Page 25 of Roommates
“Maybe you could have both,” I suggested in a small voice, because I wasn't sure they could haveeither.If I couldn't find a way to deal with this pregnancy, I might have to move back home, permanently. If my parents were going to let me, anyway. I didn't want to be a burden on them any more than I already was.
“Is something wrong?” my papa asked in that tone of voice he'd always used to invite me to unload my troubles on him ever since I'd been old enough to try and put on a brave front.
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Usually I'd tell him that everything was fine and we'd dance around each other for a little while before I broke down, but today I wasn't in the mood to play that game. Nothing was fine. “I screwed up big time,” I confessed.
Papa was quiet for a moment. Surprised, maybe, that I'd given in so easily. “I'm sure it's not as bad as you think it is,” he said eventually. “You know we don't need you to get a perfect score on every exam, right? You're too hard on yourself.”
“It's not about an exam.” If only it was... “I screwed up much worse than that. I didn't tell you this, because I didn't want to worry you, but my roommate this year is an alpha.”
“Oh? You know we trust you around alphas, son.”
“Yeah, maybe you shouldn't.”
“What do you mean by that? Did something happen?” Finally, my papa seemed to be catching on to what I was about to tell him. “Did something happen between you and that alpha? Did he pick up on your scent? Did he force himself on you? Because I swear if—”
“It wasn't like that,” I cut in. Adam hadn't done anything wrong. Everything he'd done to me, he'd had my full consent to. “Something happened, yeah, but it was my fault.”
“Oh, Luke, you slept with him, didn't you?” my papa asked, hitting the nail on the head. Oddly though, there was no judgement in his voice, not even disappointment. All I could hear was sympathy, and it was almost too much to take. I didn't deserve sympathy after what I'd done, what Ikeptdoing. I knew better, so why couldn't I stop myself? “I was always afraid something like this was going to happen eventually,” my papa admitted. “We can't suppress our natures forever. Not even with medication.”
“I should have been smarter,” I insisted.
“There you go being too hard on yourself again,” my papa admonished. “Let's focus back on the issue at hand. I'm assuming your roommate knows what's up now?”
“Actually he doesn't. He was kind of drunk when we... when I went into heat.”
“You went into heat...” my papa repeated as if he knew exactly what that implicated. Of course he did. He was an intelligent man. “And now you're broken up about having made a mistake, even though your secret wasn't discovered... You didn't use a condom, did you? No omega in heat ever stops to consider one, especially not during theirfirstheat.” He gave a pained sigh. “We should have done more to prepare you. This must have hit you like a freight train.”
“It's not your fault,” I said, hugging my knees closer to myself. “The pills should have stopped this from happening. I don't know why they failed.” Aside from maybe the fact that I’d puked my guts out after upping my doses of scent-suppressors, but that was embarrassing.
“I don't know either. Maybe you developed a tolerance or something. We always knew theycouldstop working one day. But that doesn't matter now. How far along are you?”
My stomach clenched. Papa didn't even ask if I was pregnant or not. He didn't have to. Papa always knew everything. Weirdly enough, there was some comfort in that. Knowing that there was no point in hiding anything made talking easier. “Five or six weeks, I think.”
“Okay,” Papa said, and I thought I heard a hint of relief in his voice. “Then we still have time to act.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. I'm going to talk to your dad. There's got to be something we can do, Luke. We can fix this, okay? That is, if that's what you want.”
Why was he making it sound like I had a choice when I clearly didn't? “I don't know what I want.”
Too many things were up in the air, along with my thoughts. I couldn't even imagine grabbing a hold of all of them.
“That's fine. We'll talk about it all. You should come home. We can get you the money for the ticket.”
“No, I can pay. I'll try to come out this weekend.”
“All right. Are you going to be okay until then?”
“Don't worry too much, Papa.” I wanted to be independent, and yet here I was, causing my parents nothing but grief.
“I'll always worry about you, son. Just tell me one more thing.”
“What would you like to know?”
“This roommate of yours, how do you feel about him? Was it only the heat or...?”
