by Layla Silver
We made it about three feet before we were engulfed in a bevy of super-model beautiful, scantily-clad women. This was neither a new occurrence nor unexpected. Will always drew a crowd. Somehow, it felt different this time, though. The cloud of conflicting perfumes hit like riot gas, and my stomach rolled. The brush of other bodies made my skin crawl. I gripped Will’s arm tighter. He responded by sliding his arm around my back protectively. He also wielded his charming smile to coax his admirers to his other side, giving me more breathing room.
I tried to use it for just that, working to get my breathing under control. I willed my stomach to settle and tried to shrug off the feeling of a million ants scurrying under my skin. This isn’t new, I thought at myself sharply. There’s no reason to freak out.
Blessedly, we reached the half-moon shaped booth Will had been aiming for. There were two men already snuggled up on its high-backed red-velvet bench, drinks ignored as they indulged themselves in each other.
“Elton!” Will greeted warmly. “Corey! You did make it! Excellent.” Smooth as silk, he guided me in front of him and onto the plush bench curving around the right-hand side of the table. “Maia, you’ve met these two lovebirds. Gentlemen, guard her honor for me while I get drinks, will you?” Without waiting for an answer, he strode away, his flock of admirers closing in around him again without pause.
Elton watched his brother go and shook his head. “You’re a saint to put up with him,” he told me, bemused.
“It’s not him that’s the problem,” I muttered, scowling at his impromptu entourage.
“Oh, I’ve been there,” Corey said, sympathetically. Lounging against the back of the booth, he eyed Elton fondly. “Dragons.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” Elton protested indignantly.
“Right,” Corey said, sardonically. “So, Maia, remind me what you do for a living? I remember talking about it, but I can’t remember now. I might have been a little drunk.”
“It was at the fourth of July party last year, and you were very drunk,” Elton informed him, indulgently. Then he cast his eyes to me. “Maia works for a law firm, yes?”
“I’m a paralegal,” I confirmed, inching forward in my seat a little to lean over the table. The dull thump of the base wasn’t obnoxious enough that we couldn’t hear each other, but getting a little closer helped. The velvet was soft on the back of my bare legs as I moved, but it didn’t feel as decadent tonight as it usually did. Everything just felt off. My stomach knotted again.
“What do you do?” I asked Corey politely, trying desperately to distract myself. “Design of some kind, right?”
“Yeah, graphic design. But it’s not important,” he waved his hand dismissively. “Elton here is the one doing the good work.” He turned his adoring gaze on his partner again.
“Oh, stop.” Elton swatted at him and blushed but couldn’t quite stop himself from preening. “Though I do love it.”
“What do you do?” I asked, wracking my brain. “Something medical, right?”
“I work for a surrogacy agency,” Elton said, proudly, sipping his drink. “We help humans and shifters grow their families.”
“Sounds like just what I need,” I joked, smiling weakly. The off feeling intensified, coalescing into a low-grade pressure that pressed in on me like a soupy fog.
“What are we discussing?” Will appeared. His followers faded into the background, their faces painted with shades of sadness, longing, and resentment as he dropped into the booth beside me. He carried two large wine glasses by the stems in one long-fingered hand and two bottles of wine in the other.
“Work,” Elton reported as Will set the glasses on the table right side up.
“Hers or yours?” Will deposited one open bottle of wine off to the side—a red that needed to breathe, no doubt—and expertly uncorked another. Tossing the corkscrew into the center of the table, he poured a glass for me and one for himself.
“Mine,” Elton said, amiably, leaning comfortably against Corey.
I nodded my thanks to Will and lifted the glass to my lips. The wine was bright and fruity, a perfect starter. I was suddenly parched and took something closer to a gulp than a sip.
“Maia was just saying she might be interested in surrogacy,” Corey said slyly.
I nearly choked. Will’s eyes cut in my direction, narrowing sharply.
“That is not what I said,” I spluttered. “I said it might solve my problems.”
