Chapter 19 #2
When Tempest answers all of his questions and asks some of her own, he looks up.
And I have to hold on to the edge of the door at the impact of his gaze on me.
His dark, dark possessive gaze.
Like he’s looking at something that belongs to him.
I mean, technically the hoodie that I’m wearing, white and creamy and cozy, does belong to him, yes. Not to mention, the baby inside my body.
The body that has grown and swelled — only slightly but still — in the past weeks.
And all of it has happened under his wolf eyes.
And so this dark possession has only grown over the past weeks.
Before it made my skin coarse with goosebumps, but now it burns me.
It makes me curl my extremities and part my lips.
Now it makes me, actually makes me, put a hand on my belly. Not that it’s a hardship; I love touching my belly, but still.
The moment I do, he lets Tempest go and his animal eyes fall on my expanded abdomen. He stares at it for a few beats as if checking that my — our — baby girl is all safe inside of me. As if he can confirm this just by looking at me like that.
Then he lifts up his eyes and moves toward me.
With every step he takes toward me, he does his thing.
Checking to make sure that I’m okay, that nothing bad has happened to me while I was safely ensconced in this cozy house, spending a relaxed day with his sister.
His steps echo as he climbs the porch steps and I dig my fingers into my belly.
When he reaches me, he dips his face and I crane my neck up.
“Hi,” I say, doing my thing, glancing at the tired lines around his eyes, his mouth.
The sharpness of his cheekbones, his jaw, the creases on his forehead.
As if that place where he works chisels him down, brings out his blade-like edges, and I hate that.
I absolutely hate it.
“You okay?” he asks instead of greeting me back.
“Yeah. You? You look tired. Was it a hard day?”
“I’m fine.” He dismisses my concern over him and it bugs me even more but I keep my mouth shut for now. “You throw up at all?”
“No, not even once,” I whisper. “Remember what the doctor said? I won’t. Not anymore.”
At the mention of our doctor, his stubbled jaw clenches. “Well, the doctor can go fuck herself.”
“Reed,” I warn. “Don’t say that. It’s not her fault that my morning sickness was so bad.”
“But it was her fucking job to make it better, wasn’t it?”
I sigh. “You know, you shouldn’t curse so much, Reed.”
His eyes flash, making me blush.
Then he asks gruffly, “Pest give you a hard time?”
“Of course not. She’s my best friend. We had tons of fun. We saw movies. We gossiped. We had pizza and popcorn. And cheesy fries. Also cupcakes.”
Aside from my nausea being gone, my hunger is back. I still can’t do meat. But God, give me all the fried stuff.
His lips twitch. “Peanut Butter Blossoms.”
Gosh, those cupcakes will be the death of me.
Because every time I eat them, I think about his mouth. I know I’m not supposed to but I do. I do think about his taste. And it doesn’t help that I’m surrounded by his scent, his clothes. Him.
I bite my lip, nodding. “And she bought me stuff.”
“Stuff.”
“Yeah. She got me tons of yarn and…”
Something flashes through his eyes then and I realize what I said. What it means.
I made him a sweater once. Took me weeks to work on that intarsia for him. I worked late into the night, trying to get it finished for his championship game.
My fingers hurt with the phantom pain now.
The pain over the fact that he must’ve thrown it away.
Because it didn’t mean anything to him.
But more than that, there’s pain in my hands from holding on to the past so tightly.
“To knit,” he says in a low voice, his gaze piercing into mine.
“Yeah. I wanna make her socks. And hats.”
“Sweaters.”
I swallow, still cradling my belly. “I wanna make her those too. But I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“What if… What if she doesn’t like them? My sweaters.”
A muscle on his cheek pulses. “She’d love them.”
My heart jumps. “You think so?”
“I fucking know so.”
I like it…
That’s what he said back when I gave him the sweater and I was so happy that he did. But he was lying. I know.
I also know that he isn’t lying now.
And his next fiercely-spoken words prove it. “Because you’ll make it. And for once you’ll make it for someone who actually deserves your perfectly made things and your first attempts at intarsia.”
“Reed, I…”
I trail off because I don’t know what I was going to say. I don’t know what I wanted to say.
What did I want to say to him?
It doesn’t matter anyway because Tempest decides to tell us both, from where she’s still standing by Reed’s Mustang, that she’s hungry and that we should finish making googly eyes at each other later.
And then I’m so embarrassed that I was, in fact, making googly eyes at him, I don’t even look at Reed all throughout dinner. Although I can feel his eyes on me and also on Tempest, whom I think he’s glaring at.
After we’re done, we have a debate on who’s going to do what in terms of cleaning up. Reed wants to do everything himself but I tell him no. I tell him that I’m fine now and I can do stuff. Plus he’s tired from work anyway. So I clean up the table, put away all the food, and Reed does the dishes.
Tempest watches it all with her gray eyes that never ever seem to stop laughing.
When we’re done, she pulls me out of the kitchen without even a word to Reed and drags me to my room, closing the door.
“So?” Tempest goes when she’s got the door locked.
“So?”
Wide-eyed, she asks, “Are you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“You’ve told me everything. Except one thing.”
“What is that?”
She sighs, looking at me, and her always smiling eyes go dim and grave. “Are you still mad at him? For what he did to you.”
