This has been buzzing around in my brain for a while, and I wanted to get it out before After Dead is released and we all get the low-down on what happens. Firstly, let me say the following:

This story does not provide a HEA for Eric and Sookie.

I wanted to explore a few other things, so I haven't gone down that road. This picks up three years after the end of Dead Ever After. It'll be in three parts, and I'll be posting them close together. This is my first ever foray into canon, so forgive me if anything appears too OOC.

The story, and the chapter names, are all inspired by the Fleetwood Mac song The Chain.

Disclaimer: I do not lay claim to these characters.

If you don't love me now, you will never love me again.

I'd been feeling restless all day.

Once, I'd thought that as well as being telepathic, I might have been a little psychic too. I now knew that not to be true, and I'd been more than thankful for it.

But, all the same, my nerves had been jangling since I'd got up that morning and heard the wind blowing through the woods and on towards my little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Sam had given me some odd looks as I'd been distracted by the world out the window and ignored the bacon that was burning in the pan, but he hadn't said anything to me.

We had a lot on our minds anyway. Work was a big part of that. Sam had gone in early to meet a delivery and I'd spent the morning stuck in the office going over rosters and menus and weighing up the price of liquid soap dispensers for the customer bathrooms.

I had never expected my work to be glamorous, but I found it wasn't occupying my thoughts as much as it once had.

Or maybe I'm remembering the day wrong. Perhaps my feeling of dissatisfaction came when Tara called in around lunchtime. She only stayed briefly, but it was long enough for her to list to me, once again, all the things she needed to get rid of now that Sara and Robert were past their babyhoods and no longer had use of baby blankets and cribs and baby swings and bottle warmers and diaper disposal systems. I could tell, even without pulling it straight from her head, that she was hoping I'd have some news for her, that I would lean in and whisper conspiratorially that she should put those things aside and I would find them a new owner.

But I couldn't say that. I had no news on that front. Sam and I had been married for just over a year now, and we'd entertained the possibility of a baby for longer than that, but no baby had yet arrived. It struck me as no small irony that the blessing bestowed by my fairy great-Grandfather, Niall, had rendered my land fertile in a way I did not appear to be.

Tara probably didn't have to be telepathic to realise that it wasn't something I wanted to discuss at length. She finished up her lunch and was on her way back to her store.

I looked around Merlotte's Bar and Grille and surveyed the other customers. Normally I found that a comfort, the continuity of the world I lived in, boiled down to the fact that the same faces appeared in the bar day after day.

Today, though, I found it a little constricting. Something was missing, and I wasn't sure what it was.

I retreated back to the office until it was time for me to leave. I was only working the day-time shift today; Sam would stay on to manage the evening shift. We didn't expect it to be busy, and I was tired anyway, and glad to turn into my driveway and open the door to home.

The wind still howled through the trees and the darkness was gathering behind them; the days were shorter at this time of year.

I tried very hard not to have an opinion about that, or think about it for too long. Not these days. The sun set and the world moved on.

I spent the evening drifting around my house. It was hard to not to think of it as my house, still, even though I had shared it with Sam for more than two years now. Our house, I corrected. Ours.

It made me feel a little less adrift to think about Sam's presence. I wished that he was here with me, that I could make us dinner and we could sit together and talk about our days. But the reality of the business we owned was that nights like that were rare, although possibly savoured all the more because of that fact.

Instead I turned to the television to distract me, but it did a poor job. I switched it off and decided to head on to bed.

But in the hallway, I stopped. There was something…out there.

Once upon a time I might have dismissed that feeling as my mind playing tricks on me, or my imagination spooked by watching the murder-mystery show I'd just switched off. But I knew better, now.

I supposed other people might imagine themselves safe in their own homes. They might think that if you lock the door and check the windows everything will be OK.

I had been shot in my own front yard. Nearly burned to death in my bed. I had been beaten by a pack of Weres who lay in wait in my living room. I'd dodged an attempted kidnapping in my driveway but only after I'd already been kidnapped by vicious fairies as I reached my own backdoor.

I had seen my…friend…take a bullet for me in my kitchen, before I shot the perpetrator myself and watched her bleed to death on my kitchen floor.

I was not someone who could be comforted by a few locks and pieces of wood. Luckily, I didn't have to be. I had wards. I had magic woven into the space outside my property which stopped those who meant me harm from crossing.

