The Three (16 page)

“You really want a baby someday?”

Elin nodded shyly. “Someday. I’m not ready now, because traveling is no way to raise a child and right now I want to see the world. But someday, whether it’s because a situation arises or we just decide to settle down and have a family…yes, someday I would like to raise a child. I think about it sometimes, and it just feels right to me. With you and Kael.”

“With me?” Responsibility crashed down upon Anna, before being replaced by elation at being given a gift she had never thought she would receive. “Really?”

“Of course. I think you’d be wonderful with a child.”

The words brought unexpected tears to Anna’s eyes as she contended with another memory, this one pushed so deep inside that she had steadfastly refused to think about it since the day it happened. She pulled Elin into a quick hug so she wouldn’t see her rising emotion.

Elin tightened her arms around Anna’s body. “So would Kael.”

Anna tried to imagine Kael with a child. Kael had taught her so much about fighting and hunting; their sparring matches had grown competitive and laughter-filled. Anna learned something new nearly every day they spent together. I love being around him. Once he lets down his guard a little—and I let down mine—he really is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.

“He would be great,” she said. “There’s not a question in my mind about that. He’s just scared, I think.”

Elin drew back and twisted her hands together. “I still love Kael, and Kael still loves me, it’s just…I totally ruined tonight. It was such a good night, too.”

Anna lifted Elin’s face with a hand under her chin and gave her a reassuring kiss. “You didn’t ruin anything.

Like you said, you still love him and he still loves you.”

“But he’s standing out there in the rain pissed off at me. We yelled at each other.”

“Honey, sometimes people who love one another fight. If you didn’t love him, he wouldn’t be able to make you so angry. The same goes for him. If he didn’t love you more than anything in the world, there’s no way you could elicit such emotion. And you know that.”

“I know. But it doesn’t seem right somehow.”

“Trust me,” Anna said. “John and Moira back in my tribe loved each other so much it was crazy. The only thing louder than their lovemaking was their arguing.”

“Do you think we’ll ever fight?”

“Probably. But I’ll love you until the day I die, no matter what.”

Elin’s face flushed with pleasure. “I’ll love you until the day I die, too.”

“I think I should go after Kael,” Anna said.

“Will you tell him that I love him? No matter what?”

“He knows that.”

“Tell him anyway. Sometimes he forgets.”

“I’ll tell him.” Anna stroked her lover’s fiery hair. “And then I’ll bring him back inside so you can tell him again.”

When Anna stepped onto the back porch of the cabin, now in blue jeans and a thick sweatshirt, she thought at first that Kael had broken her word and wandered off. Having already checked the front porch and around the sides of the cabin, she started to weigh the pros and cons of venturing through the rain into the surrounding forest when a quiet sniffling noise drew her attention to the ground just below the porch.

She stepped to the railing and looked down at a freshly shaven head. Kael stood shivering in the pouring rain.

Goddamn it, Kael.

She got to the bottom of the back porch steps just as Kael turned to walk away. “Hold it,” she called out.

“You’re not leaving. You’re coming out of the rain with me. You’re going to get sick, for Christ’s sake.”

Kael stopped walking, and her shoulders dropped in defeat. She let Anna grab her arm and lead her onto the porch. Then she turned, revealing reddened eyes and an expressionless face. “I honestly don’t know why you care.” Her voice was almost swept away by the sound of the storm. “Hit me,” she whispered.

Anna blinked. “What?”

“Hit me, Anna. Please. I deserve it for what I said to you.”

Anna stared at Kael’s heaving chest and the way her wet T-shirt clung to her lean body. “That’s not going to make me feel better.”

“It’d make me feel better.” Tears spilled from Kael’s eyes, and she swiped at them with an angry hand. “I’m such a fucking asshole sometimes. Even as I was saying the words, I knew what they would do to you.”

“So why did you say them?” Anna whispered, still raw from having such ugliness thrown at her by someone she trusted.

Kael balled one hand into a fist and rubbed it over her scalp. “Because I was scared. I thought you might tell Elin that you would raise a child with her. And that Elin might decide to leave me if I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I wanted you to hate the idea, too.”

