Deliver Me (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 1)

by Aiden Bates

  Finn frowned at him. "What do you mean 'if it comes to that?' What aren't you telling me?" He leaned forward.

  Carter looked out the window. He wasn't bitter about Finn's lack of enthusiasm. He had no right to be. He wasn't exactly on board the baby train himself. He'd have liked for Finn to feel something, but he didn't have the right to expect that either. "I can give the baby up for adoption, if that's what the best solution turns out to be." He tried to ignore the way his heart screamed at him for the suggestion. He couldn't think about himself right now.

  "Is that something that you want to do?" Finn held himself perfectly still. "I wouldn't have expected that from you, after seeing you with the Geary children."

  "Tom's kids aren't mine. They have two parents to take care of them, and grandparents to help out. This kid would only have me. That's a lot to consider, especially when I've never seen myself in a parental role before." He looked away.

  Finn stood up and walked around the desk, until he was in Carter's line of sight. "Uh-uh. There's something missing here." He lifted Carter's chin with one finger. "You're scared."

  "Do you know why I got into medicine?" Carter looked into Finn's eyes, because he had little choice. He could get away if he forced the issue, but he didn't want to get forceful with Carter. "My older brother got married young—eighteen or so, same as Paul. He got pregnant right away, too. He miscarried, at nineteen weeks. Bled out right there in the emergency room, because they didn't have anyone who could help him." He bit his lip. "I don't talk about it much. Sometimes I do, if I'm doing a career day for omegas or something. But yeah, I'm scared. I remember how Toby looked all pale and dead in his coffin, and all that I see is my face there now that I'm pregnant."

  Finn reached out stiffly and put a hand on Carter's shoulder. "That had to have been terrifying for you. And I can see where it would make you want to avoid the whole baby thing. But it's happening, so we do have to deal with it. I can promise you, Carter, that everything possible will be done to keep you safe. We've got Allen on staff, and he knows what he's doing. And we've got Huntington here, and you've trained him yourself." He brushed his fingertips across Carter's cheeks. "I'd tell you not to worry, but you've never done a damn thing I've told you to." He grinned, just a little bit.

  Carter blushed. "Well, that's not entirely true."

  Finn smirked. "Go on. Head home. Get some rest. You've got—we've got—plenty of time to worry about what comes next."

  ***

  Finn got Carter calmed down as best he could. He wasn't good at this kind of thing, the emotional stuff. He didn't generally like it, and he didn't exactly have a lot of practice. Still, he could see that Carter was terrified of the prospect of his pregnancy. As the alpha, it was Finn's job to make things better for his omega.

  He felt good once Carter's muscles relaxed under his skin. He'd done well by his omega. Once he convinced Carter to go home and rest, he headed home himself.

  He drove in a daze, running two stop signs and one red light. Part of his hindbrain recognized that he'd done those things and screamed at the rest of him about paying attention and not getting himself killed because he got a shock to the system. The rest of him kept driving, insulated in a hazy other world where only one word mattered. That word was baby.

  Carter was going to have a baby. His baby. He didn't doubt Carter when Carter told him he was the father; Carter wasn't the kind of guy who made a habit out of meaningless sex and it showed. He could accept that. The only question now was what was to be done about it.

  A large part of Finn had jumped for joy at the prospect of surrendering the baby for adoption. He wasn't the paternal type; anyone who knew him would say the same. Carter knew him well enough to admit that. Carter hadn't even suggested the idea of raising the kid together. No, their arrangement had been for one strictly no-strings-attached encounter, and with a little allowance for the circumstances that could continue to be the case.

  The rest of Finn recoiled in horror from the concept. The child was his. It was part of him, something that he had made with his omega. He'd devoted every minute of every second to his career, and he hadn't sought this distraction, but it was here. Plenty of other men rose in corporate ranks and had families at the same time; why not Finn?

  Even if he never got another promotion, even if he stayed right here in Syracuse for the rest of his life, he was making enough money to support himself, Carter, and as many children as they chose to have. He could do that even if Carter decided to retire from delivering babies and put his feet up. He could give Carter that—hell, he knew that Carter came from poverty. He could give Carter luxury.

  Of course that would be creating strings, though. He hadn't wanted that. He wasn't sure, even now, that he did want that. Carter would have told him if he did want a relationship with the father of his child; he was outspoken like that. Maybe Carter had written Finn off as not "daddy" material. Maybe Carter still despised him.

  Maybe Carter didn't see Finn as his alpha, even though Finn had accepted Carter as his omega before they'd had sex.

  The thought didn't sit right with him, but that didn't make it any less likely. Carter already had someone that he loved, someone that wanted him. Tom might not want Carter in the way that Carter wanted him, but Finn hadn't exactly gone making offers either. He might not make an offer, and Carter might not want an offer.

  All of this uncertainty, and insecurity, gave Finn a headache. He pushed it off to the side. He would deal with it when he got home and could focus on things that weren't driving.

  Naturally, because the universe hated him, he saw his parents' car in the driveway.