So the fact that I could sense the tell-tale void of a vampire's brain outside, in the woods, close to the house, close enough that they must have passed through the magic barrier my friend Amelia had placed there for my protection meant they must be friend, not foe.

But even with that knowledge, I was worried. I knew it wasn't Karin; she no longer patrolled my woods nightly. And I knew it wasn't Bill, he was away in Europe working on his database. This was an unknown vamp, and that thought filled me with dread.

I stopped in place. I waited. I listened to the wind and I held my breath, hoping the void I could sense wouldn't get any closer.

Individual vampires are harder to pick out than humans. I sense their absence, rather than their presence, and a black hole is a black hole, whatever way you look at it.

But there was something familiar about this particular black hole. Something that made my heart constrict a little and kept me rooted to the spot, staring at the wallpaper and the mirror with the gilt frame that had collected more dust than I'd noticed for a while.

I wasn't sure what to do. I hoped that he would give up, go away, and just leave me in peace again. But the void stayed put and I realised I couldn't do that any longer and I would have to step outside the door and confront the past.

As I walked down the porch steps I caught a glimpse of the white figure in the trees. "You can come on outta there!" I called. "I know you're there."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Eric said as he stepped out from behind a tree so smoothly it looked a little like he was gliding.

And then we just stood there, watching each other. Eric hadn't changed at all since I'd last seen him; I doubted he could say the same about me. I tried very hard not to care about that, but I couldn't completely shrug it off.

I was over 30 now. I was never going to be that same young girl who'd welcomed her first vampire into her life again.

And then I realised that Eric's expression wasn't something I was used to seeing on the faces of the vampires I came into contact with, at least, not the vampires I knew. He looked at me warily, as though he wasn't sure if I was the welcome committee or the advance guard.

I was used to having a reputation that often preceded me. As a child, growing up telepathic, I'd been Crazy Sookie. As an adult, when I entered the supe world, the gossip about what I was capable of was occasionally useful. There were still members of the Long Tooth pack of Weres who believed I held the power of life and death in my fingertips.

But this, from Eric, felt a little odd. It was a sign, I guessed, of how far we'd come from what we were.

"You weren't sure what kind of a reception you were gonna get," I stated, and Eric nodded, once, in agreement.

I couldn't remember the last time we'd agreed on anything quite so easily.

"I left my anger behind a long time ago, Eric." That may have been somewhat of a lie, but I decided I just wasn't going to feel guilty about lying to Eric. "Just like you left here. And you're not supposed to be here now. So, what's up?"

"I am…passing through," Eric said, his expression not giving much away. Now he knew that he wasn't going to be met by burning torches and pitchforks he had relaxed imperceptibly, but he hardly looked friendly. No vampire ever really does, they don't do small-talk or chit-chat or any of the other things that keep interactions between humans pleasant even when they're entertaining thoughts that are less than pleasant about each other. Vampires don't care what you think about them, they don't make first impressions and they don't consider humans worth their effort most of the time.

And, after more than a thousand years as a vampire, I'd have to say Eric had it down pat.

"Well, you can't pass through here. You're not supposed to be in Louisiana anyway, are you? Not since that deal you did with Felipe and Freyda. So get outta here before you bring down a world of trouble on both of our heads." I turned on my heel and started to walk back to the house.

"You think I'd bring you trouble?" Eric said, from right behind me. It's hard to escape a vampire if they don't want you to go. I could, of course, have made a break for it and run for the house. I had no intention of re-instating Eric's invitation to my home, so he couldn't get inside. Once I shut that door he was stuck on the other side of it and I wouldn't have to listen to his explanations any longer.

But I had to admit I was a little curious about why he was here. Curiosity had been my downfall more than once, but old habits die hard.

"I know it," I said, turning around once more. "Past experience, remember?"

"I think you're over-simplifying things." Eric folded his arms and looked down at me. The watery moonlight shone through the golden mane of his hair making his face look incredibly pale.

"I think I don't care to have a conversation with you about the way I choose to state things, Eric."

Eric looked away from me, over his shoulder, almost as though he was worried someone might be there. There was no one, of course, but Eric's actions worried me, and I re-considered my decision not to bolt for the house.

"So, you gonna tell me why you're here or are we done?" I asked, in a tone that was harsh and impatient, even to my own ears.

