“Ready?” Dan asks, watching me.
I nod and get up, following him out of the house. By the time we’re walking to town holding hands, some of the urgency has gone out of me.
Well, it’s too late to tell him now. I can’t do anything until late this evening, and that’s actually a relief.
When we arrive at our meeting area, Julia and Vanessa are waiting for me. Both of them greet me with a warm hug, and it lifts my mood immediately.
“Good morning,” Julia says. “You look tired, Grace. Are you alright?”
“Yes, thank you,” I say. “Just a rough sleep.”
“Let us know if you need some time off,” Vanessa says. “You’ve been putting in full days here in town, and I don’t think I’ve seen you take a single day off since we first moved here.”
“I just enjoy it,” I say honestly, putting an arm around her shoulders as we head towards the schoolhouse. “If I took a day off, I’d miss you too much.”
“We can meet up outside of a work setting,” Julia chuckles, giving me a squeeze from the other side. “We could have a girls' night. Drinks and pizza.”
“Oooh, yes,” Vanessa says. “And ice cream.”
“Pencil it in,” I reply. “For now, what’s our schedule look like?”
The girls give me the rundown on school projects, stocking the shops, managing the supply chain to the other packs, and preparations for the evening pack dinner. We spend a full day making sure the pack business is running smoothly. By the afternoon, we’ve settled into the comfortable routine of setting up dinner in the covered area by the park.
Even though Dan and I sit together, we don’t talk over the evening meal. So far, it doesn’t seem as if anyone has noticed our unity is an act, and it makes me worry about what will happen when I tell him about the baby.
I don’t want to tell him… but I have to. This isn’t the kind of problem I can just ignore and hope no one notices.
After dinner, we head home, and as the front door closes behind me, I watch Dan go towards the stairs. Nerves twist in my gut, but I take a deep breath and blink hard to gather the courage to speak.
“Dan, can we talk?”
He stops, turning around with a wide-eyed look. “What?”
“Can we go to the kitchen, please. I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Us.”
His face changes, slowly locking down as if shutters are closing behind his beautiful blue eyes.
“Oh.”
“Please, Dan. It’s really important.”
He takes a few slow steps towards me, and I don’t like the look on his face.
He looks… suspicious.
“What do you want to tell me?” he asks, a slight hint of accusation in his voice. It’s so intense, I actually take a step back.
“I… we still haven’t talked about that night.”
He stares at me blankly.
“When we had sex.”
Still, Dan doesn’t react.
