Page 115 of Rogue Riders Duet

“Still. You’d know.” She pulls out her phone. “Let’s check. I’m not a doctor, but Google and I are basically interns by now.”

I groan. “This is hell.”

Piper scrolls, mumbling to herself. “Well, apparently, it is possible. I’ve had a lot of female riders in here who don’t get their period regularly. All the training, stress, hormone imbalances… it messes everything up. Maybe yours were all scrambled and now they’re rebalancing?”

I shoot her a look. “Why would they? I’m not training less. If anything, I’m doing more than before.”

“Okay… maybe not then,” she admits. “Maybe you have a stomach bug? Ate something bad. Magnesium overdose? You guys drink those giant recovery drinks like it’s your job. Normal people would hang over the toilet for days.”

I perk up. “That could actually be it. I chugged a full bottle this morning before practice.”

“There you go,” she says, visibly relieved. “Let’s go with that, but let me work on your hip a little if it’s giving you that much hell.”

I nod stiffly and flop back with a grunt, pulling up my hoodie to free my hip and stomach, and trying to breathe through the steady throb in my abdomen. As Piper starts working, her fingers move too precisely to be soothing. She finds a knot on my side near my hipbone and presses, and a bolt of pain shoots down my leg like fire.

I hiss. “Jesus, woman.”

“Breathe. I’m not even going hard yet.”

I lie there in pained silence while she keeps going, her thumbs digging into muscle that feels like it’s just one big bruise.

“I’m sorry you can’t have kids,” she murmurs quietly after a while.

I bark a laugh, half-real, half-reflexive-pain-response. “Oh, that’s the least of my problems.”

“You don’t want kids?”

“Nope. Never wanted them. Can’t see children in my future.”

Not that I have a future anyway, I think but don’t say.

Piper presses her palm down into the joint of my hip and grinds into it, and a raw, involuntary curse claws its way out of my throat.

She winces. “Sorry, tight as hell there.”

“No shit,” I grit out, my jaw clenched so hard it aches. “What about you? Do you want kids?”

“Sure, with the right man.”

“The right man like… my brother?”

Her cheeks pinken. “I really said that, didn’t I?”

I smirk. “You so did.”

“Did he… say anything?”

“Nope.” I shake my head. “But he’s still sick as fuck, so maybe you’re lucky, and he thinks it was a fever dream.”

“You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

“Yep.”

She groans. “He’s so going to remember it, isn’t he?”

“Absolutely.”

“Fuck.”