Chapter 14
The next morning, I also like how Calum isn’t done trying to win my contest for me.
He arrives much earlier than when torture sessions used to start his mornings. “Get your skates on, Juno. We’ve got a lot to pack into today.”
He’s here even ahead of him sending his usual text reminder to turn an egg over, but I’m up early as well, determined to help him score a goal of his own. My problem is that my latest footage is the opposite of helpful.
I can’t find any loser material in any of this content.
Calum claps big hands together. “I said to get your skates on. We need to get moving.”
“Non.”
“No?” He crosses thick arms over his chest. “Why not?”
“Because you’ve got some explaining to do, Trelawney.”
For a split second, his game-face mask makes a reappearance.
It slips off the minute I press Play on a brand-new split screen.
Penny’s face fills one-half of my laptop screen.
The second half is filled by one of London’s top chefs, and Calum’s laugh could give Dad a run for his booming money.
“You really don’t miss a thing, do you?”
“Like you playing matchmaker?” I chuff as Calum sinks onto my bed to watch a romance in the making. “I chase the truth, remember? Plus, joining these dots was almost too easy.” I press a keyboard command, and my own voice fills the cabin.
“I only have eyes for Calum.”
In this replay of my first visit to London’s lowest rated restaurant, Penny animates to say, “Well, that’s understandable.
But if you do have eyes for me, try to catch my good side.
” She flutters her eyelashes. “Still living in hope of attracting a chef I can keep. Bonus points if he’s a silver fox who can cook decent pasta. ”
My bunk shakes with silent laughter, which means Calum must have guessed what is coming. I set the other side of the screen into motion to prove it.
“My son keeps telling me to get back on the market.” A silver fox stares into the lens of my GoPro. “Get a good pic of my best side and I might have to add it to the dating profile he made for me.”
I nudge Calum. “What have you got to say for yourself, Cupid?”
Calum zips his lips, so I let more of last night’s footage do the talking for him. My camera caught him loading a bow with an arrow while I was away from the table. “You know how you usually do all the meal prep here?”
Bright kitchen lights find every strand of silver at Robin’s temples. “Yes.”
Calum fires a romantic arrow. “Could you do your next meal prep session in a different kitchen?”
“Where?”
I turn up the volume so we both hear Calum say, “In Kensington. A family friend lost her chef. Her ex-husband. He really did her dirty, and a year later, she’s still struggling.
If you could give her some tips while borrowing her kitchen, I know she’d appreciate it.
” He looks over his shoulder. At me, I guess, helping that second chef to recreate perfection.
“I’m pretty sure Guy would want to help too.
He’s eaten there. He’ll tell you that Penny is good people. The best. You’ll like her.”
Yet again, there’s nothing here to make Calum’s club drop him. I still kind of want to show the world these snippets, because there’s no doubt that every single time he’s zipped his lips closed has left Calum isolated, and yet here he is, connecting people.
I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone more.
He leans in like he’s on the same page.
We almost connect, so close that I catch a waft of minty freshness.
“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.” I slip into my tiny shower room to get busy with my toothbrush, then pause with a mouthful of foam when I overhear the video start up without me—Calum must have pressed Play.
Penny’s voice rings out. About me.
“Calum Trelawney, you dark horse. He’s so pretty! Will you take him home with you for Christmas? He’s—”
I know what’s coming, what Calum said while I was getting a grip on myself all alone in a restaurant hallway. It still stings a little, which my bathroom mirror reflects.
“Someone who made Jack’s life hell?” Calum snorts through my laptop’s speakers. I flinch even though I know we’ve cleared the air since. Regardless, this reminder of where we started is a kick to the nuts. “I couldn’t take him home.”
I rinse. Spit foam that tastes weirdly bitter. Leave the shower room just as a past version of Calum says, “Because if I did take him home, you know how Mum would react.”
Penny clucks. “She’s so protective.”
A lot has happened since that conversation. I know so. Today I retrace my steps to kneel beside an incubator, barely seeing the egg that I turn over to avoid watching this replay. That doesn’t stop me from hearing him say, “The minute she met Valentin in person, she’d go full-on mother—”
I don’t need to hear the word lion. I actually hate the thought of anyone thinking Calum needs protecting from me.
