Page 25 of Dangers of Love

Shit.

Then again, when I considered the odds, the fact that this was the first time anything like this had ever happened to me, I supposed it wasn’t too far-fetched. Shit like this happened every day.

Hell, it’d happened to my brother, Alec.

At least I knew how my family would take the news. Well, more or less. I’d already been enlisted when all of that had happened, but it wasn’t actually that hard to figure out.

While my parents hadn’t been the sort who’d expected abstinence from any of us kids, they’d also been big believers in making sure all of us understood the possible consequences of our actions. When they’d given us each the sex talk and discussed birth control, they’d also told us that the only way to one hundred percent avoid pregnancy and STIs was to not have sex. Well, other than the obvious exception of rape, of course, and none of us would ever blame a survivor for anything that came from something like that.

If we did have sex, we’d be expected to take responsibility for anything that came up because of it, but they wouldn’t tell us how that responsibility was supposed to look. The only thing they’d made clear was that brushing consequences off wouldn’t be allowed, and the first of us to go through this situation had risen to the occasion just like he always had with everything else.

Alec married Keli, but the marriage hadn’t lasted very long. He’d done the whole joint-custody thing until earlier this year when Keli had gone off the deep end and dropped Evanne at his house with primary custody papers, before running off with a boyfriend. That had sparked off a whole other kind of shitshow.

Aline wasn’t Keli, but out of everyone in my family, Alec was the only one – that I knew of anyway – who could understand what I was going through. It was a workday, but I never called Alec just to talk. If he saw my name on the caller ID, he’d answer.

My phone was in the bedroom, and as I stood to get it, I realized how much time had passed since I’d sat down. And how fucked up I’d actually gotten yesterday. The pain wasn’t bad enough to stop me, but it was enough to make me grimace as I walked, working the stiffness out of my muscles. A hot shower would do me some good too, but I wanted to talk to my brother first.

He answered on the second ring. “Eoin? Da said you were in an accident. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I winced as I rolled my shoulders. “Sore and I have some nasty bruises, but nothing more serious than a concussion.”

That was more than I probably would have told him if something like this had happened before this past spring, but I’d put my family through enough worry this year. For him, knowing more would be better, not worse.

“Do you have a few minutes to talk?” I asked. “I could use some advice.”

Only the very brief pause before he answered told me that he was surprised. “Sure. What do you need?”

“I met this girl.” Shit. I sounded like a teenager, but I decided to plow on. “The first job I did with Cain, the girl…woman we were hired to…find…”

Shit. This was harder than I’d thought. I didn’t know how much of this was important. I’d never had to actually tell anyone in my family that I was dating someone because I’d never really done it before.

“Her name’s Aline, and we’ve been seeing each other since then.”

I really hoped I didn’t have to spell out that ‘seeing each other’ meant sex. Not because I’d never talked to my brothers about sex, but it was different with Aline. I didn’t want him thinking about her that way, even if I knew he wouldn’treallybe thinking about her like that. No, his relationship with Lumen was solid, and he’d never fantasize about someone else’s girlfriend, but I still didn’t like even the idea of it.

Maybe a blunt, rip-off-the-bandage approach would be best.

“There’s a chance she could be pregnant.”

He didn’t say anything immediately, but that was okay because I knew he was thinking. He wasn’t an impulsive sort of guy, which was another reason that talking to him was a good idea.

“How high is a ‘could be’ chance?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “She has an IUD and a positive pregnancy test.”

Another few beats of silence, and I wondered if he was going to ask me if we’d used a condom too, but he didn’t.

“The two of you have been together a month?”

“More or less.” It was an honest answer, even if I kept back some details.

“How do you feel about her?”

That was a good question, and I wasn’t sure I had a good answer. I did my best. “I like her a lot. I care about her enough to work my ass off to be with her.”

“Do you have to work at it because she’s high maintenance or because you’ve done some dumb stuff already?”

The question held a bit of teasing in it, and I knew that wasn’t because he thought this was funny. He’d almost completely fucked things up with Lumen more than once because he’d been an idiot.

---