Author's Note: Surprise! An update to round out 2013! Warning: there's angst ahead, but rest assured, there will be a happy ending at the end of this. I'm still looking at 3-4 more chapters for this, and one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2014 is to finish this fic as soon as possible.


The first light of morning was beginning to break overhead, and Callie stirred. This was not her bed, she could tell that for sure. The sheets were softer, she couldn't hear Mariana murmuring in her sleep, and perhaps most importantly, there was someone else in the bed. And she was stark naked. She flicked her eyes up. Her cheek rested against the planes of Brandon's chest, and she could see him fast asleep. His arm rested protectively around her back, drawing her closer to him.

Dueling thoughts crossed her mind. On one hand, she could get up, get dressed, dispose of the condom in the trash outside and get an early breakfast before Stef and Lena got up. On the other, she could stay curled up here with him until he woke up. The latter definitely appealed to her romantic side, but her functional, pragmatic side begged her to consider all the repercussions. All of her life – okay, all of the time she had been in foster care, which seemed like it had been longer than it actually was, maybe even a lifetime – she had allowed her brain to win out.

But now her heart was demanding to be heard. She'd told him that she loved him, and she knew that she was honest when she said it, although her honesty was driven by the hard edge of desire.

She turned her face so that her lips grazed the pucker of skin along his chest, and she planted a small kiss to the spot where they came to rest. He stirred only long enough to tighten his grasp around her, his hand rubbing the backs of her shoulder blades.

She breathed in deep. She knew she could spend forever here. He'd told her as much, she knew it to be fact, and yet, she couldn't help but wonder what would come next for them. There was no going back – not after she'd felt him inside her, his eyes wide and dilated as he looked into her eyes.

Everything had changed between them. And it was made harder by the fact that she couldn't just be open about their relationship, because that would be such a black mark against her, and it would ruin things for Jude, and she had promised Jude that this was the last stop for a while, if she had anything to say about it.

Not that she usually did, but that was beside the point.

After all, if she had her way, her parents would still be a daily fixture in her life, and maybe Brandon could be that shy guy that she ran into once and never forgot. But would she even appreciate what Brandon signified in that idealized world?

But they couldn't go back to how they used to be. That was set in motion the night of their first kiss in the kitchen – and the second, and all the kisses that had followed, and the beach, and sneaking around behind everyone's backs. It had all led them to this place, in this moment.

She knew that how she handled today would be the ultimate test of how they would adapt.

First things first, however. She strained back against his hand, and wormed her way out of his embrace. Not that she wanted to leave – furthest thing from it. But it was what was necessary, and he would understand, eventually. And she would be just downstairs, not halfway across the country.

She gathered her clothes from the floor, where they had been scattered the night before, and she quickly got dressed. She also grabbed the condom from where Brandon had placed it. Brushing her lips against Brandon's forehead, she whispered a faint "goodbye" before tiptoeing out of the room. She didn't sneak out fast enough to not notice the fact that Brandon whimpered and curled into the spot where she had laid only minutes before, almost as if he was seeking her out, even though she wasn't there.

She slipped downstairs and out the front door, feeling the cool dew of morning air tickling the tips of her toes. With a quick flourish, the condom was out of sight of anyone who could tell where it came from, she noted, as she cast a stray banana peel over it to disguise it from anyone peering into the can. As she walked back up the walkway to the house, the door to the house opened.

A bleary-eyed Stef stood in the doorframe, her hand clasping the edge of the frame while the other rested against her hip. "Hey, Callie, you're up early," she said.

"Yeah, uh, I just wanted to see the sun rise," Callie said. "It's supposed to be inspirational to those of us with a creative mindset, or so Brandon has told me."

"Tell that to me again when he actually wakes up before nine on a Saturday morning," Stef said, with a laugh. "C'mon inside, I'll make you breakfast." She scooped up the newspaper in her hands and offered Callie a genuine smile. "I may have made waffle batter last night."

"Sounds delicious," Callie said, giving her a smile in return. "I'll be right there, okay?"

"Okay." Stef retreated into the house, and Callie looked up at the sky. It was reassuring to see that the sun still rose, and Stef couldn't seem to tell that anything had changed. So she would tentatively call this a win.

As she walked back into the house, she heard footsteps skitter across the floor above her. "And that would be Lena," Stef said, coming out into the hallway, rubber spatula in hand. "I called up and told her that we were making waffles, and did she want to join us?"

"And she said yes!" Lena called out from upstairs. "Be right there, you two."

Callie sat down at the counter and fiddled with the fork that sat next to her plate. "So, uh, you going into work? I'm not used to being up before you."

"Yeah," Stef said, shaking her head. "Sadly, crime doesn't wait for anyone in this city, nor does the paperwork for my boss. Not even on a Sunday."

