"You named him in my apartment. Joint custody at minimum."
The corner of his mouth lifts again. We're negotiating plant custody across a dinner table, and neither of us has actually said the words "move in" because we don't need to. It happened in inches—the drawer, the key, the toothbrush, the sweater—and here we are.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay," he agrees.
We eat. He tells me about Marco's mom's gallbladder—she's fine, it was gallstones, Marco cried at the hospital, which Callum refuses to admit he finds endearing—and I steal bread off his plate. He lets me.
I watch him talk about the new probie at the station who doesn't know how to coil a hose. His hands gesture, his forearms flex, the worn collar of his T-shirt showing the dip of his collarbone. Ava mentioned he was staring at his phone all day waiting for me to text. I think about his hands and his mouth, and the fact that I haven't touched him properly since the couch, and my body is suddenly very aware of the gap.
He catches me looking. "What?"
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"The thing where you pretend you're not staring at my mouth while I talk. Except you're the one talking and I'm the one staring at your mouth, so I guess I'm doing it." I put my fork down. "You have pasta sauce on your lip."
He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Gone?"
"No." I lean across the table and kiss him. He tastes like garlic and basil, and I smile against his lips when I feel his surprise—not at the kiss, but at the version of me who just leaned across a dinner table and took it.
"Still there," I murmur against his mouth, which is a lie.
He pulls me closer and kisses me back. His hand comes up to the side of my neck, his thumb resting on my jaw. The smile fades into something heavier. I climb out of my chair because the table is in the way and that's unacceptable.
"The pasta—" he starts.
"Is cold."
"It's not cold, I just—"
"Do you want to eat pasta or do you want to kiss me? Because I'm making an executive decision and the pasta is losing."
He lets out a real laugh, the kind that comes from deep in his chest and makes his eyes crinkle. He pushes his chair back, and I'm in his lap in two seconds flat. My knees bracket his thighs, and his palms settle on my hips like they were built exclusively for that spot. The kissing goes from playful to heated in the time it takes me to roll my hips once.
"Ava also told me," I say between kisses, "that you were a terrible teenager."
"Irrelevant."
"Apparently you had a phase where you wore cargo shorts exclusively."
"I'm not discussing this while you're on my lap."
"Cargo shorts, Callum. With the little snaps on the pockets."
He shuts me up by kissing me hard enough that my head tips back. His mouth drags down my jaw to my neck, and the cargo shorts commentary dies in my throat, replaced by a pathetic, needy sound. His grip slides from my hips to my ass, pulling me flush against him. I can feel him through his jeans, hard and thick, and a heavy kick of heat pools low in my stomach.
"Bedroom," I say, my voice dropping into a register I didn't know I had three weeks ago.
"You sure? I think there were more embarrassing stories—"
I bite his neck. Not hard—just enough. He makes a low sound that tells me exactly how the rest of this evening is going to go.
He stands up with me still wrapped around him. I yelp, grabbing his shoulders as he carries me down the hall. It's ridiculous and incredibly hot. I laugh into his neck, my legs locked around his waist as he navigates the doorframe. One of us clips the wall, he swears, and I laugh harder.
He drops me onto the bed—into the nest, our nest, the tangled pile of blankets that smell like both of us mixed together. I pull him down on top of me and kiss the swear word right off his mouth. His body covers mine, heavy and solid, and I arch up against him. The weight of him is my favorite thing in the world, and I'm done being patient.