Page 118 of Use Me Up

“Oh, Gatlin! I love you, you know that.”

“I love you, too,” he says. “And I like our connection. I feel like it’s deep in ways that a purely physical connection wouldn’t be. I’ve never had a romantic relationship with someone that felt like my connection with you.”

“Me either,” I say, “but then, I really haven’t had a lot of romantic relationships in my life.”

He laughs. “I only mean that you and I don’t get into fights like I do with Kane, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I say. “There’s a volatility to the attraction with the others. It makes it hotter, but whatever we have, it’s warmer, nicer, safer.”

“Exactly,” he says, and I can hear his affection for me leaking into his voice.

I grin, blowing on my wet toenails, basking in it. “I think Kane’s jealous,” I say. But maybe I’m saying that because I have jealousy on the brain.

“Kane doesn’t get jealous.” Gatlin is sulky again.

“Maybe not sexually, and maybe he hides his other attachment feelings even from himself, but I think he worries he’s not enough for you, and I think you telling him that you want to uproot your life, specifically because you want more than him, it’s…”

Gatlin sighs. “You have such good insight into him, Hannah. What would I do without you?”

“You would be very frustrated,” I say, laughing. “You would be very confused. You would be very lonely. And I would be, too.”

He chuckles on the other end. “I think you’re right. He is worried about that, and I should have thought of a different way to broach the subject with him.”

“I’m going to call him,” I decide.

“No, Hannah,” he says. “No, you don’t have to do that.”

“I do call him sometimes,” I say. “He and I talk on the phone. We text.”

“Yeah, but… there was another part of the conversation.” Gatlin sighs again.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t say this to you,” he says. “We talked about it at the beginning, maybe, a little bit, but then I didn’t want to pressure you, and I left it all behind, and I don’t want to introduce it now. It’s definitely something we can wait on, it can be years down the road, but…”

My heart is starting to pound, and I think I know what he’s going to say. “Gatlin?”

“I just… I maybe mentioned that maybe I would like to, um… start a family with you.”

My heart squeezes in half. I let out a breath. Oh, my God. “Did you?” I’m smiling. “Did you really say that to him?”

He lets out a relieved breath. “Hey, you don’t sound opposed.”

I lean back on the couch, thinking about everything that happened months ago, going back and forth, not taking that pill, the whole nine yards. I just breathe for a moment. “No, I’m not opposed,” I say, eventually.

“But it would be far in the future,” Gatlin says. “Not right this second. First, we move closer. That’s the first step, and there are a ton of steps in between now and babies.”

“Oh,” I say quietly. “Are there?”

“You’re so young, Hannah,” he says.

“I’m calling Kane,” I say, and then I hang up on Gatlin without waiting for an answer. I dial Kane, and my fingers are shaking. Not because I’m nervous about talking to Kane, because I’m not. Just because I can hardly believe this might be happening, actually.

I haven’t been able to face up to the fact that I’m jealous of Calliope’s pregnancy, that part of me is really yearning for that. I keep telling myself it’s only because of wavering on taking the Plan B pill. That incident put the idea of babies in my head, and then Callie being pregnant kept it there.

It seems like a thing I’m not supposed to want. I’m only twenty-five. I’m supposed to want to be wild and crazy and pursue my dreams and everything else.

It’s only that lately, I feel like it’s the thing I want the most. Not just babies, but the whole thing. A pack. All my men, our babies, a family, a life. I wouldn’t be the center of it—not exactly. We have Ellis for that. But I’d be an integral and important part of the group with important things to do, and I feel like it might be the thing I could do best, to love my pack, to be part of something bigger than me?