Twenty-Five
Wyatt
With the bathroom door locked and the shower running, i took a deep, shuddering breath and dragged my hands down my face.
When I glanced up, my drawn, pale reflection stared back at me. I took another breath.
Cal’s comment—crass and rude as it had been—had almost made me spill. I’d known something was wrong for weeks now, and I couldn’t shake the memory of breakfast with the Carlyle clan that morning back in March.
I didn’t want to believe it. It went against pretty much everything I’d learned about mammalian biology in school.
But reality was sometimes strange—case in point, the fact shifters even existed.
And the symptoms added up. If I’d been looking at any other case, without knowing the sex of the patient, pregnancy would have been my first guess.
So I’d taken a test. No surprise—it was positive. In humans, though, I knew that meant a man could have prostate cancer, which was another terrifying prospect.
I’d sat with that for a few days. Yesterday, I’d been in the clinic by myself, and curiosity finally won.
I’d used the ultrasound on myself.
Of course, I’d been in the middle of conducting a self-exam when Vern had barged in, demanding a refill on horse tranquilizers—something about a stallion up at Hobby Horse—and he’d caught me red handed.
“Now what in tarnation!” he’d bellowed, and I’d fumbled the wand.
“I,” I stammered, and Vern glared at me.
“Wyatt,” he’d said.
I swallowed thickly. “I just … had to know,” I said weakly, then dropped the wand from my hand. I sank my teeth into my lip, feeling exactly like I had the first time Dad had caught me looking at gay stuff. Not even porn. Just stuff.
My heartbeat ratcheted up; my palms were suddenly slick, and I was fairly certain I was going to faint.
Vern shook his head, and I screwed my eyes shut, hating that I was so sensitive to his opinion, that this was giving me flashbacks to my dad.
“This is what I meant when I told you not to get mixed up with those Carlyle boys,” he huffed.
He’d stepped into the exam room and shut the door firmly.
He handed me a wad of paper towel, and I wiped myself off, before collapsing onto the physician’s stool.
“You knew this could happen?” I asked him, bewilderment finally winning out over my terror.
He made a face. “Well. Not this in particular,” he said. “But strange things happen around the Carlyle boys—around shifters—all the time.”
I swallowed nervously. The wad of paper towel in my hand was trembling; I was trembling.
Vern’s expression relaxed into something like sympathy. “I suppose the question is what you want to do about it.”
I stared at the wall for a full minute, trying to wrap my brain around that. “I have a choice?”
It was practically a whisper. Vern’s expression soured. “’Course you do! Even if the law said you didn’t, you’d have a choice. There are … methods.”
I got the distinct impression he was talking about our status as veterinarians affording us access to drugs. Since those were supposed to be used for livestock, not many people would question it, I supposed. I grimaced at the thought of needing to resort to that.
Vern cleared his throat. “Anyway—it’s not like that here.”
I felt my shoulders relax a little. “It’s just … not how I was raised.” Not that I agreed with a lot of what I’d been taught, not now. I’d been raised to think abortion was wrong, but I’d also been taught to think being gay was a sin, and well, here I was.
I could have laughed. Dad had always told me being gay was wrong because it was against God’s wishes. God had told humanity to go forth and be fruitful and, well, gay people couldn’t do that.
Except I could. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I’m not sure,” I told Vern in a shaking voice. “I … gotta think about it.”
“Understandable,” Vern said. “You need anything, you let me know, okay?”
I didn’t dare open my eyes. “Yeah. Okay.” I nodded timidly. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Vern echoed. “Good. You, uh … wanna take the rest of the day off?”
I shook my head. “No.” If I took the day off, I’d do nothing but think. And that was the last thing I wanted to do right then and there.
“You sure? You got patients and—”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, offering him a smile. “Help keep my mind off things.”
He gave me a tight smile. “Right. Okay, well. If it gets to be too much, you just holler? Right now, I gotta go back up to Roy’s. We gotta put this poor old stallion out to see if we can tend to his leg or if it’s the glue factory for him.”
I gasped. “Not the glue factory.”
Vern laughed as he headed to the door. “I’m joking—Roy would never let me do that to one of his horses, no matter how lame the old bugger was.”
I’d met Roy all of once, and he was all gruff exterior. I was having a hard time picturing him being such a bleeding heart that he wouldn’t put an animal down.
“Anyway,” Vern said, waving as he headed out the door of the exam room, “I gotta get back up there.”
“Vern,” I squeaked, then shrank back on the stool.
“Yeah, Wyatt?”
I hunched my shoulders. “You’re not … mad at me, are you?”
