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After I got the test results, maybe it seemed like a miracle or something, and maybe it seemed like I couldn’t spit in the face of it and end the pregnancy. Maybe I felt like the baby had to live. But I had already been going to have the baby, regardless, and that’s the truth.

Aborting a child because they’re going to die in their thirties or forties seems insane. Who wouldn’t rather have thirty years than none?

I supposed I had to agree with her there.

He leaned over and read over my shoulder. “We didn’t talk about it. It came as this horrible surprise when she started having symptoms and I found out she’d known all along.”

I sat back at the table, glaring at the manifesto. “It makes it worse.”

“Does it? If she had done it because I was the only person she could successfully mate with, you’d forgive her?”

“Well, no.” I sighed again. I looked at him. “I can’t forgive either of you, that’s the thing.”

He bowed his head.

I turned back to my drink.

This seemed to have entirely ended the conversation, and I wasn’t sure if I should change the subject again, think of something else to say, but maybe that was it, maybe there wasn’t anything else to say. I could not forgive him.

“I don’t forgive myself either,” he said.

“Well, what? You want a medal for feeling bad?”

He drank beer, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I want at all. I want space. I want time. I want to think this through and try to figure out how I feel about everything. And you’re here, and I just…” He focused on me, and I scented it, his arousal, his desire for me.

I crossed my legs and looked pointedly away. “Stop that.”

“Would if I could.” His voice was husky.

I wrapped both hands around my glass of rum and Coke and I squeezed so tight that I thought maybe I could actually break the glass with my bare hands, but that did not happen. The glass did not break. It was whole and cool and covered in condensation. I breathed.

“You wanted her,” I finally came out with. My voice was so choked.

“Didn’t we do this already?” His voice was pained.

“Why?” I said, turning to look at him. “What was wrong with me?”

“Hell, Leo, nothing,” he said. “You never wanted two things at once?”

“I’m not a thing.”

“Never wanted anyone besides me?” He raised his eyebrows, a challenge.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I never did anything about it.”

“It seems to be the sticking point,” he said. “If I’d done it because I had no choice, because she forced it on me, and because I was out of my head, then you could forgive me—”

“I don’t think so!”

“Well, you did,” he said. “It happened in, what, late October of your senior year, and you stayed with me, let me sleep in your bed, slept every night with my…” His voice dropped very low. “With me in your mouth,” he breathed.

That went through me like violence. I shuddered in disgust and shame and sheer fucking arousal. My pelvis tingled.

His nostrils flared. “I mean, fuck, Leo, why did I do that with you? Did I like it? Did I like being the one thing that made you feel better, if only temporarily? Did I like that it was my dick?”

“You did.” I glared at him.

He nodded. “I did.”