While You Were Creeping - Poppy Rhys Page 0,49
a few days after New Year’s, “I have a favor to ask and I don’t even know if it’s possible, but I’ll hate myself if I don’t try.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to help, hon,” he’d replied, setting aside his carving tools.
“Remember when I asked you about interdimensional prisons and you said it was a specialized federal unit that handled stuff like that?”
He slowly nodded.
“Can you put me in touch with them?”
“This about Kye?”
My chest twinged whenever someone said his name.
Where’s Kye?
What happened to Kye?
When’s Kye visiting again?
Only Mom and Aunt Gretta had known the truth up to that point. They’d been standing there when he poofed into thin air. There was no way they would’ve let me leave the lodge without explaining what the hell happened.
I’d spilled my guts about everything. The deal, the lie, the fact that Kye started out as my fake boyfriend but somewhere along the way, it turned into something real.
The realest thing I’d ever experienced in my life.
I punched my pillow, trying to get comfortable, and then shut my eyes. Tonight, I wouldn’t cry.
I wouldn’t.
****
“I’d love it if I could stop napping,” I yawned, draping myself across the island down in the big kitchen while Mom made us some tea.
“Darling, you look like you just crawled out of the grave.”
“Wow, is that something you should say to your favorite—and only—daughter?”
She sat on the stool beside me and poured us both a hot cuppa.
“Have you eaten? There’re some leftover biscuits the twins made.”
I groaned, the thought of food making my stomach gurgle like it was about to pack up and exit my body. “No, thank you. I’m just slogging through these essays. Late nights.”
Mom did her squinty eye as she watched me, daintily sipping her tea. “Holly, are you pregnant?”
I’m so glad I didn’t have a mouth full of tea, else I would’ve spit it out. I laughed tiredly.
“What?! No. I’m on the...”
Wait a second...
The air flattened out of me as I grabbed my comm and pulled up my calendar, swiping to last month.
December 8 at 5pm: Doctor’s appointment. Restriction serum renewal.
December eighth... that was the day after Kye showed up. I’d been so flustered, I’d missed my renewal shot.
It wasn’t something I thought about, you know? I hadn’t had real sex in years. Real sex as in not-battery-operated-toy-kind-of-sex. The serum hadn’t been a thought in my mind for a long-ass time.
I stared into the middle distance, working out the dates. It’d been weeks. It was completely possible. And, unlike those useless ullek disks predicted, I hadn’t gotten my menses.
“Oh fuck.”
Aunt Gretta swept into the kitchen and kissed me on the forehead. “Mouse, you look like shit. What’s wrong?”
“Jesus, I get it,” I bitched, already tired of being told I looked bad.
Mom set down her teacup and smirked. “She’s pregnant.”
“What?!” Gretta squawked.
What was right.
As in what. The. Fuck.
****
A test confirmed it.
Two tests confirmed it.
And five more after that also confirmed it.
I’m pregnant.
Oh my fucking stars, I’m pregnant!
I stared at myself in the mirror and, yes, I did look like shit. My skin was paler than normal, the circles under my eyes were dark, and my hair was a ratty mess I’d tied into a bun just to get it out of my face.
My hands trembled when I lifted my baggy sweatshirt and turned to the side, examining my belly.
A shaky exhale left me when I didn’t see any crazy changes. I didn’t know what I expected. Maybe for my belly to move and stretch like an alien was growing in there.
Well, I mean, there was an alien growing in there. Or so the eight tests said. Maybe I needed a ninth just to make sure.
I pulled my sweatshirt back down and nervously scratched at the nape of my neck.
“What am I going to do?”
Panic set in.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t fucking do this.
How was I going to raise a youngling whose father was imprisoned eleven months out of the year?
How shitty would that be for Kye? For the youngling?
For me?
Every year he’d wake, cram in some daddy time and then, when the next December rolled around, the kid would be another year older.
He might get to see the babe take their first steps, say their first words, eat their first soft foods.
He wouldn’t be there for their first day of school.
He wouldn’t be there for their graduation.
He likely wouldn’t be around whenever they got their heart broken for the first time and just needed someone to listen.
He’d likely miss every major and minor