Chapter 1
Callie made it five months before she could no longer pass off her bump as a really bad bloated sitch.
She’d always been on the petite side, so it was actually kind of shocking that she had managed to hide it for as long as she had. The fact that it was late January helped. Between her thick winter coats and her oversized sweatshirts, no one had any idea that she was pregnant.
And, yeah, that was definitely on purpose.
So was feigning tummy trouble whenever Buster showed up at his shop, eyeing the slight bump beneath her uniform tee.
Looking back on it, it was a good thing that her roommate hadn’t moved back to the apartment during the early weeks otherwise she was sure Mitch would’ve wondered about her infrequent bouts of morning sickness.
To anyone else, she might’ve been able to play it off as a hangover, but Mitch would’ve known better.
Even before she got knocked up, she rarely drank.
Now, no matter how much she had the urge, she refused to touch the stuff.
Bad enough her child was half-human, half… not. What would booze do to the baby?
No. Though she allowed herself to gorge on ice cream until it got too chilly out to enjoy it—and then, courtesy of her sweet tooth, she started craving gourmet hot chocolates instead—that was her only indulgence.
Doctor’s orders. Before the most recent ultrasound revealed a few...
quirks, she’d gone to every appointment religiously, doing everything she could as an expectant single mom.
From the prenatal vitamins to upping her water intake to eating a diet high in fiber, fruits, and veggies, she was determined to do right by her baby if only because it was just the two of them.
Or, at least, it would have been if Mitch hadn’t moved back to the city.
When he first reappeared, apologizing for the way he abruptly left and begging to be allowed to move back into his room, Callie didn’t have any reason not to agree.
At the time, she had naively chalked up her nausea as an aftereffect of a human visiting Faerie; it took way too long before it dawned on her that pregnancy was even a possibility.
Then, when she finally broke down and took the test, later having the results confirmed by her doctor, she kept the truth of her situation to herself.
It would be a huge adjustment to add a baby to their two-room apartment, but she couldn’t figure out how to tell Mitch that she was pregnant.
What could she say?
“I fell in love with one of the fae, he knocked me up, then dumped me”?
It was the truth, but knowing Mitch, he’d be on his fancy work cell phone in seconds, concern for her causing him to report her erratic behavior to her family back home.
Even if she hadn’t let on that she could still see through a faerie creature’s glamour in years, her parents and her sisters had never stopped worrying over her.
And if they discovered that she allowed herself to be seduced, then discarded by one? Well, at least they couldn’t deny that she wasn’t just the poor victim of an overactive imagination anymore.
Nope. She was just the victim of a callous, cold fae who made her believe he loved her, too, before he sent her away from his sight...
You can’t forsake what you never wanted.
That’s what he had said, and for five months she couldn’t get the icy sneer out of her head. Even worse because she knew he meant it.
The fae can’t lie—but glamour did. Glamour lied all the time.
Callie knew that better than most. She’d spent weeks convincing herself that her gift—her life-long ability to see through the thickest of glamour to the faerie creature hiding underneath—had blinded her to the truth: that glamour lies, the fae can’t, but she’d been a fool to trust Ash regardless.
Once she confirmed that, rejected or not, their break-up didn’t change the fact that he’d left a bit of himself behind when he returned to Faerie, Callie made a conscious decision to keep the truth to herself.
Obviously, she’d have to own up to it eventually—kind of difficult not to when she had a baby bouncing on her hip—but she figured she had some time.
And she did. She had a little more than five months since she conceived—three months since she ran down to the drug store and bought the pregnancy test—before someone finally pointed out her noticeable belly.
Of course it was Mitch.
And because it was her best friend, he did it in the most Mitch way possible when he said, “Jeez, Cal. Maybe you should lay off the sugar. I still love you, but that pooch you got going on… be careful or the neighbors are gonna start thinking you’re pregnant and I’m the daddy.”
He was teasing. She knew he was. That was the kind of guy Mitch was.
He poked and he teased, but he was always the first one in her corner.