"To see you." Eric made it sound like that was the most natural thing in the world. Like we hadn't parted on bad terms over three years earlier when he'd gone off to marry the vampire Queen of Oklahoma and broken my heart in the process.

"Well, I hoped you cleared it with Felipe. I sure as shit don't want to have to hose your ashes off my roses."

Eric's mouth curved upward, a smile playing on his lips. "That wasn't meant to be funny," I said. "Nor is it an idle threat. You got through the wards because you mean me no harm, and that's the only reason I'm standing out here. But if they come for you, not me, they'll get through too. And I ain't getting involved. I have too much to lose."

"Now," Eric added for me.

"I always had a lot to lose, Eric. You just didn't always care what I was risking as long as I was doing it to save your neck."

Eric stood up straighter. "I see your opinion of me hasn't changed while I've been gone."

"You did a shitty thing to me, and you did a shitty thing to Sam, and then you skipped outta town to your new life in Oklahoma. What the hell's changed, Eric?"

"Everything. Nothing."

"The second part is right. You're still the same bullshitter you always were. Look, either spill or go and annoy someone else. I bet Pam'll be glad to see you."

The mention of Pam's name caused a small flicker of expression to cross Eric's face. "You can't go and see Pam?"

"I had better not…appear at Fangtasia, no."

I thought about that. If Eric couldn't go to the club then he was definitely here covertly. "You're on some kind of mission?"

"I have been to Mississippi to parlay with Russell Edgington about a casino venture he wanted some backing for."

"Which means getting a free pass through Felipe's territory?"

"Correct."

I waited to see if Eric might fill in some of the blanks, but vampires were all about blanks. He just stood there, which was preferable, I guessed, to making any kind of move towards me.

But maybe not as good as leaving.

"You better go, Eric."

"I'd rather not."

"Why? What good is it to stand around in my backyard? Go and…go and do whatever it is your wife sent you to do."

Eric's handsome face became darker at the mention of Freyda and his relationship to her. "Would you rather that I am not here when your husband gets home, Sookie?" he said, with the hint of a snarl.

"Of course I would. But not because I have anything to hide…unlike you from the sound of it. But because you know what you did to Sam, and to us, and I would think the shame of the way you behaved would make you nasty. Nastier than you are now, anyway." I might have forgiven Eric a lot of things in the time we'd been apart but the way he treated Sam and had tried to stop us having any kind of a relationship, that still rankled.

"I see your opinion of me hasn't improved with my absence. I guess I should have expected that," Eric said, with some distaste.

"Why? You think Sam'd be running you down? Eric, honestly, I doubt you ever cross his mind." That was maybe not the whole truth. I didn't see shifter's minds as clearly as I did other folks, and I didn't go prying into all of Sam's thoughts, not if I could help it, anyway. But every so often I got a flash from him. And there'd been a few about Eric.

None of them I'd want to repeat.

Eric narrowed his eyes and I thought again about running for the house. But then his arms fell to his sides and he let out a long, unnecessary sigh. "This used to be more straightforward," he said. "We used to understand each other."

"Right. Yeah. When we had the blood bond." That seemed like a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Although for a while after it was broken, even after Eric had left for Oklahoma, I still had a feeling of anticipation as the sun set and I prepared for the addition of Eric's moods and feelings to my own.

But I hadn't felt that in a long while now.

"Look, I know you didn't force that on me," I continued. "And I know it was just one more piece of vampire shit in a whole heap of vampire shit that rained down on me during that time, but I agree with one thing. It did make it a whole lot easier. For you."

"You think I tricked you into loving me?" Eric's words weren't as harsh as some of his previous accusations had been. They perhaps bordered on curiosity, as though this was news to him.

That saddened me. It seemed like just more proof that he'd often forgotten that there are two sides to everything, including a blood bond.

"I think it made it easier for you to…I don't know. You once said we were too closely bound together for your liking. I think you were right. I don't think love is meant to be like that, where you know what the other person feels all the time."

"And that's from the telepath," Eric said, dryly.

"I know what I am." He'd made me a little angry now, refusing to acknowledge the imperfect beginnings of our love affair. "And I deal with it as best I can, same as you. I didn't say I was perfect or that I had a perfect way of doing everything, but at least I damn well try Eric. I try to be the best person I can be."

"For Sam."

