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“Did you hear me?” she said.
I choked, trying to suck in air to speak to her. “You’rewhat?”
Suddenly, the holoprojected image of her pulled back, and there she was, there was her rounded belly, and she wasreallypregnant, so that was… exactly the right time for… I made a wheezing noise, gaping at her.
“Holston?”
“Fuck,” I said.
“That’s what you have to say?”
“It’s mine?” I said in a tiny voice.
“No, I’m contacting you to tell you that some other man knocked me up!” She was sarcastic and angry.
I winced. I rubbed my forehead, trying to gather my thoughts.
Her image changed back to just her head and shoulders.
I reached up to find my antlers, rubbing my forefinger over the tip of one. “Uh, you’ve known this a while.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re probably mad about that.”
“You said your implant—”
“I know, I should have told you then, because it fell out—”
“It fellout?”
“I was pregnant already by then,” she said. “I was kind of in denial about it for a long time—”
“You knew when I left,” I said in a low voice. “You let me go and you knew.”
She didn’t say anything.
I could have been angry about this, but I wasn’t. I only felt hurt. The ache in me opened up into a gaping well of pain. When I spoke, my voice was scratchy. “You, uh, you thought I wouldn’t want it? Fuck, when I said that thing about terminating, I didn’t mean I’d try tomakeyou do that.”
“No, no, I never thoughtthat.”
“I would never tell you what to do with your own body, shei, I would never—”
“Holston, I know that.”
“Okay, so why didn’t you tell me, then?” She waspregnant. Fuck.
“I guess I didn’t want to bother you,” she said.
I scratched my jaw. I was very confused right now. “Bother me? You’re pregnant.”
“I know that.”
“So,you’rebothered. How would it botherme?”
“I guess I thought… you had volunteered to leave everything behind to have a relationship with me, and then I’m pregnant,” she said. “I thought you’d do it again. And I didn’t want to be the person who made you give up the things you care about, not when we had already seen that it wouldn’t work.”
“You wanted me to stay,” I whispered.
“No!”
