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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

IT WAS DECEMBER when Athos finally brought home the test.

Tawny dumped the bag out, peered at it, scoffed, and threw the cardboard box at him.

It hit him in the middle of the chest and he reached out and caught it.

“You keep saying you’re going to pick one up, and then you always ‘forget.’” Athos set the pregnancy test on his coffee table.

“Thanks,” she said breezily. “It’s better to do it in the morning, though. You get more accurate results. So, I’ll take it then.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

He was staring at her.

“What?” she said, as if she was very, very confused.

He hesitated. “Nothing.”

And she changed the subject to something else, something about his job, because Athos loved to bitch about shit and loved to talk about himself, and bringing up his job gave Athos ample opportunity to do both.

They talked, and they ordered food in, and then they had sex, and it was just like any other evening that they spent together.

In the morning, when she woke up and the pregnancy test was taunting her on the counter in the bathroom, that was when she knew she wasn’t going to take it.

She used the toilet without using the test, glaring at it, feeling as if she had gotten away with something, as if she had won something, though she knew that she was being ridiculous, that there wasn’t anything here to triumph over.

He got up after she did.

When he came back, he was holding the unopened box. He tapped it against his palm. “Tawny, if you don’t want to have a baby with me, uh, you’re going to need to tell me at some point.”

“That’s a really weird thing to say,” she said. She was getting dressed. They were at his place and she was going to walk home.

“Yeah, it confuses me, too,” he said. “Because I know at least some part of you likes me and likes being around me. But I guess there’s a difference between liking fucking me and wanting me in your life in that way. And I think you’re just running from that.”

She glared at him. “Is that what I am doing.”

“You have this strong sense of justice, of right and wrong, and you don’t like to do things that you think are wrong. You got it in your head the minute you met me that I was wrong. You feel guilty about being with me, and you have all along, and I have known for a long time that we were going to come down to it, at some point, that you were going to have to grapple with whatever that moral struggle was within you, and you’d never be able to see a way through to accepting me.”

She sputtered. “No.”

“No?”

“I’m not the person who thinks something is wrong with you,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“You think it,” she said. “You think there’s something wrong with you. There’s no other excuse why you would put up with me for this long. You think you have to take what you can get, and so you’ve just settled for this, and it’s making me crazy.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

She sighed. “Let’s not, okay? Can you just let me take a pregnancy test when I am good and ready?”

“It’s about being pregnant,” he said, nodding slowly.

“No, it’s nothing.” She huffed.

“You don’t want to be pregnant,” he said in a soft, wondering voice.

“I never said that!” She yanked her shirt over her head.

“I get that. It’s a lot.” He went to her, taking one of her hands in both of his. “I bet it seems really scary when you get right up on it, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not afraid.” She yanked her hand back.

“You know, you’ve admitted to being afraid before.” He looked her over.

“Okay, fine, sure. I’m afraid. There. We good?”

He fiddled with his antlers, not saying anything.

“Well,” she said, letting out a noisy breath, “I’m going.”

“I want to talk about it,” he said suddenly.

She rounded on him, annoyed.

“I mean, if you feel ambushed right now, fair enough. You pick when we talk, then.”

Her shoulders slumped as she groaned. “Athos… please.”

“Later tonight? I’ll pick up something and bring it by your place for dinner?”

She shook her head. “You know what? Forget it. Just forget all of it. This is over.”

He raised his eyebrows. “This is over? What is over?”

“This. Us. Like you said, I don’t want to have a baby with you. We had the sex. That’s got to have been enough sex. Let’s just forget about it now. Done. It’ll be easier this way.” She threw herself out of his bedroom.

“Tawny, come on. What do you want me to do differently? You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. We don’t talk about it.”

“What you’re doing right now is the problem,” she said, marching through his apartment.

“What am I doing right now?”

“Placating me,” she roared.

“How dare I?” he said, sarcastic.

She just kept going.

“Tawny,” he called, his voice cracking. “Please.”

Something in that, the vulnerability in his plea, it cut her somewhere. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t let it stop her. She marched out of the apartment without another word and she didn’t let herself start crying until she got into the elevator.

STOCKTON FOUND HIMSELF in a room with his father and his girlfriend more often than he would have liked. At first, it was horrible, too horrible for words.

And it wasn’t as if it got better, exactly, he guessed, just that it got commonplace. He got used to it. He didn’t think about it all the time.

But he and Rora were together after that.

It was easy and nice, and he wondered at himself, sometimes, when he looked around at his life, looked back at all the times when he’d been convinced that this sort of ease and happiness was impossible to attain, when he was convinced he was never going to really attract another woman, not one who’d want to stay with him, not one he could satisfy.

And yet, now, it just seemed so easy, so obvious, so comfortable.

Neither of their mothers were pleased at the arrangement.

Stockton’s mother bemoaned all of it, saying that she knew she should never have allowed Stockton to be raised by Bruin. She was very worried that Stockton was going to abandon her and abandon the family, and she made no secret of her disapproval.

