“Tomorrow. Actually.”
“Okay. You and me, right?”
Pleasure flooded through her, along with a hefty dose of disquiet. “Yeah,” she said. “You and me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
WOLFLIKEDTHEDonnelly ranch. And even more surprising, he liked the Donnellys. They were good people. Hard workers. They love their animals; they love the land. It was that sort of thing that mattered to him. They were all different from each other, half siblings, which seemed so close to his own family history, it was funny. But they were... They were functional. At least, they seemed it. Married with children and a thriving operation. It was... Well, it was not unlike Four Corners, he supposed. Except it was only Sawyer who seemed to have found his way to normal.
You’re on your way.
Yeah. He had Violet. They were having a baby.
He ignored the pit of anxiety in his stomach. He didn’t do anxiety. And more and more with this woman, with this...this whole future brewing between them, he felt uncertain.
Oh, not of what he would do. But there was such a host of things outside his control, so many people and so many... So many things had to come together for it to all work out, and Wolf just didn’t possess the kind of trust in the universe that it took to take this kind of thing in stride.
The little clinic was on the edge of town, across the street from the ocean, and he remembered when the two of them had horsed around on the beach. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He’d been playing a different part with her then. And it made him ache just then. It made him angry. Angry that he couldn’t be that for real.
Because she’d beenhappy.
It wasn’t that she didn’t seem happy enough. She did. She was affectionate with him. She smiled at him. She held his hand when they walked together. But she had been carefree with him then, and he’d felt the same thing—at least, he’d wanted to—and after he left, there had been a heaviness. And then there was the pregnancy. Yeah, he wished he could go back to that day at the beach. But instead, they were at the obstetrician.
He put his hand low on her back as they walked into the clinic. He wondered why the hell doctor’s offices always had giant vases with fake reeds and shit. Was there anybody that actually liked that?
“This place is nice,” Violet said.
Apparently, there were.
“Yeah,” he said.
She went up to the front and checked in, getting a clipboard and the stack of paperwork, which she set about filling out. He felt like he shouldn’t look over her shoulder as she filled in things like her Social Security number and medical history.
“What?”
“Seems personal is all,” he said.
She gaped at him like he was an idiot. “Wolf, I could trace my Social Security number onto your back with my tongue and it wouldn’t be the most intimate thing we’ve done.”
He laughed in spite of himself.
After what seemed way too long, an employee ushered them into an exam room.
“Take your clothes off and put the gown on,” she said. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
“Did you want me to go?” he asked.
Undressing in a medical context seemed different than the undressing they were used to. And he hadn’t been with her that way in a few days, so it seemed...potentially invasive.
“I’m fine. Though you suddenly seem very concerned with boundaries.”
“I’m being a gentleman,” he said.
“False, Wolf Garrett. You are not a gentleman.”
He sat down in the chair and rested his elbow on the desk that was just next to it. “Take your clothes off, then.” He flicked the brim of his cowboy hat up, making a show of clearing his view.
“I think,” she said, taking her top off slowly, and in spite of himself, in spite of the fact that they were in an exam room, and she was about to get... Well, he didn’t know what the hell. He didn’t know what happened at these things.