Page 38 of Bearly Mated

We were forever.

thirteen

CALLIE

We madeit home before anyone found us at Makeout Point, and spent another week in our den before we finally emerged.

You could only reschedule with the shifter doctors so many times before they called you angrily, and we’d reached that point.

So, we got in the truck, headed for the office.

If Hudson hadn’t been there, I would’ve been nervous.

Because he was, I just held his free hand and leaned back against the passenger seat in his truck, watching the town we loved as we drove through it.

I’d been puking once or twice a day for nearly a week, so I was pretty sure I knew what the test would say, but I was trying not to get my hopes up. Hope could hurt like hell.

“Did you miss this place when you were gone?” I asked him, trying to avoid thinking too hard about the way our future was probably about to change.

“Every day.” He squeezed my hand. “Did you?”

“All the time.” My lips curved upward. “I should’ve come back years ago. You would’ve followed me.”

He chuckled. “In a heartbeat.”

The words made me ridiculously happy.

We pulled into the parking lot soon enough, and slipped inside the doctor’s office together.

An hour later, we were back in the truck, wearing stupid grins. I was still clutching the blood test’s results in my free hand, and my eyes were still stinging.

We were going to be parents.

Paying off my dad’s debt didn’t even register in my mind. That might have been what pushed me to meet Hudson in the diner, but it was the furthest thing from my thoughts.

Because we were going to have a baby.

And he was going to be so, so loved.

Or she.

But probably he, given shifter genetics.

“I love you,” Hudson said, lifting me into the passenger seats and stepping between my thighs to kiss me. “So fucking much.”

“I love you too.”

He kissed me again, harder, until someone in the parking lot honked at us.

My face was red when he pulled away, and he grinned as he put a hand on my cheek. “Still embarrassed that we’re screwing, Cal?” he teased me, his voice playful.

“Only a little.”

Hudson laughed. “Let’s go home.”

Nothing had ever sounded better.

epilogue