"I would much rather have her here with me," Lena said as she walked into the kitchen, walking over to Stef and kissing the side of her cheek. "You know, when we were first in love, I would sometimes drive Stef to work on these early mornings, just so we'd have that extra time together."

"And why don't you do that anymore?" Stef asked, as she pried the waffle off the waffle iron and flipped it onto Callie's plate. "I miss that."

"Because...actually, I don't know why I stopped," Lena said. "I guess we got so used to spending so much time together that it didn't seem like a necessity anymore."

Stef pulled Lena in for a kiss. "I would be honored if you would drive me to work today," she said. "Like we used to."

"Oh, really?" Lena asked, kissing Stef back, her lip catching on Stef's. "That would be an honor in itself."

"Then it's settled," Stef said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out two bottles of syrup. "And Callie, you have the choice between strawberry or maple syrup for your waffle."

Callie took the bottle of strawberry and squirted it on her waffle, and as she began to cut her waffle into tiny triangular shapes, she watched Stef and Lena's interactions. They were so at ease with each other, so clearly in love. Even after all these years of apparently being together. She speared one of the triangles and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Could this be a peek into a possible future with her and Brandon? Early morning waffles with their kid, light banter at the ready, love sparking between all of them.

It sounded a little too Leave it to Beaver for what she was used to, but then again, she was the first to admit that her life had clearly sucked the last few years, and that was an understatement.

"The waffle was really good, thanks," she said, as she stood up and put her plate in the sink. "Have a good day at work, Stef, I'm," she paused for a brief moment. A part of her wanted to go upstairs and curl back into bed with Brandon, especially if the moms were going to be gone, but the pragmatic part of her wanted to do something practical. Maybe work on homework, or try to sleep in her own bed. Or something. "I'm going to go upstairs and do things."

"Sounds good," Stef said, waving her hand. "Go. Fly like the wind, Callie."

Callie walked out of the room, still wavering on the decision she was to make. As she walked away, Lena turned to Stef. "Did you notice that her shirt was on inside out?" she asked, one eyebrow arched in a perfect crescent.

"Yeah," Stef said. "It's probably nothing." She drank down the last of her coffee and turned to Lena. "C'mon, let's go. If we hurry now, maybe I can convince my boss that traffic was bad on the way in..."


Callie stood at the top of the stairs and bit her lip. It was another dilemma of heart versus brain. Heart meant Brandon, brain meant Jude, and there wasn't a scenario in which she could reconcile the two to be the same. She'd allowed herself to be selfish and seek her own desire for one night, but now, she needed to do some thinking.

She cautiously turned the knob to her own bedroom and slipped inside. Mariana still snuffled softly in her sleep, which was a relief – she didn't want to have to make up explanations that she knew Mariana would never fully buy. She threw the blankets over her head, and burrowed deep inside the covers, burying herself away to allow herself to think.

She had always been so focused on Jude and doing right by Jude that she never gave a second thought to herself. If there was a bullet flying toward Jude, she would dive in front of it, no questions asked. For so long, he had been the only person she'd allowed herself to love.

And then there was Brandon. She laughed under her breath, but he was almost like her savior, trying to save her from someone. Herself? She almost envisioned him as a Prince Charming on a white horse, gallantly going after the princess in the tower. But she wasn't a princess, by any stretch of the word, and girls like her didn't get the prince or the happily ever after. They got what was acceptable – sometimes, not even that much – and they learned to live with it, whether it was what they really wanted or not.

She wanted Brandon. And they'd done a good job over the past few months, at least she thought so, of disguising the true nature of their relationship from everyone but Jude.

And there he was again, Jude. To strike the balance between her two guys would be to find peace in the Middle East, and for that, she deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. She feared that having one meant that she'd lose the other, even though she knew that neither of them saw it that way – well, maybe Jude did, but he was jaded in similar tones to her own. They'd never really talked about it, not since the day he'd caught them together. Brandon would never make her give up Jude, not at all, and she knew that, and that was another thing that she loved about him. He understood how important Jude was to her, and would never do anything to diminish that.

She felt a gentle tingling between her legs, and she knew that the feelings from the night before were about to cascade over her in waves. She knew what she had to do.

In quick, almost cat-like movements, she moved with agility across the floor and tiptoed back down the hall to Brandon's room. She got back into bed with him, and placed his arm over her waist.

"You're back," he whispered, brushing his lips against the nape of her neck. "And dressed."

"Yeah," she said. "I – I woke up early, and you were still asleep, and I had breakfast with the moms. She made waffles."

"I missed waffles?" he asked, his lips turning down into a pout as they opened and closed against her skin in soft, measured strokes.

"There's still some downstairs if you want to get one," she said, easing into his embrace.

"Are you asking me to make a decision between having you in my bed and having waffles for breakfast?" he asked, his tone light and airy, before taking a nosedive into something more serious, "Because you know that I'll always pick you."

"I know."

And that was what made everything so much harder to handle.

-to be continued-