He’d been that way for years, ever since they met when Callie’s older sister Ariadne started dating Mitch’s older brother Tony.
The two were married now, and though their families seemed sure that Mitch and Callie would eventually wise up and realize that they were made for each other, the pair were just friends. Best friends, but that was all.
So the idea of Mitch being her baby’s daddy?
It was clear he was only saying that to get a laugh out of her, especially since it was equally as obvious that he never for a second actually believed she was really pregnant.
It was a joke, but no one was laughing when Callie stared at him in shock, unable to hide her stunned reaction to his comment.
Without meaning to, she totally gave it away.
Beneath his styled blond hair, Mitch paled. “Holy shit, Callie. You are, aren’t you? What— I… how?”
It took a few seconds for her to recover, and by then she knew it was too late.
She could lie—but, honestly, she didn’t really want to.
Maybe she had hoped that she could conceal her pregnancy just a little longer than she had, but she’d been dying to talk about it with someone. Who better than Mitch?
A tiny smile tugged on her lips. “Oh, come on. With all those different girls I see you bringing home on the weekends, you of all people should know how something like this happens.”
“Well, yeah. I know, but, holy shit, Callie. Sure, I might bring my dates here sometimes, but what about you? You haven’t been sneaking around on me, right?”
“Uh…”
“I mean, unless you’re the second coming of the Virgin Mary or something, you can’t expect me to believe you got like this yourself.”
Her smile faltered. While it had been a weight off of her shoulders to finally admit the truth to her roommate, that didn’t mean she was ready to talk about Ash to anyone.
It had been five months since her fae returned to Faerie. A little less than four since the last time she desperately tried to summon him. He was nothing more than a painful memory.
“Mitch. I don’t think—”
“Who’s the father?”
“Huh?”
“I said, who’s the father?”
It was the tone that had the remains of her smile fading completely. It went from a joking remark to a bewildered command to a… a demand so suddenly that Callie was surprised she didn’t get whiplash from it.
She rested her hands on the bottom swell of her belly as she pursed her lips, both unable and unwilling to explain.
She didn’t even have to answer, though. Even before he noticed her stubborn refusal, Mitch shook his head, then held up his hand. “Ah, hell. I’m sorry. I… that’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”
Callie accepted his apology with a single nod.
Mitch cleared his throat. “Forget about that. But you… pregnant? Wow. Um…” Dropping his hand, he waved in the general direction of her slight bump. “I just… you’re gonna keep it, right? The baby.”
It was the same question that Callie had asked herself nearly two months after the last time she came face to face with Ash. With his dismissal still stinging, she’d sat on the edge of her toilet, the two lines on the pregnancy test almost mocking her, and wondered the exact thing.
It didn’t take her long to know the answer to that.
While some women might make another choice, Callie decided to see her pregnancy through to the end.
What happened after the baby was born… well, she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.
For now, she was only focused on seeing if she even made it nine months.
With a half-fae baby who already seemed more advanced than he or she should be, who the hell knew?
A deep breath, then a nod. “Yeah. I am.”
As shocked as Mitch was to hear that she was expecting at all, he didn’t seem even a little surprised at her answer.
Instead, he hesitated for a few seconds, falling forward on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to move toward her without actually taking a step. While still hanging back, he slowly lifted his hand.
“Can I touch you?” he blurted out.
Callie froze. “What?”
Mitch’s cheeks reddened. “Your belly, I mean. Now that I know it’s not just a big lunch you got going on there, I thought...” His low voice trailed off before he shrugged. “It’s no big deal if it makes you uncomfortable. Just thought I’d ask.”
“Oh.”
His request made a little sense. It was like when one of the dogs in the park came up to her. She couldn’t resist the urge to run her fingers through their fur and often asked the dog’s owner if she could. Only Mitch was asking her permission to touch her baby belly.
And why not?
Callie knew why not, and the fact that she even hesitated to tell her roommate that he could do something so simple let her know that she was still struggling more than she wanted to admit.