Until now.
Because that was what this was. There was no other word for it, no softer, safer term I could dress it up in to keep it at arm’s length. This was love. The kind I’d read about, the kind I’d watched other people experience, the kind I quietly, privately grieved, never knowing, in those rare honest moments with myself in the dark.
I was completely, irreversibly, head over heels in love with Callan.
The thought should have terrified me. In some ways, it did, because love was exposure. Love was handing someone the exact code of how to destroy you and trusting them not to use it. And I was not a person who trusted easily—or atall.
But here was the part that kept me up at night, the part that made me press my fingers to my chest as if I could feel the change that had taken place there:
This man—this man—who I mostly hated, who made me dread my days for years, whose voice alone had once been enough to make my stomach twist into knots, the man who had challenged me and criticized me and pushed me past every limit I thought I had, the man I had fantasized about throwing in the shark tank once or twice.
Hewas the one who, somehow, without my permission and certainly without my awareness, slipped past every defense I had ever built. He had gotten into my head first, and then—so quietly I didn’t even feel it happening—into my heart. He’d found the breaks in my walls, the ones I didn’t even know were there, and he hadn’t broken through them. He’d just…moved through them, like water, like the light, like something that always belonged on the other side and was simply finding its way home.
And now he was there, woven into every quiet moment, the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about before sleep pulled me under. He became the person I looked for in every room, the voice I strained to hear, the presence that made me feel like I was standing on solid ground.
He had become the one person I was unwilling to do life without.
Not unable.Unwilling. There was a difference, and it mattered. I could survive without him—I had survived worse, survived things that should have destroyed me—but I didn’twantto. I wanted more than that. I wantedhim. I wanted mornings like this, watching him in the sun. I wanted his low voice and his rare smiles and the way his hand sometimes found the small of my back when we walked, so casually, like it was nothing, like it didn’t send electricity sparking through every nerve in my body.
All of it was strange—the hatred turning to tolerance, turning to understanding, turning to something so tender it almost hurt to hold. The end of everything brought me the one thing I never thought I’d find: this cranky-ass man turning out to be the safest place I’d ever been.
But it was strange in a good way. In the best way, the kind of way that made me think perhaps the universe wasn’t entirely indifferent after all, that sometimes, it put you exactly where you needed to be—even if it burned everything else down to do it.
Callan looked up from the woodpile. Across the distance, his eyes found mine as they always did, as if a thread were strung between us. He didn’t smile—he rarely did—but something in his expression softened slightly.
Yeah, I thought, lifting my mug to my lips to hide the smile.This is love.
* * *
It happened on a Tuesday. Or possibly a Wednesday. The days had stopped mattering in the way they used to, but this one—this one I would remember.
We’d all eaten dinner together, the four of us around the table Finn had built from reclaimed oak. Ethan had caught three bass that afternoon, and Lock cooked them over thefire pit with wild garlic and whatever herbs he’d found in the greenhouses. It should have been a good night. Itwasa good night. But Ethan had gone quiet halfway through the meal, pushing food around his plate with his fork, and when Lock asked him if he was alright, the kid shook his head and said he was tired and disappeared into his room.
Lock had followed him. He was good with Ethan in a way Callan and I weren’t—patient and steady, never pushing, just present. I’d heard the low murmur of his voice through the wall as Callan and I cleaned up, and then silence, and then Lock came out and said the kid was asleep.
“I’ll take the couch tonight,” Lock said, jerking his chin toward Ethan’s door. “Keep an ear out.”
Callan nodded. I dried the last plate. And then it was just the two of us standing in the kitchen with the fire crackling low and the island settling into its nighttime chorus of frogs and wind through the pines.
“Come on,” Callan said. Nothing else. Just that. His hand found the small of my back—that touch,thattouch—and guided me down the short hall toward the room we’d been sharing for the past two weeks. We had agreed that being in the same cabin was safer.
The door clicked shut.
The air between us thickened instantly, and every nerve in my body lit up. Callan turned the latch—a small, deliberate sound that echoed louder than it should have—and when he turned back to me, his eyes were dark. Not dangerous. Thisdarkness held heat. Intent. A hunger raw and barely leashed, it made my pulse jump and my mouth go dry.
He crossed the room in two strides and took my face in both hands, thumbs brushing my cheekbones with a tenderness that broke me. He looked atme—reallylooked at me—and I watched him swallow hard, watched a man who had spent his entire life in control struggle to hold on to the edges of it.
Then he kissed me.
Not like a question. He kissed me like an answer to something I’d been asking my whole life without knowing it. Hard enough to steal my breath, deep enough to reach the places I’d kept locked and hidden. I made a sound against his mouth—half gasp, half surrender—and my hands fisted the front of his shirt, pulling, pulling, because there was still too much space between us and I couldn’t stand it, not for one more second.
He walked me backward, one hand sliding from my cheek to the back of my neck, the other dropping to my hip, guiding me with a confidence that made my knees unreliable. My calves hit the edge of the bed, and he eased me down, following me onto the mattress so his weight settled over me, solid and warm, pinning me in the best possible way.
He broke the kiss to drag his mouth down the side of my throat. His teeth grazed the spot where my pulse beat, and I arched off the bed, a sound escaping me that I didn’t recognize. He lingered there, lips and tongue and the barest scrape of teeth, tasting my heartbeat like he needed proof of it.
“I need you.” His voice came out rough and low, barely above a whisper, spoken directly into my skin. “All of you.Right now.”
“Then take me,” I said.