Earth Fathers Are Weird (Earth Fathers #1) - Lyn Gala Page 0,60
He needed Rick to understand this. “I respect how you exhausted yourself caring for Xander. You are an incredible father. I respect your skills that allow you to afford such a nice ship. However you earn your compensation, you are effective. I respect you for being so honest and having so much patience with me. When I got here, I didn’t understand much, and you helped me with the computer and how to use the bathroom and how to open doors. At one point I thought you didn’t care about me, that you only cared about the offspring I carried, and it hurt,” Max confessed. He remembered sitting in the access shafts crying. Not his finest moment.
“Clarify pain.”
Max closed his eyes. “I hurt because I do like you. I respect you. I thought you liked me, but then when I found out about the surrogacy, I thought I was wrong. I thought you didn’t like me. It turns out, you thought I was a liar.” Max laughed. His feelings were one big tangled mess. He didn’t know what he felt. He did know Rick’s touchy-feely period hadn’t ended when Max had given birth. Rick had been just as quick to touch or to share conversation after the offspring were born. And now Rick wouldn’t come close.
Max wondered if this was what the soldiers from Vietnam had felt like when they’d come home and had been called baby killers. Rick acted as if Max was suddenly someone different—someone dangerous and unstable.
“I was wrong. You are not lying. You are a warrior,” Rick said. He reached out as if he wanted to touch Max, but then he pulled his tentacle back.
Max grimaced. He hated this new distance between them, but he would never regret protecting the family. Now that he had nearly lost them, Max could admit to himself that he felt like these people were his family just as much as Pete and his parents were.
Rick rotated his whole body to watch Max out of a different set of eyes.
Maybe it was time to change the subject. Max leaned forward. “Query. What did invaders hope to take?”
“Query. Reason for knowing.” Rick had his paranoia dialed up to ten, and his reluctance didn’t make Max feel any more warm or fuzzy.
“Answer. I want to know what to defend. I want to know who else might come.”
Rick inched closer, but the silence was pretty telling. He didn’t want to tell Max what the bad guys wanted.
“Query,” Max asked, “do you have something illegal on this ship? Something dangerous?”
“No,” Rick said immediately. “No additional ships will come. I move ship farther from developed planets. Too expensive to pursuit. You do not need to be a warrior.”
Max was starting to form a few hypotheses. “I am always a warrior. I can’t stop being one, even when I have offspring in me. I will always protect you and the offspring.”
Rick’s tentacles twitched. “You protected offspring. Humans have imperative with surrogate offspring.” He had left himself out of that list of people Max would protect. And actually, he had reduced all of Max’s efforts to a biological imperative. Max had issues with that.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, appreciating again how good the burn cream was. He didn’t have a single blister—just some pink, healing skin. “Some humans fight to protect others. Some humans hurt others. Most humans protect offspring. Some don’t.” Max thought about the assistant football coach who had been arrested for child porn. He’d had a long conversation with his brother, and he remembered the fear that the man might have touched Petey. “Humans rarely prey on offspring,” Max added after a pause. Rick’s tentacles all curled up, which was fair because that’s how Max felt about pedophiles. “Query. Are all your people the same?”
“No,” Rick said slowly. “But no my people are warriors. We hunt from secrecy.”
“Some of my people do that too,” Max said. “This is not about humans. This is about me. I would always protect you. I would always protect the offspring.” As Max said the words, he felt a tightening in his chest at the idea of someone threatening his adopted family. In the past, Rick had always been the one to initiate touch, so Max took a risk. He held one of Rick’s tentacles. “The invaders deserved to die because they would have hurt the family. I only killed them because of that.”
Rick curled his tentacle around Max’s wrist. “Clarify. Family is a genetically