“Elin’s not going to leave you, Kael. You know that. And for the record, I’m not competing with you for her. I don’t want to leave you, either.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t.” She blew out a nervous breath. “Before I came out here to find you, Elin made me promise to tell you something. She told me that she loves you no matter what. She said sometimes you forget that.”

Kael released a quiet half-sob. “Sometimes I do.”

Anna took a deep breath, steeling herself for the talk she knew they needed to have. “Elin really wasn’t saying that she has to have a baby. She’s just saying that she hopes to have the opportunity to raise a child someday.”

Kael raised haunted eyes to Anna. “And I’m saying that I don’t think I can do it.”

“I don’t deny that it would be hard. And it would be scary as hell. But it’s something she genuinely wants, and if we could find a child who needed parents, would it really be such a horrible thing?”

“Yes,” Kael exploded, anguished. “One more person to worry about? Another person to protect? But this one is completely helpless and dependent upon me? I don’t know if I can take it, Anna. Do you know how hard it is?”

“To love?” She allowed herself to imagine Elin being hurt for just an instant, and her bones ached with pain at the idea. “Yeah, it’s hard, but what’s the alternative? Not to love?”

“I don’t know.” Kael turned dark eyes to the wet forest that surrounded them. “I never—”

“What?”

“I never thought I would feel…these things I do. And it terrifies me. After I met Elin, I swore I would never let another person inside of me like I did her. Loving her was the best thing I’d ever felt, but it scared me in a way I had never experienced when I only had to think of myself. When we found you…I didn’t want to care about you, but goddamn it, I do. And that’s fine, because what can I do about that, anyway? But now Elin’s asking me to think about adding a child to this family? Why? So I can worry constantly about what could happen to my babies?”

“Kael…” Anna placed a calming hand on her arm.

Kael’s whole body trembled beneath her touch, and a low, keening noise escaped from her lips. For a moment the raw emotion paralyzed Anna, then, uncertain of how else to respond, she pulled a soaking-wet Kael into her arms, murmuring, “It’s okay. You still love Elin, and she still loves you. I promise.”

Anna sighed at the feeling of holding her strong friend. In one earth-tilting moment, Kael had gone from stoic protector to fiercely protected, and Anna felt the fundamental change deep in her soul. That’s exactly how I feel about him, isn’t it? Protective. Just like with Elin.

Leaning into Anna, Kael cleared her throat before making a hushed confession. “There’s something I’ve never really talked about with Elin. It’s one reason I got so upset back there.”

Anna’s instinctive suspicion that Kael was withholding something was confirmed by those tortured words.

“Tell me.”

Kael’s body grew tense in Anna’s embrace. “Guess how many children I have?” Her voice was so low that Anna could hardly make out the question over the noise of the thunderstorm.

Anna squinted her eyes closed in reaction to the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had a hard time reconciling the idea of masculine Kael being a mother. “How many?”

“Three.” Kael’s voice broke. “I don’t even know whether the first two were girls or boys. The third was a little girl. I managed to catch a glimpse of her before they took her away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna murmured into Kael’s ear. I guess it makes sense. Kael was at the Eve Institute for ten years and forced to procreate for nine of them. “Elin doesn’t know?”

“I don’t talk about it.” The words were flat and clipped.

“You can talk about it with me,” Anna said. “I don’t know why you haven’t told Elin, and I understand that you must have your reasons, but…talking about it might make you feel better.”

“You learned that from Elin, huh?”

“That and other things.” Anna traced her fingers over the side of Kael’s face, the hard line of her jaw. “And, by the way, you have to know I could never hit you. I have a feeling you’ve been hit far too many times.”

Kael gave her a fond half-smile. “I don’t know. You do get pretty brutal when we spar. You’re better every day.”

Anna chuckled. “Thanks. That’s not the same, though.”

After a brief hesitation, Kael leaned her forehead against Anna’s. Voice tremulous, she said, “I worry about my babies all the time. Where they are, what might be happening to them. I know it’s strange. I never wanted to have them, and I hated being forced to carry them, but…nine months is a long time to spend with somebody and not care at all.”