“Your mother,” Will guessed, frowning. “Harping about grand-pups again?”
I lifted one shoulder in what I hoped was a dismissive shrug and took another too-big sip of my wine. It went down smoothly, a cool contrast to the heat building in my cheeks and burning at the back of my neck. “I’m the only disappointment,” I said, trying for flippancy. “Turning 30 this year and not a single pup to show for myself. Azalea had her first by the time she was 18.”
Saying it out loud suddenly made it all horribly real. I was turning 30, and I still lived like I’d just gotten out of college. I didn’t have a family—hell, I didn’t even have a boyfriend! No prospects even. When was the last time I’d been out on a date? Last year? The year before?
“You’re not a disappointment,” Will corrected, his tone going peevish as I downed another quarter of my glass. “There are more measures to success in life than churning out pups every year or two.”
“Will,” Elton chided.
Will glowered at him.
“You’re not wrong,” Elton conceded. He shot a sympathetic look at me, then frowned at his brother again. “But for some people, there is a lot of pressure to have pups. You can’t just wave it away as a non-issue because you personally disagree.”
“So, what?” Will demanded, swigging his own wine. “You’re saying that Maia should have some stranger’s baby just to shut up her family?”
“I’m saying she could,” Elton defended. “If she wanted to. She could have a baby without any fuss or entanglements. If it made her happy.”
Happy. I emptied my wineglass. Happy would be Will suddenly and magically deciding that he didn’t want any of the gorgeous, talented women who trailed him around like paparazzi. Miraculously and spontaneously deciding that what he really wanted was a coyote mate with a crazy, dragon-hating family.
No. There was no head injury or spiritual experience in the world life-altering enough to make Will want me.
I reached for the wine. Will tsked and grabbed it himself. The pang of affection that gripped my chest at his insistence on gentlemanly manners by pouring for me hurt. I wanted him so badly I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Maia doesn’t need some anonymous sperm donor,” Will informed his brother imperiously as he refilled both our glasses. “We have a pact.”
He did remember. The shame of it made the backs of my eyes burn. I lifted my glass to my lips and took a long draught, willing the cool wine to wash the blazing lump from my throat.
“A pact?” Corey raised his eyebrow with interest.
“Yes,” Will grinned. Goddess, his smile could light up the whole damn club. “We went to college together, you know, and we agreed,” he turned his smile on me, and I tried to match it, despite the abrupt and stark impulse to cry, “that if she turned 30, and I turned 100, and we still hadn’t found our mates like the useless recluses that we are, we’d have a child together.”
Corey huffed with laughter. “Well, then.” He lifted his glass. “To backup plans, I guess.”
“Will.”
I tried to smother the vicious resentment that erupted within me at the sugary-sweet voice. Two of Will’s groupies, both of them dark-haired, copper-skinned, and drop-dead gorgeous, appeared at the table’s side, batting their obviously fake eyelashes—no one was born with lashes like that—at Will.
“Ladies,” Will greeted smoothly, setting his wine down.
“Come dance with us,” they wheedled. “You promised.”
Will glanced in my direction. I gripped my glass so tightly I was
afraid the stem would snap but forced myself to smile. “I’m going to hang out a little longer. Have fun.”
He eyed me suspiciously but then nodded. “Sure,” he agreed, his tone easy. “Come find me when you’re ready for the floor. I’ll save you a dance.”
I nodded, trying to feign cheerfulness. I could feel my heart bleed as he offered each woman an arm and headed for the dance floor. As soon as he merged with the crowd, I emptied my wine glass again. I had the unexpected and intense desire to get absolutely black-out drunk.
“Is that true?” Elton asked, reaching across the table to refill my glass. Their mother really had taught them impeccable manners. “That you made a pact?”
I nodded wordlessly, lifting my wine to my lips again.
