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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

TAWNY SHOULD HAVE been angry when Athos showed up, but instead, she was just pathetically grateful. She opened up the door to her apartment and let him come inside, and it was all she could do not to break down in tears.

He entered, walking into her hallway, jamming his hands into his pockets.

She shut the door behind him. “You probably shouldn’t have come.”

“I know you want me to go,” he said. “But can you hear me out first? Someone today told me that you’re rejecting something.”

“I’m not rejecting anything,” she said.

“It’s not me you’re rejecting,” said Athos. “And I don’t really think it’s the baby either. I know you’ve wanted a baby for a long time. So, I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think you’re even rejecting pregnancy itself. You can do anything at all, even really hard and difficult things. You’re not one to be frightened or terrified. And maybe you could be rejecting your family, maybe you don’t want to go live with your mother, but there are options to avoid that, and even if you’re rejecting her, that’s no reason to run off on me this morning or not to take the test, so…” He turned around, spreading his hands. “It leaves only one thing, Tawny. You’re rejecting yourself.”

She let out an exasperated breath and pushed past him, further into the apartment. “No!”

“No?” He was coming after her.

They arrived in the living room. She turned in a circle, hugging herself, shaking her head. “Maybe. Sort of. In a kind of way.”

“You think there’s something wrong with you,” he said.

“No, you think there are things wrong with you ,” she said.

“I know there are things wrong with me.”

“You think that you won’t matter again unless you’re part of a couple,” she said. “That’s why you just abase yourself to me, let me practically abuse you—”

“Um, wait a second here, what?”

“Yeah, it’s not weaponized incompetence. You actually don’t think you’re worth anything. And it’s not just you, you happen to think it’s, like, all men.”

He coughed. “You know, a lot of times, I talk out of my ass, and it doesn’t mean that I—”

“Newsflash, Athos, men are not only important for making babies and dying to protect people. Men can do all kinds of things, like, you know, sew baby clothes and mix baby formula and—”

“Come on, Tawny, I know this stuff.”

“It isn’t true, is all I’m saying,” she said. “You feel like you lost your identity when you lost Cira. You and Cira were a unit, and that was who you were. And you think now this is your identity, me and the baby, and you don’t need that, Athos, you don’t.”

He stared at her for a moment, wordless, and then he sat down on the couch in her living room and bowed his head, his antlers pointing at her. “You are rejecting me.”

“No, I’m saying you’re rejecting yourself and you’re settling for me! And I don’t want to be settled for.”

“Settling for you?” he said, his voice muffled. “How could I be settling for someone who has such high standards?”

“Oh, I have impossible standards. You know it. I know it. We all know it. No one sane could stand being in a relationship with me. I’m too loud, too opinionated, too forceful, too brash, too everything.”

“ Are you?” he said in a low voice. “Are you really?”

“Yes, and you just have this incorrect opinion of yourself that you are not enough. So that’s why you put up with me. And I’ve let it go on as long as I could, but eventually we have to face the fact that we’ll eventually be at each other’s throats. You’ll come to resent me. I’ll come to be frustrated with your lack of backbone.”

“You’ll be frustrated with my lack of backbone, sir ,” he said faintly, furrowing his brow.

She laughed softly. “Sir,” she repeated, and when she looked at him now, she felt such a flood of fondness and affection, it robbed her of breath.

“Look, Tawny, I’ll do better,” he said quietly, but he still hadn’t lifted his antlers.

“Don’t do that.”

“Is that my lack of backbone again?”

She sighed.

He was silent.

The silence stretched on.

She got up from the couch.

“Where are you going?” he said.

She left the room and went off to the bathroom where she found the pregnancy test and came back with it. She handed it over.

He looked down at it. “Am I supposed to understand what this means?”

“Well, I’m pregnant,” she muttered. “Clearly. Because we have been having a lot of unprotected sex for a really long time now, so it obviously worked.”

Athos let out a funny noise in the back of his throat.

“You okay?” she said.

He nodded, wordless. His eyes were very bright.

She moved in to touch him. “Hey,” she whispered. “Hey, you had to know that it was going to happen.”

“Got what you wanted from me,” he said, nodding. “Time to digest me for protein now.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” She snatched the pregnancy test back. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You know, you really could have fooled me with the way you’re acting,” he said. “I am so, so confused right now. I think what you’re saying is that you just want me to be, like, more masculine and not let you call all of the shots or something, but—”

“No! You are plenty masculine, you dumbass. What with your rack of antlers and your very functional penis, you know?”

He let out a breath. “Very functional, huh?”

“It won’t work with us, that’s all I’m saying,” she said. “I want it to work. I think you want it to work, but that’s not enough.”

He lifted his head and his antlers pointed up at the ceiling and the look he gave her made her cringe because he obviously thought she was stupid. “How is that not enough?”

