12. Dragon
Chapter Twelve
DRAGON
The rest of the month went by as usual. I was so tired all the time, so sticking to work and home was good for me.
Horse was…weird. Polite. Super, super polite.
He still had an entourage of women most times I saw him in public spaces, but he didn’t flirt with them or me.
He’d mention the weather and then disappear.
And then I got the world’s worst flu. It hit me towards the end of April and then just wouldn’t quit.
I disinfected everything. Where did I pick up flu germs? I didn’t make it to Girl’s Night, which was frankly a relief after the last disaster. Felicia wanted us to go to a male strip club, so yeah, happy to have missed that party.
Minx brought me soup and was all teary about how she hoped I felt better. I threw it up. Felicia brought tacos. I threw it up. Jezebel brought her medical bag. Finally, not food.
Then again, I had to put up with her checking my blood pressure, taking my temperature, and checking my iron.
“How long since your last cycle?” she asked, pricking my finger with a tiny needle of agony.
“Motorcycle? That was Pansy. A month and a half?”
Her lips tilted, and she gave me a sharp smile. “Not that kind of cycle, precious. Just making sure it’s flu and not morning sickness.”
I squinted at her. “What?”
“Pregnancy. You don’t have a fever. You’re dehydrated, which means I might hook you up to one of my special IVs, but only after I make sure you aren’t carrying Horse’s precious offspring. What I put in my special IV isn’t for the uninitiated.”
I stared at her. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Right. So your last cycle was…”
I took out my phone. Two months ago. But I couldn’t be pregnant. The doctor wrote a whole report about it when I was seventeen. I’d gotten a second opinion. After my accident, the internal scarring from my shattered pelvis was so bad, that there was no way.
She looked over my shoulder and whistled. “So ya’all are going to take a pregnancy test.” She stood up and picked up her bag. “Be sure to let me know how it goes.” And then she left.
Was it possible? It couldn’t be, and yet…I ran for the garbage can.
Of course Horse had to be in the hotel drugstore/gift shop when I went in.
It was just off Purgatory and had an excellent selection of almost everything you could want.
And there was Horse behind a sunglasses rack, studying his choices like it was possible he didn’t have an entire collection of higher-end glasses in his room. Next to his velvet Elvis poster.
I ignored him and went to the health and drug section.
He probably hadn’t seen me. He looked good, though.
Not dehydrated and exhausted, like me. No way I was pregnant.
Right? I walked down the aisle, picking up different supplements like they might help my flu.
It had to be the flu. One of those long, nasty ones, like Covid.
I picked up a cough syrup and put it down, then turned and almost ran into Horse.
He didn’t step back and apologize for hovering behind me.
He just stared deeply into my eyes with his dark blue gaze, as if I were the only woman in the world.
For a second I bought it, letting the attention go to my head.
“The cannolis were amazing,” he said in a low voice that sent a shiver up my spine. The voice was too much, too appealing to resist. No wonder he had stalkers. But I wasn’t going to be one of them, particularly when he made Minx feel bad.
I pushed him out of my way and headed down the aisle. “Obviously. If they weren’t amazing, I wouldn’t bother making them. Why do you have so many kinds of sugar?”
He cleared his throat, following behind me. He was wearing designer jeans and a drapey t-shirt that clung to his muscles just right, which made me feel self-conscious in my sweats and ripped shirt. I hadn’t meant to see anyone here, particularly Horse. Not that there was anything special about him.
Right there ahead of me was the shelf with the pregnancy tests behind locked glass. I’d have to get a clerk to open it for me? Was this more or less humiliating than making out with him in the elevator? I felt too crappy to know.
He rumbled, “I like sugar. I had a phase when I tried to cook, but I only learned a few things before I gave up and ordered in. Cooking is hard. I can’t imagine making a cannelloni, much less a good one.
So my kitchen is stocked with some stuff.
In case you need to borrow something else.
You haven’t been to any of the fights, and Dirk ran the last race. You also look…”
I shot him a glare that had him freezing and raising his hands in surrender.
“Amazing,” he finished with a stunning smile.
I rolled my eyes and headed to the clerk, empty-handed. “Yeah. I’m sick.”
“Why didn’t you grab any medicine? What kind of sick are you? Have you seen a doctor? I know a great one who owes me some money. No, not money, just a favor from this one time I set him up with his dream girl. He’d be up for a house call.”
“You sure he’s not a gigolo? Those are the only people who make house calls these days. Anyway, I don’t need a doctor, I’m just…”
My stomach clenched and twisted. I darted towards the back room where customers weren’t allowed, but no one stopped me. I found the bathroom in time, but only barely.
I crouched there, trying not to touch anything, even though for a back room bath it was pretty immaculate.
“You should be in bed,” Horse said, low voice directly behind me. How did both of us even fit in that tiny space?
