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“So is this about you or me?”
“Hell, of course it’s about me. None of us does anything wholly selflessly, do we?”
“Gus, babies are expensive. I was planning on moving out before I found out I was pregnant. When I started looking at everything I was going to need I realized there’s no way. It’s scary.”
He shrugged. “I have money.”
“Oh. And you’re just offering that to me too?”
“We’re getting married.”
“You say that like I should know what that means, but you also laughed at me when I asked about sex. Usually, when people get married they have sex.”
“Why don’t we just skip to the part where we have separate rooms and call it a day?” He smiled. “We’ll be like an old married couple right off.”
“Right.Well.” She felt distinctly unattractive then. Because the whole conversation didn’t seem to be having any sort of effect on him, and in fact, he seemed to find it all rather amusing.
As if sex with her were a joke.
She felt very strongly thatsheshould be the one having issue with it all. As she was younger, and practically still a virgin. And he was...
She looked at his face. She couldn’t even bring herself to think uncharitably about his scars while she was being mean inside of her own heart.
He wasn’t ugly, anyway. She felt guilty for having let herself think that the other day. It was wrong. He wasn’t.
He was him.
Broad and strong and tall. Head and shoulders above other men, pretty much literally. He had a square jaw, and half his face had gone mostly untouched by flame.
“Name only,” he said. “But you got the full benefit of my name. This house, this ranch, my name on the birth certificate. You’re a McCloud. And so is the baby.”
A McCloud.
Given how attached they all were to their names, and what they meant to be each individual family, even though Four Corners was a somewhat blended endeavor, it was a very strange thing to think of. The idea of not being a Sullivan.
Of becoming a McCloud.
Elsie was also going to be a McCloud.
It was very weird. It was very, very weird.
“This is a lot to take in.”
“We can do it whenever you want. There’s no rush.”
“There is, though. I don’t want him coming back. I want us to be married. I want your name on the baby’s birth certificate. He lost his right. To anything. He wanted me to get an abortion.”
“Damn,” Gus said, his words hard. “Did he try to pressure you?”
“No. Worse, he laughed, and just wanted to know if I needed a ride. Like he didn’t even care that much one way or the other. Not desperate to make it go away... Because if I had the baby it was obvious it wouldn’t mean anything to him. I would prefer it if he had been terrible and tried to talk me into it. He didn’t even care that much. I don’t know that I want to be a mom. Not now. But my parents left me.” And suddenly, she felt a burning conviction in her chest that hadn’t really been there before. “My parents left me. They left me here and... I want more for my child. I’m not going to make them feel like an afterthought. I want them to feel like they’re the most important thing. I don’t know how to do that. Because I’m selfish, and I’m just now trying to figure everything out. I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve never been off of this ranch. I don’t know anything, I... I was going to make my own way. But I think I have to do that in a different fashion now. I’m going to make my own way by being the best mother that I can be. And I just don’t ever want this child to feel that kind of dismissive... If he were here, if he had decided to stay, he would’ve become someone like my dad. Just able to up and walk away never thinking of his kids again. I hate it. I hate him. Not because he hurt me. But because he doesn’t care about...” She put her hand on her stomach.
Gus’s face softened. Just a little.
“Alaina, I don’t know that I’m going to be any good as a dad. I don’t know anything. Except I know how not to be one. What I do know is how to protect people. I’ve been doing it all my life. Plus, the uncles will be pretty good.”
That made her laugh. “Uncle Hunter.” And then she felt immediately guilty. “They’ll have to know, though.”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t matter. It’s not going to matter.”