My heart starts to thump in my chest. “I… I’m…”
She grabs my hand in hers and squeezes it. “Because if you are, then it’s okay. I support you.”
I squeeze it back. “A-and what if I’m not?”
“Then I support you too. Duh.”
“He’s your brother, Temp,” I remind her.
“I know. And I love him and he’s my BFF. But you’re my BFF too and I saw how you were that night. I saw what he did to you, Callie. I was there. He broke you.” She scoffs. “You’re the biggest good girl I’ve ever met and look what he made you do.”
My eyes sting.
I can’t believe this girl. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she hadn’t been with me. Not only that night but also throughout that summer.
I mean, she’s my partner in crime.
“So? Are you?” she prods.
And the only reason I can tell her is because not only do I love her but I also can’t keep it inside anymore. “I think… I think I’m tired now.”
“Of what?”
“Of being angry at him. Of holding on to the past. I try. I do. I… make myself remember and it was easy before. So easy but…” A tear falls down my cheek. “But I… it’s hard. He makes it so hard. Do you think I’m weak? For not being angry at him anymore. For letting go of the past.”
She has tears in her eyes too as she says, “God, Callie, you’re not weak.
You’re one of the strongest people I know.
You’re a survivor, okay? You survived your first heartbreak.
You survived my brother. So no, it doesn’t make you weak.
Moving on is not weakness. It’s a choice that we make when the time is right.
It’s a choice that we make to cut that toxic, hurtful part out of our lives.
So we can be free. We can have closure. You’re getting closure, Callie. You’re choosing not to hurt.”
I’m choosing not to hurt. I’m choosing closure.
That’s what I wanted, right? I wanted to move on.
I wanted to stop the hurt, the pain.
And it has stopped.
I haven’t felt that anger in such a long time. I’ve been trying to but it’s gone now.
He made it go away. He did it.
He did what I asked him to do that night.
He made it stop hurting.
“Closure,” I whisper, a light bulb going off in my head. “I’ve wanted that. That’s what I wanted.”
“And you have it now.”
I wipe the tears off my face and nod. “Yeah.”
“And besides, not being mad at him doesn’t mean you can’t make him pay,” Tempest says with raised eyebrows, wiping her own tears.
“What?”
She winks. “Watch this.”
Letting go of me, she opens the door and peeks her head out, shouting, “Reed, Callie’s feet hurt.
” My eyes bug out and I tug on her arm to stop her but she doesn’t.
“Get in here, bro. She says her feet hurt because of what you did to her. You knocked her up, didn’t you?
And now her ankles are swollen and my best friend can’t stand.
All because of you, Reed.” Then, she turns to me.
“Wait, is it feet or ankles? What happens to pregnant women?”
A shock of laughter bursts out of me. “Uh, everything.”
She laughs too and I decide that as soon as I get a chance, I’m introducing her to all my St. Mary’s girls. She’s going to get along great with them, especially Poe.
That’s how Reed finds us, giggling like lunatics. His frown says all about what he thinks of that. Pair of silly teenage girls. This is exactly how he used to look at us back then, when Tempest and I would hang out together.
When Tempest leaves us alone, he asks, looking down at my ballerina feet, “What the fuck is she talking about? What’s wrong with your feet?”
I study his face.
His bruises are long gone now. His arched cheekbones, his straight pretty nose, those eyelashes, that V-shaped jaw dotted with stubble that he scratches in irritation.
“You really hate your stubble, don’t you?” I ask instead.
He frowns. “What the hell is wrong with your feet, Fae?”
“I like it, your stubble,” I keep going without answering him. “Always have. And your longish hair.”
His eyes pierce mine. “You like my longish hair.”
“Yes.” I eye his long, dark strands that are brushing against the collar of his shirt. “Technically you need a haircut. But I don’t want you to get one.”
He studies me a beat. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I won’t get one.”
“You won’t get a haircut.”
“That’s what I said.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Because I said so.”
He tightens his jaw for a second before he almost growls, “Are we done chit-chatting? What the fuck is wrong with your feet?”
“Why, are you going to massage them?”
“If I have to.”
I bite my lip, circling my eyes over his face, my heart thumping in my chest. “You’re crazy.”
“And you’re pregnant.”
“With your baby,” I whisper.
Something washes over his beautiful but concerned features. Something heated and bright and possessive. And his eyes home in on my tiny bump that, to be honest, is not even visible under his hoodie, but still.
“Yeah, you are,” he whispers back, gruffly. “So are you going to tell me?”
When I put my other hand on my stomach, he swallows, fisting his own hands.
The hands that I’m so entranced by.
The hands that I can completely admit I want on me. God, so much.
“I’m just pregnant, Reed. That’s all,” I tell him. “You don’t have to treat me like a princess. And no, nothing’s wrong with my feet. Tempest was just messing with you.”
“Tempest and I are going to have words.” He bends down slightly. “And I’m not.”
“What?”
“Treating you like a princess. Because you’re not a princess, are you?”
“No.”
He looks me up and down, my short body in his large hoodie, my daisy-printed pajama pants, my loose braid, my ballerina toes. “What are you then?”
My toes go up at his question and I whisper, “A fairy.”
His wolf eyes glow. “Yeah, my Fae.”
And I know what I have to do.
I know.