“Hello, it’s Jack,” he says with professional calmness.
I can hear a woman speaking on the other end but can’t make out the words. That’s fine, though, because the grin spreading across my husband’s face is all the evidence I need.
Bree must be pregnant—which means we’re going to have a fawn. We’re going to be dads.
Arthur lets out a yelp the moment Jack thanks the woman on the other end and hangs up. He hops off the couch and dances around in a circle, waving his butt every which way. I turn to Jack, whose mouth is hanging open, his eyes unfocused. I grab him in a hug, pulling him close, and he envelops me in his arms in return.
“We did it,” I whisper to him, running my hand through his mane. “We’re gonna have a family.”
Jack nods furiously but doesn’t speak. When we finally pull apart, because Arthur is crowing like an unhinged child, Jack’s eyes are moist.
“Wow,” he murmurs, looking down at his hands. “A fawn. Life is going to change so much.”
“Yep!” Arthur leaps onto Jack’s lap, making our buck gasp in surprise. “Time to start cleaning up the office.”
“Maybe we should get a different house,” Jack says. “More rooms.” His face lights up. “Yeah! We should do it now, before the fawn comes.”
I pat his back. “We have plenty of time. Not a bad idea, though.”
I haven’t seen Jack this enthusiastic about anything in ages, and it makes me warm inside. We made the right decision to go to DreamTogether—and to keep our activities with Bree under wraps. This is the bubble of happiness I’ve been missing.
To celebrate, Jack opens a bottle of bubbly and we all drink some, toasting to our surrogate. Then, after consuming probably too much alcohol, I go to the bathroom to piss and return to find Arthur bent over the couch, Jack voraciously thrusting in and out of him. I decide to leave them to it, heading to my computer in the office.
Opening a browser window, I send a ten-dollar tip to Sienna, which allows me to direct message her.
Great news, I type. I hope you’re doing all right.
The response comes quickly. No puking yet.
I smile at the screen. Good. Hopefully it stays that way.
After closing out the browser, I shut my computer and sit in the dark for a moment, listening to Arthur’s moans on the other side of the wall.
He’s right in wanting a relationship with her. I, too, am already wondering and worrying. Now that I know our fawn is growing inside her, I want to be near her.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe we should tell Jack. Maybe he would want that, too, if he got the chance.
I just have to figure out the best way to tell him.
“We absolutely should not do that,” Arthur says when I bring it up on our way to yoga with Bree. “How suspicious would that look, that we’ve been seeing her without telling him up until now?”
“We could make something up. Say we just found out. Bree would play along.”
Arthur frowns. “I don’t want to make her do that.”
But I know he feels the guilt, too. He’s just better at compartmentalizing.
When we see her outside the yoga studio, smiling so wide her eyes squeeze closed, my heart soars. Arthur runs up to her and throws his arms around her without a shred of propriety, hugging her with his whole body.
“Breeeee,” he squeals, and she flails in his tight embrace. “We did it!”
“Sure did,” she answers with a giggle. Finally, he lets her go, and she straightens her shirt to stop it from exposing her juicy tits. “I wonder which one of you it was?”
“Well, Arthur had the best chance,” I say, tucking some of her curly red hair back. Her green eyes lift to mine, and I consider kissing her the way Arthur did the other day—but that’s a level of intimacy I’m not sure I want to foster. “But given the timeline, it could have been any of us at DreamTogether.”
“Was… Jack excited?” she asks.
“Over the moon. He almost cried.”
