The next two weeks were so turbulent I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. There were days that we would spend together, walking through the forest or even going into town for supplies together and just really enjoying each other’s company, laughing and joking all the time. Then there were other days when I could hardly get a word out of him, or when he would snap at me and I didn’t know why or what I had done to upset him. It made my heart hurt. I’d never been in a situation like this before.

There was still sex though. I mean, if there hadn’t been sex I would have been convinced he had gone off me completely, but at least there was that for me to fall back on. There were tender moments but I couldn’t help but feel his mind was elsewhere. No matter how hard I tried to get him to seem interested or into it, he wasn’t there with me. We were together, but we weren’t together. It started me wondering what the hell I was doing here. If he’d gone off me entirely and I was wasting my time, if I’d allowed myself to open up to him and now he’d changed his mind. I so didn’t want that to be the case.

I’d not been feeling too well for a couple of days now. I didn’t know if Dante had noticed. It was hard to get his attention at the moment so I found it a little hard to believe that he would have paid attention to the fact that I was joining him on his rounds less and less, and having to sleep off whatever it was that was attacking my insides.

“Are you coming today?” he said after breakfast one morning. I’d hardly touched what he’d made; scared it would make me throw up. That was the last thing I wanted.

“I’m still not feeling so good,” I said. “I might go back to bed.”

He sighed, checking his watch. “I don’t have a lot of medical supplies up here,” he said. “Do you want me to run you into town quickly? You could maybe get something to settle your stomach. Or maybe some aspirin.”

It was the closest he’d come to taking an interest in me over the past couple of weeks and I really did appreciate it, even if he was a little bit frosty while he was doing it.

I smiled at him. “Thanks Dante,” I said. “That might help.”

We drove out of the campsite and into town, silence still between us. I so wanted him to talk, to say anything to me. Instead we drove along in silence, that wedge driving itself further between us until we pulled up outside of Walgreens. He passed me some money. “Here,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t expected him to come inside with me, but it still surprised me a little bit when he decided not to.

“What?”

“Nothing, just…stomach pain,” I said. “I won’t be a second.”

I blinked tears away from my eyes as I hurried into Walgreens. Why was I crying over him not coming to the fucking pharmacy with me? What was my problem? I shook the feeling off and started to look for some kind of medication. I didn’t want to keep him waiting. I didn’t want to give him another reason to be cold with me. I was keeping him from his rounds after all.

I found the aspirin, grabbing some cold and flu tablets just in case it was that instead. Maybe I needed to go and see a doctor or something. I’d bring it up with Dante if symptoms persisted. I didn’t want to be a bother and take more time out of his day than was necessary.

As I was walking to the checkout I found myself down the pregnancy aisle. I caught sight of the pregnancy tests, a whole range of them right next to the fertility supplements and the condoms. A crazy idea formed in my head.

It hadn’t been all that long ago that Dante had come home and totally fucked my brains out without a condom. At the time it had been the hottest thing in the world, the feeling of him bare inside of me, the raw passion of it all but, hindsight being the wonderful thing that it is, I was starting to doubt whether that was such a good idea.

What if I was pregnant?

I mean, that was the whole point of me coming here in the first place, wasn’t it? That objective had changed quite a lot when I’d started getting super close to Dante and we’d been a lot more romantic with each other. If he hadn’t been blowing so hot and cold with me over the past couple of weeks, this honestly would have felt like the best thing in the whole world but now I was worried.

I grabbed two of the pregnancy tests, vowing to hide them from Dante, so he didn’t get the wrong idea.

As I walked to the counter, I started to wonder what it might be like to be carrying his child. In my brain, I could already feel the child growing inside me. Mine and Dante’s child. Would that be so bad? Maybe that would be the thing that turned all of this around.

I cursed myself, sounding like the kind of person I would cuss out if I saw it online, someone trying to save their relationship with a baby. But I couldn’t help but wonder if we could do just that. Maybe this would turn his mood around.

I paid for my things and went back out to the Jeep. Dante already had the engine running when I got in.

“What took you so long?” he asked. It wasn’t an accusation, not by a long stretch, but it still burned a little.

“I couldn’t find what I was looking for,” I said quietly. “Never been to this one before, totally different layout. It threw me off.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

We drove back in even more silence and I got out of the Jeep, walking back to the cabin by myself as he drove off to do his rounds. Maybe he was just stressed. Fuck, why was I making excuses for him being so surly?

I got inside and couldn’t really wait, taking the pregnancy test almost immediately. The three-minute wait was agony. I didn’t even know which was I wanted it to go, positive or negative.

