Page 93 of Use Me Up

“How do you know that?” says Ellis to Gatlin.

“He came to see me last night,” I say.

Gatlin winces. “Okay, I was going to tell you. And nothing happened—well, we kissed, but I stopped it, and if you don’t want anything to happen again, we need to—”

“You didn’t take it?” says Ellis, turning to look at me. “Seriously?”

“I still can,” I say. “The insert says within seventy-two hours of unprotected sex. Obviously, the longer I wait, the less effective it is… well, I don’t know. I guess it would depend on how close I am to ovulation, really, because what it does is that it delays your ovulation so that the sperm can die so that—never mind.”

“Why?” says Ellis. “Why haven’t you taken it?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You don’t want to have my baby,” he says, and he is certain of this.

“Well, you don’t want me to either,” I say.

“No,” he says. “I don’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. After everything I’ve done, that’s the last thing you need from me. I’ve done enough to you, Hannah.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s only that Gatlin told me not to take it—”

“I took that back,” says Gatlin. “I said I didn’t mean it.”

Ellis turns to look at him.

Gatlin sets down the silverware and glass. “Look, she’s very young, and this entire situation is fucked up, but obviously, omega, I would want your baby.”

Ellis’s lower lip trembles for a second and he turns and looks back at me, and then back at Gatlin. He tangles a hand in his hair. “Callie said I was a monster. She said I needed to get a vasectomy. She acted like, if a baby came from me, it would be…” He sits down heavily on the couch and never finishes the sentence.

Gatlin sits down next to him and tentatively touches his shoulder. “Hey,” he says in a low, soothing voice.

I fold my arms over my chest. “So, this is why, Gatlin? This is why I’m the thing that’s missing? You want a baby?”

Gatlin looks up at me. “No.”

“We’re not having a fucking baby.” Kane is standing in the doorway, leaning against the door jamb, his nostrils flaring. “For fuck’s sake, Gatlin, we can’t take care of our omega. How could we possibly be parents?”

gatlin

Kane is probably gayer than I am, in a way.

He likes pussy, insomuch as he likes to fuck it, and he likes the look of women, and the curve of their bodies and the idea of high heels. Hell, Kane likes wearing high heels sometimes.

Kane’s homosexuality is more in the way he prefers an all-male romantic existence, and this perhaps could be a kind of misogyny. If I push him, he’ll take everything back, of course, but he makes offhand comments, like the thing he said about omegas and puppies, for instance? He says similar things about women. Women are too needy, too clingy, too interested in settling down.

Back in the beginning of our relationship, when I was younger and more unsure of myself, I never said anything back to him when he said this kind of stuff, primarily because I felt all of his comments in this direction as a loaded barb towards me.

Back then, I was frightened that Kane would be done with me at any time. I thought if I was too clingy, he would call things off.

He’s three years older than me, and I was extremely insecure when I was twenty-five.

Anyway, we’ve been together a long time now, and I’ve come to understand our dynamic, which is one in which he runs and I chase. He likes to remain aloof, but when I come after him, he’s quite happy to be chased and tied down and butt-fucked and told that he will accept just how clingy I am of him, and he does.

So, anyway, I think these things he says, the idea that he doesn’t want an omega, that he doesn’t want a clingy partner, that he doesn’t want to settle down, I think they’re all part of some elaborate game that he’s playing, and that if I pin him down and say, “Look, here it is, our omega, our woman, and let’s have babies,” then he’ll…

Oh, fuck, I’m probably kidding myself.

Maybe I just want him to be that way?