“But Lorenzo?”
“He already mated. He could be interested in companionship, though. Or just a bit of fun. He could also have a second mating. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“Maybe we should follow them to Mom’s.”
He laughs. “Your mother is an adult, baby.”
“Well… is Lorenzo going to be a gentleman tonight?”
“No idea. I know I’m not. Can’t wait to get you home.”
I look at him and his eyes flash with heat before they return to the road.
“Moon’s pigment is fading,” he observes.
I stretch to get a better look at the night sky. He’s right. There’s not much of a pink hue left.
We missed the sunset tonight. That’s disappointing.
He smiles. “Could be interesting what happens next…”
And my heart sinks. He thinks I’m about to be ripe to make a baby with. Each time he has sex with me over the next however long he’ll be thinking he’s getting me pregnant, tying me to him forever.
“How many kids do you want?” I ask, then clear my throat as that sounded more like a croak.
This right here is another reason – maybe the biggest – that all this can’t possibly be fate. Why would fate cheat him like that?
“Never thought about it, really. I’m open to the conversation, though,” he says. “You?”
He obviously wants a family. Why would fate pair a super-alpha male with someone who can’t help him procreate and make new strong wolf shifters?
And that’s the kicker. I should tell him that right here and now, say it out loud so that he’ll know. He’ll know that I’m not his happily-ever-after. He’ll know that this witchcraft shouldn’t have happened and that if it hadn’t or if it could somehow be undone, he’d have the opportunity to find what he really needs, someone who can give him exactly what he deserves.
I moisten my lips and straighten up, ready to set him straight, ready to get it off my chest, knowing that the change in his features, the look in his eyes will probably be as bad or worse than it was when I shared with Blake what the doctor said to me.
But the words won’t come. The words stay lodged in my chest, in that little hidden compartment there that I’ve occasionally dipped a toe into over the past few days. That little itty-bitty part that holds the very big emotions inside it – the truth. That I wish this could be real.
Sadness floods through me. Sadness isn’t a strong enough word. Neither is immense sorrow.
Grief over the fact that I’m not going to get to carry a baby. Mason’s baby. Anybody’s baby. Especially sad it can’t be Mason’s baby.
Blake and I lasted not long after the news.
My relationship died what felt like a slow death, because the writing was on the wall almost immediately. He always knew he wanted kids. At least three, including a boy named after his dad, since his dad got killed by that drunk driver. I stood with tears in my eyes when he told me with tears in his that he didn’t need to raise someone else’s kids. He felt a deep need to carry on his family line. To look into the eyes of a child that he knew he helped make. That was part him. Part his parents, who died too young. Would I consider a surrogate? I told him I wasn’t ready to decide about something like that, needed time to process the news before I would know if I wanted to foster, adopt, or consider going the surrogacy route. And the decline of the relationship was fast from that point on because he was suddenly ready to have kids immediately, even though we hadn’t set a wedding date. Blake never even told me he loved me. He acted like he did up until that point, but the death of his parents broke him. He didn’t like that I needed time to process. And I didn’t like that he wanted so badly to look into a child’s eyes that would be part his but not part mine. I don’t know why that stung so much, but it did.
We parted ways just before Auntie Nelle came home to die after a big fight when he first made a comment during a nothing spat about how maybe I should go on medication because my hormone disorder was making me a super-bitch. And I knew then that he would always hold my fertility issues against me.
And then after Auntie Nelle’s painful end, Dad got caught having an affair. And Mom went through that hell right after losing her sister. It happened not long after I introduced Rick to my parents.
Rick, who told me on the first coffee date that he was driven, ambitious, and didn’t want children. He knew that to his core to the degree he had a vasectomy when he turned twenty-five.