Page 12 of Falling for the Enemy

That decision still held, no matter how many mixed signals her body sent lately.

Maybe it was her age. Thirty-one hit a lot harder than thirty for some reason. Her choices now carried the threat of permanence, which made her question everything and doubt some things she never previously mistrusted. Basically, the intrusive baby thoughts were annoying, so she kept batting them away, but her brain felt the strain.

So much had changed. While Jocelyn enjoyed a successful career built on fictional men whose emotional availability put every real man to shame, her friends were living the real deal. Greyson and Wren were the exception to the rule. They had that magical romance thing that usually only existed in fictional love stories, but they were real. Their love was real. So real, it sometimes suffocated Jocelyn with quiet envy.

But she had a town full of people who loved her. She didn’t need to belong to one man. Hideaway Bay absorbed her unfiltered, eccentric personality with groomed acceptance. That was enough.

Whatever this biological longing was, she didn’t plan to evaluate it too deeply. She was the kind of woman who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted. She did not shift gears on a whim. That was for sure.

Hopefully, once the newest Hawthorne arrived, the baby fever would pass.

She didn’t want kids, not long-term, which was usually how they worked.

This was just a mild touch of FOMO—fear of missing out. It was a hankering for a maternal gene she was pretty sure she’d been born without. Nothing more.

The thought alone of herself as a mother would be catastrophic, so she never gave it much serious thought.

Wren, on the other hand, would be a fabulous mother. She’d make homemade baby food and organic soaps. She’d be a natural at nursing, and even make her kid’s clothes. She’d have picnics in the grass and probably do other grainy hippy shit Jocelyn would never even think about.

Wren had the kind of patience and sweetness no one ever accused Jocelyn of having, which was why they made perfect sense as best friends. Also why The Universe gave Wren a fertilized embryo and Jocelyn an IUD.

Drift and Dwell, the local home goods store, occupied the ground floor of a converted warehouse at the far end of Harbor Street. Its windows, dressed with artfully weathered rope and glass floats, made the whole storefront look like a Pinterest board washed ashore.

Inside, the air smelled like beeswax and dried lavender. Jocelyn spent twenty minutes in the candle aisle, holding each pillar to her nose until she found exactly the right scent. Driftwood and sea salt were the winners, clean and coastal without veering into sunscreen territory. The cotton wick would burn steadily, without competing with the food.

She added eighteen navy candles to her basket, setting them carefully atop a stack of cream linen napkins. Next, she found a bundle of jute twine thick enough to wrap the centerpieces, pausing to calculate how many spools she’d need.

“Forty to fifty guests, eight guests per table, plus the buffet area…”

Her head hurt within seconds of doing math, which was exactly why she chose to work with words rather than numbers. She had to make favors for each guest, still finalize the invitations, go over the menu with the chef at Wine & Barrel, figure out the music, and do about a million other little things no one thought of until the last minute.

Her heart suffered a strange little pinch that felt oddly close to anxiety.

Six weeks. She only had six weeks to pull this together. October twenty-fourth had sounded like ages away last month. Now, it was breathing down her neck.

“Fuck.” She cleared the shelf, grabbing all six spools and shoving them into her basket. “Better to have extra than come up short.”

As she finished locating items on her list, she realized the pressure she was feeling regarding the upcoming baby shower was probably nothing compared to what Wren was going through with the upcoming human being about to plop out of her.

Wren was having a baby. A literal human, small and helpless, completely dependent on others for survival.

The sense of impending doom sent a cold sweat down Jocelyn’s spine. She had to remind herself this wasn’t her kid. She only had to pull off ‘cool aunt’ and ‘goddess mother’, then her responsibility ended.

Thank the under lords.

Old Lady Larkin rang her up with the glacial efficiency of a woman who considered haste a character flaw and had organized her entire existence around avoiding rushing. Her weathered hands, deformed by rheumatoid arthritis, showed fragile bones beneath her translucent skin. The woman was as delicate as a bird and would likely be blown away in a strong wind.

“Planning something?” She folded the napkins into tissue paper with the methodical precision of an origami master who charged by the hour.

“Just decorating.” Jocelyn kept the lie clean. Small towns had ears under every awning, and the guestlist could easily balloon the moment anyone caught the scent of a celebration for one of their lifelong locals.

“For something special, I would think,” Mrs. Larkin observed in a shaky voice. “That’s a lot of napkin rings for a woman who lives alone.”

She gave Mrs. Larkin a tight smile. “I’m going through a Martha Stewart phase.”

“Hmm.” She smoothed tissue around the candles, recognizing the deflection as easily as a sommelier recognized a cork.

Jocelyn kept her expression neutral as she paid for her goods and lifted the heavy bags. “Have a nice day, Mrs. Larkin.”