Chapter Eighteen
Shaw
We had moved right away. As in a week after Gatlin accepted the job, so I’d been traveling back and forth dealing with subletting my apartment and selling Gatlin’s house.
At first, I’d asked him if he didn’t want to just rent it out in case something went wrong, but he was adamant about throwing ourselves fully into our new life and new city.
My lease would end in six months and either the tenant would apply with the management company to stay or leave.
But since they had been approved by them already, as required under my contract, it would no longer be my problem.
“A house in another city with a tenant is just one more thing to deal with,” he said. “We don’t need the hassle factor.”
Sometimes my mate was all alpha, and since he was generally right, I had to go along with him.
That two-hour drive each way just to handle things now was a huge PITA.
Not something I wanted to do on a regular basis.
A rental involved a lot of maintenance and responsibility.
If we had one, and I actually wanted to use the money from the house to buy one down the line, it should be local.
On the way back from one of these trips, I drove through a fast-food joint and bought a sandwich and fries to eat in the car.
It tasted great. Going down. But by the time I pulled into our driveway, I didn’t even make it in the house before getting sick into the bushes.
And then again once I reached the bathroom.
Covered in a cold sweat, I lay down to rest. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt my stomach off, which was why I got grilled chicken instead of deep fried.
But it was the first time I’d actually gotten sick.
Much better by dinnertime, I prepared baked macaroni and cheese with ham and a salad.
My alpha would be working evenings at least some of the time once the club opened, so I was enjoying his daytime schedule while it was coming together.
But when we sat down to eat, the food that had smelled so appetizing, repulsed me.
I pushed the plate away. “Ugh. Does this taste right to you?”
Gatlin looked at me in surprise, his fork in his hand. “It’s delicious. I was going to ask you to make it every week. Why? You don’t like it?”
“It’s weird. Slimy. Smells bad.” I swallowed down the bile climbing my throat. “I had an upset stomach earlier. Maybe I’ve got a bug, or the sandwich I had for lunch was what was off.”
“Maybe.” He pushed the noodles around on his plate for a moment. “You only felt bad today?”
“Only—pardon me for saying this while you’re eating—only threw up today. Twice.”
I expected him to be concerned. He was so protective of me, and that was why I had held out for a while before telling him. It was likely nothing, and he’d just be worried. But instead of jumping up and insisting we see a healer, my alpha beamed at me. “Omega, that’s great news.”
“What?” I had to have misheard.
“You know what this has to be, right?” He pushed back from the table. “I’ll run right down to the pharmacy and be back.”
Before I could even reply, he was out the door and gone. Then I thought, maybe the reason it was great news was he knew a good stomach remedy? He would be happy if he could help me feel better. No other explanation for his reaction existed. Right?
I left the table, got a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge, and went into the living room, nauseated again and not able to bear the sight or smell of dinner.
Slumped on the sofa, I sipped at the bottle, wondering how long it was going to take him to get back.
I didn’t want another vomiting incident like earlier.
After about twenty minutes, he came into the house with a big brown bag and set it down on the coffee table. “I wasn’t sure which one to get so I waited in line for the pharmacist, but he was so busy with an older lady who had a new med and was asking about side effects, I gave up and got them all.
“You choose.” He tipped the bag over and out spilled at least twenty boxes of… I picked one up and stared at it.
“Alpha, is this what you think? I don’t…I can’t be pregnant.” I’d had different symptoms with Shaw, chest tenderness, bloating, but never nausea.
“Why not? We’ve certainly been doing what causes it often enough.”
Skeptical, I sifted through the boxes. “This must have cost a fortune. Can we return any we don’t use?”
“Omega, just pick out a couple. I missed everything with Sebastian. I don’t want to lose a second of your pregnancy with this one.”
“You don’t want to watch me pee on the sticks, do you?”
“No.” He chuckled. “But I do want to see the confirmation appear on them.”
“I am pretty sure I have a bug, so don’t get excited.”
“Shaw, it’s way too late for that.”
I did three of them, and then Gatlin joined me in the bathroom where we did just what the boxes said not to do and stared at them until they changed. It didn’t take long. I was so pregnant, they almost glowed.
And my alpha? He totally glowed.