Page 17 of The Rough Rider

Maybe it had to do with him and Elsie being together now. That would be good and right and fair. But she had a feeling it was something else that she couldn’t quite put a finger on, and it made her feel disoriented.

But then, everything about this moment was disorienting.

“Should I get Elsie for you?” he asked.

She sniffed. “I didn’t come here to see you.”

“You’re going to be my sister-in-law.”

“Sure,” she said, feeling a little dizzy at that.

“Who’s that?”

Elsie appeared, and then stood still for a moment, staring at Alaina through the crack in the door.

“Hey,” Elsie said, looking surprised.

“Hey,” said Alaina. “I just wanted to talk.”

“Okay,” Elsie said.

She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. “Are you all right? I wanted to know what happened. With...with Gus. Since I’m having trouble making sense of this.”

“I know. Because when last we left off, I had slept with Travis.”

“Yes. When last we left off.”

Elsie stared at her for a long moment and Alaina decided to just...let it out.

“I’m pregnant, Elsie,” Alaina said.

Elsie’s eyes went wide. “You’repregnant?”

“Yes. I know there’s no way that Gus is going to keep all the details secret from his family...”

“Did you sleep with Gus?”Elsie somehow managed to shout that whispered sentence.

“I didn’t sleep with Gus,” Alaina said. And she felt jittery and warm just saying the words. Just thinking about it.

It was too jarring. She’d been through way, way too much in the last two months. Really.

“But he...” Alaina sighed. “He’s doing what he does. He’s rescuing me. And I wish that I had the fortitude to not need that. But I really need it. Can you imagine? All the questions that people are going to have about who the father is, and how sorry everyone’s going to feel for me because he’s gone. I just... I can’t bear it. I really can’t.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t come here to have a fight, Elsie. But...what you did with Hunter, it made me feel stupid. That was the problem. It didn’t make me feel brokenhearted. But when my father left, we were blindsided. It was such a shock. I thought everything was perfect, and it wasn’t. And then it turned out there were people at Four Corners who knew. Other people knew that there were cracks in our family and it didn’t ever once occur to me that there might be. I couldn’t bear that that happened again. I couldn’t bear that that happened in our friendship. And I can’t take the humiliation that is going to come with all this, because even if everybody is well-meaning, and I know that they are...”

“Slow down. Please don’t marry Gus just because of what I did. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you and...”

“No, they’re separate issues. Kind of. They’re separate issues kind of. I just feel raw and very reminded of that place that I was in. And Gus reached out a hand, and I don’t think that I can tell him no.”

“You can,” Elsie said, looking defiant. “I’ll be your baby’s surrogate dad if I need to.”

“I know you would. And I’m sorry... I’m sorry that the last couple of months I haven’t been honest with you. And that I’ve been distant. I haven’t been able to be honest with anybody. That’s the truth. I haven’t been able to articulate any of this. And then it all came to a head last night when I puked and Gus found me. He quite literally picked me up off the ground. He’s offering a life for my baby that I can’t give apart from him.”

“Is this about your dad? I mean, I know what you just said, about me and Hunter, and making you feel stupid. But I mean is this about...?”

“Me not having a dad? Yeah, kind of. Look, you know what it’s like. To not have parents. At least, not functional ones. And yeah. I want something different than that for my kid. And oh, dear God, Elsie. I’m having a kid. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Maybe this is the problem. I need an adult, and Gus is basically one of the few functional adults that we know.”

“Did you want Gus to be the baby’s daddy, oryourdaddy?”

“The baby’s.” And she felt weird and warm. And she didn’t like it.

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