'm not yelling at you, Laney! Just tell me what the fuck is going on." I was yelling by that point.

"I'm pregnant." She said it so matter-of-factly. So calmly. Like she was telling me we can't go to the beach that day due to an impending storm.

Her tears disappearing.

"Is it mine?" the words tumbled out so quickly that I couldn't swallow them back. It was like all of a sudden the nights that Laney was unavailable or the fact that she didn't want to be my girlfriend made sense, even though we had been seeing each other for years.

"Fuck you, Finn," she said and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. I could have gone after her but I didn't, I couldn't.

I was lost in the 90 mile per hour winds that she always left behind and I was surprised that there was nothing physically destroyed too.

Maddy came into the living room a moment after Laney left, "what's going on?"

"Laney's pregnant."

"Shit," she said and just sat with me on the couch.

Maddy and I look after each other, always have. And I couldn't have been more thankful for my sister in that moment. It was a role-reversal. Her trying to care for me and I wondered how life would be different for the two of us if we had parents that cared or bothered to stick around.

And I don't know if it was my own lack of parents that were the driving factor of me doing everything in my power to keep this baby or if it was out of loneliness or complete desperation to be anything other than the Finn I've been all through high school and even now, two years later.

Laney and I were still impulsive and reckless with each other and with ourselves. I was figuring out how to get by and Laney was figuring out every way to destroy the life her family was trying to build for her. I sometimes wondered if I was just part of that plan.

But I just knew right then and there that I wanted this baby more than I wanted anything in my whole life.

***

It kills me to see Maddy hurting and not being able to help her because she doesn't want to be helped. It is the same thing that I dealt with when Laney was first pregnant with Peyton.

Maddy and I were this unbreakable team until Laney came, which then brought Peyton. It was never my intention to lose Maddy along the way. It was the distance that siblings usually form naturally, I saw my friends go through it as well, but we had to be different. We were all each other had.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" I ask when she finally emerges from her bed room. Her blonde hair is a mess and her lack of makeup lets me know this wasn't a normal Maddy breakdown.

"Not really." She says and leans her head on my shoulder while grabbing my water and taking a long sip. I stay quiet.

I know how important silence can be when your world is often too loud, your brain filled up with banging pots, screaming kids, and a lack of understanding.

"I think I'd rather talk about you and West," she says. She lifts her head and looks at me with a knowing smirk.

"Nothing to talk about. We've knowing each other for what, two days?"

"Well you've showed more interest in her than you have in anyone since Laney ditched."

"It's not interest," I say.

"It totally is."

"She's..." I trail off trying to find the right word, "calming."

"She's nonjudgmental," Maddy says with a smile and I know that she does see West as a friend even if most of her life is hidden from her.

"I guess," I shrug.

"Stop pretending, Finn. You are curious."

"You already knew that," I say.

"Now you're more interested in just getting into her pants?" She inquires.

"Still up for debate."

Maddy laughs and punches me in the arm.

"Do not hurt her," she warns.

"Promise," I tell her.

She grabs Peyton from her highchair and holds her close, "I'm sorry about bailing. I just had to and I knew she'd be fine with West but that really sucked of me and I'm sorry."

I nod because again we always know when words aren't enough and in this moment Maddy knows she has been forgiven. She probably understands that a verbal apology isn't necessary at all. We are still on the same team even if most of the time our signals get crossed and our connection gets lost and we think we've lost each other we always find a way back.

We have to.

There are no other options for us.

For her.