It was a stupid question, the kind of question a ten-year-old would ask a parent when they broke a window or burned dinner or something. Not a question a twenty-something man should ask his mentor. Or employer. Or whatever Vern was to me.
Vern’s expression softened into a smile, something that looked almost fond. “No, Wyatt,” he said gently. “I ain’t mad at you.”
Relief flooded through me, nearly toppling me off the stool. “Okay.” The word shook. “Great. T-thanks, Vern.”
His smile tightened, and then he stepped out of the exam room, closing the door softly.
We hadn’t spoken about it after that; it was late when he got back from Roy’s, and I’d been run off my feet with the clinic.
Then I had to finish packing. All Vern had said to me over breakfast this morning was “good luck,” and then I’d been out on patient calls all day, while he was in the clinic.
I hadn’t even dropped by the house to pick up my stuff; I’d had it packed in the car so I could head to the new house whenever I finished with my calls.
And now I was standing here, in the shower, letting the warm spray run over my skin, stalling for time.
I wanted to tell Cam. I didn’t want to tell Cam. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do.
I curled a hand over my low belly and leaned my forehead against the wall of the shower stall.
I was going to have to make a decision, and stalling wasn’t going to stop that. Better to rip the bandage off, I decided, cutting the water and stepping out of the shower.
I dried off and dressed quickly, tugging up a pair of jeans. I paused to ponder my reflection in the mirror. Did I look rounder? Cam’s brother sure must have thought I did. I cupped my hand over my belly again and bit my lip.
Yeah, I guessed I looked rounder. I felt heat creeping into my cheeks and forced myself to look away.
I combed out my hair as quickly as I could, then went to join Cam in the kitchen. I slid onto one of the barstools at the breakfast bar.
He really had done a good job with the kitchen renovation, I thought, glancing around.
I maybe didn’t care as much about backsplashes and countertops as he’d hoped, but the kitchen looked sleek and modern—not at all like the crowded, outdated kitchens I’d been in recently.
Most of the folks in Coyote Creek seemed to have built their houses in the 1950s, lived in them, and done nothing about replacing or updating anything since.
Cam whirled around, holding a plate in either hand as he pulled them from the oven. He looked ridiculous, with an apron that said Kiss the Cook and mismatched oven mitts. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Order up,” he said, sliding one of the plates across the bar to me, onto a cushy placemat that looked homemade. “Careful, the plate’s probably hotter than the food.”
“Right.” I picked up a fork; I hadn’t been kidding when I told him I was hungry. The last few weeks of nausea had abated, turning into a seemingly insatiable hunger.
That was the baby, I supposed, demanding more fuel to … grow.
I paused, glancing down at my belly as Cam slid onto the stool beside me. “You want something to drink?” he asked. “I got us some bubbly.”
“I, uh.” Well, fuck, there was the need to make a decision slapping me in the face. If I wasn’t keeping it, I could drink with impunity. If I wanted to keep the baby, though …
“Wyatt?” Cam sounded concerned. “Everything okay?”
I turned to look at him. I could imagine what I looked like: eyes wide, mouth just slightly open. Cam looked back at me with a similar expression, worry building in his amber irises.
“I can’t drink,” I blurted, and just like that, the fear that had been keeping me tongue-tied and twisted dropped away. The words that I’d so carefully caged, paralyzed with terror, came tumbling out. “I’m pregnant.”
Cam’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “I’m sorry, what?”
I took another breath. “I’m pregnant.”
Those amber eyes opened again, boring into mine. “You …”
Cam glanced down. I curled my hand over my belly. Cam’s eyes widened; his mouth formed a little round o. “You’re …”
He looked up at me again, and I nodded a little. A smile soared across the coyote shifter’s face. “Holy shit, Wyatt, that’s amazing!” he cried, looping his arms around my shoulders and dragging me into a hug so hard, he nearly knocked my stool right over.
“Cam,” I grumbled, struggling to extricate myself.
He released me as quickly as he’d embraced me. “Oh—fuck, sorry.” His hands landed on my shoulders, bracing me. His gaze searched my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’m—”
His grip tightened. “No, I mean—are you okay?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure,” I admitted, slumping toward the bar. “I only found out yesterday.”
“Oh,” Cam said, slumping with me. “You …”
I rolled my head a bit. “I guess I kinda … guessed? Like, I thought … but I only just …”
We were silent for a moment or two after that. Finally, Cam said, “What do you want to do?”
I sighed, letting my eyes flutter shut. “I don’t know. I need time to think about it.”
“Okay,” Cam said gently. One of his hands found mine, twining our fingers together. “Well, no matter what you decide … I’m right here. Okay?”
He gave my hand a squeeze, and something like relief flooded me. “Okay,” I breathed, and for the moment, everything was.