“Yeah, with what?”
I jumped in before Reed could make matters worse. “He’s cleaning the gutters or whatever. And when I told him he shouldn’t bother because everything was fine and that he should enjoy things in life like pretty rain instead of worrying about everything, he said I didn’t know anything about house maintenance.”
Ledger turned to me. “Pretty?”
“Yes. That’s all. Relax.”
Ledger frowned at me before turning to Reed. “She tell you that it was pretty?”
“Also cozy.”
They both looked at each other, sporting the same look. The look that said I was crazy, that all women in the world are crazy for suggesting that rain is pretty.
Ledger turned back to me. “Callie, it’s not going to be pretty or cozy or whatever the fuck when your roof starts leaking and there’s water damage. Let him do his thing.” And then, just to annoy me — I know it — he added, “You should go inside and bake cookies instead and see if the purple leprechauns that live under your bed want some.”
My eyes went wide. “You moron. I can’t believe you said that. Especially when you know that I’m pregnant and my hormones are all messed up.”
They are.
Along with making me cry, they make me angry and hot and just… so irritated.
So much so that I punched my brother in the chest that day, which only made him snicker. And when I noticed that Reed’s lips were twitching, I punched him too.
“You know what, I am going to make cookies. Oatmeal raisin, Ledger. But you don’t get any.”
“Hey!” Ledger protested. “Now, that’s a little hasty. Who loves you the most, huh?”
“Not you.” Then I turned to Reed who was watching me with amused eyes and declared, “You too. I know you like them too. But you don’t get to have any either.”
So yeah.
Apparently, ever since Reed and Ledger ganged up on me, Ledge doesn’t openly glare at Reed anymore either.
Which is great but I hate that there’s so much testosterone around me.
The only person that I know who does glare at him is my ballet teacher, Miss Petrova.
Aside from forcing her to apologize to me all those months ago, Reed gets on her nerves. Because he likes to watch my lessons and Miss Petrova thinks it’s disruptive.
But of course Reed doesn’t listen.
He still sits there and still watches me awkwardly hold my poses and heave and pant as my pregnancy progresses and my bigger belly messes with my balance. But my doctor has said that as long as I don’t exert myself too much and do it all under professional supervision, it should be fine.
“You know, you’re starting to creep out other girls too. That you sit there and watch me and don’t even listen to our teacher,” I tell him when he opens the door to his Mustang to drive me back home after class one evening.
“And I should care about that why?”
“Because they might call the cops on you,” I reply, raising my eyebrows. “Because you’re acting like a stalker.”
He narrows his predator animal eyes. “I know all the cops, remember?”
“So what, you’re going to keep stalking me then? Like a criminal.”
“No, like a villain. And you’re pregnant with my baby.” He flicks his eyes over me, over my bun and sweaty neck, my white leotard and ice blue tutu that hides my pregnant belly. “It’s my fucking job to stalk you.”
I run my hands over my tutu, cradling my belly. “But —”
His eyes follow the gesture as usual before he murmurs, cutting me off, “Besides, you should tell your Miss Petrova that this isn’t the first time I’ve stalked you in a ballet class. So she should really stop gasping every time she sees me watching you.”
“What?”
His wolf eyes that I know are going to be the death of me sparkle then. They glow like his beautiful vampire skin as his lips tip up in a smirk. “Long before I made you spin for me in the woods, I used to watch you spin on your toes at Blue Madonna. I used to watch you leap and jump across the dance floor while your fucking Miss Petrova smiled at you proudly.”
My skin wakes up in goosebumps but I know it’s not the winter breeze that’s making it happen. It’s him.
“You used to watch me?” I whisper, looking up at him. “Before the woods.”
“Why do you think I blackmailed you into dancing for me that night?”
“B-because that’s what you do. That’s your thing.”
His smirks changes into a lazy, languid smile as he confesses, “Yeah, that. But also because you were my tight little ballerina long before you knew it.”
My heart goes up on its tiptoes and I do too. “But you never said anything.”
“If I’d wanted you to know, Fae, I would’ve told you. Now get in the car.”
This is crazy and incredible and exactly like the pregnancy book, isn’t it? That he was trying to hide that day.
And I can’t help but ask, “Why do you hide it, the things that… that might make someone like you?”
I don’t know where the question came from but now that I’ve asked it, it feels like the most important thing I could ask him. The most important thing that he could tell me.
“If you think watching a girl dance through the window like a creepy stalker is something worth liking, then you need to reevaluate your whole thinking, Fae,” he says with a tight jaw. “And I don’t want people to like me. I’m pretty happy being hated. Now, for the last time: get in the car.”
And I do.
With a spinning heart and heaving breaths.
With something moving and melting inside of me. With my stomach fluttering, and I know she’s melting inside of me too.
At him.
At her daddy.
Melting and melting like thick raindrops on the windows, on the roof for which he cleaned those gutters last week.
Melting like the honey when he makes me come.
Because he does.
He does make me come every night.
And God, when he does, stars explode in my veins. I feel it in my stomach, my womb, my trembling thighs and my ballerina toes.
Ever since I forgave him and he apologized to me and my body on his knees three weeks ago, he does it every night. He apologizes with his hands and his mouth. With his warm and wet and sucking kisses.
His kisses that taste like cupcakes, my favorite dessert in the world, the most addicting dessert in the world. So is it any wonder that I’ve become addicted to his kisses? To his mouth.
To him.
Some of it could be my hormones again because God, I’m horny all the time. But I know that majority of the credit goes to him and his sexiness.
In fact, I can’t even go to sleep without him.
Before when I was really sick, I’d pass out in the bed and the only way I knew that he stayed with me in the same house, not in the same room or bed, was because he’d always be there if and when I woke up during the night to throw up again.