It felt like slow motion walking up the stairs to the stage. There were three chairs next to the podium, three speakers, and Jasmine had placed me last. She probably knew that it would take me a minute to pull it back together after I saw everyone there. The wait was nerve-wracking at first, but with each woman that went up, I gained a little more confidence. It's funny how that happens. One person's story can validate everyone else's. Before I knew it, it was my turn and my body stood up and my feet carried me across the stage before my mind even knew that it was happening.

Sammie's little squeal "Mommeeee!" snapped me back into focus, and there was a rumble of giggles as she stood up on Shayna's lap and pointed her little fingers in the air like she was at a rock concert. I looked at her, and silently thanked God that she had made it this far. Then I put my fingers to my lips and blew her a kiss.

When I looked over at Kenney, I lost my breath. It had been almost a year since I had looked my friend in the eye, and there he was, in the flesh, looking right back at me. Sammie clapped loudly, and Kenney broke the gaze first, looking away with a smile.

Shayna looked like she was having a hard time trying to keep Sammie from climbing over onto Kenney's lap. My rambunctious baby had strategically made her way down the line and placed herself exactly where she needed to be to get where she wanted to be...with Kenney...and suddenly I took what I was about to say a whole lot more seriously.

Everything was crucial at that moment, as I weighed the depths, the fragility and the innocence of a young girl's heart. It was the pure, unadulterated, innocence that got me. I couldn't remember ever being that way, but I was sure that at some point I was. I wondered if my mother had feared for my little heart the same way that I feared for Sammie's.

"I was..." My voice came out strained and weak. I backed away from the mic, and then leaned forward and tried again. "I was nine years old the first time I fell in love. Give or take a few..." I looked over at my mom, guiltily. She quickly looked away, knowing full well that this was about to be a story that she didn't want to hear. Then I looked over at Kenney, who was now holding Sammie and watching me with bated breath. He wasn't sure what I was about to say either, and I could see the anxiety all over his face.

"But...I guess...this story is not as much about him, as it is about me and how I should have...gone out and seen what this world had to offer, instead of...you know..." I involuntarily looked over at Kenney and we silently shared a private joke that, in hindsight, wasn't all that funny.

He used to say that to me every chance he got. I should have listened.

"...Instead of jumping head first into craziness, I guess. But the heart wants what it wants, and if you don't learn how to get control of your emotions early in life, they will literally take over everything else you have going on..."

My eyes skimmed across the sea of girls. They were all listening.

"I thought I knew everything and had the worst attitude back then. But life has a way of humbling you."

I looked down at the podium like I had notes, but there weren't any. I realized then that Jasmine had caught me off guard because she wanted me to speak 100% from the heart. I had never told this part of the story before. I hoped the girls could take it. I hoped my mom could take it. Because the truth is, she really loved Collin, too.

"I was fifteen the first time my boyfriend hit me. Same guy. Well, he didn't exactly hit me. He just grabbed me and pushed me into a locker. By that time, I had already loved him for years, but I knew then that he had to go. I didn't have to put up with that, and that's what I should have stuck to. He moved away like a year later, and I didn't start hanging out with him again until college." I smiled at the unpredictability of life. "We ended up going to the same school."

I was getting off track and had to refocus. Speaking off the cuff was so much harder than it looked.

"Anyway, any guy who pushes you will probably eventually hit you, too. And I'm not just saying that because that's what happened to me. I'm saying it because it's the truth. My story is the same story that I keep hearing over and over again. I had a friend who tried to tell me that early on but, like I said, you couldn't tell me anything back then. If I had listened to him, though, I probably would have been a lot better off right now."

Both of my parents looked over at Kenney at the exact same time. I knew they would. He acted like he didn't notice, just held the baby tighter and kissed the top of her head. She had her head on his chest and was dozing off just that quick. If he wasn't careful, she would have him wrapped around her little two going on three year old finger, too.

Out of the blue, I remembered that night at Shipwreck when he had done "I'm In Love With My Best Friend," and how pissed I had been at him for getting in Collin and my business. I told him then that he didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but now, knowing everything that I did about his past, I realized that he probably knew exactly what he was looking at.

I just didn't want to hear it.

I looked around the room at the girls.

"If you can, get yourself a really good friend. One who will fight your battles with you, and one who will tell you the truth when you don't want to hear it. God blessed me with friends like that. I found them as soon as I moved away from home, and they're still with me to this day." I looked over at my backrow team. "I'm pretty sure...no, I know for sure that my baby and I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for them. It's just a gut feeling that I have..."

Jasmine's words rang back to me as my voice trailed off. Tell the truth. It's time.

Damn, I didn't want to do this. But I had to. Everyone in that room needed to hear what I had to say, and all for very different reasons.

"My boyfriend started out doing little things...what I considered to be little things at the time... pushing me, yanking me around, shaking me. One day he broke my wrist. Up until about a year ago, I always passed that off as an accident. I truly thought he didn't mean to do it. Same thing when he pushed my head into the doorknob and gave me a black eye. I really thought that it was actually me who did it, because I was clumsy and fell when he pushed me. My friends tried to tell me that he was dangerous, that he would only get worse, but I didn't believe them. I didn't want to. I was too in love with him...too in love with the idea of him. Of falling in love with my best friend, because at the time...that's what I thought he was..."

