Page 27 of Jake and Conner
"I’m still sorry." Because that was just as sad. "And now your mother has found out about the baby?" I rubbed my temples, thinking.
"I told her," Mark admitted. "I'm really bad at keeping secrets. She was bound to find out anyway."
He was probably right about that, but we could have used a little more time, anyway. "Where are you right now?" I asked. "Can they hear you?" I needed to know if he could talk freely. Otherwise, there was no point in trying to have a conversation right now.
"I'm in my room. She’s downstairs." He lowered his voice a little. "I don’t think she can hear me."
"Okay, good. Have you thought about what you want to do about the baby?"
"My mom says that I have to give it away. She’s saying that no one will mate me if I don't."
My heart ached for the poor kid on the other end of the line. He sounded so broken. It was obvious whatever choice he might have made if given the opportunity, it wouldn't have been that. "You know that's not true, right?" I tried to console him as best I could. "Times have changed."
"Have they really?"
"Of course they have. There's a lot of patchwork families out there these days and omegas and alphas who get divorced and remarry. We have a lot more freedoms these days than we used to have." The world we lived in wasn't perfect, but we were making progress. Little by little. "If you want to keep that baby, we'll find a way, okay?" Mark was going to be eighteen soon. Before the baby would be born. That meant his no one could force him into making a decision. At least not legally.
"Okay," Mark said, although he didn't sound wholly convinced.
"What about the baby's other father? Your boyfriend?” I asked. "Are you still in contact?"
"Yeah. He knows about the baby."
"Has he mentioned what he would like you to do?" I jotted some more questions down on my notepad. We couldn't get into this too deeply over the phone, but there were a lot of things I needed to know regarding this other man. Was he an alpha? Was he of age? Was he going to support Mark or was he going to try to lay a claim on the baby?
"We haven't really talked about it much," Mark admitted. "I don't think he knows what he wants."
"That's okay, we can figure it out."
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then Mark said, "I gotta hang up now." I could only speculate that it was his mom coming into the room as he ended the call.
I put the phone away, leaned back in my chair and exhaled. I'd guessed that the kid's parents were going to be problematic. As slowly as our laws changed, sometimes I got the feeling that society's expectations of omegas changed even more slowly. At least among certain segments of the population.
I made a few more notes on a piece of paper before turning to the next file on my desk. At least my short conversation with Mark had managed to distract me from my weekend plans. Mark didn't know what he wanted to do with his baby, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my alpha. Maybe I should have given the issue a little more thought, but what was the point, really?
Even if I spent all day every day leading up to the weekend thinking about my relationship with Jake, once I was face to face with him, all of that was going to be wiped from my mind, anyway.
It was a little frustrating, really, how he did that to me, turning my thoughts to mush. When I was around him, I only wanted to bewithhim. I wanted to feel the warmth of his body as he held me, I wanted to feel the way my skin tingled as his fingertips skated over my back, and lower. I missed all of that so badly, even now the memory sent a shiver down my spine.
But I didn't want to be controlled by my hormones. I wanted to make rational decisions, and when I thought about all of this rationally, I didn't want to get into another relationship if it was going to blow up in my face the way the last one had. I didn't want Jake back if I was going to lose him again, because losing him had beenhard.I didn't want to go through that again. I didn't want to have all the same arguments again.
And yet, in spite of all of that, I'd kissed him.
And I didn't know what I was going to do when I saw him again.
11
Jake
Saturday afternoon, I picked Conner up at his house. He wore jeans and a plain green sweater under his black coat. Anyone else might have looked underdressed in those clothes, but the color of the sweater accentuated his eyes and contrasted nicely with his hair. He managed to look great with absolutely no effort put into his outfit at all. He probably wanted me to think that he hadn't put anythoughtinto it, either, but he couldn't fool me. I knew he wanted me to look at him, so I did, slowly eyeing him from top to bottom as he got into my car.
"I like that color on you," I said.
"Oh, the sweater? It was a gift from my sister," he responded nonchalantly, as if none of this was a big deal to him. I tried to give off the same vibe. I was pretty sure we were both pretending. At least I was.
Inside my head, I was a nervous wreck.
Conner had given me this one chance. What if I wasted it? What if I said something stupid? Because let's be real, there was a hundred percent chance that I was going to say something stupid at some point over the course of the day.
