by Aiden Bates
“No, I’m a dick. Rich was probably in pain, and Pedro isn’t. It’s different. You can compare but you can’t say which one’s better or worse. Just…the same in some ways and different in another. It was a low blow.”
Oliver shrugged. “I got scared when you called us having the baby ‘a whole thing.’ It made it seem like literally everything had stopped meaning anything to you besides Pedro.”
“Yeah. And I made it seem like I didn’t want to go. I do want to go! But I also don’t know. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be or what I’m supposed to do. Everything I do feels like the wrong thing.” I put my head in my hands. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Oliver replied. “Look, I understand that you need time to think about it, about your life, and your decisions. That’s fine. Get back to us on whether you want to go or not. I hope Pedro gets better. Pedro, dude, it was nice to finally meet you. I’m sorry it had to be like this. I have to go make sure Mitch is okay right now, otherwise I’d stay, and we’d fix this, just…don’t forget there are people who love you. Both of you.”
That was something I couldn’t promise. I couldn’t jump up and run out with him to get Mitch because I was still scared of leaving Pedro. I couldn’t promise I would ever not be scared of leaving Pedro. I couldn’t make myself stop loving Mitch, Oliver or the baby, but I couldn’t promise I would be there for them, not as long as I had to be here for Pedro. I couldn’t do or say anything without a second and third thing interfering with the first.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say again.
“I know,” Oliver said as he picked up the things Mitch had left behind. “I’ll let you know how it goes with the OB, okay?”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything as Oliver walked off after Mitch.
23
Mitch
It had been a week, and still absolutely nothing from Marcos. I should have been furious, but I was too damn busy being hurt. I knew how this worked. He would send a text message here and there until one day I’d never hear from him again. I knew because I’d been there before.
When I was twenty-two, I’d done the one thing escorts weren’t supposed to. I fell in love with a client. Greg Marshal. A tall, dark, handsome alpha. He’d taken me out and kept me engaged with smart conversation. He was kind and loving and constantly talked about his nieces and nephews. The sex was amazing, and six months in, I was smitten. I’d fallen hard. Like an idiot, one night I told him, and I’ll never forget his reaction. He told me he didn’t feel the same. I was crushed. He’d never blocked me on his phone, and I’d tried a time or two to patch things over. Eventually, even that communication dwindled. A month passed, then two. Finally, I found out he was seeing one of the other omegas. I honestly felt like I’d been abandoned.
I’d been so lucky with Oliver. He’d been the first one to admit what he was feeling, convincing me to give him, and love, a chance. It was probably what had let me open myself up to also give Marcos a chance, but now he was doing the same thing as Greg, abandoning me. However, it felt about a million times worse because I knew Marcos loved me.
“Ready to go, babe?” Oliver called from the hallway.
“Yeah, all set.” Oliver had been able to take the day off to take me to my OB appointment, the very first since we’d found out I was pregnant. It was impossible to think of that moment and not think of Marcos as well. He’d been so surprised by how happy it had made him, and I couldn’t help but think that Marcos probably hadn’t had a lot of good news in the last few years. I was so excited for this, but it felt sort of incomplete without him here with us.
We got into Oliver’s car, and as he drove he slipped his hand onto mine.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine,” Oliver replied.
I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s silly. I just… I was hoping Marcos would come around by now.”
Oliver nodded. “So did I. But we can’t make his decisions for him. He’s got to come to things in his own time, his own way.” Oliver paused, and I could tell he was working up the courage to say something else. “Besides, it was just you and me in the beginning, you know? If that’s how it’s going to be in the future, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It doesn’t make this feel any better though, does it? It doesn’t make it any less painful that the baby’s father isn’t here.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized my mistake.
The car was dead silent. Shit. Not good.
“I mean, of course you’re the baby’s father, too. It’s just—”
“Is that what you think?” Oliver’s voice was small. It would have been easier if Oliver had been angry. I could deal with angry. But he sounded hurt. I wasn’t very good at hurt Oliver.
“Do you think the baby needs an alpha? Are we not enough?” he asked.
When he said that, I could hear every single person who’d implied something like that, every pundit who’d ever suggested that about omega relationships, every single time some asshole had challenged Oliver in school or at work or at anything at all just because he was an omega. I heard it because I’d also experienced it, and I hated that I’d now added to that voice. As if it needed anymore headspace.
“No. Sweetheart, no. It’s not that,” I said, eager to ease his worry. “It’s just, that we’d started to put together this family, and well, I guess I’d gotten invested in the idea. It was stupid for me to, but I did. I love you, Oliver. So much. That will never change. It hasn’t changed. But… I love Marcos, too.”
Oliver gripped my hand again, firmly. “I do, too,” he admitted. “I never expected that to happen, but it did. But the fact is, he’s choosing to disconnect from everyone but Pedro right now. That’s his choice, but it is a choice whether he likes it or not. If we have to, we will do this without him.”