  Sheila and Brian Riley wore nearly identical jackets, despite it being midsummer. Sheila looked around herself with a sour, pinched look to her mouth, while Brian stood in his Donegal cap and looked out at the world with his face set impassively. "It's gone on seven o'clock!" Finn's mother scolded, getting up from where she leaned against the family Cadillac.

  Finn shuddered to see the Cadillac. He was generally all for not replacing things until they broke, but the Caddy had been broken before they drove it off the lot, back in the early nineties. Parts of it were held together with toothpicks. A pimp in Newark had once mistaken it for the car of a rival and shot a hole into the back seat. The hole was still there. "Mom. Dad." Finn tried to smile. This was not the example of family he needed in front of him right now.

  "It's gone on seven o'clock, and where have you been? Your father and I have been waiting here since four thirty in the afternoon for you to get home." Sheila wagged her finger at Finn. "Four thirty! And don't think that the neighbors didn't give us some mighty strange looks, too, because they did."

  Finn cringed. "Okay. Well, maybe we can get this lovely… piece of equipment… into the garage and then I can get my car into the garage, and then you can explain to me why you're here with no notice." He forced himself to smile and shepherded his mother toward the back of the house.

  His father got into the Caddy, tried to start it three times before the engine caught, and drove it toward the backyard. Finn scrambled to get into his Benz and followed, opening the garage with the touch of a button.

  He slid the Benz into its proper slot and got out, opening another bay for his father. Then he grabbed his parents' bags and carried them into his home.

  He wasn't worried about the place being unsightly. He paid people for that, and those people would have been there during the day. Nevertheless, Sheila found fault with some dust on top of the refrigerator. "It's the age of the house, dear. You should have bought a new house, but of course you probably couldn't have afforded that."

  Finn bit his tongue. "I'll give you the room with the floral quilt. That bed is at least big enough for two. You might like it; it's an antique bed." He led the way up the stairs.

  His mother complained about the stairs, because they were old and couldn't be expected to climb the stairs like young people. She turned up her nose at the en-suite bathroom, because th
e fixtures were inappropriate to the time of the house. She came back down to the less formal sitting room to let him know that "people moved on from the Edwardian years for a reason, son, and you should save your money and upgrade the rooms as soon as you can."

  Finn clenched his hands into a fist. "Did you come all this way to complain about my plumbing?" He loved his house. He'd chosen it because of all of the period detail. Everything had in fact been upgraded; it was only the aesthetics that had been carefully restored.

  "Well, no, of course not. It's been ages since we've seen your face, and we wanted to make the time to visit. Since, you know, you won't come down to New Jersey to spend some time with us." Sheila sniffed and toyed with the placemat before her.

  It was an ominous start to the weekend.

  The next day Sheila decided to stay at home while Brian, Finn's dad, told his son that he wanted to golf with him. That surprised Finn. When he'd been younger, Brian had dismissed golf as superfluous to making money, unless he could earn a scholarship with it. Now he wanted to hit the links?

  Finn decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He took his father to the country club and signed him in as a guest. When they ran into the CEO of University Hospital, Finn even introduced the old man, even though Brian only nodded and wouldn't speak a word. They played their eighteen holes and retired to the clubhouse for lunch, where Brian continued to sit in silence for a long while.

  Then Brian spoke. "I want to go to church with you tomorrow."

  Finn's jaw dropped. He blinked and hurried to cover his breach of etiquette. "Um, okay. I'll have to find us a church to go to, but fine."

  "You've been here for almost three months now and you don't have a church yet?" Brian poked at the table three times. "I'm very disappointed, Finn."

  Shame burned in Finn. Of course his father was disappointed. His father was always disappointed. There was just one problem. "Since when do you care about church? You literally never went to church when I lived with you."

  Brian grunted and shrugged his shoulders. "I was busy. I needed to make money, to support you and your mother. Now I'm an old man, and I remember what's important. Listen to an old man for a moment. When I was a boy, everyone in my village went to church. Even your uncle Lochlann, damned though he was. No one missed Mass unless it was for a very good reason, such as being dead."

  Finn smirked and let his father drone on. Apparently Brian was feeling nostalgic for the good old days he'd left behind. He still wasn't a believer, but he missed the sense of community.

  That was fine, but that wasn't what Finn associated with church. Maybe if he'd been brought up in it, he'd feel differently, but his father hadn't done that. His father had preferred to go into the office, "I'll tell you what, Dad," Finn told him. "If we can find a church, we'll go tomorrow. But first, you have to tell me why you and Mom really came all this way."

  "We wanted to see you!"

  Finn shook his head. "No. Not buying it. Not after all this time."

  "We were worried about you." Brian looked away. "You tell us all of these absurd stories. You pretend that you're a deputy executive for one of the top healthcare providers in the country. Now you pretend that you're a hospital CEO. That's not normal, son. That's delusions of grandeur."

  "Except for the part where it's true." Finn shook his head.

