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“Maybe,” I allowed. “But the night you and I got together was closer to my ovulation date. Roughly, anyway. So it could conceivably be any one of you.”
“Conceivably,” Gage spoke, but for once the joke was mirthless.
“Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
The men stood there for a long time, staring curiously at the swabs. I held them out, spread in three directions, pointing at each of them. But no one moved.
“Look, I know how stupidly formal this is,” I said, “but I need to be sure. We didn’t go through a fertility clinic or anything, obviously. Still, I’m willing to take on one-hundred percent responsibility insofar as custody, financials, and such. Once paternity is establish, I’ll have my lawyers draw up a petition to surrender parental righ—”
“You’re kidding, right?” Maverick interrupted. “That’swhy you’re here?”
“What?”
“You want our DNA? You came all the way out here for that?”
I was confused, tired, disorientated. Taken aback, I shrugged.
“So you didn’t come here to see or talk to us,” Gage squinted. “You came here for cheek swabs… and that’sit?”
My mouth went as dry as the desert outside. All of sudden I wished I’d taken the water.
“I… I just wanted—”
“You wanted what?” said Maverick. “A baby? Well seems like you got one. But you don’t want a father, do you? No, not that. You just want a donor. A donor who walks away.”
“But it’s always been that way,” I shot back. “Nothing’s changed. This is always what I wanted.”
“Yeah?” Gage offered. “And what about whatwewant?”
I hated seeing Gage like this. He’d always been the one to make me smile, make me laugh. Right now though, he looked confused. Hurt. Even angry.
Fuck.
Gathering myself, I tried to examine it logically. I still didn’t understand their reactions at all. They knew why I’d come here the first time, they knew what I’d been seeking. Devyn had even offered it, but Devyn was being uncharacteristically silent.
I stood half in the archway, still refusing to enter the room. The guys took turns staring at each other in silence. For a very long time, no one spoke.
“Well… I guess congratulations, then.”
Devyn had finally spoken, from the other side of the kitchen. Leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, his face was stoic. His expression entirely unreadable.
“Do what she wants.”
He took the lead, plucking his swab from my hand. Locking eyes with me, he opened his mouth and dragged the cotton tip through the inside of one cheek, twisting it in both directions. I wondered how many times he’d done this for the military. More than once, it looked like.
By the time he’d reinserted the swab into the protective tube, the others were doing the same.
“There,” Maverick said when everything was finished. He was the last to hand me his swab. “You got what you wanted.”
I tried to swallow but I couldn’t. I could only nod. “T—Thank you.”
“Is there a hotel we could drop you off at?” he asked.
His words were cold. Clinical. Gone was the warmth, the levity, the affection.
“No. I have a car.”
“Good then,” he said turning away. “Drive safe.”
