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“Grow up and deal with it, jerk-off,” Davy snarled. “You asked.”
“True, true,” Sean soothed. “Sorry. So can’t she just, you know, do a test, or something? Put you out of your misery?”
“Not yet.” Davy’s voice was clipped. “But we’re pretty sure.”
“Oh.” Sean pondered this news. “Uh, well? So? Shouldn’t I be crossing my fingers? Isn’t this a good thing? A cousin for Kevvie. Cool. They can tumble around on the rug like a couple of puppies.”
Davy shook his head. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Sure, it’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. Fantastic. Yeah. But I can’t—I can’t—”
“You can’t have sex with your wife because you think she may or may not be pregnant? That’s pretty medieval.”
“Yeah, that’s what Margot thinks.” Davy stared down at his fists, clenched before him on the table as if he were trying to hang onto something invisible.
“It’s not going to be like it was with Mom,” Sean said cautiously. “Living out here with Dad was like living in another century. Margot’ll have third millennium medical care, from a major medical center—”
“I know that.” Davy’s voice was taut. “I fucking know that.”
Davy’s eyes were shut, but Sean knew what his brother saw. Their mother, bleeding to death from an ectopic pregnancy, while the truck tires spun out in three feet of snow. His father, trying to stanch the blood. Ten-year-old Davy had been driving, or trying to.
Sean, Kev, and Connor had stayed behind in the snow shrouded house. He’d been four. Old enough to know that something terrible was happening. It was one of his earliest memories. Maybe not the earliest, because he remembered Mom, like a glow in the back of his mind. Or rather, he remembered remembering her. He shook the poignant feeling away. “Statistics are on your side. Women these days—”
“I know the statistics,” Davy said. “I’ve informed myself, Margot’s informed me. I’ve been lectured, scolded, screamed at.”
“Ah. I see,” Sean murmured.
“When she told me…Christ.” He rubbed his eyes. “She thought I’d be happy. Hell, I thought I’d be happy. But I almost lost my lunch.”
“Whoa,” Sean murmured. “Drag.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Ever since then it’s like I can’t breathe.” He swallowed, audibly. “I close my eyes, and I see blood.”
Sean whistled. “Ouch. I can see as how that might put a crimp in a guy’s boner.”
“This is not a joke,” Davy growled.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Sean touched his brother’s shoulder. It was rigid as steel cable, vibrating with a charge that was approaching lethal. The guy had to chill, before he hurt himself.
Or worse, wrecked something irreplaceable.
It had been such a relief, to see his tight-assed brother finally loosen up and get happy. He was so in love with Margot, he was goofy with it. He was having fun for the first time in his more or less grim life.
No way in hell was he going to let Davy fuck that up.
He folded his arms over his chest, considering his options.
“I don’t know why it threw me.” Davy sounded lost. “Considering how much we get it on, it’s amazing it hasn’t happened sooner.”
“Got it on, that is,” Sean corrected. “Past tense. That’s all over for you, buddy. Kiss your dick goodbye. You’re never having sex again.”
Davy glared at his brother, slit-eyed. “Do not fuck with me, Sean.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he assured his brother. “Neither will Margot. Nobody will, being as how Mr. Big-n-Friendly’s gone south, leaving your bride to shrivel alone, sexually unfulfilled. What a waste. Poor Margot.”
“Keep your trash mouth away from Margot, punk.”
“What an asshole, letting that sexy lady sleep alone,” Sean mused. “But she’ll land on her feet. Just looking at Margot makes a guy want to procreate. Being as how you’re giving her all this breathing room, it shouldn’t take her long to find someone capable of—nngh!”
Bam, he was clamped to the wall, Davy’s forearm pressing his trachea. Good. He struggled to breathe. It worked. He’d goaded the grizzly out of its cave. Now all he had to do was not get killed.
