KEISHA’S POV
I was in the kitchen.
Not my kitchen though. Sothing that felt warr than that. Bigger too. The kind of kitchen that had always had people in it— worn edges on the counters, a window that let in too much light that was almost blinding, sothing on the stove that slled like it had been cooking for hours.
Callum was behind .
His hands were on my shoulders, warm and grounding, and he was saying sothing near my ear that I couldn’t fully make out but made feel settled and calm. I could feel his voice more than I could hear it.
He was so close to . I could feel his breath brushing my neck and I shivered at the contact.
Dane was at the table across from .
He was looking at my stomach so I looked down.
The bump was there. It was round, obvious and undeniable and I stood there looking at it with a feeling I didn’t have a word for — I wasn’t scared. I knew that, what I felt was sothing bigger than that and soothing at the sa ti.
Dane reached across the table and pressed his palm flat against it, then he said sothing to Callum over my head and Callum laughed.
The one that still sent shivers down my skin.
The one I had only heard a handful of tis and could pick out of a crowd of a thousand laughs because it was completely unguarded and nothing like the version he wore in public.
His hands moved from my shoulders and ca around , one on either side of Dane’s hand, and I stood there between them and felt sothing slot into place that I hadn’t known was missing and I thought — oh. Oh this is what it’s supposed to feel like. This is—
Sothing touched my face.
I woke up so fast I nearly sent the folder flying off my lap.
Oh fuck.
I grabbed it and looked around.
Callum’s office.
Callum sitting right beside , not behind his desk where he was supposed to be, in the chair directly next to mine with a handkerchief in his hand and an expression that was working very hard at being neutral but seed to be amused.
I stared at him. "Huh?"
"You were sweating." He said before I could say anything. "From the sleep."
I touched my cheek and it was still warm from where the cloth had been. "How long was I asleep?" I said.
He looked at his watch with the calm of a man who had been sitting there for a while and had made peace with it. "Just over two hours." He shrugged.
I grabbed my phone.
Two hours and eighteen minutes.
I had sat down to wait for him and fallen completely, deeply, apparently sweatily asleep for two hours and eighteen minutes in his office chair.
"Why didn’t you wake ?" I asked, stirring from the chair.
"You went out within about five minutes of sitting down." He said. "And you didn’t move for a long ti after that." He looked at . "You needed it."
"That’s not the point." I rubbed my face. "I ca here to deliver a report not to sleep in your chair."
"The report is done." He said as he nodded at his desk where the folder was sitting, open, signed, with two corrections in his handwriting in the margin.
I stared at it. "You went through it."
"It needed going through." He nodded. "Mrs Velaris can address the corrections tomorrow. Nothing urgent."
I looked at the folder. "I was supposed to deliver that." I muttered, still feeling annoyed that I had slept off.
"You did deliver it." He smirked. "You were in the room."
"I was asleep in the room." I said.
"The report arrived." He shrugged. "The thod of delivery is a secondary concern."
I opened my mouth.
He looked at with complete seriousness and I closed it again because I genuinely didn’t have a counter argunt for that specific logic.
"How long were you sitting there?" I said. "Before you woke ."
"A while." He said.
"How long is a while?" I raised a brow.
"Long enough." He said.
I looked at him. "You sat here and watched sleep."
"I sat here and did work." He said. "You happened to be asleep in my office while I did it."
"On the chair right next to ." I frowned. "Not at your desk."
There was a short pause and he cleared his throat.
"The light is better on this side." He said.
I looked at the lamp on the desk. Then at the lamp on this side of the room which was identical, then back at him with a frown.
"The light." I said.
"Yes." He said.
I held his gaze and thought about calling him out on the fact that the light was the sa.
He held mine back completely unbothered.
I picked up the folder from his desk, put it in my bag, stood and he stood too and we walked out of the office together and through the quiet mansion and out into the evening which had gone fully dark and cold while I was apparently having dostic dreams in an office chair.
We walked along the main path and I pulled my coat tighter and thought about the dream and the kitchen.
I thought about Callum in the dream, gushing about a pregnancy he didn’t know existed at the mont.
At the fork in the path he stopped and I stopped too.
"You’re going to your house." He pointed out. "No longer staying at the mansion?"
"Yes." I said. "Door’s done."
He nodded slowly. "The lock combination is on the kitchen counter." He said. "Dane’s handwriting. Read it properly before you set it — it’s a different system from the old one and the sequence matters."
"I will." I said.
"Test it at least twice before you go to bed." He urged.
"Callum." I sighed. "I understand."
"Just test it twice." He watched carefully.
I looked at him standing in the dark with his coat on, and a worried expression on his face. Like he was thinking of saying sothing but didn’t know how to.
I think it was best he didn’t. Not now. Not when I was one second away from screaming at him to leave alone.
Was this because of my mood swings?
Did I already have that?
"If anything feels off—" He started.
"I’ll call." I assured him.
"Good." He said.
He looked at for a mont. That mont that had things in it.
"Callum." I started, my voice low.
He hadn’t asked today. I had wanted him to ask about what I wanted to say. But he didn’t. More like he wanted to be the one to tell him.
"Get so sleep." He said quietly. "Real sleep. In a bed."
"As opposed to an office chair." I smiled.
Sothing pulled at the corner of his mouth. "As opposed to an office chair." He agreed.
"Goodnight." I said.
"Goodnight." He said.
I turned and walked toward my house and heard him stand there on the path for a long mont before his footsteps finally moved back in the other direction.
The house was exactly as Dane had left it. The new door was solid and heavy in a way the old one had never been, the fra fitting flush and clean. I found the combination instructions on the kitchen counter exactly where Callum said they would be, written out in Dane’s neat careful handwriting with a small note at the bottom that said— test it twice.
I stood in my kitchen holding the instructions and looked at that note.
Test it twice.
I set the combination and tested it. Once. Twice. Worked perfectly both tis.
I put the instructions down and stood in my kitchen in the quiet of my own house for the first ti in days and looked around at the new windows, the fresh paint visible through the glass outside, the porch light casting a clean circle on the path.
Soone had taken care of this.
Dane had taken care of this.
I pressed my hand to my stomach without deciding to. Just the flat of my palm, brief and calm against my baby.
Fuck, it still felt weird to say that.
Then I dropped my bag, took my coat off and put the kettle on.
I was standing at the stove waiting for it to boil and staring at nothing and thinking about the dream— the kitchen, the bump, Callum’s hands coming around , Dane’s palm flat against it, that laugh— when I realised I was smiling.
Actually smiling.
Standing alone in my kitchen at nine in the evening smiling about a dream in which I was visibly pregnant and living dostically with two n who were in a forbidden bond with that nobody was supposed to know about while one of them was being arranged into a mating ceremony with a woman who kept malice with and possibly everyone who didn’t gush at her and the other one still hadn’t told what happened with my sister.
I was smiling about that.
I brought both hands up and slapped my cheeks. Not hard. Just enough to make a point to myself.
"Utterly crazy." I said out loud to myself in my kitchen, hoping that it would snap back to my senses.
Diane huffed in my head. "What do you think?"
I rolled my eyes at her, staring out the window.
Don’t.
Not tonight.
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