I Do Believe in Faeries (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 3) (14 page)

I thought about the Bean-Nighe. Alaina was going to live a long, happy life with her baby, and that faerie that I had seen in the Autumn Court was a far cry from her.

“Hey,” Alaina said.

“Hey,” Jordyn said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m six months pregnant.” Alaina eyes fell on me. “Oh, hey Abby. Listen, I’m sorry for the scare. It means a lot that you came all this way.”

“It’s all good,” I said truthfully. Really, I had so much more to be sorry for.

“They’re going to investigate what went wrong,” Alaina explained. She sighed. “Got the fright of my life last night.”

“I can’t even imagine,” I agreed.

She grinned at me. “Everything looks fine,” she said. “They’re just going to keep me for observation for a little longer to make sure that everything truly is all right. It was…scary there for a second.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

How do you apologize to someone for causing the biggest, worst scare of their life when you couldn’t go into the reasons why?

The simple answer was, I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to stay out of an insane asylum. I had to keep this to myself. I’d ended up doing the right thing in the end, but the cost was high. I didn’t care about my own magick, even though it was the one thing that I had wanted my entire life. No, I was thinking about a certain red-headed faerie who made my heart go pitter-patter. Who may have made the ultimate sacrifice so I could return back to my world with the baby.

Was Oberon correct? Was Robin so old, that to give up his magick meant giving up his life?

Oh no
.

I hiccupped, feeling my tears start afresh. Regardless, Robin was gone, and I’d never be able to see him again.

“Excuse me,” I said, dazedly. “I need to step outside for a second.

Jordyn gave me a quizzical look, but I ignored it as I ducked out of the room and sank into one of the waiting room seats. Now that I was finally alone, I let my tears out.

It kind of felt good.

Epilogue

Three months later

“So good night unto you all

Give me your hands if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.”

I closed my copy of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and sighed, as I clutched it to my chest.

“Oh Robin,” I muttered. “You suck at restoring amends.”

It was my tenth time to read the play, and while I still looked at some cheat notes, I was beginning to fully understand Shakespeare in a way that I never had before. It really was a beautiful story, and after my whole adventure in Tir na nÓg, I knew that a lot of it was based in truth.

Especially when it came to one character.

I was in the waiting room of the hospital with Jordyn and a few of their friends from the mermaid troupe. We were all anxiously waiting for news of Alaina’s baby. I couldn’t wait to see her son’s face in the real world this time.

Jordyn sat across from me, and she raised a quizzical eyebrow as she nodded at the book.

“Is that for school?” she asked. “I’ve seen you read it a lot recently.”

“Something like that.”

I knew that I’d probably re-read it a few more times and watch it being performed. If this was all that I had left of Robin, then I was going to take it.

“That’s one of my favorite Shakespeare plays,” their friend, Tara, who wasn’t much older than me, said. She just flew in yesterday from Texas to visit her family in Jacksonville and to be here for Alaina. Like Jordyn, she seemed like one of those too-cool people, and her smile came easily. “May I?”

I reluctantly handed my copy over to her, mainly because I didn’t want to part with it. She took the book and flipped to one page. “’
The course of true love never did run smooth’,”
she read out loud. It was like she knew exactly where to flip to in order to get me right in the feels.

It was so true too. I clenched my hands as I cast my eyes down. I hoped no one saw my sadness there. But Jordyn, being my big sister and probably because of her magic, saw my expression. I saw her frown, but she didn’t say anything.

“I never did get around to reading that one,” their other friend, Christine said. She was older than all of us, but she laughed and acted like she was our age. I liked her already.

“You should,” I said, taking back my copy from Tara. “It’s a good one.”

“I used to read Shakespeare,” their boss, this old guy named Neptune, said. “Especially his sonnets.”

Next to me, I saw Tara frown and I knew that there was more to his story than just him being a Shakespeare fan. Maybe a long-lost love? I had no idea.

I didn’t have time to wonder. “It’s a boy!”

We all turned to see James, Alaina’s boyfriend, standing in the doorway, wearing a blue pair of scrubs. He looked both shell-shocked and full of wonder, as if life was everything it was supposed to be: a miracle. You couldn’t wipe that smile off his face if you had the world’s biggest eraser. And who would want to? His family was perfect.

In the three months since my time in Tir na nÓg, I never had any doubt about my own sacrifice to get their baby back. Maybe I doubted and wished that Robin hadn’t done his part.

This made up for a lot of it.

We all stood up and congratulated him, patting him on the back, and telling him how great a father he’s going to be. Both he and Alaina were going to make great parents, and I couldn’t wait to meet the little guy.

“Can we see them?” I asked.

Everyone stopped, caught off-guard by my eagerness to see the baby.

“Of course,” James says, slowly, “Alaina’s tired, but…”

“Great!”

I pushed past them and practically sprinted to Alaina’s room. I skidded past the hallway and hurried my way to Alaina’s room. I flung open the door and stopped in the doorway because I was transfixed by the scene in front of me.

There was mama holding her baby like he was the most precious thing in the world.

He was.

Tiredly, Alaina looked up at me, but she couldn’t hide the smile from her face.

“Abby,” she said, surprised at my appearance. She recovered quickly and beckoned me with her head. “Come meet Lucas.”

I peered down at the bundle she had in her arms. I haven’t been around babies much, but this one was pink and new. His eyes were closed as he napped on her chest.

“Hey little guy,” I said.
Remember me at all? The last time I saw you was in a faraway land.

Actually, it was probably better if he didn’t remember. Being kept in a marble by a bunch of pixies and all.

I waggled a finger at him and got the hugest smile on my face when he wrapped one tiny hand around it. Tiny hands, tiny fingers, tiny fingernails. He was a whole person in such a wonderful, perfect package. “He’s perfect,” I said to Alaina.