My mom's mouth dropped open and I knew that she wanted to get up and walk out right then. But she didn't. She stayed, just like Jasmine said she would.

"He dragged me behind a building on campus one day, when we were still in college. He saw me on the yard talking to my professor about a grade, but he thought that I was...giving him my number or something, I guess. I wasn't, but he didn't want to hear it. He pushed me down on the ground, and...I don't know what he was about to do to me, but two of my friends and another of their friends ran up before anything could happen. That's what I considered nothing happening, back then..."

I looked over at Drama, and then at Kenney. They both wore the same expressions that they had that day, like I had taken them back all those years, back into that exact moment. Kenney looked ready to choke somebody out, and Drama looked like he told me not to suck Kenney in. Kenney started to hand the sleeping Sammie back to Shayna, but she stirred in her sleep and started to get fussy. Changing his mind, he laid her back onto his chest and patted her back to soothe her.

"One of my friends beat him up, bad." My dad looked over at Drama, who nodded his head toward Kenney. "The other two guys had to pull him off of my boyfriend to stop him from beating him. I had never seen my friend so mad. The crazy thing is that I was kind of...mad at my friend for doing it. Even though he only wanted to help me, I didn't want his help. I didn't think I needed it." I looked over at Kenney, who was watching me, with my precious baby's head resting under his chin, expressionless.

I felt my heart suddenly pull toward him and I wondered how I could possibly experience a feeling so strong like that while I was talking about this, reliving it like it was yesterday. What a mess. Kenney must have felt it, too, because even though his expression didn't change, we both looked away from each other at the same time.

"I loved my boyfriend so much that it killed me to see him hurt. Since we were little kids, no matter how much he hurt me, I couldn't stand to see him hurting. That's how he always reeled me back in. I thought we were so in love." I shook my head. "I thought we had fairytale love, like in the movies, because we had been together so long."

Some of the girls nodded, and I knew I was doing the right thing by talking to them.

"My friend, the one that beat him up, made me look at myself in the mirror one day. My face was all messed up. I felt so stupid, and I was so mad at him...for telling me the truth. I knew even then that he was telling me the truth. I just wanted to be loved so badly, I wanted that kind of love so much...that I was willing to put up with anything to get it. Anything. For years."

I looked at Sammie again and started to end the story right there, but then Jasmine nodded her head, encouraging me to keep going. Shayna did the same.

"When he found out that I was pregnant, he stopped hurting me for a while. He was about to..." I looked over at my dad and then quickly looked away. Like Drama, his expression was more concerned than angry. "He was about to...do something crazy. But I yelled out that I was pregnant and he stopped." My cheeks felt like they were on fire. This was a hell of a story to tell in front of my father, let me tell you. I looked over at Shayna. "And then he asked me to marry him." Then I looked at the girls. "...And I said yes."

The reaction that I got from the girls was 50/50. Half of the girls nodded understandingly and half of the girls shook their heads and looked at me like I was stupid. A handful of girls just sat there, watching me, like they were watching a show on TV. Those were the girls that I zoned in on. Because I had been giving Shayna...and Kenney...that look for years.

"But one day I caught him with someone else, and we got in a huge fight." I brushed away a few tears and prayed that God wouldn't let any more fall. "I thought he killed my baby."

Both of my parents turned their stunned faces toward Kenney at the same time. Kenney, truly back in the moment with me, started to hand Sammie to Aunt Jasmine, but took one look at her face and handed her over to Shayna instead. Shayna, who was a few steps ahead of me in the story, hugged my baby like she was so glad that Drama had gotten to her in time. Drama looked over at them both and put his arm protectively around them. Kenney sat forward onto his elbows, not even noticing that my parents were staring at him in disbelief. Jasmine was crying with me.

"He didn't, though." I smiled at the girls and they all smiled back, some of them looking over their shoulders at my sweet sleeping baby. "My friend came and got me, and actually let me stay with him because, after the fight, my boyfriend put me out. How crazy is it that he actually had to put me out after that..." I lost my train of thought for a second when I saw my mom nod at me in agreement. "My boyfriend and I weren't living together, but he was paying my bills and...well...don't ever let a man do that. Pay your own bills."

Some of the girls in the front row, who I had noticed earlier were wearing more expensive jewelry than they could afford, started giggling. I looked dead at them. "I'm serious." They straightened up. "Because none of it's yours. No matter what you do for it, he can always just...take it back."

I looked over at Kenney and continued to look at him while I spoke. "My friend tried to keep me from going back to him. He was afraid for my life and the baby's, but the more pregnant I got, the more I thought it was the right thing to do to go back to my baby's father. I mean, he was her father. And...I had done such a great job of painting the picture that I wanted my parents to see...and they lived so far away, so they had absolutely no idea... They genuinely thought that it made sense for me to be with her father, too. They didn't know."

