Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(58)

“A girl,” he said with finality.

“Really?” I said. “You don’t want a boy to teach to be manly?”

He snorted. “Who says I’m manly?”

“You’re very manly,” I said. I leaned over and kissed him.

“Eww, get a room, you guys,” said Christa.

“Anyway,” I said, “since when did you know this? You said you didn’t think about having a baby.”

“Yeah, I kind of skipped over the baby part whenever I thought about it,” he said. “I always thought of the kid as being like three.”

“Who you were teaching to shoot guns,” I said.

He laughed. “Stop picking on me, doll.”

“Why do you want a girl?” asked Christa.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. A boy would be cool too, I guess.”

I drew in a long breath. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.” My life was moving at the speed of sound lately. I wanted a chance to breathe, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get one anytime soon.

Christa fell asleep after a while. She’d been so worried about her mother, and now that she was relieved, she seemed exhausted.

Griffin said I should try to sleep too, so I curled up on one of the couches in the waiting room. But I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking about the fact that there was some other person growing inside me. It was part of me, and it was part of Griffin, but it was also itself. A completely different being.

It made me feel sort of awed and excited.

But it was also kind of creepy.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been invaded, that I was going to be taken over by the thing in me.

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a thing. It was a baby. I should like it. I should want it.

I did want it.

I didn’t want it to grow in me, though. It freaked me out.

Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat up and opened my eyes.

Griffin was across the room, staring listlessly at the news on TV. He turned to me. “You okay, doll?”

There was an element to his voice I didn’t think I’d ever heard before, a deeper kind of concern and respect. I liked it. It made me feel sort of fuzzy all over. “I’m...”

How could I tell him that I was terrified of being pregnant?

He crossed the room and sat down next to me. He pulled me close.

I snuggled into the crook of his arm and chest. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” he said. “Everything’s pretty scary right now.”

“I didn’t mean about Marcel, although that’s scary, too,” I said. “I meant about... being pregnant again.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “It’s a big deal, having a kid. Our whole lives are going to change, and who knows if we’ll even be good at it, and what if we’re pregnant with the bad seed or something?”

I giggled. “The bad seed?”

“Don’t laugh,” he said.

“What is that?”

“It’s this old black and white movie about these people who adopt a little girl. She was nearly killed by her father when she was a baby. And then she starts killing people, because killing is genetic.”

“Killing isn’t genetic,” I said.

“How do you know that?” he said.

“Besides, it’s not like we kill—” I broke off.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

I reached up to stroke his chin. He hadn’t had a chance to shave, and now his chin was prickly. “Griffin, we aren’t going to have the bad seed. We’re fine.”

“I hope not.”

But since he had irrational fears, it made me feel a little better about sharing mine. “That isn’t what I mean, anyway. I think we’ll be fine after the baby’s born. I’m afraid of... being pregnant.”

“Is that scary?”

“There’s something growing in me.”

He laughed.

“Griffin, it’s not funny,” I said.

He kissed the top of my forehead. “You’re really freaked out about that?”

“It makes me feel weird,” I said. “I know I’m supposed to be all glowing and stuff, but instead I feel like... an alien vessel or something. I feel invaded.”

His voice was a soft rumble. “You said something like that before, when we were arguing. I thought you only said it to hurt me.”

“No, I don’t want to hurt you. Does my saying that hurt you?”

“Well, I mean, if you feel invaded, I’m kind of the person who did the invading, aren’t I?”

I looked up at him. “No. I don’t think that. It’s not your fault. I mean, the, um, invasive part was really fun.”

He laughed. “I’m glad you still think so.”

“I just don’t feel like myself. I feel... like I’m nothing more than an incubator or something.”

“Doll, no one thinks that.” He disentangled from me so that he could look at me in the eye. “Are you saying this because you don’t want to have the baby?”

“I want to have the baby,” I said. “I just don’t want to be pregnant with the baby. And I don’t want to have to go through labor. That scares the hell out of me. I’m bad with pain. I really don’t like it.”