Page 108 of The Heart We Guard
Then, Raven looks across the table at me. “Oh my God. You’re both pregnant. Which means…wait. Butcher will have a child and grandchild the same age.”
“Ember’s kid will have an aunt or uncle their own age,” Quinn adds.
“Wow. Look at you all doing math and genetics and things,” I say sarcastically, but with a grin on my lips.
“Ha!” Quinn says. “We’re not the ones messing up family tree timelines.”
Raven moves back to her chair. “I take it you guys are all good with this?”
After Atom and Ember had shared their news, Atom and Butcher had a private talk about something. It had given Ember and I a chance to talk and for me to reassure her that I’ll be whatever she needs me to be.
She asked if we could be friends, and I confessed I had a shortage of them. Between us, we decided the children should grow up more like cousins.
Ember reaches for my hand across the table. “We’re better than good. It’s exciting. And I get to do this with Greer. It’s like our bonding thing, right?”
I laugh at that. “If you say so. But, yes. What does it matter? Age, sequence, linear lines drawn on a flowchart. Yes, we’re pregnant at the same time, but we’re still just women navigating our own way in life.”
Quinn throws her arm over my shoulder. “And it’s easier when you’ve got friends. Right?”
“It is,” Raven says. “Which reminds me, Quinn, did you finish this month’s book club read?”
Quinn nods excitedly. “Let’s get some food coming, and then, I’m gonna tell you why I think the next monster in the series is going to be a kraken.”
I shake my head and grin as I finger the bracelet Butcher gave me last night. It has black leather straps and a gold ring with a red stone in the middle that hides a tracker. When he first mentioned a tracker, I thought I’d feel trapped wearing it, but somehow, him knowing where I am to keep me safe helps me feel liberated. “What in heaven’s name are you reading, now?”
“Monster smut,” Ember says. “I was out on it, until I read two chapters, and am now very much in.”
“You don’t want to know what they can do with their tentacles,” Raven adds before bursting into laughter, likely at the horror on my face.
“That sounds utterly awful,” I say, opening the menu.
“Don’t say things like that around Quinn,” Ember says. “She takes it as a challenge to convert you.”
“But maybe she could give me some friends-to-lovers recs. You know, where they really know each other well.”
Quinn claps her hands. “Oh my God, let’s park the kraken if it means Greer will join us for a book club read.”
I gave it some thought. My reluctance to read romance was more about me than it was the genre. I’m not ready to share that I’m asexual with them, yet, so to ask them outright for that kind of representation feels weird. But friends-to-lovers, where there was already a connection, felt like a step.
Over food, the conversation changes direction so quickly, I barely have time to think. How Raven’s son, Fen, is doing at school. How Quinn’s niece’s transplant went. When Ember’s bar will reopen. And they all heard about the ambulance, so there are questions about that too.
What I loved, and what certainly surprised me, was how astute each of them was when it came to helping me thinkthrough access and stumbling blocks for the mobile clinic. And how enthusiastic and supportive they all were of each other. Like their own unit, just as strong and capable as the men, in their own way.
But the conversation returned to the romance book club, and even though I might have wanted to, I couldn’t tune it out.
The openness with which these women talked about sex was…liberating.
Nothing was off-limits. Even questions about Butcher and me that I danced around.
“So, Smoke did the whole masked man thing yesterday afternoon,” Quinn says, already laughing. “Only, he put the mask on as he rode up the trail and didn’t realize that the new sofa had just been delivered. The delivery guys were getting into their truck as he pulled up to the house.”
Ember puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. Did they see him?”
At this point, Quinn is nearly crying. “Absolutely. And he styled it out by walking by them in absolute silence before kicking the door shut behind him. I could barely kiss him hello I was laughing so hard, so he gave up and railed me over the back of the new sofa that still had the plastic on it.”
I’ve never thought about sex in the way these women do, and it was also fascinating to hear about the way their men felt about sex.
It was all so positive.