It was harsh, but it was the truth. As much as I loved Marcos, loved the idea of all of us being together, the reality is that I had to think of our baby first. It felt good, in a weird way, that at least we were together in our pain. It helped, somehow, to know I wasn’t the only person in this who had hurt feelings.
We pulled into the doctor’s office, and Oliver killed the engine before turning in his seat to look at me.
“We can help him,” he said. “But we may have to accept the reality that, to Marcos, it was just a temporary distraction from everything else he has going on.”
I could hear the sorrow in what he was saying. I genuinely thought better of Marcos than that. But maybe he just didn’t have the time or energy to devote to a child at this point in his life. When we’d started this, that hadn’t been the expectation. It had been a little hasty to think that had changed seemingly overnight.
I followed Oliver inside and took a seat as he spoke with the receptionist. A few minutes later, we were back with the ultrasound technician and the doctor.
It was exposing to be here propped up on the examination table with my shirt up.
“This is going to be a little cold,” the doctor explained as the technician spread jelly on my stomach. Even with the warning, I sucked my teeth. “A little cold” was an understatement.
“First time?” the technician asked, grinning.
“Yeah. That easy to tell?”
“Sort of. All the experienced ones make that face before I put the gel on. Only the new ones don’t know I mean business.”
I chuckled, and Oliver rubbed my shoulder in sympathy.
“Alright, speaking of business. Let’s meet your baby. Sound good?” the doctor asked warmly. She was kind and soft-spoken, and it helped calm my fraying nerves. I don’t think the enormity of what we were about to do hit me until now.
The technician turned the screen toward us, and after a few awkward moments of pressing and hunting, the doctor smiled. “Ah, here we go,” she said.
And, there we were. There was our baby, the size of a jelly bean, but there, nonetheless. Suddenly, every
thing seemed to come into sharper focus. This was real. What we were doing, what we had done, had resulted in this. Our baby. I spent a lot of my time these days thinking about the baby. But thinking about the baby wasn’t the same as seeing the baby. It was easy to think about the baby theoretically, but it was hard to think about it that way when you were seeing the physical evidence of its presence.
I reached out blindly for Oliver’s hand, and there he was, just like always, his brown eyes wet with tears. He hugged me carefully around my shoulders so as to not upset the ultrasound magic happening on the screen.
“It’s enough,” I whispered in his ear. “This is enough.” I meant it with every fiber of my being. We owed it to this kiddo for it to be enough regardless of what happened with Marcos.
“Do you guys want some copies of this?” the doctor asked.
Oliver nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, please.”
“How many?”
“Three,” we both said immediately. It was clear who the third one was for, even if he wasn’t interested in it. I sighed, hoping Marcos would take the copy, but even if he didn’t, even if Marcos decided he didn’t want anything to do with the baby, he or she deserved all the love and attention I could give it.
It was enough. It had to be. Not for my own pride, not because what I really, truly wanted felt more and more like sand slipping through my fingers, but because I had to be enough.
Oliver gave me a kiss to my temple as the doctor and technician worked to clean my belly and grab the printouts we requested. Regardless of where everything else lay, I knew I had him here beside me every step of the way.
We scheduled our next appointment, and before I knew it, we were back on the road again, the late afternoon sun streaming through the trees. It felt peaceful. Oliver hummed softly to the music on the radio, and I reached over for him one more time. We’d needed that connection today, and I felt I was going to need it more and more as the weeks went on. This was uncharted territory for us, all of it. The baby, marriage, Marcos; they all held rewards, they all held risks. Today had been a strange, mixed bag of both.
Oliver, for his part, didn’t say a word, didn’t take his eyes off the road. I watched the warm sunlight illuminate his handsome features, catching his brown eyes and lighting them from the side as he smiled slowly.
It was almost perfect. Almost.
It was the “almost” that hurt so much.
24
Oliver
I’d always loved my work. Mitch always scrunched up his nose when I described it in too much detail, and trust me, there was a lot of detail involved. I understood that, for most people, it was probably too dry, probably too sterile, and definitely too numbers-focused to be enjoyable. But ever since school, I’d found it all soothing. After my brother died, things really fell apart with my family. When everything was happening with Rich it had been easy to ignore everything to do with me. Afterward, it had become more difficult for them to accept that their omega son liked omegas. They’d struggled with losing the perfect son, and now they found the one they had left was even more imperfect than they’d ever assumed.
In the two years after Rich had died, I’d drunk more and more just to numb the pain. Numbness felt better than dealing with everything. Eventually, my drinking had gone far beyond anything I could justify as social, manageable, or even acceptable. It had gotten to the point that even I was aware I had a problem. At first, I’d floundered, not really sure what to focus my attention on. School was over, my brother was dead, and my family had a lot of extreme ideas about how I was supposed to live my life.
Then I found accountancy. It was always organized, controlled. It was eventually what I’d spent the last few years pouring myself into. I’d gotten a reputation in the office as a workaholic, which I’d interpreted as an upgrade to the other kind of “holic” I might have been before.