"For me. I try to be the person I want to be. Not someone else's dream woman." I paused. "Did you think I did that…for you?" Now I was the one who was curious. I'd always known that I held a certain allure for vampires, and it wasn't just my face or my figure that attracted them. I had a little fairy blood, the essential spark and a disability that could become a gift in the right hands. At least, a lot of them thought so. I was vampire catnip under the right circumstances.

But had Eric just thought I played that up to land me a big, bad, vampire sheriff?

"No. I believed you were genuine," Eric said, as though we were discussing the weather. "A little naïve at first…and, certainly you were unlike anyone I had met in a long time, perhaps ever. But I did believe you were genuine. When you took me in after I had lost my memories you did it because you wanted to help me."

"But you didn't realise that until after you got your memories back?" There'd been a time, after the witch's curse had affected Eric, when he'd been suspicious of what had occurred while he was under it.

"You saved me at Rhodes, too," he added. "At some risk to yourself."

"At great risk to myself. I don't survive impacts as well as you-all do. But it was complicated back then. We were…connected." There was silence for a moment. I guessed Eric was lost in his memories too. I had got Eric and Pam out of the bombed building in Rhodes, but we'd also been bonded by then. Who could tell if it was the pull of that connection which sent me to their room that day?

It was a string we'd never unravel now.

"You broke our bond," Eric said, a little accusingly. "You broke it without telling me and we were never the same."

"You want to throw around accusations, Eric, you better be careful. You broke my heart. You broke my trust. It wasn't just the blood that connected us, it was…it was…all that other stuff I felt for you, the faith I had in you. The faith we had in each other and the fact it would all work out. It all got broken and all that was left were two people who couldn't be together anymore."

"You agreed we should part," Eric spat back. "You were more than clear about that."

"Because you married someone else. After, I might add, you divorced me."

"You did not even want my love anymore. I tried to tell you I could still offer you that; it was still mine to give freely even if my allegiance was owed to another. Nothing had changed." Eric was starting to sound a little on the petulant side and it was getting on my nerves.

"Eric, everything had changed. And I'd seen that your love comes with a big bunch of lies you tell yourself, and me, to make it all seem OK. I couldn't deal with that anymore."

We stared each other down in the chill night air of the backyard, both waiting for the other to make a move.

"I didn't think it would be this difficult," Eric said, suddenly.

"What? Trying to make me see reason? Or, at least, your version of it."

"Being near you again. You're still…" Eric leaned right over me and took a big old sniff, right by my head. It was a little disconcerting to say the least. "Intoxicating," he finished, as he straightened up.

"But I'm not yours," I reminded him, lest he get any funny ideas. Or any ideas that weren't very funny at all.

"No. But you were, once."

There wasn't much of a question in Eric's voice, but I answered him anyway. "I was."

"Do you regret that, Sookie?" It wasn't what I expected Eric to ask me, he didn't seem to be someone who was big on regrets, I didn't think he'd have survived so long if he was. A thousand years is a long time to live, and a long time carry your regrets around. Eventually you'd just buckle under their weight.

"That we were together? No, I don't." I had given it some thought in the last year or so. With the benefit of distance, I thought I had a better view of our relationship. Maybe my judgement was still a little clouded when it came to Eric, maybe it always would be, and maybe I'd always struggle to reconcile some of his later actions with the vampire I loved so deeply, but I thought I had as good a handle as I ever would on what had happened between us.

I just didn't necessarily want to explain that to the vampire himself.

"Not even…the way things ended?" Eric asked me.

"Oh, I regret plenty about that. And if that's your idea of an apology, Eric, you suck at it."

Eric narrowed his eyes. "I think if any apologies are forthcoming, then it should be on both sides, Sookie."

"Really? What would you like me to apologise for? Breaking the blood bond that was forced on me and gave you free access to my emotions, or not wanting to die just so I could be your mistress on the side? Take your pick Eric, but it'll be a cold night in hell before I apologise for any of that."

"You're still angry at me."

"I have a right to be. Over some of the things that happened, I have a right to be angry. You treated me poorly, and you know it, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to duck out of it now."

"I did not come here to duck out of anything, Sookie." Eric sounded a little exasperated now. "I came here to…"

"Yeah? Why are you here? I didn't think vampires did closure." I looked at Eric's face. It was deathly still in the glare of the light from the porch.

"You've come to say a final goodbye?" I asked, and my voice was little more than a whisper.

"I am…I am going somewhere else after this…"

"Secret vampire business?" I asked, even though it seemed a little childish to try to lighten the mood.

