Page 76 of Chaos

It’s not easy.

When he’s ready, his hands leave his head, and he turns around to face me. His cheeks are redder than normal, his ears too, and his eyes are bright as they settle on me. “Keep going.”

I scan through all the things that scared me, the things that I imagine are terrifying him, the things I want him to hear first, and settle with, “I talked with Sheila. I took a test. I’m definitely pregnant, and there’s no way she could be anyone else’s. Even if I were lying to you about what happened in there—which I’mnot—they never touched me, she’s yours. You can’t doubt that. She’s yours, Yorke. She’s yours and mine. She’s ours. And I don’t know how Ben knew, maybe Renata told him or he figured it out on his own, but the whole time in there I never got my period and … she’s yours. She’s only yours, and mine.”

Somewhere in the middle of that, I ended up reaching for him. The second my hands touch his chest, he does a triple sigh. This rapidhu-hu-hu-huuuuuuuu.The rigid set of his shoulders eases and the muscle in his jaw unclenches.

“She’s yours,” I whisper imploringly. “You have to know that. She’s—”

“Frankie,” he says into my hairline. “Please. Stop.”

I wrap my arms around his waist, sucking his peppermint-and-pine soap smell into my lungs with a big sigh of my own. Maybe not a triple one, but a double. Underlying the soap is his smell, that unique Yorke smell, warm skin, and humanity, and it calms me down and slows my heart. We’ve done so little of this, had so little time alone together in which we weren’t asleep or I wasn’t tearing off his clothes to chase away memories of the cellar.

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” he finally says. “That she wasn’t mine.”

I pull back to stare up at his face. “Why did you look so horrified then?”

He leans backward, letting me go, and slides slowly down the wall, like an invisible string is pulling on his great big boots, until his ass hits linoleum. “Because you can’t leave Sheila. We can’t leave no matter what happens.”

“No.”

I know my spot, so I slide right down, climb on top of him. His hands slide automatically down to my hips, holding our bodies flush together.

I wish a lot of things were different right now—that it came out differently, that we weren’t on the gross floor, that Ben hadn’t gotten involved in this, but I don’t hate this position at all.

Just the two of us, Auden safe at school, Beast chasing chickens, inside Thornewood with friends and extended family in the building nearby, our bodies pressed together, Maybe safe and snug between my spine and his.

The best things between Yorke and me always happen like this.

The first true sense of hope unfurls inside me.

His eyes close.

“It’s okay not to be happy about this.” I touch his closely cropped hair, my knuckles pink and swollen already. “I won’t get upset or hurt. I’m scared, too. I wasn’t happy when I first found out. It’s okay to be … whatever.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I wanted to be sure, so I waited until I could take the test, and then you got shot …” I swallow. “If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I was ready for it to get real. I was waiting. But I should have told you anyway.”

“Any chance it’s a false positive?”

“No. I read about it. There’s either human growth hormone in my pee or there isn’t. And if there is … well, maybe-baby not so maybe.”

“And this is what? A month in? We have eight to go?”

“It actually goes from the last period.” I read about that too. “In the ballroom I was about a week out. So maybe I ovulated early or your sperm lived a long time inside me—but I was at three weeks already when Ben took me. And then I was there for four. And then back here for one. We’re almost to two months.”

He takes that in slowly. I expected worry, panic, questions. Instead, he looks … sad. “What’s the percentage chance of you dying in childbirth?”

My heart lurches slightly. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s over zero, you can’t do this.”

“It’s higher than zero. You know that.”

It’s all there in his eyes—everything I felt when I first found out, fear written in amber. His voice cracks as he says, “I don’t need a baby. I needyou.”

I start shaking, and a breath shudders out of me. “But … but do you want a baby? I don’t mean … like right this second … because I know the timing blows … but generally. Eventually?”

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