By contrast, Rora’s mother’s dislike of it seemed to only be faint distaste. Rora told him that her mouther would say, offhand, from time to time, “Mark my words, you can’t tie a buck down like an eaglekin or something, Rora. He’s going to flit off and want his freedom. You’ll see.”

But Stockton didn’t flit off and he didn’t regard anything about his relationship with Rora as limiting his freedom.

And then it was December, and it was getting colder, and the season was over and he ran into Athos one morning. The other buck was sans tie in his office, flipping through the pages of a law book—and that in and of itself was weird, because there was no reason to look up laws in books in this day and age. Everything was digitized. The reason the firm kept the shelves of books was for purposes of appearances, near as Stockton could tell.

“Anything I can get for you?” Stockton asked, because he was an intern, and that was his job, to assist the actual lawyers at the firm.

Athos just kept turning the pages, scanning them, but too fast to really be reading anything on the pages.

“Athos?” said Stockton.

Nothing.

Stockton debated just letting it go. If Athos wanted to sit here and leaf through some old book and ignore everything, then fine, that was his business. He even started to leave the room.

And then, sighing, he turned around and went back over to the other buck. He put his hand in the middle of the book. “Hey.”

Athos looked up at him, startled. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, just I’ve been talking to you with no response for five minutes now.”

Athos slumped down in his chair and reached up to run his fingers over the tips of his antlers. “Yeah, right. Sorry. I’m distracted. Personal shit.” He shook himself, shutting the book. “I need to pull myself together. Looking at this is beneath me anyway. I promised her I would not make trouble for her.”

“Woman trouble?” said Stockton.

Athos put the book back on the shelf on the wall behind him. “Nothing, nothing. You don’t want to hear my stupid sob stories.”

Stockton hesitated. “You know, I used to feel like women—all women—were constantly, uh, rejecting me.”

Athos turned to look at him, slowly lifting his chin, looking him over. “You got some sob stories, too.”

“Well, things are good now, though, actually,” said Stockton. “Things are really good. So, I’m just saying, maybe there’s some way for things to get better on your side, too. I don’t know what’s going on with you, of course.”

“I don’t even think it was me she was rejecting,” said Athos. “I don’t know what the fuck she was rejecting. But I think I may have gotten overly attached to this theoretical fawn I was sowing in her womb, and if I did… Damn it, tell me that I cannot sue her for shared custody. Tell me that’s a dick move. My mother would tell me that was a dick move. There’s no reason for a buck to be involved in his child’s life.”

“I mean… I’m glad to know my dad,” said Stockton. “I wish he had not fucked my girlfriend, true, but—”

“Wait, what?”

“You remember that morning when we were having breakfast at the rite, and Bruin was all, ‘I shattered some little doe’s innocence’ or whatever?”

“That was your girlfriend?”

“Not then, she was not. But then she and I got together, and we didn’t know, and then I found out, and then…” Stockton groaned. “Anyway, it was a mess.”

“Yeah,” said Athos, looking horrified.

“We worked through it, though,” said Stockton.

“How?”

“You can’t sue her for custody,” said Stockton with a shrug. “That’s a dick move. But if she’s not rejecting you, what is she rejecting?”

“I don’t know,” said Athos.

“Well, figure it out,” said Stockton. “And then you do that for her, whatever she doesn’t want to do. You take care of that for her, and then she takes you back. She needs you for something. Figure out what it is and be that.”

“No,” said Athos, shaking his head. “That’s the thing. They don’t need us. Women do not need us.”

“Uh huh, right. Which is why gender evolved at all, then. Because having two genders is absolutely pointless,” said Stockton.

Athos blinked rapidly, digesting that. “You know what? I’m good. You have things to do, intern?”

Stockton chuckled. “Yeah, I got things to do. Sure.”

“Good, because if you don’t, I have briefs for you to proofread,” said Athos.

Stockton backed out of the room. “You know, I hope it works out.”

“I’M NOT SAYING that,” Lyall muttered. “I honestly don’t know why I said anything at all. Let’s pretend I didn’t say anything, actually.”

It was morning. Eiren was in his bed, her chest pounding wildly, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was panicked or because she was excited or some odd mixture of both. She should have gone home ages ago, but she hadn’t. She’d waited, drinking coffee in his bed, listening to him talk to her about whatever weird coding problem he was having.

She didn’t know anything about coding, but she’d learned from listening to him.

Typically, she wasn’t much interested in listening to people talk about things she didn’t understand, but the odd thing with Lyall was that everything about him interested her. She could listen to him read the damned phone book and be riveted.

“You don’t mean it,” she whispered. “You have been very clear, all along, that you don’t want a relationship. Why would you even say this?”

“You’re different,” he said. “So, I think we should try it.”

“It’s skipping ten thousand steps,” she said, shaking her head. “We need to date first. We need to go out in public together. We need to meet each other’s families. We need—”

“We go out in public,” he said. “What do you mean by that? It’s not like you’re my dirty deerkin secret.”

“You’ve prowled after me, reluctantly, when I go out and see people I know, and you stay to the shadows, are gruff and won’t talk to anyone, and then insist that we leave early.”

His lips parted. He scrubbed at his jaw. “You tease me, Eiren—”

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “You can’t be like, ‘I can’t control myself around you,’ as an excuse for everything.”