"Yes." Eric looked at me for what felt like a long time, almost as though he was trying to memorise me.

"OK," I said in the end. "So, you're on a dangerous, and secret, mission and you thought you'd stop in and…what, exactly? See if I was disposed to bestow a favour on a soldier who might not make it back from his war?"

"I just wanted…" Eric looked away. "To spend a moment with you."

He sure did make that sound romantic and wistful, but I was an expert of looking at the flipside of what he told me. "And a moment is all you have?"

"You know that things move quickly in our world. I must be ready."

I nodded. Eric had always had pressures and nothing had been simple when we'd been together. Witches, bombs, a takeover by another monarch, a fairy war, we'd weathered them all but it hadn't been enough to keep us together forever.

"I wish you would say something," Eric ventured.

"What would you like me to say? Good luck? Try not to meet the true death? Let me kneel down and kiss your feet before you go?" I hadn't expected that last remark to slip out and it took me a little by surprise. I was flustered, still, by Eric's appearance and by the feelings it dredged up.

Things I'd thought I'd let go of, were now bubbling to the surface.

Eric decided to meet fire with fire. "Is that all you have for me now? Your anger? Anger that I had no choice and I did what I could to make sure that you were still free, that you could have all of this…" he swept his arm around, pointing out to my land and my house, "…and your husband too. Tell me Sookie, has your perfect life not lived up to your expectations?"

"I never said it was perfect. I never said Sam was perfect. But he gives me what you never could, Eric. I know you'll find this one hard to believe, as long as you've lived and all, but he has what you don't. Time."

Eric stood very still when I said that, and I wondered if that was what flabbergasted looked like on a vampire. Sure they got to live forever, in theory, but being dead during the day, during every day, was a little constricting to say the least. Add to that the pressure of the vampire world; pressure by makers, by those higher up the chain of command, the pressure to just get on, to be the best vampire you could be, to keep existing just that little bit longer it all mounted up and it ate into the night time hours.

The time Eric and I had spent together had always felt fleeting, snatched as it was from the other demands on him. At the time I had a made a decision that I would take what I could.

Now, I had other priorities and even if Eric's maker had not contracted him to marry the Queen of Oklahoma something else would have eventually forced us apart. I was human, and my time was limited.

"I could have given you eternity, Sookie," Eric said quietly.

"But you would have had to kill me first." I sighed, and felt a little like we'd had this conversation before. "I don't want to be a vampire."

"Because you…" Eric searched for a word. "…dislike what we are."

"Because I don't want to be out of time, Eric. This is my time. This is the place I belong, and not just because my family have lived here for generations, not just because my fairy kin blessed the land, but because this is my place in the world. These people I see every day, they're my people. For better, or for worse, and trust me, if anyone knows the worst side of humanity it's most likely me, this is where I want to be."

Eric didn't say anything to that, so I continued on. "I don't hate vampires, Eric. I never did. But you have to see that you are out of place, you are out of your time, your life was cut short and you became something else. Something rooted in magic and power, not in the everyday. That's not what I want."

"But if, as you say, I was pulled out of my life then I was set on a path to something bigger. Something to which I am connected as deeply as you are to your so-called people. You call it magic and power, and, yes, it is both of those things. But there's more, and I wish I had been able to show you."

I shrugged. "I guess I got to see too much of the bad side early on. I wasn't exactly given the full sales pitch." Even before my relationship with Eric my entanglements with vampires, and my relationship with my vampire neighbour Bill Compton, had led me into a dark and dangerous world. "I just want to live out my life and try to live it well. To make it matter, not just to me, but to the people I connect with."

"This is about your God," Eric said, a little scathingly. I knew better than to try to argue religion with someone who'd been around at the time of the Vikings. We were never going to see eye to eye on that one.

"This is about me figuring out what I want in my life. I thought I wanted to be special, I thought I wanted to find a place where I belonged, with other people who didn't fit in. But that isn't me, the price is too high." Sam had once warned me about that, and I'd chosen to stay on the path I'd set. I couldn't, or, rather, wouldn't regret that now, not when I reflected on where that path had led me. But I didn't want to retrace my steps, either.

"What I want is what I have, Eric. I want to be a part of the lives of my friends and neighbours, someone they call on in a crisis, someone they care about, someone they even take for granted occasionally. Just plain old Sookie Stackhouse, of Bon Temps, Louisiana."

