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“Why couldn’t I have told you to stay? Why couldn’t I have let you know about the baby?” I looked up at him. “If I’d told you I was pregnant, you wouldn’t have left.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. But we’d hate each other right now, because I would have felt trapped, and I would have blamed you.”
“You think…?”
“Maybe not?” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We had this crazy thing, and now it’s all…” He pulled back to look at my belly.
“I had this really dumb idea,” I said.
He looked up to meet my gaze. “Huh?”
“About… us and about how to…” I shrugged. “Why does it have to be all or nothing, you know?”
He tilted his head back. “All or nothing?”
“Okay, well, that resistance outpost where I’ve been living and doing admin work? I don’t really like it there either.” It was this very old building that was constructed right into a cliff and almost none of the rooms even had windows, and I sometimes felt claustrophobic there. “To be honest, one of the things I always liked about working for the resistance was traveling and going new places?” I didn’t even want to admit this out loud, because of course my resistance work was selfless, no matter what it was that Holston said about it, even if he made it out like I was doing it to make myself feel special. “And before I was pregnant, I did field work and I traveled. I’d get a new assignment somewhere, and then I’d be on my way there? But having a baby, it means I need to be settled, and I can’t go out in the field, and…” I sighed really heavily. “I can do the admin stuff. I don’t mind the tedium. It’s fine.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. He was confused.
“Sorry. I got off topic a little bit there. I guess what I was sort of thinking was…” I let out a breath. “I could do a lot of that admin stuff anywhere. They could send me encrypted files. I could pore over transcripts or listen to recordings wherever? I don’t need to be… there.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “What are you saying?”
“A-and if I had someone, like a person who I could really trust, to take care of the baby, like after she was older. Like not within the first gecycle or anything, but when she was weaned if I decide to breastfeed or… or… well, I could go on field missions again.” I ducked down my head.
He shifted on his hooves. “Are you saying that you want…? Whatdoyou want, shei?”
“Would you let me do that? Let me leave to go on a field mission and be the primary caretaker for our daughter? Let me go do dangerous things and leave you here and not be a mom for… I don’t know, maybe fogemoons at a time?”
“‘Let’ you?”
I gave him a little smile. “Okay, well, you know what I mean.”
“You going to move in with me, shei? Are you going to beherewithme?That’s what you’re saying?” His voice cracked.
“But not all the time. I would sometimes go, and you would sometimes go. You’d go on long hunting trips, just you in the woods, and I would go on missions for the resistance, and we would each let the other person have that.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s, um, that’s… pretty much the most perfect compromise I couldthinkof. You’re brilliant, shei.”
“I-I didn’t mean to invite myself to live with you.”
“No, please, invite yourself anywhere. I want you here. I want that more than anything.”
He caressed my face.
I tilted my head back.
Our lips met.
I felt it everywhere, a shivery joining of goodness that assured me that everything was going to be okay, finally, after all.
I pulled away. “Thisisa good idea, isn’t it?”
“It’s definitely a good idea,” he said. “We all need to feel like we matter, and sometimes we need more than just one thing. Or one person. A relationship might not be enough, and a job might not be enough, and a child might not be enough, but you might need… need them all?”
“You’rebrilliant,” I said.
He laughed softly.
