While You Were Creeping - Poppy Rhys Page 0,50

event in the youngling’s life.

I buried my face in my hands.

“I’m such an idiot,” I whispered.

It was all too much. An overload of emotion and everything seemed impossible. I needed to talk to someone. Needed to work it all out before I made a decision that would affect multiple lives.

When I walked into Dr. Molina’s office that evening, I lowered myself onto her beige, boring couch and immediately burst into tears.

“Thanks for seeing me on short notice. And I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “It might be the hormones, but it’s probably just plain old me crying like a fool.”

I told you, I’m a mess.

“Holly, are you alright? You look—”

“Like shit? I know, you’re not the first to think that.”

“I was going to say, you seem like something heavy is weighing on you.”

Her voice was soothing and the small pinch between her sleek dark brows was the only wrinkle on her face, but that tiny wrinkle conveyed a message of care and concern.

It felt nice, being back in this neutral toned office where nothing was too colorful or outlandish. Just... normal.

I could use a little normal.

“First, tell me what’s changed in your life. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

Everything.

Everything changed.

I word vomited everything from start to finish. About Kye, about Dasha, Amelie, Perry, and the wedding. About berchtas and how I thought his imprisonment was unfair, the deal, the lie, and the very real baby that now took up residence in my uterus.

By the time I was finished, I felt like a wrinkled balloon. All the hot air had petered out of me and my shoulders sagged.

Dr. Molina leaned forward, carefully asking, “You haven’t checked your ex’s social threads? And you’re no longer flushing toilets?”

I laughed, the sound exhausted as I wiped at my cheeks. The dumbest thing happened. I’d been so busy falling for Kye that my compulsive habits had died a slow death.

“Funny thing is,” I sniffled, “I’d gladly go back to flushing toilets if it meant I didn’t have to feel this way anymore.”

“And you say you love this man, Kye?”

I accepted another tissue to add to my growing mountain of them. “Yes. I’m stupidly in love with him.”

I couldn’t love a normal guy off the street. Someone physically here and touchable, someone I could build a life with.

No, I fell in love with an imprisoned, Krampus-looking, kindhearted, funny, foul-mouthed, unavailable-eleven-months-out-of-the-year alien.

“Good.”

I wiped my nose again. “Good? No, this is bad.”

Dr. Molina moved closer and sat on the couch beside me. “I’m going to tell you something and I hope you’ll hear me out.”

My stomach muscles immediately clinched.

“I am the great, great niece of Neoma.”

The breath shot out of me when I immediately stood and took a step back. “What did you just say?”

“I’m a berchta. We may look like humans, but we have longer lifespans. And other abilities.”

“But...” my brain screeched to a halt before it fired up and ran a marathon. “He said witches have glowing green eyes. Your eyes don’t glow.”

“Not to you, no. Humans don’t have the proper eyesight for it. Kye’s kind does.”

Kye’d never seen my therapist. I hadn’t visited her since the first day of December, before he was even a presence in my life.

“What’re you saying?”

“I’m not really like my family. I’ve never believed in pocket prisons, but when I inherited Kye from my late mother, I needed time to find a way to help him.”

“Help him? Why didn’t you just free him?”

She stood, folding her arms and moving past the windows. “I felt that if I freed Kye immediately, he’d spend the rest of his life resenting the time he’d lost. He’d never truly be free.”

An incredulous laugh escaped me. “You head shrunk Kye?”

She pursed her lips, hiding a smile. “What can I say, except it’s what I do.”

Okay, she had a point.

“When you came into my office a few months ago, soon after our sessions started, I had a thought.” Her clear forest-colored gaze slid to me and she tilted her head as if to ask for understanding. “You suffered from a vicious cycle with a narcissistic ex and it was affecting every part of your life, even your prior love of Christmas.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” I lamely mumbled.

“Kye was in a similar cycle, but with ghosts of the past and different enough from yours that, if I put you together under questionable circumstances, maybe, just maybe, your collision would be big enough to shove you both off your personal hellish merry-go-rounds. And if you ended up