This was not a comment I expected so I felt my brow furrow and my head tip to the side.
“Why?”
“Birth control, darlin’.”
“But I’m on birth control.”
Chace blinked up at me before he stared.
Then he asked, “What?”
“I’m on birth –”
I stopped speaking abruptly because I finally lost the haze and snapped back into real life.
When I hit my twenties, my periods changed. They’d always been regular, light cramping, nothing too bad. Then they stopped lasting four days, started lasting two because they became heavy, the cramping intense and sometimes I’d get minor headaches that weren’t debilitating but they weren’t fun either.
It was the cramping that was bad. Month after month, for the first day, it was awful. I’d have to sit in a hot tub and take large doses of ibuprofen even to make them manageable. If I didn’t start at night, I would have to miss class when I was in college or even miss work when I was working. If I did start at night, it would take so long to get the cramps to go away, my sleep was interrupted and I’d be a zombie at school or work the next day.
When it came down to missing or zoning out during work, I eventually went to the doctor. She put me on birth control and voila! Back to regular periods, cramping and headaches gone, flow normal.
I’d never gone off the pill and I’d never used it for the purpose it was intended because I’d never needed it. So I never thought of it that way.
Until now.
“You’re on the pill?”
Chace’s voice took me back to him at the same time it reminded me this was not a story I wished to share.
“Uh…”
His hand at the small of my back became an arm around my waist and he said low, “Faye.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
His brows drew together. “There a reason?”
“Um…”
“Faye, bein’ real, my dick is still inside you,” he reminded me. “This is not only shit we can talk about. It’s shit we have to talk about.”
“Uh…”
“Honey –”
“I had really bad periods, I take the pill and it regulates them so they’re not bad anymore,” I said in a rush.
“Right,” Chace replied matter-of-factly then concluded, “Excellent. Next time I get you na**d and I get you, no condoms. All you. Fucking brilliant.”
He let my hair go, gave me a squeeze with both his arms, lifted his head off the pillow and touched his mouth to mine.
Then he rolled me to my back sliding out of me, bent his head, kissed my shoulder and muttered, “Be back.”
He rolled again and angled out of the bed. I dazedly watched the muscles of his back and shoulders move as his arms swung loosely at his sides (along with watching other, um… parts of him) because he was walking to my bathroom.
Okay, well, I guessed I didn’t need to be embarrassed about discussing my period with Chace.
Good to know.