Chapter 1 #2
Those few weeks with Ash had really screwed her up.
Before, she’d been choosy when it came to her bed partners, but she considered herself to be a touchy-feely person.
Callie hugged her sisters all of the time when she still lived with them, and even a gentle brush of her shoulder as Buster complimented her on another perfectly composed photograph didn’t register as anything other than support from someone she cared about.
And then she met one of the fae and learned all about the power of the touch.
The higher races of Faerie could derive pleasure from touching a mortal for the simple fact that the fae were soulless creatures who stole a piece of a mortal’s from every human they charmed into giving them permission.
They couldn’t just grab, of course. Callie knew from experience—Ash breaking the hand of a pushy idiot who got grabby with Callie during a matinee at the local cineplex came to mind—that a fae would be burned if they touched a human without permission.
Their skin blistered and burned, just the same as if they came in contact with pure iron, and though they healed pretty quickly, Ash mentioned before that he abhorred pain.
He had tricked their first touch out of her. Believing she owed him a life debt, Callie let Ash touch her. By the time she learned the truth behind the kobold that attacked her in the park, the damage was done. Ash had touched nearly every part of her, including her heart and soul.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
But he had fooled her. He’d made her believe that they were meant to be, that they were fated, and she fell for it. She’d had twenty years of lessons she’d picked up on in how to deal with the faerie folk, and she threw them all away for a moment in the sun with her Light Fae.
Now she knew. Now she hardened her resolve, and in the months since he left, she’d fallen back to her old routine. Let a goblin or a redcap or—on one notable occasion—an oversized, rock-hewn troll clomp by her. Callie saw it all while pretending she couldn’t.
She was good at pretending.
Pretending she didn’t have the sight? Check.
Pretending she didn’t suffer from heartbreak every moment since the Light and Dark Fae guards escorted her through the Fae Queen’s crystal palace and to the portal that separated her from Ash for good? Check.
Pretending she wasn’t scared out of her fucking mind to have Ash’s baby on her own?
A glimpse up at Mitch revealed that maybe she wasn’t as good at pretending as she thought. On his handsome face, she read concern mixed with reassurance as he lowered his hand to his thigh again.
Before she could think better of it, she stepped toward him, offering him her midsection. “Yeah. Sure. Go ahead.”
He did. Laying his palm along the slight curve of her lower belly, his eyes widened when, suddenly, he jolted in place.
“It moved. The baby… it moved.”
Holy shit. The baby did!
Slapping Mitch’s hand away from her, Callie replaced it with her own. The slight flutter inside of her these last few days had been easy to dismiss as gas or nerves, but there was no denying that she felt a gentle thud just now. And for Mitch to feel it too?
“She hasn’t kicked like that before,” she marveled. “That’s new.”
She… for some reason, Callie had been referring to the baby as ‘she’ more and more lately.
Call it a hunch, but she was almost sure that her child would be a girl, though she wasn’t sure why.
Or maybe it was just wishful thinking, really, that she’d have a girl to dote on instead of a little boy that would only remind her of the fae she couldn’t keep herself from missing...
“It must like me,” said Mitch, grinning as he pulled Callie out of her musing. “First time, you said. Right? How far along are you again?”
Good question.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t know roughly how long she’d been pregnant. Considering she’d only slept with one guy in more than a year, it didn’t take a genius to know that she conceived back in August.
But that was the thing. When the only guy she fucked wasn’t exactly a guy but a friggin’ fae from Faerie, Callie had no clue what that meant for her baby. They would be half-human, half-fae, and she didn’t know if she would carry to full-term or not.
So far, everything seemed pretty normal.
It took her longer than she cared to admit to finally put on her big girl panties and make an appointment with an OB-GYN because she was so worried that Dr. Flannigan would somehow know her baby was different.
Of course, during her last appointment, the doctor had mentioned a few of her results had seemed a little curious, a little strange, and Callie had refused to go back for further testing.
How far along are you again?
The suspicious side of Callie wondered if he was only asking because, deep down, he was still trying to figure out who the dad was. By narrowing down the date, he might be able to get a better idea of the timeline.
It wouldn’t help him. Considering Mitch moved out within days of her meeting Ash—and she was still convinced the Light Fae had everything to do with her roommate’s sudden decision to return to the suburbs last summer—he never even knew that Callie was dating anyone, let alone one of the high races from Faerie.
“A little over five months.”
“That far? And I’m just finding out now?”
“You’re the only one who knows,” she told him. “And, Mitch… I’d like to keep it that way.”
That was one downside to living with someone who was technically part of the family.
Callie’s dad treated Mitch like the son he never had, and she knew that her mom and her sisters had no problem quizzing Mitch when it came to how Callie was getting along in the city.
Her roommate had always been loyal to her, so she didn’t really think she had to add that last part, but just in case...
“Of course. I’d never tell a soul if you didn’t want me to,” Mitch promised. Then, as if something occurred to him, he frowned. “The only one? Are you saying that even the dad—”
“Doesn’t know,” she said firmly. “He’s not in the picture, either, so let’s drop that, okay?”
His dark brown eyes seemed glued to her midsection, as if he couldn’t look away now that he knew the truth.
She got the feeling that he’d never been around a pregnant chick before—which, she allowed, could very well be true.
Like Callie, Mitch was twenty-two and the baby of his immediate family.
Neither of Callie’s sisters had had any children yet, and Tony was Mitch’s only sibling.
Good chance she was the first one he knew.
“Gotcha.”
“Good.”