I snap my laptop closed, grab my jacket, then act bright and breezy. “Right. Let’s get started.”
Once I’m outside, I hurry ahead. The marina is also breezy, the wind whipping away something Calum calls out from behind me. I don’t slow down to listen. I hurry even faster, already aboard a speedboat before he can reach me.
“Wait.” Calum catches up. He should step aboard to join me.
He doesn’t, and something under my ribs lurches at his hesitation.
It lurches again when his gaze drops to my mouth.
Don’t ask me why it feels like I’ve missed my one chance today to kiss him where no one else could see us.
It’s the worst time in the world for Christmas music to drift across the water.
Mariah Carey tells the whole marina all she wants for Christmas while the one thing I want says, “Are you . . . Are you okay?” Calum scrubs at the back of his neck. “Listen, I don’t remember saying any of that. It sounded really . . .”
True.
He looks so awkward that I tell myself to get it together like I did almost two weeks ago in that restaurant hallway.
“It’s all good,” I promise Calum. “Seriously. Don’t sweat it.
How about you tell me what’s so important about today that you got here extra early?
” I tilt my head across the river. “The torture chamber called you back?”
“Nope.” He earns his masochist credentials by casting a wistful look in that direction.
He looks back at me and smiles, which is better, but rather than sitting up front beside me like usual, he sits at the back of the boat like a test-drive client.
For a moment, I think he’s done that to create distance between us.
Calum has a different reason. “Listen, have you brought more than one camera with you?”
“Of course.” I pull my spare from my pocket. “Why?”
“Because I had some last-minute ideas for your contest entry. That is, if you haven’t already finished.”
“Not quite. It’s due tomorrow evening.” Right now, that doesn’t feel long enough to do my entry justice.
“And you’ll have to help close out the boat show tomorrow as well?
” Calum squares his shoulders. “That means today’s the day.
Focus your spare camera on me. I’ll give you all the content you need from back here.
” He sprawls on luxurious leather seating designed for millionaire comfort.
Calum stretches his arms along the backrest like he owns this vessel instead of the one Dad has taken to the boatyard to paint rescued children’s names on. “How do I look?”
Like the reason for global warming. Hot enough to melt every iceberg.
Those are the only honest answers. Or they would be if he didn’t supply a different definition.
“Entitled, right?” He gets good and comfy, his thick thighs spreading.
“Super-rich yet lazy?” Calum digs into a drinks fridge for the fizz that Dad usually pours down the necks of execs to help them lose control of their cash.
He waggles a bottle at me. “Go ahead and drive. I’ll act like I’ve spent my whole recovery time here living it up while people like Reece are risking their lives.
You could put that on a split screen, right?
Him being good while I’m bad to the bone.
” He waggles that bottle again. “If I down this, I’ll—”
“Be drunk later in charge of a bunch of kids?” Another hockey-camp rink visit is on today’s schedule. “How about no?” I reconsider after Calum takes the passenger seat beside me and we wait at the lock gates to join river traffic.
He laughs. “I was only going to pretend to drink it. Better not even do that if I want to open a hockey school of my own one day.”
“That’s your plan?”
He nods.
Finding this out feels vital. “Here? Or in the States?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Here.” I let out a held breath until he frowns. “Well, not here exactly. In Cornwall.”
“Because there aren’t any real rinks there?”
“Exactly.” He looks pleased that I remembered. “That’s where I’d build a hockey school, but not only for kids.” Now he looks anywhere but at me. “I’d build it for players whose careers ended before they were ready.”
“You want to build a team of your own?”
“Kinda. More like a programme where they can deal with whatever cut their careers short. Mindset stuff, you know? To help deal with the fallout of the ice breaking underneath them when they least expected.”
I don’t know which of his brothers he sounds like more. I hear both Reece and Patrick.
“Can’t help thinking who better than a team of losers to teach kids that the real win is getting to play, whatever happens. Win or lose, picking up a stick as part of a team is all that matters.” He also hasn’t given up attempting to score a win of my own for me. “Pull over at the next pier.”
“Why?”