“It makes sense,” Anna murmured, though she wasn’t sure whether she would have felt the same way or not. I’m glad I never had to find out.

“I worry about them all, but that last little girl the most. Because I saw her, she’s the most real to me. She’d be almost nine years old now.”

“How about the oldest?”

“Fifteen.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna said.

With a helpless shrug, Kael pulled her closer and pressed her rain-dampened face into Anna’s hair. “It didn’t give me an excuse to get so upset with Elin back there. Or to take my fears out on you. I said what I did to get a reaction, nothing more. Using something like that against you wasn’t fair. It was unforgivable.”

“But I already told you, Kael. I forgive you.”

“I’m not sure I deserve a friend like you.” Kael hugged her tighter, then released her so she could look into Anna’s eyes. “Hey, Anna?”

“Yeah?”

“Can…can you at least understand where I’m coming from, though? How do you think you would feel about raising children, if—”

“I was pregnant once.” The confession left her mouth before she even realized she was going to make it. It was the first time she had ever said it out loud. “I…lost it maybe three or four months after…that day.”

“Oh.” Kael broke their eye contact at her soft words. “Did you realize you were? Before you lost it?”

“I knew I hadn’t menstruated, and I worried, but I thought maybe they had just damaged me inside. I almost hoped they had. And then one morning I woke up, and I just wouldn’t stop bleeding. Garrett was scared to death.”

“I bet he was,” Kael said. “That must have been really frightening.”

“I was glad I didn’t have to have that baby.”

“What am I going to say to Elin?”

Anna gave Kael a patient smile. “You’re going to tell her you love her no matter what, too. You’re going to tell her you’re not mad at her. Tell her you were scared. Tell her whatever you feel comfortable telling her, but make sure she knows this isn’t something that could tear you two apart.” She paused, framing what she wanted to say most. “Kael, I could help protect a baby.

You don’t have to bear that responsibility alone. And in fact, I think the three of us together…well, I think we could do anything. We complement each other.”

Kael’s lower lip quivered. “Anna—”

“No, listen to me,” Anna continued, not allowing Kael even one moment to protest. “I’ll spar with you every day until I can hold my own, if it means you could feel better about letting us give Elin a child to raise.

Because, I mean…what’s one thing we love so much about Elin? It’s that part of her that is so untouched, right? And that’s exactly what makes her want to share her life with a child, I think. So if we want to honor that piece of Elin, then maybe the way to do that is to figure out how we can—”

Kael stopped the rambling speech by covering Anna’s mouth with her own. The kiss was slow and gentle, and when it ended long moments later, it left Anna breathless. Kael pulled away and pressed her forehead to Anna’s, both of them gasping. Her hands slid down Anna’s sides and came to rest on her waist.

“I’m sorry.” Kael made no move to pull away. “I just…had to do that.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Anna’s voice was low with sudden, startling arousal. “I’m glad you did.”

Nodding, Kael raised her eyes to meet Anna’s, only inches from her own. Her timid smile almost broke Anna’s heart. “I just wanted you to know…thank you. I would appreciate the help. Elin and I are so lucky to have you.”

Anna could feel the solemnity of Kael’s words, and her heart beat faster as her commitment to her family was solidified by her promises of the night. “You’re welcome.” At Kael’s loving gaze, she relaxed into a playful smile. “Elin was right, by the way. You are one hell of a kisser.”

Kael grinned, then took Anna’s lips in another lingering kiss. She pushed her tongue inside of Anna’s mouth with a groan of pleasure. Anna brought one hand up to rub over the back of Kael’s shaven head, keeping her close. Their kiss ended with more mutual gasping, bringing both Kael and Anna to panting laughter.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you to do that,” Anna murmured.

“Not as long as I’ve wanted to do it, I bet.”

“I don’t know about that.” Anna drew back. “As much as I’d like to kiss you again, I think you need to get inside, tough guy.”

“Yes. I need to make things right with Elin.”

Anna stepped out of Kael’s embrace. “We need to get out of these wet clothes, anyway.” Her nipples tightened as Kael’s eyes grew heavy-lidded and dark with desire. “We’re going to catch our deaths out here like this.”