Page 41 of Mating of Convenience
“It’s…” Raph traced a finger around the rim of his glass. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“Take your time.” It wasn’t often that my friend was lost for words so I didn’t mind giving him a minute or two, even though I was curious as hell now. What could be so big that Raph struggled to come out and say it?
On the chair opposite me, Raph furrowed his brows. “The week I broke up with you… you remember that one time we had sex and the condom broke?”
“I do.” I remembered how shocked he’d been--how shocked I had been too. But even so, I’d told him it was no big deal. That I would stand by him if he’d conceived. I was never going to be a dead-beat alpha.
“You seemed almost happy,” Raph said.
Had I? “Why are you bringing this up now?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was that moment I realized youreallywanted to be a dad. Not justsomedaybut as soon as possible.”
“And so you broke up with me,” I concluded.
Raph licked his lips. “Not immediately. Actually… It got me thinking about our future. I lay awake that night, thinking about you and me and a tiny you…” He paused. “The weirdest thing was how the idea wasn’t scaring me anymore. I started thinking that maybe if we stayed together I wouldn’t mind having a family with you. Not atonof children, but maybe one? I could give you that, and then we could go from there.”
I stared at my friend. Here I was, thinking I knew everything about him, and then he went and said stuff like that and turned my world upside down. “But if you were thinking that…”
Raph shook his head and picked up one of the red paper napkins lying on the table. For a moment he looked at it as if he was wishing for a pen so he could draw on it, then he started simply pulling it apart between his fingers as he spoke. “I went to a doctor for a morning after pill. I mean, even though I was sorta coming around to the idea of having a kid with you, I didn’t want to have a kid right away.”
“I get that.” I still wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me, though, and he looked so crestfallen about it all that I kind of wanted to hug him. Or maybe even more than that. When I inhaled, the smell of fresh crepes entered my nose, but that wasn’t the only scent in the air; I caught Raph’s too, and though I wasn’t the most typical alpha, breathing in the scent of the omega I loved still stirred protective instincts in me. “What did the doctor tell you?” I asked.
“He insisted that he couldn’t give me the pill without giving me a check-up first, since I admitted I’d never been to that kind of doctor.” Raph took a deep breath. “In the end, he gave me the pill, but I also got a call a few days later.”
“What call?” He’d never mentioned any of this to me before. All that he’d told me was that I didn’t need to worry about the broken condom because he’d taken care of it.
“It was the doctor’s office. They asked me to come in again. I had a really bad feeling about that.” Raph gave me a smile that did nothing to hide the heavy sadness that had taken hold of him. I had a really bad feeling too. The last time I’d seen him so broken up about something was when his mom died.
“What happened?” I asked.
“In short, they told me it was very unlikely that I would ever have kids through natural means.”
I heard him speak the words clearly, but it took a few seconds for my brain to process their meaning. While I was staring at my friend as if he’d just told me that the stars in the night sky weren’t real, the waitress came by again and set two plates with steaming hot crepes in front of us. I had no eyes for them. In light of what Raph had just confessed to me, even the smell of roasted apples and smoked sausage wasn’t enough to bring my appetite back to life. “Why did you never tell me that?” I finally made myself ask.
“How could I? I wasjuststarting to think that I might want kids and I knew how muchyouwanted them and then… that happened. I didn’t know how to deal. I didn’t want you to pity me, and I didn’t want you to give up your dreams of a family for me.”
“So you just left?”
“I know it wasn’t the right thing to do. If I could go back…” Raph met my gaze, but he didn’t speak on. He didn’t really have to. I could see how much he was struggling with his past decisions. “I figured you could find an omega to have a child with and I could… I don’t know. Never think about it again?” Raph started tearing at his paper napkin again. “I guess I just needed a break to come to terms with things.”
“Have you?”
“I don’t know.” Raph glanced up at me. “You made me want things I never thought I could want. I never really got over that, and, to be honest, I never really got over you either.”
“Angel…” I reached out and enveloped his hand with my own, stopping him from further destroying the paper napkin. I couldn’t believe this was the reason he’d broken up with me. Or that he wasn’t over me.
Did that mean there was still a chance for us?
First though, I had to make him see that his medical issues weren’t a deterrent to me. “I don’t care if we’ll never have kids,” I told Raph. “I’ve been teaching for a while now, so I know that taking care of teens isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I tried to make light of the situation.
“You don’t mean that,” he said. “I know you too well. You think you mean it, but you’ll be sad eventually. I don’t want to be the reason you’re sad.”
“Trust me, Raph. You could never be the reason I’m sad.”
“I was when I broke up with you.”
“True.” I paused, catching Raph’s gaze. “But it was being away from you that made me sad.”
