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“Yes, Julius,” I say, rolling over to face him.
“Are you pregnant?”
“I—” I stop talking in order to lick my bottom lip that suddenly feels dry and chapped. “I might be.”
His arms band tighter around me as he digs his nose into my hair, breathing me in. “Charlee said your clothes aren’t fitting anymore, but, baby, I can feel your ribcage. You’ve lost weight.”
“I’m a conundrum. What can I say?” I tease.
This is the first time since the ordeal that I’ve felt like carrying on a conversation. If that doesn’t say how pertinent Julius is in my life, the fact that he makes me want to feel something other than numbness, then nothing else can express that.
He is the oxygen in my lungs. He’s become the key component to my survival. Mera’s all I’ve ever had, and Julius is right up there with her. He’s surpassed her in a way. Not that that’s lessened her importance to me, but he’s enhanced my viewpoint on the outside world and has opened my heart to love.
Even Luca has wormed his way in there. He’s not my best friend, he’s not my life partner, but he’s my family—my brother. What a brother should be, unlike mine. He’d never sell me to the highest bidder. Mera, as my sister, neither would she, and that’s why I think nobody’s tried to infiltrate this stronghold.
They don’t know how.
They haven’t been told the secrets, which is why I’m in melancholic agony. I know that their loyalty to me means that they’re being tortured for that information.
Neither of them will give.
They’d die first, and that can’t happen. I’d never be able to deal with the survivors' guilt that comes with it.
* * *
I must’ve fallen asleep in Julius’s arms mid-conversation, because when I awaken, Charlee is sitting on the bed next to me with a book in her hand.
“We got you one of those fancy pregnancy tests from the pharmacy. Did you know you have to ask a pharmacist for them? They don’t put those suckers on the shelf like they do condoms. I’ve never seen Bull’s face so red from embarrassment. It’s a look I’ll never forget and one he’ll never live down,” Charlee rambles, a mirthful smirk on her face and in her eyes. “It was hilarious, Shayne.”
“Thank you?” I say, fashioned more as a question instead of a statement. Now, Bull’s not the only one embarrassed.
“No time like the present, Shayne.”
“Now? You want me to take it now?” I ask, horrified that she’ll be on the other side of the door, listening to me pee.
“Grab life by the horns, Shayne. No time like the present,” she rebuts, waving her hand toward the attached bathroom.
Groaning, I roll out of bed. On my way to the bathroom, a picture catches my attention. “Do you think she’d hate me?” I ask my friend, stroking my finger down her ma’s face.
“For what? What would she hate you for, Shayne?”
“For this,” I say, gripping my lower belly with my free palm.
“Shayne, I’m gonna tell you something about my ma, okay?” She waits for me to nod, and once I do, she continues. “My ma was unique. She was the most generous, loving, and forgiving woman who ever lived. She loved Pops with a voraciousness that’s unheard of. All she’d want for him was to be happy, to find love again, and live his life with that woman at his side. She’d never view you as competition. If anything, she’d see you as an extension of herself. Anyone truly devoted to Pops, a woman who loved him just as fiercely, she’d be supportive of. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was playing matchmaker from the other side of the veil.”
“I’ve heard she was eccentric.” I giggle, remembering some of the peculiar stories Julius has shared with me of her “spiritual”, or as the guys have called it in passing when her name came up, her “freaky” abilities that she attributed to her Native American ancestry.
She sounds like she was an amazing woman—someone I wish I’d had the chance to meet. Although, I do have to say, there’s something familiar about her, as if I’ve met her in my dreams. But that’s ridiculous, right? She didn’t know me so that’s not a probability.
I say a quiet thank you to her as I march into the bathroom, determined in my demeanor.I can do this. It won’t be bad no matter what that little test says.
* * *
“What does pink mean again?” I ask Charlee as I pace the bedroom. She has the directions in her hands as I hold the testing strip in mine.
“It means you’re knocked up, have a bun in the oven. You’re gonna have a baby in T minus nine months give or take,” she teasingly remarks. “I’m gonna be a big sister!”
“Your dad is—”
