Grumpy Elf:I don’t know why I talk to you.
Me:Beats the fuck out of me, but you won’t go away, so I figure I’m stuck with you now.
Chapter Twenty - Two
Kendrick
I blinked my eyes open in the waning afternoon light, to find Bal propped on one arm, chin resting on his hand, silver eyes watching me.
“Were you watching me sleep?” My voice was rough, and I grimaced as I swallowed. All that moaning, panting, and wailing had left my throat wrecked.
“Yes.” He smiled broadly at me with absolutely no shame.
Rolling my eyes, I grinned back at him. “Weirdo.”
He rolled to his side, then handed me a bottle of water, still cold from the fridge. I drank half of it down greedily, nodding my thanks. My stomach rumbled noisily, and Bal frowned.
“We need to eat,” he declared.
“Mmmm,” I stretched on the bed, arms above my head, before relaxing back into the pillows. “I’m hungry but I don’t want to move.”
“We don’t need to,” he assured me. “They do have…what do you humans call it? Dash Door or whatever?”
“You know perfectly well what it is called,” I chided, reaching for my phone and pulling up the app. “Stop acting like you don’t have a clue what’s happening in the human realm. You are more on top of all the popular apps than I probably am.”
He shrugged, “It’s kinda my job to be up on all the latest gadgets and what not.”
“What sounds good?”
He snuggled up against me, the big spoon, looking over my shoulder and peering at my phone. “You’re the pregnant one. Pretty sure what I want doesn’t matter until…” he looked like he was doing some kind of math in his head, “September?”
Nodding, I scrolled through the restaurant options, trying to decide what I was in the mood for. “Best alpha answer ever. And my due date is September seventeenth, give or take a day.”
Stopping my thumb scrolling on the Main Street Diner, I told him, “Grilled chicken, fries, and a shake sound really good.” Adding items to my cart, I asked him what he wanted.
“That actually sounds good, though make my shake strawberry.”
Finishing the order, I put my phone down. “It will be twenty minutes or so.”
We should probably get up and shower, or at least put some clothes on, but I hadn’t been joking when I said I didn’t wanna. I just wanted to stay cuddled in my bed with a naked Bal.
“I told them to leave it at the door, but one of us will need to go down and get it.” Batting my eyes at him, I silently told him who I thought that someone should be.
Thirty minutes later, food spread out between us on the bed, I moaned at my first bite of sandwich. “They have the best diner food.”
Bal sat his shake between his crossed legs. “This shake is amazing.”
After a few more minutes of eating in silence, he wiped his mouth with one of the napkins he found in the take out bag. “We probably should talk. About the future.”
“Yeah.” I sighed, sad our blissful little bubble needed to burst.
And so, we talked. I told him how much I loved teaching, but that with my parents now living at Santa’s Village, how much I missed them. Sure I could use the special cell phones to talk to them or my brother anytime I wanted, but it wasn’t the same. Before, with just Keegan gone, it hadn’t been so bad. My parents were still here, and even if no one else remembered I had a brother, they at least did.
Now no one remembered my parents or my brother. I was truly alone for the first time in my life, and it was lonely. So far I hadn’t had to navigate any questions about my family to anyone, but it was bound to come up, even casually. For people who had known them, it would just be a blank space in their memory.
Bal told me that while he understood my love for teaching, that he couldn’t live in the human realm, which deep down I knew. While the Kringles had special magic that allowed them to change their appearance, like Nik when he acted as The Santa and delivered presents, elf magic didn’t allow Bal to do the same. And he had kind of an important job back in the village.
Head laying on Bal’s chest, after we had finished eating, I confessed that I had been terrified of having the baby withoutmy parents here. Without my mom. Of going through my pregnancy, all alone, and the delivery. And raising the baby on my own. Sure, I had my friend Sadie, and she promised to be there for me, but it just wasn’t the same.