No, this was more humiliating than making out with him. Far more. Horse had seen me vomit when he looked like that?
“Go away,” I growled, staring at the white, nondescript toilet seat. It was good quality, though, especially for a backroom toilet.
“I’m not leaving you here. It wouldn’t be neighborly.”
I snorted, and then nausea rose up, and I was once again heaving. “The next time I vomit, it’s going to be on your shoes. Go away.”
“I don’t like these shoes, anyway. I’ll leave if you tell me what you came here to get.”
“You’ll leave because otherwise I’ll kill you.”
He sighed heavily. “If I believed that you were in condition for killing, I wouldn’t be worried about you.” He put a hand on my back, warm and soothing. “I’m worried about you, Trixie. I want to help. What can I do?”
I stayed crouched there, surrounded by stranger germs, with Horse’s soothing hand on my back, and felt like crying.
Also like curling up in a ball and letting someone else carry me.
I couldn’t get pregnant, so I shouldn’t have to buy a pregnancy test. And Horse shouldn’t be here, worried about me.
He was one of the few people in the world who could carry me.
Not that I’d actually let him, but maybe I’d let him carry some of the humiliation for me.
I was feeling a little better, probably good enough to make it back to my room. I squeezed my eyes shut and then gave in to how crappy I was feeling and let go of my pride and autonomy, just a little.
I wasn’t pregnant. But I needed to rule out the possibility.
I took a shaky breath and wiped my forehead with my arm.
My head was sweaty and gross. All of me, really.
Why was Horse in this bathroom with me? If I told him to buy me a pregnancy test, he’d probably run away.
Good. That way, everything would go back to normal, without this weirdly disturbing ‘worried about you’ thing.
“I need a pregnancy test,” I said, my voice cracked and sad. “I’m not pregnant,” I added. “I just need to be sure it’s the flu and not something else.”
“Sure. Running diagnostics. Do you need help getting back to your room before I get your equipment, or do you think you’re good?”
Equipment? That almost made me laugh. “I couldn’t possibly make it to my room on my own two feet. You’ll have to carry me.”
He laughed, his hand sliding up my back, teasing at my curls. “They don’t call me a Horse for nothing.”
Right. His real name wasn’t Horse. Maybe it was something civilized. I didn’t know anything about him other than his man-whore persona and his velvet Elvis posters. And that he threw star parties and had the best sugar.
I slowly stood up, testing every difference in elevation to see if I’d throw up again. When I made it all the way up, I turned around and gave Horse a shaky smile. “I’m going to head to my room now. Thanks for doing the thing.”
He smiled back, mostly sweet, but there was still concern in his eyes. “No problem. It’s a small price for your cannolis.”
I left him at that, walking through the shop feeling weird, like that last bit had been flirty. But no one would want to flirt when I looked so bad.
I was safely ensconced on my couch when I got a text, a picture of a white bag on a door handle that looked suspiciously like my apartment.
He didn’t ring, just left it there like he didn’t want to see me again.
I couldn’t blame him for that. It was like the front desk thing all over again.
He liked to keep his worlds separate. But maybe he really had been worried about me because he was a person who threw star potlucks and didn’t press charges.
Horse had bought me a dozen diagnostic tools. The tests were unanimous and positive. I was apparently pregnant. I couldn’t get pregnant, but those tests didn’t care. Whether it was two lines or a pink circle, or a plus sign, they all spoke one truth.
I scrolled through my phone photos, some of Minx’s shoes she was going to buy, and a cute picture of the mountain lion sleeping on Nix’s desk from Jezebel, and tacos from Felicia, and a set of very pretty knives from Daniela, until I got to the photo of one Richard Carmichael’s driver’s license.
Twenty-two years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Twenty-two years old.
He was just a baby playing in Las Vegas. He was probably going to college and dating nice girls. His lovely, respectable life spread out before him. He was really the father of my baby?
It didn’t compute. I did the sensible thing and went to sleep. When I woke up, I’d have a better idea how to handle things.
Except that I didn’t. I was a strong, capable woman who went up against men and won, regularly, but that life didn’t cater to children.
Particularly for a single mother, and there was no way a twenty-two-year-old would uproot his life and move to Las Vegas to father a child from a random fling.
But I wasn’t mother material, even if I didn’t have the obvious problems with infertility.
If I were a single mom, what would I do?
Racing wasn’t mom-friendly or even father-friendly.
People died. Jobs where people died should be essential to the greater good, like being a police officer or a firefighter.
Something where the risks were worth the price.
Off-road racing or boxing wasn’t it. One of my brothers did boxing in college, and now he worked in my dad’s gym, but once he had a kid, it was all about mitigating risk.
I could give it up. People wanted babies. Or I could walk into a clinic and walk out, never having to think about it again. In Las Vegas, there were plenty of clinics.
I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything but try to stay hydrated.