Okay haha this has taken me forever to update and this chapter really really sucks but hey, it's the best I can do. I do have a good reason for the long delay hah! I'm not so into writing my CSIMiami because I'm thinking about writing NCIS and I cant write NCIS becaues I'm not done with Miami and I'm not done with Miami because I'm thinking about NCIS, which I'm not writing for because I'm not done with Miami. Phew.
Okay, now, on with the chapter I think hah.
"Is it mine?" Eric asked with uncharacteristic coldness in his voice.
Calleigh just nodded, keeping her eyes at the floor.
"Anyone else know?"
This time Calleigh shook her head.
"You, me and him."
She nodded her head to the window into the interrogation room.
There was a stagnant pause in which Eric looked at Calleigh and Calleigh looked at the floor.
"We need to talk about this later, okay?"
Calleigh nodded in agreement. "After work, we can… talk."
She had been about to say we can have a drink, but then she remembered how the whole mess they were in had began and decided against a drink.
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Somehow, they managed to avoid each other and any awkward moments until near the end of the day when Calleigh was packing the evidence she had into a box, ready for storage.
Eric came into the room, just as Calleigh was about to lift the box and carry it out, and she greeted him brightly.
"Oh hey Eric. Just let me get rid of this and then I'm ready… Eric!"
Calleigh's tone switched in a second as the box was prised from her hands.
Eric gave her a look that said "how could you be so stupid?", before he left and headed to the evidence storage locker.
Calleigh was fuming when Eric met up with her a few minutes later.
"Eric! I'm one month pregnant, not eight! I can lift a box of evidence!"
Eric didn't say anything and didn't meet Calleigh's eye.
They walked in silence out of the department into the privacy of Eric's car. Eric stared out of the windscreen, not looking at Calleigh in the passenger seat as he talked.
"How long have you known?"
"This morning," Calleigh replied, also looking forward.
"When were you going to tell me?" he asked, almost fearing the answer.
"I don't know," she answered truthfully.
There was another pause.
"Were you even going to tell me?"
Calleigh turned to face Eric indignantly, shocked that he suggest such a thing.
"How could I not tell you? You're my best friend! I'd tell you anything! What, you think I'd go and have an abortion or something without telling you? I couldn't do that… I know that you are against them anyway."
She sat back in the seat and added, as an afterthought:
"And I'd have trouble hiding it at nine months if I didn't tell you."
Eric noticed that Calleigh had been subconsciously holding her hand against her stomach, protectively. He leaned over the middle of the car and took her hand.
"What am I going to tell Horatio?" Calleigh cried suddenly. "He'll kill me for sleeping with you!"
Eric chuckled a little before leaning in a little closer. Calleigh turned her face to him and bit her lip. For some reason the sudden closeness made her nervous.
Calleigh's lips, so inviting they looked and so soft, Eric was almost sweating with the effort of not closing the last inch between them. Her sweet breath tickled his cheeks and he momentarily closed his eyes. He felt something soft and warm brush his lips so lightly that it almost wasn't there at all. When he opened his eyes, Calleigh's face was a hair's breadth away from his, with her eyes closed and her expression one of total release. Eric, seeing this, took Calleigh's face gently in his hands, hoping that she wouldn't pull away.
She did.
"Eric," she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. "We can't do this."
Holding eye contact with Eric, Calleigh got over the car. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Eric was watching her leave.
"Dammit!" she muttered as she threw herself into her car. She couldn't help wonder why she'd stopped herself from taking the previous moment further. She had started it, so she obviously wanted it, and Eric wanted it too.
Or maybe Eric had started it…
With a shake of the head, Calleigh started the car. She couldn't, and didn't really want to remember what had just happened.
What's done is done, she thought.
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Eric was at a loss. Calleigh had scared herself and then ran to find somewhere to hide. He felt cold inside, thinking that it was his actions that had driven her away, into her fort where no one else could enter. The place that she always retreated to when she didn't want help; usually these were the times that she needed help most of all.
Should he follow Calleigh, he wondered as he watched her car in the rear-view mirror, or should he give her the space that she clearly wanted?
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Calleigh stumbled through the door to her apartment and almost fell into the bathroom. She crouched over the toilet bowl, retching and coughing up everything she had eaten that day: a sandwich; a bowl of cereal; a digestive biscuit she'd eaten with a cup of coffee…
When she looked down at it, the small pile of half digested mush that slid slowly down the white porcelain, it didn't look like that much. She knew that she'd lost weight since her night with Eric because she'd hardly been eating. That day had been one of the days she'd eaten most in the last month.
When the nausea passed, Calleigh stood shakily and started to rummage around in her cupboard for something to settle her stomach.
"Damn morning sickness," she muttered as she searched. "Why can't it just happen in the morning?"
After dry-swallowing a couple of pills, she made her way into the bedroom to change into some comfy clothes, before heading to the lounge, ready to sit and watch mindless television for a couple of hours before it was an acceptable time to sleep.
That was all she had done for the last week or so. Sleep, work and watch television.
Every few minutes, she caught a glimpse of the phone out of the corner of her eye. It seemed to be calling her, telling her to contact Eric.
But she couldn't do it.
For hours, she fought with the phone, arguing that she didn't need to call Eric; that she could cope.
She went to bed at around nine in the evening, pulling down the blinds to block out the last of the Miami sunset.
