“You can start by never taking me to see a doctor,” Owen murmured. The anger began to fade from his body language, and Crawford was eternally grateful to see it go. “I won’t go. I won’t. I would rather leave you than go toseeone.”
“Okay.” Crawford sat on the bed. Talking Owen down from his sudden temper was proving easier than he believed, but the heartache in Owen’s voice rattled him. All he wanted to do was sweep Owen into his arms and keep him safe. If Crawford could only keep his omega close, he could make sure whatever had hurt him so badly would never hurt him again. “That’s a good start. A very good start. Why don’t we talkaboutthat?”
Owen barked a dry laugh and shook his head. “Are you playing counselor right now? You know it’s not going to work on me. I spent six years of my life studying so I could counsel others, and another two as an unpaid intern accumulating college credits and experience. Talking about my feelings isn’t goingtowork.”
“Whynot?”
“Because…” Owen ran his hands through his hair. He was in profile to Crawford’s position, and Crawford saw his eyelids droop. Bit by bit, he lost steam. “Because feelings don’t always cut it. If you’d gone to school and studied it like I had, you’d know. If you had field experience, you’d know. When you go through a trauma, feelings aren’t enough. There are some things you can only ever cope with and pray that they leave you inpeace.”
“Then what can we do?” Crawford asked. “I want to be there for you, but right now I don’t know how.Teachme.”
Owen’s shoulders slumped. He sank onto the bed and shot Crawford a mournful look. “I’m being serious when I say all you need to do is never bring me to adoctor.”
“What if yougetsick?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Owen looked down at the sheets. He plucked at a crease. “Iwon’t.”
“You can’t say that.” The anger was gone. Crawford took it as his cue to reduce some of the distance between them. He slid across the edge of the bed to approach Owen so that their hands were side by side, but not quite touching. “Getting sick isn’t something you can control, but getting whatever’s stopping you from getting medicalcareis.”
“It’s not…” Owen raked his teeth across his lip. “I don’t want you to get angry. I wasn’t… it wasn’t myfault.”
Whatever bothered Owen was coming closer to the surface. If Crawford could coax him a little more, he was sure Owen woulddivulgeit.
“I know that the relationship we have is different from most people’s, and that you feel obligated to please me, but I will never judge you. Whatever you did or didn’t do, whatever you’ve been through, it won’t change anything,”Crawfordsaid.
There were tears in the corners of Owen’s eyes, and Crawford had to hold himself back from reaching up to brushthemaway.
“When I was sixteen,” Owen murmured, “I got sent back to school too early after my first heat, and one of the alpha boys in my class took me into a janitor’s closet andknottedme.”
Crawford’s blood ran cold. The thought of another alpha touching Owen, laying claims on him,knottinghim, awoke the protective, possessive beast in Crawford’s soul. It may have happened over ten years ago, but it didn’t matter. If he found the man whodidit—
“I wanted it,” Owen admitted. “I was heat addled and he was… he was hot. When he was done, he took me back to his car and we did it again in his back seat, and then he brought me home and we fell into bed together. I thought that it was how it worked. I washappy. But when his parents found us knotted together, they weren’t. His room stank of me. My pheromones wereeverywhere.”
“Then why are you afraid of doctors?” Crawford asked. “I don’tunderstand.”
“My heat was almost over, but not quite, and we conceived.” Owen ran his fingers over his knees, pushing at the denim. “I was pregnant by him, and he abandoned me as soon as he found out. His family moved out of state to cut me out of his life, and I… I didn’t know whattodo.”
A baby. Crawford sat up a little straighter and wrapped his arm around Owen’s shoulder, tugging him close. He didn’t know that Owen was a father. The protective instinct, once destructive, mellowed. Thoughts of a miniature Owen, blue eyes bright, grin mischievous with youth, turned Crawford’s aggression into paternalinstinct.
Crawford didn’t think he was ready to have a child, but hearing that Owen was a father changed his mind. If he could care for Owen like he had been doing, he could care for a babyaswell.
A child, he guessed. Almost ateenager.
God.
Crawford pressed a kiss to Owen’s temple, overjoyed, but Owen wasn’tdoneyet.
“I was young, dumb, and broke. So I…” Owen hesitated. “I found this place that would take me for free to… to get rid of it. It wasn’t even a hospital or a clinic—it was a private lab, and the doctor… he did something, and it’s never been the same again. My heat doesn’t work like it should since he touched me, and I don’t trust any of them anymore. I don’t. He did something to me. I’mbroken.”
The details eroded, but Crawford pieced together Owen’s meaning. The picture in his head of a pre-teen Owenshattered.
“So I won’t go to see a doctor,” Owen said. “I take over the counter contraceptives, and if I could predict when I was about to go into heat I’d medicate myself to block it, but I have no clue when to start, and it’s dangerous to take those types of medications too far in advance. Whatever that doctor did to me in his lab, he… changed what’s inside of me. My heats will come on in rapid succession for months at a time, then dry up for an abnormally long time, then come back again, and I can’t control it. All I want is for it to be over. It’s miserable to have to suffer through four, five, six heats in a year, unable to suppress them. All I want is to benormal.”
“I know.” Crawford’s voice dipped low and he kissed Owen’s temple again. It was no wonder why he’d acted out. “Thank you for telling me. I want to work on making itbetter.”
“There’s nothing you can do to make it better,” Owen whispered, defeated. “There’s no way to take back the choices I made, Crawford. You know it. You can’t spank this away. I chose to terminate the pregnancy and now I’m broken. This is my punishment for making a poorchoice.”
“You are not broken.” Owen’s body was receptive, so Crawford tugged him into his lap. Owen sniffled and blinked away his unshed tears. “You were young and you did what you had to do with the resources available. No one can blame you. You didn’t make a poor choice. You were still achild.”
