Page 131 of Use Me Up

“Clearly you want her,” I say. “That’s very fucking obvious. What no one understands is why.”

He bows his head and chuckles to himself. He rubs the back of his neck, and when he raises his gaze to mine, he’s smiling.

It isn’t fair, what I’m saying to him. Gatlin and I have had all those conversations about being drawn to Ellis and Kane, about how they are exciting precisely because of their rough edges, how we all balance each other, and I can see it’s the same with Callie and my brother.

Is it because she’s female? Am I being too hard on her because of some Madonna/whore complex in my head? If so, I should probably stop. I’m in a relationship with three men. What is Callie’s crime? Sleeping with Ellis when she was married? It was not as if I am faithful to one man myself. Sure, I can claim it’s different, but how different is it? I know that Ellis gets crazy jealous of me with the others sometimes. I know it, and I guess I tell myself that Ellis deserves it.

Gatlin doesn’t get jealous of me, but he does get jealous of Kane. And Kane… his jealousy is always pushed down because to admit jealousy is to admit vulnerability. Kane does not like to admit he’s vulnerable.

My relationship is not perfect, and I am not better than Callie.

On the other hand, whatever, fuck that, I am way better than she is. Way better.

Witness the fact I have a pack, as a beta.

Of course, that’s not really because of me, it’s because Ellis wanted me.

And Ellis, the reason he wanted me, at first, was because he was sure I wouldn’t put up a fight, because I was a pathetic doormat.

So…

“Let’s not talk about this anymore,” I say to Andrew.

“Okay,” he says, bemused.

“Why does anyone fall in love with anyone?” I say. “Love is madness.”

“Totally,” says Andrew. “Love is madness.”

“Just… you can handle her, though?”

Andrew gives me one of his pure alpha looks. His voice goes scoured. “Oh, I can handle her.”

Yeah, maybe I even get it. She’s a challenge. He’s an alpha. He likes a challenge. The fact she keeps him on his toes is part of why he loves her.

I know that Gatlin is going to be over-the-moon about the baby, but I’m surprised at how excited Kane is, and I’m surprised at how all-in Ellis is.

Ellis is a surprising sort of person, really, but he is an omega, and maybe some kind of instinct kicks in, I don’t know, but once there’s a baby on the way, Ellis is all about making very comfortable and secure homes for the baby, because the baby ends up having several homes.

This is probably down to a bit of privilege, I guess, that there are four of us, and we have three different homes to live in?

Mostly, it’s two, because we move into a house that is only a ten-minute drive from Gatlin and Kane when I’m only four months along. Ellis decorates the entire place himself. He asks for my say-so about things because he’s not a dick, but then he does all the work himself. He paints and puts up wallpaper and sits around screwing together furniture and putting down peel-and-stick tiles in the bathroom and adding new light fixtures, all of it.

He turns that house into our little oasis. The nursery? It’s a thing of beauty. He’s amazing.

And Kane? The minute Kane knows there’s a baby, I am buried in gifts. He gets me every single thing a woman could conceivably need while she’s pregnant. I have all the mint candies and ginger candies and seabands, and I barely have a chance to get morning sickness before Kane is overkilling the cure. I have pregnancy pillows and an entire new wardrobe of adorable maternity clothes.

Gatlin subscribes all of us to some pregnancy email list that sends us a message telling us what fruit the baby is now the same size as. Your little bundle of joy is now the size of a kiwi, that kind of thing. He plays relaxing music for my belly, resting his hand there and talking directly to the baby from practically day one.

My favorite afternoons are ones where I spend them curled up against Gatlin, with one of his hands absently on my swelling belly. The afternoons where he’s just talking to the baby, telling the baby stories, being the dad already, and I can feel his love enveloping our little one, like a huge, warm hug.

Or maybe my favorite afternoons are the ones where we talk about the future, where we dream about more babies, growing our family, Ellis making homemade baby food in sexy aprons, Gatlin reading the kids stories at night before bed, Kane buying an entire playground for the backyard, me kissing boo-boos better and cheering the kids on as they learn to ride bikes.

I feel it, deep down, that this is forever, that we are lucky to have found each other, that our pack is something special and perfect. That it is ours, and that we have each other always.

I am anti-homebirth, firmly anti-homebirth, but this is probably just because of Callie and Andrew overselling it to the point of nausea, so I spend a bunch of time talking about how much I am going to have the most modern, medically assisted birth of all time.

And then we end up deciding on a birthing center with a big tub and I hold off on getting the epidural so long that they say it’s too late, and I end up giving birth in the water and all of my mates are there, pulling our tiny girl up to the surface so that she can scream at the top of her lungs for the first time.