“Like a deer in the headlights,” he continued as he wheeled himself toward the kitchen.
“I was not,” I argued, following him.
The muscles in my abdomen tightened painfully, and I held back a gasp.
I was fine. Daniel was fine. The symptoms were temporary. He would be back as soon as he could be.
“Well, neither of us is sleepin’ tonight, so how about a drink?”
“Whatcha got?” I asked, ignoring the sweat that had broken out on the back of my neck.
My entire body was sore from my little excursion earlier in the evening, and I dropped onto a kitchen chair with a groan.
“Shitty timing for them to fly to the coast,” Pop said as he set down two glasses and a bottle of whiskey on the table between us. “Glad I picked up a little something while I was out this week. How’re you holdin’ up?”
“Everything hurts,” I replied dryly. “But I can hack it.”
“He needed to know,” he told me as he poured the whiskey. “You’ve always been tough, kid, but hidin’ how bad you’re feelin’ is just plain masochistic.”
“I figured he knew that it was bad.”
“How the hell would he know that when you weren’t tellin’ him?” he asked dubiously.
“Because it’s common fucking knowledge?”
Pop blew a raspberry and shook his head. “You know that it affects everyone differently. There was no way to know how bad yours had gotten.”
“It’s not even that bad?—”
Pop laughed. “Try pullin’ that shit with someone that’ll believe you.”
“You’re right,” I huffed. “It sucks. But I wasn’t going to try to guilt him for going home, you know? Like, if he was okay with me feeling like I’d been run over by a truck, then what the hell would spelling it out for him do?”
“So you didn’t want to tell him about it, but you wanted him to realize it anyway and make changes,” he replied drolly. “That’s some backward shit.”
“No,” I argued. I paused, struggling to explain it. “He knows that mating heat symptoms are painful, right? So if I whined to him about it, what difference would it make, really? Like, hey dude, I know you already know that this is painful, but I’m going to reiterate that fact for you.”
Pop watched me for a few quiet moments. “I don’t think that’s it.”
“You don’t?” I asked flatly.
“Nope.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “I think that you didn’t say anything because you didn’t want to inconvenience him.”
I scoffed.
“And you were afraid that even after you’d told him how bad it was, he would keep doin’ it anyway. Then where would you be?”
I saluted him with my glass and took a sip. The whiskey burned all the way down my throat.
“Feel like you should know this already,” he continued. “But it’s all right to be vulnerable once in a while. People might surprise you.”
“Are we going to share our feelings now?” I joked, leaning forward on my elbows, my cheeks squished between my fists. “Because I’ve been dying to tell you about the butterflies I get when Danny smiles.”
Pop chuckled and flipped me off. “Little shit.”
I smiled and leaned back in my chair, letting out a slow breath as my chest began to ache. “He knows how bad it is now.”
“And?”
