Page 41 of Broken Pregnant Mate
But this—all the wide open sky—is the opposite. As I stare out at it, I feel something taking flight in my chest. Something that wants to seemoreof this, more of the world altogether.
“Well?” Veva asks Kira just as she sits down, her eyes locked in. “Did you tell him?”
Kira’s face is warm and rosy, and she laughs, shaking her head as she situates a blanket over her lap. The night is cool, but the fire is hot, and it makes for an incredibly cozy feeling. In fact, everything about this day—aside from how I felt right after waking up this morning—has felt like someone else’s life.
Almost too good to be true.
“Geez, Veva, give me just one second to settle in,” Kira says, shaking her head and adjusting herself in the chair, getting comfortable. A beat passes, then Ash speaks up.
“Nah, she hasn’t told him yet,” she says from her spot across from me. There’s an open bag of marshmallows in her lap, and she’s eating them happily, talking through the fluff.
“How could you possibly know?” Kira asks, raising an eyebrow at the woman. Her tone isn’t accusing at all, but joking, making light of the situation.
Or maybe the situation really is just light.
Maybe I’m so used to anger and passive-aggressive language that it’s hard for me to realize when good friends really are just joking with one another.
“Ouch,” Ash says, swallowing down a marshmallow, grabbing another, and pointing at her sister-in-law with it, as un-menacing a point as they come. “Is that a jab at me not being psychic? Low, low blow, Kira. And after everything I’ve done for you.”
“First, it’s not a jab at all. Second, those marshmallows are supposed to be fors’mores, Ash. Not for personal snacking.” Kira reaches forward, grabs one of the sticks for the marshmallows, and holds her hand out until Ash tosses one ather. Kira, surprisingly, manages to catch it and spears it onto the stick before placing it over the fire.
“Don’t police my snacking,” Ash says. “Nobody else is using them.”
“Yes, but you’re destroying the flavor profile in my head,” Kira says, glancing to the right as she carefully turns her stick, toasting the marshmallow evenly on all sides. “I got dark chocolate with dried raspberries for asophisticateds’more.”
When I was a kid and got to go on a single camping trip with an outreach group, I was too impatient to cook the marshmallow like that. I’d just plunged it into the flames, then cried when the outside was charred. I felt like I had killed the thing. The troop leader was not amused.
Once her stick is propped up over the fire, Kira goes on, “I’m not confirming or denying—just wondering why you think that.”
Ash shrugs, holding a marshmallow and turning it side to side, as if examining it. She touches it to her tongue and pulls it back again, then glances over at Kira. “I know my brother. He’d be acting a lot weirder than this if you were pregnant again. He gets all”—she stops, dancing her fingers around for a second—“fluttery. When you’reexpecting.”
Kira laughs hard enough that it’s difficult for her to get the words out. “He doesnot—”
“No, she’s right, Kir. They all do,” Veva says, shaking her head and leaning forward, picking up a drink from the table. She falls back into her chair with a sigh. “Emin is like that with me right now. Acting like I can’t do anything just because I’m carrying a child. Newsflash—I’ll have to keep doing things even when I physically have the kid in my hands. Also, I think that keeping active is good for the baby. Like, I can put her throughthe motions of activities, give her a head start on her motor skills, or something like that. But Emin hates it. I’m like, always three seconds away from kicking his ass or magicking his mouth shut.”
“You can do that?”
It’s the first time I’ve spoken, and I startle even myself with the sound of my own voice.
“Why?” Veva asks, cracking an eye open and grinning at me. “You already tired of Aidan’s mouth?”
“No,” I laugh, shaking my head and holding my hands up. “No, I—”
“Chill out,” Ash says, still talking through the marshmallow. “She’s just teasing you. Nobody here is accusing you of not liking your fated mate, and all that.”
“Don’t mind her tone,” Kira says, kicking Ash’s foot with her own so it falls off the edge of the fireplace. Ash sticks her tongue out at her and replaces her foot. “She’s just mad because she had her eye on Aidan for herself.”
“What?” Ash blurts out a laugh, shaking her head. “No. He is so not my type.”
Veva lets out a low noise, and Kira leans in, eyebrows raising. “Is that so? I didn’t realize youhada type. I thought you were all.I’m an independent womanand everything.”
“First,” Ash says, grabbing a soda and taking a swig from it. “Iaman independent woman. Second, I could never date Aidan—our names start with the same letter. That’s horrific. Third, he’snotmy type. Too…I don’t know. Soft.”
I let out a breath without meaning to, thinking of his stomach, his chest, the relentless training he’s been doing formonths—yearsnow. The last thing I think of when I picture his body is soft.
“Okay,” Ash rolls her eyes with a laugh, and I feel my cheeks heat when I realize they all understand what that sound from me meant. “Not soft like…his body. But his vibe. No offense, Emaline, but he seems like that kind of man who wants…you know. To baby you.”
My face is on fire. It shouldn’t matter—I’m just playing the part of his mate right now. Nothing I say is real, nothing I share is about a genuine connection between Aidan and me, but my entire body flushes nevertheless.