“Well,” Elton shared a glance with Corey, then looked back at me, his eyes full of compassion that only made me feel worse. “If you decide you want to, give me a ring, all right?” His eyes trailed toward the dance floor, his expression pensive a moment, then returned to me. “I’m sure the agency could help.”
If only it were that easy, I thought. I looked toward the dance floor, too, my eyes instantly catching on Will as he danced in the center of a knot of beautiful women. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to drown the pain of watching.
I took another drink anyway.
Chapter 4 - Will
I all but poured Maia into the passenger seat of my car. Then, for good measure, I leaned in and buckled her seatbelt around her. Her skirt rode up as she shifted, and I fought down the urge to smooth it back into place over her thigh.
The wine she’d drunk seemed to seep out of her pores, overpowering her usual herbs-and-earth scent. That was rare, and I didn’t like it. My protective instincts roused, and I checked that she had her purse in her lap and all her fingers and toes safely away from the door as I leaned back. Shutting the passenger’s side door, I tipped the valet, reclaimed my keys, and slid behind the steering wheel.
Maia leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted. I went back through the evening in my head as I pulled out of the parking lot. She’d been fine when I picked her up. What had changed? Everything played out seamlessly in my memory until we’d reached the club. She’d seemed … off. It started when we stepped inside and other people descended, I realized. It had gotten worse when we started talking to Elton and Corey. What had we talked about?
Kids. The memory came to me, and my heart sank. We’d talked about kids—about Maia’s family pressuring her to have some, and about our pact. Resentment welled up inside me. Had her family been ragging on her that badly? Why? Maia was amazing. How could they not see that?
Then again, maybe it wasn’t them. What if it was being reminded of our pact that upset her? Shit. If I had upset her, it was up to me to make it right. I didn’t want to give her the wrong impression if it really was her family behind her frustration, though. I chewed on the problem as I navigated us out of the city.
Only when I’d pulled onto the expressway did I finally bring it up. “So … our pact.”
“Mmm,” Maia’s lips quirked drunkenly. “Elton … thought i’was funny.”
Irritation prickled, but I stuffed it down. My feelings were less important just now than hers. “What do you think?” I prodded.
“We’re old.” Maia rolled her head in my direction and cracked one eye open. Her smile widened a little.
I frowned at her. “I’m serious, Mai. I mean, we are getting old, and neither of us has any prospects on the horizon.” Okay, that might have been more leading than I’d intended. Before I could walk it back, though, she snorted.
“You’ve got dozens. Scores. Hunnid … hun … hun … dreds.” She widened her eyes and tilted her head. “Oh, Will,” she said in a high, breathy voice. It took me a second to realize she was imitating the other women at the club. “I’ll give babies. Lossa, lossa babies. All the babies.” She waved wildly, her face scrunching in irritation. “Couda had anyone. On floor. Table. Just …” her hand flopped into her lap, dejectedly.
“Mai.” My voice went low. She had never cared about the girls all over me. Gods, what had her family been saying to make her feel so inadequate about not having a mate and a kid? They nagged all the time, but usually, it didn’t hit her this hard.
“’s fine,” she mumbled, scrubbing at her face tiredly. “Who even wans a mate an’ pups ‘enway?”
“You and me,” I said firmly, refusing to let her fall into that kind of defeatist spiral. “We love mini-humans, remember? That’s why you’re Aunt of the Year every year, and I do all kinds of work on engineering kids' spaces.”
“’s diffrent.” Maia’s head lolled against the headrest, and she stared blankly ahead.
“It’s not,” I countered, half-tempted to pull the car over so that I could stop and make her look at me. Hear me. “Don’t you want one of your own?” I cajoled, instead. “A little bundle of chaos and mischief to love? All yours?”
She didn’t answer.
“We could, you know,” I prodded, unwilling to let her stay in that mental space. “We made a pact. And we’ve known each other for years. We’d be great parents. It’s not a bad plan.”
“Complicated,” Maia mumbled. Her head dropped forward, and she stared at her hands in her lap, her gaze far away.
