“Don’t pick that up,” she said, grimacing in horror.
“I wanted to see it.” He stared down at it, his face grim and forbidding as the side of a cliff.
She ripped the test out of his hand and walked back into the bathroom, throwing it away again. Then she came back out.
“So,” she said. “That’s that.”
“I’m not going to ask how it happened. I know how it happened.” His dark eyes collided with hers. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’resorry?”
“I’m the one with experience. And I don’t... I use condoms. I swear to you. Every time. But I didn’t with you. I just... I wasn’t thinking. That’s it. Plain and simple. And I owed you more thought than that. I owed you better than this.”
Of all the things she had expected, it wasn’t that. And actually, it infuriated her.
“You owed me better than a lot of things,” she said. “Protection being the least of it. Honestly...you apologizing for... For the presence of our child... I... I don’t want you involved, Wolf. I think that you should do the right thing. I think that you should walk away and let me deal with this. Because you don’t want it. You want to...go on with your life. That’s what you want. I know it, because I asked you to do something different and you wouldn’t. You didn’t want to be with me. You didn’t want to stay here. You didn’t want to try something new. So... So don’t. Go back and forget that this happened.”
“Right. Forget that it happened and...have my family come chase me down and string me up the nearest tree?”
“Look, I can’t speak for what your family’s going to do to you, but at the end of the day, it’s no more their problem than it is yours. This is... I don’t want you involved.”
“Too damned bad.”
He looked at her, and she saw... Well, she saw a lot of bitterness ahead. A lot of ugliness. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t see another way around it. Because he was... He was going to be exactly who he’d said that he was. And he might be filled with adrenaline right now; he might be filled with...even good intentions.
Except, last time he told you. He told you unambiguously exactly who he was and what he was going to do. He told you. He didn’t pretend. Why would he pretend now?
She shoved that voice off. Because she was angry, and she wanted to be angry. And she wanted Wolf to be an enemy; she didn’t want to make him into anything else. She wasn’t in the mood. She didn’t want to be giving. She wanted to be furious. He had broken her heart, and he had changed her life in ways that she hadn’t asked for.
“I don’t put my mind to something and then not see it through,” he said. “You’ll find I don’t put my mind to a lot of things. I don’t commit to a lot of things. Hell, I don’t commit to a damn thing. But you know what I’m not? I am not a deadbeat. And I will be damned if a kid of mine is raised without knowing me. Grows up knowing that I’m out there somewhere in the world and I didn’t give a shit about them. No. I won’t do that. Because I lived that. And I’m still pissed off about it to this day. You know it. You’re no different. You honestly want that for your kid? You want them to know that I walked away? Even if it was because you asked me to? How would you like that? How do you like it? Knowing that one of the people who made you didn’t have the wherewithal to commit? Hell. You and I both know that doesn’t lead anywhere good.”
“Right. It doesn’t lead anywhere good, so... I guess, as a result you and I aren’t that good. How are we going to...functionally raise a child? And don’t you think the end result is just going to be what we both experienced? A broken home?”
“Seems to me there’s nothing to avoiding a broken home other than...not breaking it. Seems to me it’s a choice.”
“Yeah. But...you’re a human being, so surely you know how that works. It’s like going on a diet. It seems really easy until this plate of cookies is in front of you. Salad is fine when it’s theoretical. Sugar is what you pick if you have the choice. It seems simple, then you have to do it. You don’t know how to commit to anyone, and I...”
“But you know there’s nothing else for it. We have to get married.”
“I just... I’m sorry, what?”
“We have to get married,” he said. “And you know there’s no other choice. I can’t have a woman out there pregnant with my child. I can’t have a child and not marry its mother. I wouldn’t be able to set foot back on Four Corners property. And you... You think your dad and your stepmother would just be fine with you...having a baby with no father in the picture?”
“This isn’t about other people,” she insisted.
“The hell it’s not. What in your life doesn’t have anything to do with other people? Other people are all tangled the hell up in mine. As much as I like to consider myself a man who does what he wants, I understand what commitment is. I understand what responsibilities are. I work a family ranch that is dependent on every single person to get all the work done that needs doing. I’m dependent on them. They’re dependent on me. That’s how it is. It’s the way of it. Four Corners is basically a town in and of itself. And my father... My father didn’t take care of his kids. Yeah, it was our mothers who left, but it had to do with how he treated them. It had to do with what he wouldn’t do. And you know what he never did? He never offered marriage. My mother wasn’t having any of that. She left. She left because he wasn’t holding her there.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said, her throat going tight. “You don’t want me. You don’t want to stay with me. You made your choice already and you...”
“I made my choice based on a different situation than the one we’re in now.”
“You don’t want to get married because of me.”
“No. I’m also man enough to know that when things change, you gotta change with them. You grew up on a ranch, Violet. You can make all the plans you want, but when the weather turns, you’ve got to go with that. You can’t argue with the earth. You can’t argue with nature. And neither can we. This is real. It’s happening. So we’re happening.”
When he looked at her, his eyes were like fire. “You need me to speak with your father?”
“You’re not done speaking with me,” she said.