“I don’t know!” She reached out and switched on her nightstand lamp. “I thought we were in dreamside, but then I woke up a bit more thoroughly and …”
He shuddered. Semen on the covers, along the back of her legs—what were the odds that none of it was inside her?
He stumbled to the bathroom, pulling up the pajama pants he’d apparently pushed down to his knees in his sleep.He wet a facecloth and brought it back for her, so deeply in shock he didn’t say a word.
But with all their melding of day and night, real and unreal, was it any wonder this had happened?
“Peter,” she said, after he’d returned the cloth and come back to bed, “it’s OK.”
“No,” he said, beginning to shake. He wrapped the covers around himself. All the anxiety—the fear—he’d suppressed yesterday came roaring back, stronger than before. “It’s not OK. It’s a wake-up call.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to take the job.”
“What?”She propped herself up on one elbow, staring at him in evident agitation.“No—I’m sure you didn’t get me pregnant! I’m due any day, it’s the safe part of the cycle?—”
“No, I mean—I have to take the job because we can’t live like this.” He swallowed. “Let’s say we can save your house and negotiate the bills down from impossible to merely onerous, and we both get jobs, and we’re able to keep our heads above water. That’s the best-case scenario, right? You agree with me?”
“Yes, but that’s better than the alternative!”
“No,” he said. “Because even if wegetthe best-case scenario, which is no guarantee, life will go on happening after that. Unexpected bills we’ll have no ability to pay because we’ll already be at our limit.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue but said nothing. He could see the truth of what he said sinking in as her expression shifted from determined to unsettled.
“And this could happen again,” he murmured, gesturing between them. “Easily.”
“We can put precautions in place.” It was a pleading statement, not a confident one, because what would be good enough? If they slept apart, wouldn’t they eventually be tempted to go back to the same bed? If she cast a shielding spell between them, wouldn’t they eventually forget?
“There’s something I vowed to myself when I grew up dirt poor here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Well—two things, actually. First, that I would take care of my nan as soon as I graduated.”
His grandmother died during his first year at the Academy. Beatrix knew that.
“Second,” he said, “that I would never, never,neverdo anything that could possibly result in fathering a child who would grow up like I did.”
He heard the breath catch in her throat.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t. When the Pentagram calls, I have to say yes.”
He turned to look at her. “Say you understand,” he whispered. She’d been there during his childhood. More than that, she’d seen a bit of it through his eyes, feeling what he felt. “Beatrix?—”
“I understand.” The words came out slow and heavy. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he held her, knowing her too well to think this was a minor concession. She’d contracted his deep-seated horror of that job. And on top of that, she had a powerful determination to push on in the faceof adversity. She never gave up. He was making her agree to a plan that went against her every instinct.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking.
CHAPTER 20
It wasn’t quite five o’clock in the morning, but there was no chance of going back to sleep now. They dressed in silence and headed downstairs. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in her hands that she didn’t want to drink, when she heard a softthunk, followed by three morethunksthat sounded like rolled-up newspapers hitting the front door.
She closed her eyes. How she’d hoped, when Hickok showed up yesterday, that a story could help. But now it didn’t matter. And honestly, what had she been thinking? What assistance had she expected to get?
Peter’s chair slid backward against the floor. She listened to the slow thud of his footsteps as he went to collect the papers.
“Hickok’s story is out,” he said when he returned. “Headline: ‘Latest disaster for Romeo & Juliet: Crushing bills.’”
“I don’t want to read it,” she whispered.
He sighed. “Neither do I.”