I’d been prepared to hear a lot of things in rebuttal. That wasn’t one of them. “What?”
“Com-pli-cated,” she repeated, enunciating each syllable slowly. “Getting a … a baby. You have to …” she gestured vaguely.
I raised an eyebrow and forced myself not to laugh. “Sleep together?” I suggested helpfully.
Maia nodded seriously, then shivered. Watching the wave of revulsion run through her like that was like taking a knife to the heart. Derailed, I clenched my jaw and fixed my eyes on the dark road ahead.
You asked for that, I scolded myself ruthlessly. You set yourself right up even though you damn well know better.
For a while, I kept my gaze straight ahead. I made myself focus on the way the headlights swept over the empty expanse of the desert. On the nearly-full moon hanging heavy in the sky overhead and the vista of stars stretching out on the horizon. Anything to not think about the fact that Maia didn’t want me.
She was so repulsed by the idea, she couldn’t even consider one time to get a child we both wanted. It was frustrating, not least because I was damn good in bed. All modesty aside, I prided myself on being a skillful and generous lover. We’d gossiped enough about every detail of our lives throughout our friendship that I knew Maia knew it, too. She just … wasn’t interested. For some reason I’d never managed to put my finger on, she had unequivocally categorized me in her head as friend material and not a potential mate. Period. End of discussion.
Yet you keep staying, my inner voice taunted. I did. Because she was my friend, and it was too important to screw up just because I couldn’t keep my own feelings in line. So fine, she didn’t want to sleep with me. But she did want a baby—we both did. And, well, Elton had a point.
“We wouldn’t have to,” I made myself say finally. I said it carefully, my gaze darting toward her in the darkness. “Elton wasn’t kidding. The surrogacy agency could do it. It would be … medical, but it’s an option.”
She shook her head. “Com’licated.” She waved her hand unsteadily between us. “Sharing.”
“Joint custody.” That thought hadn’t occurred to me, and I mulled it over. Two of us, one baby. The math was pretty cut and dry. There would have to be some kind of joint custody arrangement. That would complicate things.
“Like … divorce,” Maia said, her face screwing up in distaste as she stumbled over the words. “Drop-offs and … and pickups. Double ev’rything.”
"Ash," I said, abruptly understanding where this line of thinking was coming from.
Maia’s brother Ash had split from his one-time fiancée shortly after their second child was born. They shared their two kids fairly well,
but there was still drama. I remembered hearing more than once how the world was thrown into disarray when a favored stuffed animal was left at one parent’s house while the kids visited the other. There had been disputes and miscommunications about homework and chores, too. A few late pickup and drop-offs had wreaked havoc with big events. It wasn’t a surprise that Maia was wary about the idea of sharing her child with someone she didn’t live with. Even when both partners did their best, it was prone to being rough.
Frankly, now that she’d brought it up, I didn’t much care for the idea, either. Sure, Maia and I saw each other all the time. We talked and texted constantly between seeing each other, too. But if there were a kid involved, it would be different.
Double everything. “We could have two babies.” The idea popped out before I’d even realized I’d opened my mouth.
Maia looked at me as though I’d grown a second head.
“We could.” Having voiced the idea, I found I was fascinated by it. “Two babies, one for each of us,” I said. “No sharing or complications involved. What do you think?”
Maia squinted at me and then rubbed her forehead. “Head hurts.”
I snorted. “You drank too much.”
“Yeah.”
She sounded miserable, and my heart squeezed. “All right, I’ll stop talking,” I promised. “Just think about it when you’re not so drunk, okay? Us having babies?”
“Hhmm,” Maia acknowledged, distantly. Her eyelids drooped.
“It could be a good plan.”
She nodded, burrowing back into the seat. Unable to stop the indulgent smile that tilted my mouth up, I keyed on the seat warmer to her preferred settings. Coyotes didn’t purr, but Maia made a sleepy, distinctly happy noise as the leather underneath her warmed.