I owed my work a lot that went beyond a paycheck.
But today, like a lot of other days recently, there was no hope for concentration. After we’d finished at the doctor’s office, Mitch had insisted on calling Marcos until he picked up. He sounded a lot like he had when we’d gone up to the hospital in-person, exhausted and distracted. Mitch had told him the baby was healthy and when the due date was. I’d hoped that learning that information would wake him up. Instead he just said he’d let his mother know and he was happy to hear it.
Happy to hear it? What sort of response was that? A few weeks ago, he’d been over the moon. Now, he sounded more than anything like he just wanted to get off the phone. It was impossible not to sympathize with his situation. I knew it in my own skin. It was also impossible not to be furious with someone who could make Mitch’s fall apart like he’d done after he’d hung up.
I backed away from my computer again, rubbing at my eyes. Not for the first time today, I debated about going home early. It wasn’t like I was managing to get anything actually done. I thought about leaving and going straight to the hospital and talking to Marcos in person. But I wasn’t sure where to even begin. What would I say? It wasn’t as if I could ask him to choose. That wasn’t fair. How could someone choose between his prospective family and his own brother? It was an impossibly cruel thing to do to him.
I was interrupted in my thoughts by a knock on my door.
“Come in,” I said, turning to see one of the firm’s senior partners. Nancy Greene was fairly well liked within the firm. She was nice, and genuinely tended to believe in the competence of her staff. “Nancy. What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Oliver. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
I blew out a big breath. At least this would give me an excuse to focus on something else instead.
“Sure, come on in.” I stood up and went to the bar cart I usually just ignored. “Can I get you a drink.”
Nancy sat, her perfectly manicured hand waving my offer to the side. “No, no. That’s fine. Please sit.”
I sat.
“Oliver, I’m going to cut to the point. There have been some…troubling allegations that have come to light.”
What? “Okay…and they are?”
Nancy looked supremely uncomfortable. “It seems there is credible evidence you’ve hired escorts in the past.”
I felt the blood rush to my face. Well, this certainly wasn’t comfortable conversation. I didn’t see the point in denying it. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what the point was in the conversation.
“Nancy, you see the hours I work. I haven’t always had time to date, and—”
Nancy held up a hand. “Oliver, I, for one, am not concerned about your personal activities. The problem is that it could put a bit of a stain on the company. That’s the only concern.”
Stain on the company? How? How exactly did she think I found out about Rob Callahan in the first place? I wasn’t the only man who worked crazy hours in the office and who craved company from time to time.
“So, what are you saying?” I asked, bluntly. I’d always liked Nancy. She was the only female partner at the accounting firm, and as an omega, I’d resonated with her. It was difficult for an omega or a woman to shoulder their way into the field and gain respect. I’d thought if I’d put in the hours at work, they would have no choice but to treat me equally. Clearly not.
Suddenly, it made perfect sense why they’d sent Nancy to do this. Why Nancy didn’t seem to believe a word of what she was saying. “They can’t be firing me. There’s no morality clause in the employment contract I signed. So I don’t see how seeing an escort could get me fired.”
“No, firing you isn’t on the table. If this information hadn’t come to light then I doubt there would even be an issue. Look, it’s not fair. It’s frankly so much bullshit. But, for now, you’re suspended until we can determine the credibility of the claim and work with PR to come up with some sort of effective response to this in case we need it.”
“This is because I’m an omega, right? I mean, I just want to be really clear.”
Nanc
y, of course, didn’t answer that. “Oliver, you know as well as I do the realities of what we’re up against.”
“Working twice as hard for half the respect?” It was ridiculous really considering we had a woman president and an omega as vice president. I suppose it was a step forward in the right direction for a better equality, but it wasn’t here yet. “Well, you don’t have anything to worry about, okay? I’m engaged. A baby on the way and everything. So I’m not going to be seeing escorts anymore.”
“And your fiancé?”
“I’m sorry?” What did Mitch have to do with any of this?
“Well, you’ve already said you didn’t have time to meet anyone. Strange then that you’d suddenly find a fiancé…” She seemed to contemplate it for a moment before her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Is he an escort?”
The thing about respecting a person is you can sometimes forget they have their own blind spots, their own issues. I’d always liked Nancy because I felt like we were on the same team. That was stupid. She may have some sympathy for me, but clearly it ran short of having sympathy for my fiancé’s history as a sex worker.
The thing about sympathy is that it’s either total or it’s worthless. If she didn’t like him for what she guessed he was, well, then, she didn’t like me either.
“I’ll collect my things, Nancy.” This conversation was over. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help the board navigate this.”
So, this had nothing to do with the fact I had slept with escorts because that would be hypocritical of every other alpha who worked here, but everything to do with the fact I was engaged to one? Seriously?
Nancy at least had enough self-awareness to look mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Oliver. The board has to think about the company, its reputation. What would we tell the stakeholders?”
