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And I didn’t know what shocked me more, the fact that he used my first name or that I told him, “Parent Trap. The Lindsay Lohan version.”
Without a word, he lifted the remote and found it on the streaming service. Then he folded his arms over his chest, lowering down to rest his head on the back of the couch.
I studied him for a minute. How he wetted his lips with his tongue. The same tongue that mere moments ago formed my name. We’d never first-named each other to our faces. It was always our last names or “demon spawn” or “asshole.” Never Taylor or Dean.
Calling me by my first name felt intimate. But I supposed what we were doing now, sitting here in my darkly lit living room after he escorted me to a clinic to get an abortion, was more intimate than anything I’d ever done in my life.
It was more than I’d shared with anyone else. Ever.
“Thank you,” I said, and he turned his gaze to me, the colors of the television flickering over the planes of his face. His forehead that often wrinkled in thought, his nose that was ever so slightly upturned, giving him a boyish air, his square chin and angled jaw covered by the neatly trimmed beard, it all came together in the exact right amount of handsomeness. Not stop-dead hot, but the kind of handsome that eased you in, lulled you into comfort. He was the kind of handsome that would age well.
How unfortunate.
Though he didn’t verbally respond to me, he slowly reached out his hand as if asking permission. When I didn’t stop him, he placed his hand on my leg, patting it over the blanket, and left it there.
Until the cramps started, and I sat up, curling over.
“You okay?” he asked, and I shook my head, breathing through the twisting pain in my abdomen and back. “No, of course you’re not okay. That was a dumb question. What do you need?”
I winced, pressing my hand against my stomach. “I have a heating pad in the closet in the bathroom.”
He immediately hopped up, his footsteps fading and then returning. “Where do you want it?”
I set it under the waistband of my lounge pants, but he stopped me. “Wait. Wait.”
He searched through the drawers of my kitchen, finding a dish towel. “Use this so you don’t get scorched.” He kneeled on the floor, telling me, “Lie down.” When I complied, he lifted up my sweatshirt a few inches and laid the towel across my torso before setting the heating pad on top of it. He tucked it back under the band of my pants. “How’s that?”
“Good.” But I grimaced.
“What else do you need?”
“Nothing.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, his mouth twisting to the side, until he broke up the quiet with a question. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
I didn’t need to know whohimwas, and I shook my head. “You think I should’ve had a baby with a guy I met at a Christmas party?”
“No, but he should be here. At least.”
I swiped my hand over my clammy forehead, breathing through a fresh wave of cramps. “So he could be about as useful as he was that night? No, thank you.”
Dean smirked. “It was terrible, huh?”
“Really? You thinkthisis the time for jokes?”
He tucked a few strands of hair behind my ear, and if his fingertip lingered at the bottom of my lobe, I was sure I was hallucinating from the pain. Another reason why I couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut. The honesty tumbled out like I was under some sort of spell. “I forgot to take my birth control pill that day. Which I don’t ever forget to do, but I guess I was distracted.”
“By the octopus tattoo? Understandable. Distracted me too.”
An agonized moan escaped my throat when my stomach constricted, and pain shot down the backs of my legs.
Dean wrapped a gentle hand around my arm, squeezing it reassuringly. “You don’t have to explain it to me, but if it’ll make you feel better…”
I angled my head, meeting his gaze to admit yet another truth I’d buried. “I don’t know for sure that he used a condom.”
“What?” The single word echoed through my apartment.
I grimaced in discomfort but also in embarrassment. “I saw it. I watched him open it and put it on, but it was after he was like ‘Are you sure? We don’t need it.’”