“You like it,” he countered. “You like me out of control and you try to get me that way because it turns you on.”

She bowed her head, unable to really argue that this wasn’t true, because it was. But that was part of why this thing with them, the entire dynamic, it was weird and possibly toxic.

“So, let’s go on a date, then,” he said. “You want me to take you into wolfkin society, to some restaurant where they serve steak? Sure, fine, I’m happy to do that. When do you want to go?”

“And you’re going to introduce me to your family?”

“That’s not about you, that’s about them,” he said. “You really think that I’m, like, ashamed of you?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t mean… I just don’t get why you would say it. Why would you say we should move in together?”

“We should. Move in with me, Eiren.”

“And, of course , you assume I would move in to your house.”

“I own a house, and you live in a crappy apartment,” he said.

“You don’t want me here.”

“I do,” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“You think I’m lying to you?”

“I think you’re convincing yourself of it for some reason, but I don’t know why. Is it because of me?”

“You want it.”

“No, I—”

“You taunt me with it. You are constantly begging for it.”

“Taunt you with what? What are you talking about?”

“I mean, why else are we always doing these… things?” He glared at her, his voice dropping to a growl. “Why else are we always going to these clubs or these bars or whatever? Why else are—”

“You wanted to come to those things, but you never had to,” she said. “Those things are not about you.”

He was quiet. “You like it when I chase you, though.”

“I mean, it’s our thing,” she said.

“What? Because I’m a wolf and you’re a deer. And you think it’s about how I want to hunt you and kill you? Is that what you think?”

She sighed.

“You know I’d never hurt you.”

She laughed. “I don’t know that, and you don’t know that either. And we pretend it’s something different than what it is—”

“You want it, and I’m giving it to you, and you’re—”

“You don’t want us to move in together!” she cried. “You’re just suggesting it because you think if you trap me under your roof, I’ll stop wandering out where you can’t keep your eye on me.”

He drew back. “ No. ” He cleared his throat. “No, I guess… you really just like that shit? You just like going to pub crawls?”

“I wasn’t doing it to torture you, Lyall. You fucking volunteered to accompany me.”

He bowed his head.

She felt antsy. “I’m not moving in. You don’t actually want me to move in. You want to, like, control me, and I guess I’ve always known that, but for some reason, it seemed kind of hot, so I let it slide, but now, you’re doubling down. You want to control all my movements, keep me here, where I’m under your watchful eye, and it’s, like, textbook abusive behavior, and—”

“Hey!” He glared at her. “No. It’s not.” He ran a hand over his ears, looking at the ceiling. “It was really self-centered of me to assume your socializing was an attempt to do some kind of, uh, toxic flirtation with me. I am ashamed that I did think it was about me. That’s… inexcusable.”

She shifted on the bed, fingering the sheets. “It’s okay.”

“So,” he said. “you’re not trying to trap me. And I’m not trying to trap you. I promise. Please believe me.”

She nodded. “Okay, I do.” He wasn’t abusive, that was the thing. Mostly, he was aloof and uninterested. He did not attempt to control her. It was just… the sex… and it was hot. Then she lifted her gaze, horrified. “Wait a second! You thought I wanted to trap you, and you were going to let yourself be trapped?”

He shrugged. “I mean, I thought it was what you wanted.”

“No,” she said. “No, I would never want you to make sacrifices like that for my happiness. Never. I want you to do what you want and me to do what I want, and only that.”

“Eiren, I think making sacrifices for another person’s happiness is what a relationship is.”

“Well, this is not a relationship,” she said. “We agreed that.”

He squirmed. He actually looked hurt.

“Not because I don’t…” She reached out to touch his chest. “I like you, Lyall.”

“I think I love you,” he said matter-of-factly.

Her lips parted. She said nothing at all.

“I knotted for you,” he said in a low voice. “That has to mean something. And I like being around you. And we won’t smother each other. We can live here, and just do our own thing most of the time, and it’ll be fine, and I like having you around. I like your scent and your presence and looking at your fucking adorable tail. Just move the fuck in, Eiren.”

She drew back. “And you’re still asking me to move in.”

“You don’t want to?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

She climbed out of the bed. “I told you. It’s too soon.”

He considered. “Okay, maybe. It’s only been a couple months.”

“But… do we have to?” She lifted a shoulder. “Do we have to be on that whole traditional romantic trajectory?”

“I think so,” he said. “I have a knot for you. I am in love with you. Do you not love me back, is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s just…” She felt like she couldn’t breathe. “It’s a lot, Lyall. It’s a lot to go from casual exclusivity to… to…”

“Okay,” he said. “So, you don’t.” He bowed his head. “Do you, uh, do you hate me?”

“ What? ”

“Well, you jumped to abusive real fast. Maybe you think this is… maybe you want something… maybe—”

“Maybe I want not to be ambushed like this,” she said, and she got out of his bed and gathered up her clothes and ran out onto his porch.

There, in the December morning, she shivered as she pulled her clothes on.

He tugged open the door. “Get back in here. We’re not done.”

“I’m done,” she said. “I am very done.”