The breeze ruffles his hair, wintry sun finding strands of dark gold. They glint. His smile is even brighter. “Because I set up something else to help score that cup for you.”
“You did?” I hope to fuck the River Police are nowhere nearby. I’ll get fined for letting a six-figure boat drift—banned from piloting on the Thames forever, all because I face him instead of watching out for river traffic.
“I told you, Valentin. Forget what you heard me say to Penny in that video.” His brow creases with how much he means this. “I’m not done trying. I won’t stop. Not for you. Right up to your contest deadline.”
That deadline will also signal the start of his last week in London before he heads home to Cornwall. I don’t know how the first two weeks have almost passed this quickly. Perhaps Calum hears the same clock ticking.
He leans in.
So do I.
Our mouths meet for our first kiss since he left that restaurant kitchen, and risking an arrest feels absolutely worth it. Just as swiftly, I need to break off to steer around a boat full of tourists. I hope to fuck none of them stan this hockey player or point their cameras in his direction.
“Look,” Calum tells me. “I got a pod just for you.”
“Of orca? What the fuck, Trelawney? I thought you liked me.”
He laughs again, and I’m glad the light on my camera blinks—I’ll want to replay his confirmation over and over. “Oh, believe me, I do.” He points up. “That’s your pod.”
He takes the wheel so I can stare at what makes slow revolutions above us.
Each capsule of the London Eye is crowded, apart from the one he’s dropped a ton of cash on.
“I splurged on the full exec experience. Thought it would be another good contrast between me and Reece. You could show him treading water to keep kids afloat, then show me being the kind of loser who wastes his cash on something trifling. Like sightseeing.”
The one problem with his plan is that nothing feels wasteful about what I’ve already witnessed.
This ride on an oversized Ferris wheel is no different.
Sure, the executive package he’s purchased comes with more champagne that neither of us opens, but I don’t focus on the Moet he’s paid for once we’re aboard.
I zoom in on his eyes widening, and they do that a lot when we rise above the city.
He soaks up every landmark as if today is the first time he’s seen each one. He’s so captivated that I’m not sure he can be aware his lips move.
I edge closer, hoping my mic picks up him checking sights off a list he once showed me.
It sounds almost reverent. Calum looks west and spots some green amongst city buildings.
“Kensington Gardens.” We’ve often walked past them on the way to a restaurant where I hope to fuck that Robin will make Penny’s Christmas extra merry.
Because of Calum.
He stares ahead next, murmuring, “Nelson’s Column,” while I mentally replay a moment I caught before he last left the city.
Seb choked on the kind of laughter that memories are made of all because a pigeon shat on Calum’s shoulder.
“Big Ben looks so dinky from up here,” he murmurs.
“I remember the first time I saw it at Christmas. Thought it was massive.” Calum’s gaze drifts back the way we came.
“Hey, you can even see the boat show through Tower Bridge. You can really tell the show is almost over from up here. There are lots of gaps in the marina.”
I’m sure I would see the same if I could make myself look in that direction.
That would mean dragging my gaze from someone the sun chooses now to fully spotlight.
I’m consumed by his reflection in this curved glass, and that’s the contrast I’d add to a supercut made of Calum-focussed moments if I ever used this footage.
I’d make a montage that would start with plexiglass buckling, and with Calum ice white instead of his current golden.
That’s what I’d replay—him sinking in slow-motion.
Then I’d add all the places in the city where I’ve seen him do the opposite for other people.
It wouldn’t be hard. All I’d need to do is splice in shots of all the hockey gear he’s paid for.
Or I could add in a production line of Christmas dinners in a kitchen where Calum asked a favour to stop Penny’s business from sinking.
I’d insert all those clips along with one of Dad’s relief at getting to give his shipwrights a merry Christmas, and I know exactly how I’d end it.
With something egg-shaped.
Yes, we stand in a glass capsule, but the egg I picture is one he can’t wait to watch his mother unwrap in Cornwall. That’s the contrast I’d want the whole world to notice—how Calum’s soft centre is the opposite of his on-ice persona.
I’ll have to be careful with my edits, or I’ll also show the whole world a truth of my own.
I want so much more than one last week with him.