Kelly

The noise came from behind her, and she spun to face it, taking a deep breath in and preparing to scream if need be.

There was nothing there. Again. Just empty space, the buildings and a sky that was filled with dreary gray clouds. It was nearing the end of September, and though the weather had been phenomenal until then, it was starting to turn rapidly. Snow and winter would be there soon enough.

Exasperated at her imagination for making her hear things, Kelly turned back around and promptly screamed.

“Dammit!” she snapped a moment later as her brain caught up to her reaction, cutting the noise off abruptly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she spat out. “Sneaking up on me like that?”

A pair of windows nearby popped open, heads sticking out.

“It’s fine!” she shouted, waving back at them. “He just startled me, that’s all.”

Whether it truly was fine was yet to be determined, but Kelly had never thought she would be in any danger from Gray.

“Seriously, I’m pregnant. Big surprises like that are not welcome,” she finished crossly, glaring at him.

Gray held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to do that. That’s why I ran around to get in front of you, so that I wouldn’t walk up on you from behind and scare you.” He sort of deflated. “I was trying to make sure I didn’t.”

Kelly immediately felt bad. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Gray just sort of nodded. Neither of them said anything as they stood there, just sort of staring at one another, but not doing anything. It was awkward. Teenage-first-love-on-a-TV-show awkward. Cringey to the point where someone changed the channel. It was the only way she could describe the feeling between the two of them.

Both of them wanted to speak, to say how they were feeling, but neither of them was willing to be the first to speak up. Kelly, for her part, was caught off guard. She hadn’t expected to see Gray there. She’d been ready to confront him in a bit at his embassy. Now that he was in front of her though, having tracked her down, she felt off guard and unprepared.

Gray looked thoroughly unhappy with the situation as well. Like a dog that had caught up to its first porcupine, only to realize that it was in way over its head. He just stood there, and if he had been younger, she could have imagined him toeing the dirt with one foot.

Which meant that it would be up to her then, to sort things out. A beast in a fight Gray might be, but when it came to her, he seemed to lose some of his edge. That was probably a good thing overall, but just then it meant that she had the uncomfortable job of starting this all off. So she did. In the easiest, most cop-out manner she could.

“We should probably talk,” she said, then fell silent.

There. Now the ball was in his court. He had to respond to her, to be the one to take the next step. No matter what it was, for just a moment, the pressure had been taken off her. Maybe it would spur him into movement, into action.

“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I think we should.”

Kelly felt her gut tighten around her child at the tone of his voice. Her heart wept at the pain in his eyes, the way his easy grin and the sparkle to his blue eyes had disappeared, brought low by her actions and his perceived meaning behind them. It hurt to see, and she longed to just tell him. To say what had truly been going on.

So why don’t you?

It was a good question. They were here, now. They needed to talk.

“Look, Gray, about what happened…” she began, but stopped as he shook his head and raised one hand, palm outward, to indicate she should stop.

“Not here,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere a little more private, and then we can discuss it all.”

“Of course,” she said. “I guess my place, if that’s going to be okay?”

Gray hesitated, and it looked for a moment that he was going to suggest somewhere else, but in the end he just shrugged and said, “Okay.”

They set off, walking side by side through the maze of units as they approached hers. Neither of them spoke a word to each other, making the moment even more uncomfortable than it had to be. It wasn’t helped by the way their hands seemed to just sway close toward each other, as if something deep inside both of them was trying to get them to hold hands. On more than one occasion she had to forcibly pull her hand back to her side, lest it brush against his and start something that maybe it shouldn’t.

At last though they made it to her unit. She walked up the stairs swiftly, her hips staying rigid and unswaying the whole time.

The door closed behind them and she moved immediately into the kitchen, fetching herself a glass of water, and then offering another to him. Gray obliged and downed half of it in one gulp, before finishing it off. She refilled it and they settled back, she against the counter, he against the far wall.

The silence threatened to get awkward once more, but Kelly summoned her courage and began speaking before it could.

“I owe you an explanation,” she said.

“Would be nice,” he admitted, a hint of sarcasm to his voice. She thought she detected an effort from him to tamp down on it, and so she ignored it.

“That man isn’t who I’m sure you think he is.”

“Who do I think he is?”