“Because I’m too much, like I just said. I am incredibly flawed.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “Well, I’m flawed, too. I thought my flaw and your flaw were actually fitting together kind of perfectly. I’m not enough. You’re too much.” He stuck his fingers together, interlacing them. “That seems sort of perfect, don’t you think?”

Her eyes stung. “B-but… I can’t stop.”

“Can’t stop what?”

“Being too much.”

“No one fucking asked you to!” he practically shouted.

She bowed her head now. Her face crumpled. Her voice was full of tears. “Do you mean that, Athos? Do you really mean that?”

He reached out and touched her shoulder, gentle. “None of us are perfect. I don’t want you to be perfect, Tawny.”

“Sure, you do.”

“No. I just want you to be with me.”

“You’ll handle my flaws if I promise to handle yours?”

“Deal,” he said.

She looked up at him. “It’s like, all this time, I was thinking I needed to be better to attract a better man, but what I should have been doing was looking for the kind of man who would put up with me.”

He laughed. “Fuck, Tawny, it is an honor and a privilege to put up with you.”

She dashed at the tears that were coming out too fast. “Yeah? You mean that?”

He kissed her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I will put up with you as long as you let me,” he said against her lips.

“Well, good, then,” she said. “Let’s put up with each other for a long while, then.”

EIREN PUSHED THROUGH the crowd at the club. It was late. They had just called last call. She had been going out too late every night, ever since she’d left Lyall’s house. She usually compartmentalized well, and she kept these impulsive elements to the weekends, away from her work time, but she’d been staying up too late, drinking too much, and then forcing herself to complete all her work anyway, forcing herself not to let her work suffer, burning the candle at both ends.

She had known, after she left, she wouldn’t hear from him. Despite the fact that he was a wolf, and their interaction was always a level of his chasing her, he only chased when he knew she wanted him to.

He didn’t text her.

She didn’t text him.

She couldn’t tell anyone about the situation, because it sounded batshit insane. My casual fuck buddy, with whom I am obsessed and who I think about constantly, told me he loved me and said we should move in together, and I ran off on him.

She couldn’t tell anyone because she did not know why she didn’t want that. She did not know why she could not tell him that she loved him too, because she did.

She didn’t know, and ergo, drinking every night.

Just to distract herself from all of it.

But now, as she pushed through the crowd, her new drink spilling a little as she was jostled here and there, she saw him.

Lyall was lounging against the wall, looking out of place in his stupid flannel shirt and his jeans, like some kind of lumberjack wolf in a nightclub. He did not belong here.

She stopped in front of him. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“No idea,” said Lyall, giving her a toothy grin. “But it’s a public place, so I have just as much right to be here as you do.”

She looked him up and down. Why did he have to look so good?

“You could run away, of course,” said the wolf lazily. “You know what happens when you run from me.”

“Is that a threat?” she said.

His grin widened.

Her stomach turned over and she was flooded with that feeling this man always gave her, that feeling of fear and desire all mixed together. “We are bad for each other,” she said to him.

“You know what I think is that you’re bad for yourself ,” said Lyall. “I think you’re bad for yourself, and I’m actually good for you.”

She shook her head. “That is the most fucked up thing anyone has ever said to me. I am not bad for myself.”

“You are,” he said. “You’re always punishing yourself for no reason, blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault. I bet you have been drinking too much all week and telling yourself that you’re irrational and that you ruined everything between us.” He plucked the drink out of her hands and took a drink of it. “Am I right?”

“No,” she said, but she wouldn’t look at him.

“It was my fault,” he said. “Everything you said was right. I was skipping steps. I was trying to control you. I wanted to mold you into an image more of my liking… but then I realized that would suck, because you wouldn’t be you anymore. And I’m in love with you.”

She lifted her gaze to his, biting down on her bottom lip. “I love you, too, you know.”

“You don’t have to say that,” he said, taking a big gulp of her drink.

She snatched it back. “Who said you could have this?”

“I think you’ve had enough,” he said, but he didn’t take it from her. “You know, you’re good for me, too. I need to get out of the house sometimes, actually. But, uh, you could stand to stay in sometimes.” He reached out and caught his finger in one of her belt loops. He pulled her close, and she found herself nestled against him, his huge thighs flanking her body. He licked the outline of her ear. “I was wrong, okay? I like it. The drama.”

She tried to pull away.

He didn’t let her. “You like it, too.”

“You want to change me,” she said in a tight voice.

“I just want to chase you,” he said, and he let go of her. “Can I?”

She drew in a breath, looking around the room, her head spinning from too much drinking, and then back to him, to his scent and his presence and his fucking flannel. “But you want to catch me?”

“Catch and release?” He shrugged.

She lifted her chin. “We can’t keep that up forever.”

“Let’s try.”

She let out a breath, and she felt oddly tender and vulnerable and, well, seen. She couldn’t trust her voice, so she just nodded as her eyes stung.