Page 70 of The Auction
I’d been distracted by looking around at some of the other guests. Clocking the women who wore dresses. There were a number of them, so I was outfitted properly forthe occasion.
“Huh?”
“What do you want to talk about if we’re not talking about the farm?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What do married people talk about?”
He leaned back in the booth with a smug expression. Like he’d won something. “Feelings?” he speculated.
My lips twisted into a smirk.
“Sex?” he prompted.
I blew out a breath. “That’s all you want to talk about.”
“Hardly,” he snorted. “But there is something we should discuss.”
“Go ahead.”
“Kids,” he said. “More specifically, babies.”
“Hard to do that from two bedrooms,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, immediately on the defensive.
I knew what he was getting at, of course. He believed that eventually I was going to cave and have sex with him.
(Hint: Eventually, I was going to cave and have sex with him.)
Not because he was pressuring me. Not because I had some sense that it was the right time to lose my virginity. I could honestly say that I wanted to have sex with him…because.
Which, isn’t that how everyone eventually comes to that decision? No matter what anyone’s situation was. Eventually you felt ready, you felt comfortable, you felt desire.
You had sex.
So a responsible conversation about preventing babies was a smart idea, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him about the IUD because it was a secret I’d had to bury so deeply in my conscious that Herb would never even suspect I’d done it. That I’d committed, what to him was, if not the ultimate sin, close to it.
I’d taken measures to prevent his bloodline from carrying on and if he’d known that, he might have tried to cut it out of my uterus with a paring knife.
So I couldn’t tell Creed it was there. Because I’d nearly willed it into non-existence through sheer denialism.
He leaned over the booth. “Forget us for a second. When you thought about your future, did you ever think about having a family?”
“Of course.”
He shook his head. “Nothing of course about it. You’ve given me glimpses of what life was like growing up with Herb. Not a far reach to imagine you didn’t see yourself as a mom to kids who might have a similar experience.”
“My kids wouldn’t have what I had. They’d have more. I’d give them more. Like I’d tried to do with Mar…”
“Margo,” he finished. “You think you have that kind of love inside you?”
I snorted. “Do you?”
His expression grew serious. “I don’t know, Jules. I really don’t. But I need you to know that I would try. That’s all I could promise. I’ve always been…a person with purpose. When I have intent, I accomplish what I intend.”
It might have been the most words he’d ever said to me about his feelings. And there was no way I could discount the words as trivial.
“It just seems so far-fetched, though,” I said, confused by what I was feeling.
“What does?”
