when I go into labor? You aren’t allowed to do anything. I’ll drive us to the hospital, and you do the stupid breathing exercises.”
Lachlan settled beside me on the floor. “Deal. I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”
“No, you will sit quietly in the corner. If I let you anywhere close to my cervix, the baby will bungee jump outta me with the umbilical cord.”
“Nah.” He snickered. “My boy is gonna surf out on the placenta.”
“You’re gross.”
He wrapped his arm over me. “You wanna tell me what happened today, Red?”
No. Not yet. “We haven’t even joked about amniotic fluid or cluster feedings or meconium yet.”
“What the hell is meconium?”
“It’s the newborn poop, some sort of tar-like black stuff that’s made of leftover uterine cells—”
“No, no, no.” Lachlan covered his ears. “We’re not talking uteruses right now.”
“Uteri.”
“Yeah. We’re talking about you and I.”
“No. Uteri. That’s the plural of uterus.”
Usually I could spin him around a couple times, show a little skin, and I’d distract him away from a topic. Not today.
He shook his head. “Put the dictionary down, Webster. You better tell me what happened at practice today.”
I hedged the question. “You got into a fight with Jack Carson.”
“Nice try. That was yesterday. Today’s crisis was all about you.”
I swallowed. Hard. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“You got fired?”
“Yeah.”
“For theft?”
God, it sounded even worse coming from him. “Is that what they’re saying?”
“No one is buying it.” Lachlan stared at me. “I know you, Elle. You’re the cutest damn hoarder I’ve ever met, but you’re not a thief.”
The truth unsettled my stomach. I prepared for the great grape purge of the afternoon. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
“I can’t…tell you,” I said.
“Imagine that.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed mean?”
“It means you’ve been lying to me for a long time.” Lachlan’s accusation should have been more of a surprise, but I didn’t have the energy or strength to refute it. “Where were you two days ago? Why were you in Atwood?”
Because I thought I was saving both of our asses. “I went for the team.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am. Can you please let it go?”
“That’s not how this works.”
Lachlan paced a bathroom too tiny for his bulky frame, especially with the sea-shell wind chime I hung from the ceiling. He battered through it, flinching as the clink-clink-clink warned him before he lost an eye to a sand dollar.
“You’ve been lying to me every day since training camp began,” he said.
“That’s not true.”
“You’re the woman who saved me from the car.”
Did the good Samaritan get in this much trouble when he helped someone on the side of the road?
I looked away. “You remember?”
“No, but there’s only so many black women with legs to their chin and red streaks in their hair popping up at practices.” He shrugged at me. “Hand me a pipe and call me Sherlock, Red. I think I cracked the fucking case. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it…wasn’t important.”
“You saved my ass from turning into roadkill. If the roles were reversed, I’d have lorded that over you every damn day for the rest of your life. You’d owe me big. Blowjob Tuesday. Steak and potatoes Wednesday. Spanking Saturday. So why did you keep it a secret?”
“It wasn’t intentional. There’s just some things I haven’t shared with anyone.”
“I know that feeling,” Lachlan said. “Difference is, I’ve confessed everything to you. I’ve told you about Bast. About hiding him. How terrible it felt. Why I was working so goddamned hard.”
“I know.”
“I trusted you, Elle. Why won’t you trust me?”
“I do.”
“That’s a shitty way of showing it. You didn’t tell me about the baby. You won’t even say why they canned your ass today. What am I supposed to think?”
I slowly stood, hoping my stomach could tolerate the altitude change. “I’m sorry.”
“We shouldn’t have any secrets. We’re a team, Elle. Jesus, you’re pregnant with my baby.”
“And that’s exactly why I’m trying to be careful. Why I had to do all of this.”
“All of what? What’s going on?”
This was getting out-of-control. I needed air. Space. A minute to think. At some point in the afternoon I had concocted a relatively reasonable story to explain it all, but the morning sickness stole it as well as my confidence. I escaped from the bathroom, but I didn’t make it very far.
Lachlan forced me to face him again. “You saved my life, and you didn’t tell me it was you. You got fired today for a bullshit reason, and you won’t even defend yourself. Something is wrong.