I looked back at my parents. My dad was watching Kenney closely, like Kenney's reaction to what I was saying would show him the truth that he probably didn't even really want to hear right then.

"It just made more sense for me to be with her father. And in my mind, we had never...in my mind..." This was so incredibly hard for me to say in front of Kenney, and I knew then why Jasmine had invited him. He needed to know the truth, too. "When he showed back up talking like we had never actually broken up...in my mind, I realized that he and I were still together, so..."

I lowered my eyes from Kenney's when his eyes got big. So many emotions went through his face and I couldn't stand the fact that I was taking him through all of that all over again. Jasmine put a calming hand on his back and gave him a squeeze. Then she put his hand in hers and looked at him until he looked back at her. She gave him the same look that she had given him that day at the club when he was so upset about his mom and sisters not wanting him to come home and visit. Then she looked back at me and said something to him. He nodded his head and looked back at me, too. Jasmine let go of his hand.

I watched their entire interaction from the podium and didn't speak again until they were finished. I had to make a decision. Should I tell the whole story, or just the well-rehearsed version of it that I had been telling myself all that time?

I decided to go for it.

"I also...had started to fall for my friend while I was staying with him. Hard. And that was so wrong because...well, it was just too much." Kenney's head dropped all the way down. I don't know what he was thinking, but I was willing to bet that he dropped his head because he didn't want me to know. "The further along I got, the more I knew that I would eventually get back with my baby's father. I had to do what I thought was right for everyone. Especially the baby. Her father and I were already a family. We were getting married... and having a baby. My friend and I were just...living wrong and I knew it."

I thought about how his sister and so many random people had given us the evil eye while I was staying with Kenney, and I knew that I was only validating what he had been defending me from all that time. I felt like a rotten, horrible, horrible, waste of human existence for doing this to him, but he had to know. He had to. Because all that time, he had no idea why I left.

Kenney looked at Jasmine like he couldn't believe that I had just said that. Jasmine patted his hand reassuringly and mouthed "It's ok." I knew what he was thinking, that I was saying he had done something wrong with me. But it was me that was so wrong to him, putting too many feelings for too many different situations...everywhere. And because of that, I wasn't going to take back what I said. It was the truth. I noticed that my mom, who was now holding the still sleeping Sammie, kept looking over at Kenney like she had never seen him before. I knew she remembered him, though. How could she not?

"What an amazing blessing I have in the friends that God has given me." I marveled at them, and especially at Kenney. "Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends." I looked at Jasmine. "John 13:15."

Kenney and Jasmine both sat straight up in their chairs. Kenney, probably realized right then that I knew way more about him than he thought I did, and Jasmine probably realized for the first time that she had actually gotten through to me that night. I just wasn't ready to leave.

"That's the kind of friends that I have. And I love them all so much. Unconditionally. And I can only hope that I've been even half of that kind of friend to them."

Shayna and Drama smiled and nodded. Kenney only looked at Jasmine like "Did you tell her?"

I quickly got to the point.

"He tried to kill us." My voice carried through the crowd as the room went pin drop silent, and landed itself right at Kenney's feet. "And my other friend came to get us." I looked directly at Drama. "And I love him for that because he didn't have to. And Jasmine didn't have to come, either, but she did."

The whole room looked back at Jasmine as she turned beet red. She wouldn't even look at Kenney when he all but pulled her face to him to make her look at him. He never knew about any of this.

"At least he said that he was going to kill us when he locked me in the closet and kept my baby out there with him" A tremor went through me with such violence that I'm sure they could see it. As if on cue, Sammie woke up and wined a little at my mom before turning around to look at me.

"I thought she was dead for sure. I thought I had lost my baby...for the second time I thought I lost her. But my friend prayed for me." I looked at Shayna and sent a silent message that she was my sister. My real sister. We were family for life. "I called them on a cell phone that I had hidden under the carpet in the baby's closet...just in case. I called Jasmine, and Shayna prayed for us the whole time that they were on their way. The whole time. She even prayed for my baby's father. She covered our whole house...from all the way across town...over the phone. And I'll never forget that because when her husband got there and literally put his life on the line to get us out safely, my ex finally let us go. Really let us go. Not like all of the other times when he would push me away and then pull me back in...like I was his toy. I mean he really let us go. It was like there was a physical release that he and I both felt. And we were both done. Just like that. What was binding us...finally broke."

I looked at the girls. "Prayer is a powerful, powerful thing. Don't ever underestimate the power of prayer. And don't ever underestimate the power of asking for help. If you need help, ask me. Ask Jasmine. Ask any of these ladies up here with me. Ask anybody. Your friends, parents, teachers. Whoever. Just don't...do what I did and think that there's nothing anybody can do about it. Ask God to show you a way out. That's what Shayna did for me. She asked God to show me a way and He did. Jasmine grabbed my baby and Rob grabbed me, and we all got the heck out of dodge. Sammie's father never even pulled his gun back out. He just...let us go. I know he still had it on him. And...so far so good. I haven't looked back since."