Page 17 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)

I shuffled behind him. How had I gone from nauseous and pissy to happy and horny to…fucking wretched …in twenty minutes? I felt so off kilter. I needed a nap, a snack, and a good cry. And then another nap.

“How do you keep those clean? The world is disgusting,” he said.

“What?” I glanced at him and saw he was looking down at my feet. “My shoes? Do you mean the embroidery? With very gentle liquid soap and a toothbrush.”

He grunted and turned down the personal care aisle and pulled out his phone to consult his precious list. “Shaving cream,” he muttered.

“Shampoo, deodorant, pads.” He stopped in front of the sanitary supplies and scanned the shelves with wide eyes.

“Jesus Christ.” He looked down at his phone again.

“Large. Okay. Is that a size or amount?”

My jaw flapped open.

“What?” he asked.

I shook my head and peered over his shoulder at his phone. “Maybe she meant long? Get the long size in a large pack. With wings. It protects your underwear better.”

He grabbed a pack, studied it, and tossed it in the cart. Then he grabbed a multipack and threw it in, too. “Just in case,” he said. “She couldn’t find a store that delivered to our house, and I only come out here every couple of weeks.”

I stared at him.

“What?” he asked again.

“You’ve changed,” I said.

He snorted. “Trust me, princess, I haven’t. I told you that already.”

“Remember that day outside Jo’s? You told me you didn’t want to hear about all my lady problems ,” I mocked in a sing-song voice. “And now here you are, buying maxi pads for your sister. No flinching. No pretending to gag. You’ve changed.”

He looked at me for a moment, then shook his head with a disbelieving huff. “I didn’t change, Chloe. I’m still the same guy I always was. I considered a new perspective, that’s all.”

“Mine?” I asked, somewhat stupefied by the notion that anything I had said that day had been worth paying attention to. He had not found me at my best, to put it mildly. I had been fucking sloppy .

“Yours, yeah. And Amy…” His chin dipped and he rubbed the back of his neck.

“I lived with two women most of my life, you know. My mother and my sister. And I still didn’t have a fucking clue about periods, other than I knew they existed.

They never talked about it. I never saw feminine hygiene products anywhere because they had their own bathrooms. My dad…

” His voice trailed off on a disgusted laugh.

“Amy told me he never let them throw their pads and tampons away in the house. They had to use the outdoor trash can.”

“What the fuck,” I whispered.

“Yeah. He said he didn’t want to see it or smell it.

And, you know, I had girlfriends. I knew they had periods.

They just…never talked about it. Or maybe…

maybe they did, and I said something like I said to you, and…

I don’t know. I hate wondering if I made them feel like shit.

I don’t remember. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. It should have.”

“Yeah, it should have,” I said flatly. I chewed my lip for a second, thinking. “But you know, what you said? I’ve heard shit like that before. All women have. And even if you said that to your girlfriends, you probably weren’t the only one.”

He gave a noncommittal grunt. “Doesn’t make it any less stupid.”

“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”

“Anyway. Sorry I was a dick to you when you were having period cramps.” He tilted his head so he was somehow looking up at me even though he was taller than me.

“You bought me an iced mocha. It’s already forgiven. I don’t know why my cramps were so bad. Usually I get a really heavy flow, but all I got from that was light spotting.”

I said it to see if I could gross him out, just to test him. But he looked at me like he was doing a complicated math equation in his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve gotten your period since then, though, right?” he asked. “It was six weeks ago.”

“No, but that’s normal for me,” I explained. “I don’t get regular cycles.”

He cocked his head. “Is it normal for you to get nausea spells when you’re not really sick?”

“I…” Six weeks ago I had unprotected sex . “Shit,” I whispered.

Steven looked at me for a long moment, then scrubbed a hand over his face. He grabbed a pregnancy test from the shelf and dropped it in the cart.

“I don’t need that,” I said. A whole team of doctors had assured me of that.

But the universe decided that was the perfect time to prove me wrong because a rancher smelling like he had rolled in cow patties cut brushed past us. It was too much, and I had been fighting it for too long. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping it.

The vomit was instantaneous.

“Your shoes!” Steven hollered, lunging forward, palms outstretched.

I puked directly into his bare hands.

Of course I was wide awake at 3 a.m., alternating doomscrolling analysis of the vicious drought hitting the western states with soothing videos of dogs guarding ducks, trying not to picture Steven’s hands full of my vomit and how I had made my humiliated escape while he was washing up in the grocery store bathroom because that made me feel ill all over again, when his text came through.

Steven

Well?

Chloe

Well, what?

Steven

Did you take the test?

Chloe

No

Steven

Why not?

Chloe

I don’t want to.

Steven

For fuck’s sake, princess.

Text me your address.

Chloe

36 Second Street

Steven

I’ll be there in 20.