She beamed at me. “He is, isn’t he?”

Our eyes met, and while I couldn’t get the stupid grin off my face, we shared a moment. Alaina may never know it, but we shared a love for this little guy. After all, I had the adventure of a lifetime to get him.

“Oh my god, Alaina!”

We both turned to see Jordyn in the doorway, flanked by all of her mermaid coworkers, and behind them James and Luke peered into the room. Everyone had big dopey smiles on their faces. And why wouldn’t they? This was one of the biggest moments of Alaina’s and James’s life.

Jordyn, Tara, and Christine surged forward and started talking all at once to Alaina, cooing over the baby. She introduced Lucas to them and their faces just melted as they talked to him.

Now I felt out of place. I got up from the edge of the bed and made my way to the door. I needed some air. For such a happy occasion, I felt indescribably sad. Mainly because this whole moment wouldn’t have happened without the biggest sacrifice from a faerie that I used to know.

I swallowed back the lump and ducked out into the hallway, ready to make a dash for the garden outside. I wanted to be alone so I could cry by myself. I just needed to be alone.

I bumped into someone’s solid chest.

“Oof!” I coughed at the unexpected body check. Whoever I ran into had been moving down the hallway at a fast clip as well, and he reached out to steady with me. Only, when I looked up, I saw a familiar face. One that I thought I’d never see again.

“
Robin
?” I gasped in disbelief.

The red hair was the same, the perfect angles of his cheek bones, the height, his lithe build—everything about him was the exactly the same. But there was something different about him, like that spark of
otherness
was gone. He was wearing a pair of scrubs, and while his name tag identified him as Nurse Robin, he seemed…
different
.

He frowned down at me, confusion twisting in those eyebrows of his. “Yeah,” he said. His voice even sounded the same. “Do I know you?”

He didn’t recognize me. My initial reaction was to feel hurt and disappointed, but I really couldn’t feel that way, could I?

This was Robin, but he wasn’t fae: he was
human
. No magick. No faerie mischief.

What happened to you?

He was a normal human, just like I was. Did that mean that this entire time, there was a human boy named Robin Goodfellow who didn’t know that he shared a likeness with an ancient faerie, who gave up everything just so a mortal girl could finish her quest?

The implications of that made my jaw hit the floor.
This entire time…

And he didn’t remember me at all. Then again, how could he? This was an entirely different being. He probably had a family nearby, friends, a dog waiting for him at his apartment. Probably a girlfriend.

I licked my lips and tried to hold back my gush of emotions.

This isn’t the Robin you know.
I had to accept that.

I smiled weakly and staggered backwards. I’d been fantasizing and wishing for Robin to come back to me, and here he was, just completely different. Fate had a weird way of messing with me.

I shouldn’t tell him a single thing. I should let him live his life in peace. He deserved that after everything that had happened. After being a pawn for a faerie king and dealing with all of the rules and mischief of Tir na nÓg.

I owed him that much.

“I’m…sorry,” I said with a laugh, trying to cover up my shock at this recent turn of events. “I thought you were someone else.”

Like the old Robin I knew, he snorted in a laugh. “You called me by my name,” he said. I forgot how much his voice made my insides twist in anticipation. “So you must have heard of me before.”

Move on, Abby.
I shook my head. “Really,” I said, even though the word burned my throat. “I had mistaken you for someone else. Sorry.”

To hide my shame, I turned and walked away down the hallway. I needed to get to the garden, take out my phone and listen to some angry Taylor Swift to get my mind off him.

I could feel his eyes on me as I went, every footstep harder than the last.

“Hey,” he called after me suddenly. “Who did you think I was?”

I glanced back at him and offered a small smile. “A villainous Peter Pan.”

That was a crazy thing to say. He even let out a mystified chuckle as he thought about it. “A villainous Peter Pan?” he asked. “Well, that would make you Tinkerbell, wouldn’t it?”

I froze at the nickname, trying not to let my shock show on my face, but I think the world swallowed me up and ate me whole. This wasn’t real. This was too weird.

I masked my shock by twirling a strand of my blond hair through my fingers.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess that does make me Tinkerbell.”

Leave this, Abby. Before you get your heart broken.

“Hey,” Robin said. He stuffed his hands in his scrubs pockets, a gesture that reminded me so much of his faerie counterpart. “I know this sounds crazy, but…” He let out a breath and chuckled. “I’m off in ten minutes, and while the cafeteria here doesn’t have anything great, maybe we could…have lunch together? I mean, I bumped into you, it’s the least I can do to make up for scaring you like that.”

I blinked at him, letting those words sink in.

“Are you asking me on a date?”

A lopsided grin came to his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I am, Tinkerbell.”

Wonders never ceased. I didn’t know what magick it was that brought us back together, but I found myself nodding in agreement.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Lunch it is. So long as it isn’t pork casserole.”

I may not have believed in faeries before. But now, after everything, I believed in a possible happy ending, too.

Acknowledgments

As always, it takes a village to write a book, even a novella that feature characters that I’ve visited twice before. So many people go on this journey with me. I am honored to know each and every one of you.

To Blazing Indie Collective, you guys amaze me with your raw talent. I’m so glad to be able to say, “I know them!”

To Margo and Lateia, you were with me in the trenches for this book. I think we made it out alive.

To Emily and Lori, you two are my inspiration and my sanity.

To Lindsay, thanks for saving my butt. Many times.

To my Nerd Crew, I hope you like it. I wrote this for you.

To my friends and family, I love you guys.

To Chris, you’re my rock.

To my readers, thank you for taking this journey with me.

Read Christine’s story this summer in: