Page 81 of Made in Love and Blood

“You can’t just tell me something like that and not expect me to react, Carina. Why the hell would my daughter be on the pill at fourteen?”

“Because I took her to the doctor and put her on it.”

“Why?”

“See, you keep doing that. You keep raising your voice like that. And when I do it back, you’re not gonna like it, Sal.”

“Yeah, well—”

“The girl was bleeding into her mattress every month for three days, and then still bleeding heavy for another seven days after. If you can’t separate female reproductive health and pregnancy prevention, that is not my problem.”

“Right,” he returned bitingly, “because you would know all about preventing pregnancies, wouldn’t you?”

Her mouth popped open, and when her gasp hit his ears, he immediately regretted what just came out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, I swear to God.”

“You sonofabitch!”

“Carina...”

“You prick,” she snarled, standing from the stool and taking a step his way.

Yeah, that had been bad. Way over the line.

“I’m sorry, babe. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just been a shitty, long day, and that’s not me trying to justify it, but I’m not thinking clearly right now.”

“Clearly? Obviously. Did you hit your fucking head again or something?”

“Carina, come on, don’t be like that.”

“I can’t believe you,” she screamed at him, throwing her arms wide as if to make her point. “And what’s crazy—fucking insane, Salvatore—is that I’ve been waiting for you to get home all day! All day, it’s wild. Because I’ve had something to tell you and there’s literally no one else for me to tell except you. And how ironic that you would say such a thing to me, not even knowing what I do right now.”

Every step she took, he’d backed up. Until then.

Salvatore hesitated. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Carina stopped coming forward, too. Her hand clapped over her mouth, but she laughed behind it. A manic, almost desperate, laugh. Her wild gaze flitted around the kitchen, at anything but him. She’d been off lately. Not long, a week or so. Up late in the mornings. Later than usual for her. Skipping breakfast, but she did that frequently enough for it to be concerning, anyway. He only started to take note of that behavior if it extended into lunch and then dinner, too. But her anorexia had been stable since her early thirties after an extended stay at the hospital where, for the first time, they force fed her through tube feeding. She swore that would never happen again, and so far, it hadn’t.

“You’re okay, right?” he asked quietly.

Carina outright glared at him at the question. “Fuck you! You don’t get to ask me that after what you just said, and you know it.”

“Carina, I’m just trying to—”

“I’m pregnant, Sal.”

Nope.

His ears just chose not to work. He didn’t understand like his brain misfired.

“What?”

“Pregnant! P-R-E-G—”

“I know how to fucking spell it, Carina, but I don’t understand how it fucking happened! Do you see the difference?”

Her face scrunched up in a way that might be cute, if not for the situation. “Are you serious right now? Please tell me you’re joking. Like we haven’t been fucking for the last month and a half? You don’t know how it happened?”