“Another man. Romantically. You thought I was seeing someone else at the same time.”

There. She’d said it, put it out there, and now they would have to just address it head-on. No sense in sugarcoating things.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I thought, given the evidence to back it up.”

Kelly was becoming more irritated with his attitude with every sentence, but she reeled it in once more. He was hurt, and she could give him a little more leeway.

“Well, I wasn’t. I’m still not,” she said slowly. “I can explain it to you, if you’d like?”

Gray tossed off half his water, peering at it with one eye, as if to see if he could make it into something else, beer, perhaps. “This ought to be good,” he drawled.

Kelly knew what he was doing. He was putting his defenses up. Trying to insulate himself from the hurt he perceived from her, to prevent himself from becoming worse. So that the words she was about to speak wouldn’t cut deeper into him than they already had. It made her soul bleed for him, to know that she’d put him through such pain, simply because she hadn’t told him about Jacen from the start. If she’d only done that, then things would have been much smoother on Gray’s end at least. Then all she would have had to deal with was Jacen himself.

“Listen,” she snapped, frustrated with him. “I’m telling you the truth, and you’re going to listen to it. When I’m done, you’re going to feel dumb, so quit the sarcastic uncaring act already. It isn’t becoming of you.”

Gray’s jaw dropped open and he started to respond hotly, but Kelly cut him off once again with a savage flick of her hand in his direction. He fell silent, but she could see anger in his eyes.

Oh well, too bad. It was his own fault for being a presumptive dick the other night.

“The man that was here,” she said, “was not someone I was seeing. That’s the first, and most important thing to get through your head. I wasn’t cheating on you. I wasn’t even expecting him, he just showed up.”

Gray nodded. “I know. I chased him here.”

Her eyebrows went up at that. “What?”

The big shifter shook his head. “After you’re done.”

Kelly frowned, but she had made quite the fuss about her getting her words out first. It would be inappropriate to change that now.

“His name is Jacen. I do know who he is. Unfortunately, I know him rather well.” A hand dropped to her stomach. “You see, Jacen is the shifter I was paired to mate with at the Institute.”

Gray came upright in a flash. “He’s an Institute shifter?”

She nodded. “Yes. Or was, I suppose.”

The Institute was the pseudo-legal organization that had tried to enact a program to breed first hundreds, then thousands of women with shifters, to spread the enhanced shifter DNA through the blood of humanity. After that, once humanity had absorbed as much as they could, the Institute had planned to end the shifter race, forcing them into a sort of breeding servant role, where all they did was offer up their genetic DNA to human women, like cattle.

Thankfully the Koche brothers had gotten involved, and their penchant for destruction and mayhem had been carried out upon the Institute, resulting in its downfall. But the revelation that an Institute shifter, one of the many who had decided to work for the organization in exchange for large sums of money, was still something that sparked the protective gear in many of the Cadian shifters, Gray included.

It was evident now, as he moved closer to the door, positioning himself so that he could intercept anyone who came through it before they could get to her. It was a small thing, but she noticed it. But it wasn’t until he’d done that, that the rest of her statement clicked through into his mind.

It was mildly entertaining to watch his face suddenly go slack, his expression one of utter astonishment, understanding, and perhaps even a bit of sadness.

“He’s the biological father,” Gray breathed, getting it at last. “He’s the dad.”

Kelly shook her head emphatically. “He is the biological father, yes. But he is not the dad. They are not one and the same.”

Gray nodded, his eyes still unfocused as he thought it over. “But that’s why he’s here. He wants to be a part of it, a part of the child’s life. Jacen wants to be a dad.”

She nodded. “Yes. I haven’t decided if I’m going to let him. He came to me a week earlier, revealing that he was still alive. That was a shock in itself, just finding out he was alive. But then he said he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life. I told him I’d think about it.”

“And did you?”

Kelly shrugged. “Somewhat, yes. I wasn’t prepared to make a decision like that so quickly. I wanted to talk to Erika about it too, but she wasn’t available for a few days.”

“Ah,” he said in what sounded like sudden understanding. “That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? At her place?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I wondered where you’d gone to. I didn’t catch your scent while I was here.”

Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “You were looking for me?”

“No,” he said, crossing his arms as he leaned on the wall. “I was looking for Jacen. You see, he’s a fugitive.”