Page 86 of Bloom
“It occasionally happens. It's not the end of the realm. She said a little appetite loss and lightheadedness can happen too.”
Maybe he was right, and Jaime didn’t need to worry so much about that.
“You can stop worrying and go,” Aleric continued as he moved around the armchair.
“You expect me to leave?!”
“I’m not forcing you to stay here.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know you're already planning to escape as soon as possible. It’s not like we planned it, and I can deal with it by myself.”
Like he did with everything else while coasting along and struggling to figure out a way to stay alive. Now he’d have another person to worry about besides his Father.
“Aleric, can you stay out here and talk to me?” Jaime watched him turn to his bedroom. “You don’t have to hide and wait for me to sneak out. I'm not going anyway. For Elira’s sake, I can’t believe you think I’d run the second you said you’re pregnant.”
He also didn’t like Aleric’s guarded expression like he was expecting Jaime to yell at him for getting pregnant or something utterly ridiculous.
“I know damn well you didn’t want to have a kid with me, so here’s your chance to leave before I tell my Father.”
Jaime imagined Lord Monet chasing after him with his cane. “Uh, is he going to try to kill me because I got you pregnant?”
Aleric sighed. “He’s not going to beat you to death with his cane if that’s what you’re thinking, but he told me when I was a teen that if I had sex and ended up pregnant, I’d be marrying the other parent. If you make your bed, you lie in it. I can do away with it, but I’m not, and if I intend to keep it, I have to keep the other Father too. Unless of course, the other is unfit in some way. You’re not unfit, so he’d expect us to get married, and if you try to run away later, he won’t be happy with you. He never said so specifically, but I think he’d send men to drag you back so you could take responsibility.”
“Fine. We’ll get married and do it right.” This was not how Jaime had imagined marriage and children, but he needed to take responsibility, and he couldn’t walk away from a kid even if he couldn’t see it yet.
Aleric’s expression was one of half shock and horror. “Oh, sure. You’ll marry me for the position, and-”
“Excuse me? If I wanted to marry you for the position, I would've been trying to crawl into your bed any chance I got to put a baby in you. We only fucked because of your heat fever, not because I wanted to get you up the stick. I also asked if you wanted me to go out and get you herbs in secret to keep you from conceiving. If I wanted to chain you to me with a child, I wouldn’t have asked!”
“The opportunity is here now, so why not take it?” Aleric snapped.
“I’m not Gautier! For Elira’s sake, everything I’ve done-does it mean nothing to you? You’ve been nicer, but you think I’m a sack of shit, don’t you?”
“Plenty of commoners might want to go higher if the opportunity comes, and this is a perfect way to do it. I’m not marrying and letting anyone use me.”
“This has nothing to do with me being an Earl later, and I’m not using you. I don’t give a shit about the position, and I was just fine with drifting before I met you. I’m the one who got you pregnant by accident, so it should be me who takes care of the child and you. No, I didn’t plan for this, and I’m not in the best position to have a kid, but what’s done is done. I was an accident baby, and my Father married my Mother. They loved each other and had a great marriage too.”
It wasn’t quite the same, but the principle remained.
“If I ran off and left you to take care of the kid alone, my parents would probably come back from the dead just to slap sense into me.”
“You'll marry me, and then what?” Aleric spread his arms. “You'll hate me in a year or two because I’ve basically tied you down here?”
Jaime made a frustrated noise. “Listen to me for a second. No, I’m not going to hate you later. While it takes two to make a kid, it’s not really your fault either. You could have not thrown your damn phallus at me, but I did come in without asking while you were…close. It’s more my fault that you ended up with heat fever.”
“I'm sure in a couple of years, it'll be entirely my fault and something to blame me for. You’ll drag it up whenever you’re pissed at me or-”
“No, I won't!”
“Bullshit.”
“How about if we get married, and ifyoudecide you truly can’t stand me later, and it's safe, you can divorce me. We’ll live apart, and I’ll still be a parent. Kind of like Lord Monet andZacharie’s Dad. I’ll get a flat in the city. Does that sound like I’m clutching onto your coattails to get higher?”
“They didn’t plan to marry. They were fine with living apart and having a relationship even if it’s not entirely proper.”
“They still would have been parents to Zacharie with both of them being a couple and…” Jaime paused. “Wait a minute. How come they weren’t going to marry, but you have to?”