When I looked, there it was, clear as day.

Pregnant.

I burst into tears. What did this mean for us? I wasn’t even sure Dante was ready for it. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. Our relationship was so turbulent right now, I didn’t know if we would survive the term of the pregnancy.

I took a shower and cried through most of it, finding myself caressing my belly every now and again, wondering if there really was a child in there, mine and Dante’s child.

I took the other pregnancy test and it came up positive again. If there had been even a hint of doubt, that just about eliminated it. I took a deep breath. I’d tell Dante when he got home tonight.

I couldn’t really focus for the rest of the day. I tried reading a book, I tried watching TV, nothing seemed to be able to distract me from the fact that I had to tell Dante this earth shattering news tonight.

I made dinner, something nice and simple that didn’t make me want to gag, and I had it ready on the table for when Dante got home. When he walked in the door, he looked tense but seemed to visibly relax when he saw the food waiting for him.

“You cooked!” he said, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t sounds so surprised, I cook sometimes,” I said with a slight laugh.

“Once in a blue moon,” he said. “This looks amazing.” He breathed in. “God, and it smells so good. This is really thoughtful, Owen.” He paused. “I take it you’re feeling better then.”

“Erm, a little,” I said. “The stuff I got from Walgreens this morning really helped, thank you.” Not a lie but not entirely the truth, that’s for sure.

He took a quick shower and then we sat down to eat. It tasted as good as it smelled. It was almost the same thing Dante had made me on my first night here, chicken and rice with vegetables. I’d just used a different combination of spices so it had a bit more of a kick to it. It was so good. And it was even better to be sitting across from a much more relaxed Dante while I was eating it. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

He sat back in his chair when he’d finished. “That was so good, Owen,” he said, a relaxed smile stretching across his face. “And so thoughtful too. Thank you so much.”

I put my knife and fork down. Now or never.

“I have something to tell you,” I said.

The smile vanished from his face.

“Please don’t freak out.”

“I’ll only freak out if there is a reason for me to freak out,” he said, his tone flat, his brows knitted in the middle of his forehead. “What’s going on?”

“While I was at Walgreens, I picked up a pregnancy test,” I said quickly. I could see him tense. This was about to go down like a lead balloon. “I’m pregnant.”

Nothing. He didn’t say anything. He just stared past me and at the wall. I could see the cogs turning in his head and, for a moment, I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me.

I cleared my throat. “Did you hear me, Dante?” I said. “I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”

“Fucking hell,” he said.

Great. Just the reaction I was hoping for.

“This is the wrong time,” he said. “How the fuck did this happen?” He started to raise his voice. I desperately didn’t want to fight about this. My body already felt weak, I couldn’t fight with him about this right now. “What did you do?”

“What did I do?”

“Yeah,” he said. “This is what you wanted isn’t it? You got here and you were trying to get pregnant, well at least you got what you wanted. What did you do, poke holes in the condoms while I was out on my rounds?”

It was like a punch to the stomach. How could he say something like that? Tears sprang to my eyes. “Dante, how could you say something like that?”

“Well, is it true?” he shouted. “I don’t hear you denying it.”

“You came home a few weeks ago, pissed off about something or other, and we had sex without a condom,” I said. “We’ve been safe every other time before that and every other time after that. How can you accuse me of something like that? We agreed to go slow, we agreed to take our time, why would I want to rush this?”

“Well, you were so intent on getting pregnant, you can’t blame me for thinking that.”

“It takes two to fucking tango, Dante,” I shouted. “I should have told you to put a condom on in that moment but I got caught up in it, but I didn’t notice you stopping to wrap it up, so don’t go blaming all of this on me. This is you too. This is our child.”

He stood up and started to pace, back and forth in front of the breakfast bar, prowling like a caged animal. I didn’t know what he was going to do. Beyond breaking up that fight between Lesander and Eric, I’d never seen Dante lose his temper. My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to believe for even one second that he would hurt me, but his behavior was concerning.

“I need to take a walk,” he said suddenly, setting down on the armchair and pulling on his shoes. “Or a drive, or something.”

It wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought he might kick me out or tell me to leave or something, instead he was the one who was going. Maybe just to cool off, but I wanted to talk about this.

“You can’t just walk away from this, Dante,” I said. “We need to talk, we can’t leave all of this up in the air.”

“Don’t fucking follow me, Owen,” he said. “Just…just stay here.”

He walked out and slammed the door. I rushed over to the window and watched him drive away. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?