  "Oh come on, Finn." His father scoffed and sat up in his chair. "Do you know how much those guys make? No one's going to pay you that much."

  Finn didn't bother to try to disprove it. With his luck, he’d have gotten hit by the software glitch, and his father would zero in on that and hassle him about his shortcomings there too.

  He sent Carter a quick text during a quiet moment between harangues. Surprise visit from the parents. I'm going to be pretty scarce for the next few days.

  Carter took it in stride. Enjoy.

  Maybe Finn had been right. Maybe Carter didn't want him after all.

  His parents examined the house and shook their heads at the furniture. "None of this is child friendly. A little boy will hurt himself on those sharp edges, and they will pull that urn right down and smash it. They will cut their little feet, Finn. Is that what you want?" Sheila pointed to the formal parlor, tears running down her face. Brian looked on with a grave expression.

  "I think that the likelihood of a toddler seeing the inside of this house is so small as to be non-existent." He stuck his hands into his pockets and leaned against the doorframe.

  "Oh!" Sheila buried her face in her husband's shoulder for a moment. "We deserve grandchildren, Finn. You owe this to us!"

  "Did you seriously drive all this way to give me a hard time about making babies you'd never be able to see?" Finn rolled his eyes. He tried not to think about the baby growing in Carter's belly right now. It would only distress them to know, and anyway Carter might give it up for adoption.

  He lay awake in his big bed later on that night, in the room where he'd had Carter, and tried to make some sense of it all. He'd never wanted a baby. He still wasn't sure that he wanted a baby now that one was on the way, although how much of that reluctance was due to the baby and how much was due to his parents' demands remained to be seen.

  Carter, though—he wanted Carter.

  The feeling was new to him, and he wasn't sure that he liked it, but he had to admit it to himself. He wanted Carter. But he didn't know how much he wanted Carter. He couldn't say for sure that he wanted Carter for the rest of his life. He didn't know if he wanted to marry Carter, because the thought had never crossed his mind before. Maybe these thoughts were just typical alpha possessiveness, something that he'd never made time for.

  Carter was just that special.

  Carter clearly didn't feel the same, but Finn could admit to himself that he hadn't given him the opportunity to do so. He'd been the one to stipulate that their liaison should be purely sexual, and he'd made sure to reinforce that by his own behavior.

  Was there a way to repair the situation? Could he try to bridge the gap between them, and see if they were compatible enough to try a real relationship? Even a friendship?

  He reached out to Carter the next day. They're dragging me to church. He didn't know if Carter would be awake, but at least he'd have reached out.

  Carter, as it turned out, was awake. His text came back right away. Do you want me to fake an emergency at the hospital?

  Finn chuckled. It was a minor gesture, one that wouldn't cost Carter more than a couple of phone minutes to pull off, but the fact that he was willing to do anything at all warmed Finn to the core. Dear God yes.

  Finn sat down to breakfast with his parents just in time for his phone to ring. Carter's voice was professional but deeply concerned at the same time as he described an entirely spurious walkout by the janitorial service. Finn jumped up and turned to his parents. "Sorry, I hate to do this to you but I need to head in to work," he told them, after promising Carter that he would be right there. "Your GPS should be able to get you to St. Vincent dePaul; that's the closest church to this house."

  Sheila squawked and Brian grumbled, but Finn grabbed his keys and fled with a light heart. He aimed his Benz toward Onondaga Hill. He'd rather try to build a relationship with Carter than spend the day sitting in a stuffy church with his parents.

  Chapter Nine

  Carter had been pregnant for four weeks now, and he'd acknowledged his pregnancy for one. The entire world had shifted on its axis, and he wished that he could find a way to appreciate it better. Some of the nausea had subsided, which suggested that it had been caused by anxiety over the rest of his symptoms.

  He still had plenty of nausea, of course, and plenty of anxiety. He wasn't about to pat himself on the back just yet.

  Other than the nausea, and the sudden aversion to eggs, and the vastly increased and disturbingly inconvenient sex drive, his life hadn't changed much yet. He still worked out. He didn't spar, because he didn't want to take a hit to the body, but he did everything else that he would normal
ly do. He got a little tired toward the end of the day. He found it a little harder to cope with a long shift, but he wasn't suddenly incapable of living his life.

  His omega patients knew. They just guessed, or they could tell by his face or his occasional need to flee his appointments. Sometimes they found him in the bathroom, throwing up. They didn't say anything, as a general rule. They wouldn't. They knew that he was unmarried, alone, and for most of them his single status was a matter of shame. At the same time, they didn't want to wag their fingers at their doctor, for crying out loud. They needed him, and they pitied him as well. They'd all found someone when they were young; if he was able to pay for a child, why shouldn't he go ahead and have one?

  He couldn't tell anyone who the father was. He and Finn didn't need to discuss that. People wouldn't understand what had happened between them. Carter wasn't sure that he entirely understood what had happened between them, but it hadn't been harassment and he hadn't been coerced. Even Allen, as understanding as he was, wouldn't get it.