Eric's expression suggested he didn't think much of that. "You think my life is that terrible, Eric? My circumstances so constrained? Take a look at your own existence. How long is that leash Freyda has you on? She's risking your neck and you're just going along with it, because in your world, that's the way the game is played."

I stepped back a little, afraid of what that comment might provoke in Eric. But he remained as still as a statue. So still, in fact, that I was tempted to pick up a stick and poke him to make sure he hadn't actually turned to stone.

When he finally spoke, it wasn't the reaction I'd expected. "You've changed," Eric said. It sounded more than a little like an accusation, as though I'd done something contemptible just to spite him.

"Human, remember? I get to do that."

"Mostly human," Eric reminded me.

"But I get to choose. And I choose human."

"Because I couldn't choose you." Eric kept trying to push that party-line, and it made me a little angry to hear it again. "And for that you still won't forgive me. In fact, I believe you enjoy hating me."

"You could have chosen me, Eric. You know you could have. You didn't have a great choice, I know that. I knew that, then. But you had a choice, as much as anyone does. And you chose what you thought was right for you. As much as I hate the way we parted, hate the things we said and did, I don't hate you anymore. I won't pity you, but I don't hate you."

Eric looked past me to the house. "You always preferred me without my memories," he said. "When things were not so complicated."

"I was fond of that man. But he wasn't the man I loved."

Eric turned back to me. "Past tense, Sookie. Your love for me has gone?"

"I still feel something for you. Not love, not anymore. But something near it." As I'd let go of the love, I'd been able to let go of the anger I felt towards Eric. Most of it, anyway.

"I'm grateful," I added. "You and I, our moment has passed. But in that moment, when Neave and Lochlan had shredded me body and soul, then you were the man I needed. The one who gave me his strength and his love, the one who helped me put myself back together. Without you, I doubt I would have been standing here, able to make the choices I have. I am grateful for that Eric. I always will be. But I don't think there's any shame in the fact that our time is over."

"I miss you," Eric said. "I miss being connected to the living world." There was a long pause. "I didn't think I would."

"Choices, Eric. We all make them, and we all live with them. Some of us just have to live with them longer than others."

I was tired, and I didn't feel like walking down memory lane anymore with Eric. "Goodbye, Eric. I wish you well on your…venture." I turned and started up the porch steps.

"Will you mourn me?" Eric called out.

"If you meet the true death?" I faced him again. He closed the gap between us, so fast he was just a blur.

"Yes." Eric didn't seem to be that fazed by the prospect of his demise. I wondered if this was another tactic on his part.

I thought about it. I felt like I had mourned him a long time before, but I realised I had mourned the death of our relationship. I tried to think of a world which didn't include Eric Northman, and it made me a little sad.

"I will," I told him. "I will mourn you."

"Then that is something. That is something we still have. I will live on in your memory, if not in your blood."

"And if you ask me, I think that's better than a blood bond." As I said that, Eric's mouth curved upwards in a smile.

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, his lips cool and smooth. "Goodbye, Sookie. I hope your future is bright." He took a few paces backwards, and then he was gone, straight up into the sky.

I took one last gulp of the night air, and I walked back inside my house, shutting the door carefully behind me.

I looked at the clock in the kitchen; Sam would be arriving home soon.

As tired as I was, I wanted to stay up to greet him, and tell him about my strange visitor in the night. The thought of Sam standing in the kitchen, running his hand through his red-blond hair and saying "Well, shit Sookie," made me feel more content than I had in a while. Eric had gone, and my life would go on as it had done. And there was a strange comfort in that fact.

My life wasn't perfect, but there were things I could count on. And Sam was one of them.

I was extremely grateful for that.

I felt like the nervous energy I'd had earlier in the day had all dissipated now. I was no longer casting about, looking for what might be out there. I felt settled, I felt content, and I felt at peace.

I hadn't expected that to be the result of Eric's visit, but maybe getting those things off my chest had done me the world of good.

I poured a large glass of sweet tea and sat down at the kitchen table. And then I glanced over at the calendar, the one pinned to the wall with a large picture of the bar at the top. I realised that it wasn't anything to do with Eric at all. I finally figured out what it was I'd been waiting for all day, what I'd been trying to ignore, pushing to the back of my mind.

I looked at the date. There was every chance I was pregnant.

Thanks for reading!