I closed my eyes. If she got hurt, or if I did, that was endgame. They would never forgive each other. Never. I had to end this. And there was only one way. I took a deep breath.
“I’m pregnant.”
For half a second, time seemed to freeze. They shoved apart, falling back onto the sidewalk. And then Dallas was getting to his feet, dragging a hand through the disheveled mess of his hair. I couldn’t look at him. Hayden hurried to Ethan’s side. She glared out at the crowd.
“Nothing to see here.”
Pacing half a dozen steps down the sidewalk, Dallas stared out at the night for so long I thought he wasn’t going to speak. And then—
“You came here? To him—”
“One, after that caveman display just now, you really don’t want to lecture me. Two, I tell you I’m pregnant and that’s all you have to say? Screw you.”
“You could have waited until I got home. Told me.”
“You just humiliated me in front of half the town because you and your brother can’t work out your bullshit. Do you have any idea what this night has been like for me?”
A Prius pulled up down the street. Cal and West got out.
“Lacey,” Dallas began, voice taking on a rough edge.
“I can’t do this.”
Dallas didn’t move. He just stared. As if he no longer knew me at all. West reached out like he might try to stop me. I slipped free. When I rounded the next block, I thought I heard Dallas calling for me.
I didn’t slow.
And no one followed.
11
Dallas
“NOT THAT I NECESSARILY MIND being force fed my weight in pancakes,” West said conversationally from Cal’s breakfast nook over by the window. “Especially not when we’re talking blueberry. But this vow of silence thing is getting a bit dramatic.”
Right. Like we’d all forgotten his reaction last month when an anonymous reader (spoiler alert: River) panned his Harry/Draco fanfic and he’d sulked for two days.
“Think we’ve all had enough drama for one night,” I slurred. Flipping the sausage, I poured a fresh round of pancake batter onto the griddle and sprinkled a handful of blueberries into the center of each cake.
Cal was currently staying in one of the cabins out on the back of our parents’ property while he paid down some of his student loans. Originally built for feral wolves transitioning back into society and working to get back on their feet, each cabin had a combination kitchen and living space, plus a separate bedroom in back. They’d been upgraded in recent years, the sloped roofs covered with solar panels that could power the small fridge and window AC unit that kept our brutal summers from being unbearable. To me, the space felt like it was the size of a postage stamp, but Cal once said that after a long shift at the hospital, coming home to a hammock swaying between a couple of live oaks and nothing for miles but a sea of swirling grass was how he kept his head level.
Shutting off the stove, I brought another round of blueberry pancakes and sausage to the table. West pushed back his chair. “Thanks, but I’m going to check in with August. Make sure he and Topher don’t need anything.”
Translate: shift change. Time for Cal to take over and make sure I didn’t burn half of Lindley County to the ground making brunch completely shit-faced.
The screen door smacked noisily behind him, carrying with it the echo of wind chimes. I leaned against the wall, inhaling the scent of snow.
“How are you doing? Pretty big news to take in, about Lacey and the baby.” Working on a psychiatric ward, Cal had two modes: calm as death and tell me how that makes you feel. The fact that I was getting a two for one deal told me precisely how badly I’d fucked up.
He moved West’s plate aside and pulled out a clean one for me.
“Not really hungry.”
“Think you should probably eat something.” The smell of sweet smoked sausage wafted through the room. Cal loaded up my plate with four pancakes, sausage and eggs, then drenched my lumberjack special in warm maple syrup, just the way he knew I liked it. Cal loved to hunt and with a bounty out on feral hogs in Central Texas, kept all our freezers stocked to last through the next zombie apocalypse. Defeated by the smell of my own cooking, I sank into the chair and stabbed halfheartedly at the pancakes.
If there was ever a day that I needed someone to talk to, it was today. And when it came to listening without spewing advice or crowing your news to everyone in six counties, Cal was pretty much your go-to guy.
“She went to Ethan. How do you think I’m doing?”
“You sure that’s how things went down?”
“She was there.”
Cal rubbed his beard. “To talk to him or to talk to Hayden?”
I grunted, dragging my sausage through the lake of syrup. We both knew damn well I was full of shit. Cal let the silence stretch, one of his shrink tricks to get patients to talk. Whatever. I had pancakes. And they were damn good pancakes. He sipped his coffee. I chewed, pulverizing some perfectly good eggs. Finally, I threw down my fork.
Point, Calgary Caldwell.
“She’s been having blackouts, couldn’t control her shift.” I was up now, pacing across the rough-hewn pine floor. “I was scared out of my goddamn mind. I came home and found her gone—”
“You got there to an empty house. What did you think happened?”
“That she’d shifted and gotten out, that someone was going to spot her as a werewolf wandering the streets in the middle of the Yule Festival.” I gripped the door frame, unable to stop my hands from shaking. Fuck. I needed more bourbon—which wasn’t happening. Cal had plucked the bottle from my hands right around the time West had pocketed my keys. Bastards. “And who knew if the Feds would pick her up or the Tracers would take her out to make sure one of us couldn’t be captured alive.”
Everything just sort of came spilling out after that. Our midnight kiss in the bakery. Juliet Blair’s deteriorating condition. The conversation with Mom the night of Thanksgiving. And now finding out I was going to be a father.
Cal listened without passing judgment, taking our empty plates to the farm sink. I didn’t want to think about how freeze-your-balls-off cold an outdoor shower had to be in November, but my brother was way into the sustainable off-the-grid lifestyle.
“You love her.”
I pictured Lacey’s face as we joined together under that starry sky, nothing separating us but skin and heat. The sparkle in her January gray eyes as I chased her around a counter in the bakery, a can of whipped cream aimed towards my chest in warning should I come any closer. The soft comfort of her fingers combing through my hair in the early hours of the morning before she left for work. And I knew then that I wanted a thousand stolen moments like that. With her.
“I never stopped.”
“This stalemate with Ethan worth risking all of that?”
No. No, it wasn’t.
I rubbed my lip, tracing the hairline scar I’d gotten that night on the barn floor nine years before.
“I always used to picture it, you know? Her and me. Couple of kids. Big house with a yard and a sprinkler out front for playing in during the summers when it gets hot. The whole nine yards.”
I closed my eyes as my fingertip found the edge of the scar, not missing it was the first place Lacey kissed every time we made love, as if she knew how much that memory still ached and wanted to make a new one instead with the brush of her lips on mine.