Chapter 49
Callum
The curbside pickup at DFW was a hydraulic ballet of roaring engines, tumbling suitcases, and unbridled American hope.
No matter how many times I returned, the air always hit the same: scorched concrete, sunburned tar, barbecue smoke, and the dry shimmer of a grassy plain.
I scanned the jumble of oversized pickups and gleaming sedans, and my breath caught when I spotted my car in the queue.
Gabrielle leaned against the rear spoiler, a to-go cup from some local caffeine cartel in one hand and sunglasses perched on her head like a crown.
Her blonde hair was down—loose, wild, and unrestrained.
She wore deliciously short denim shorts and a soft blue top that fit her like sin.
She was breathtaking, and I felt a surge of homesickness for her before I’d even reached the curb.
I rolled my suitcase along the pavement and approached, watching her toy with her phone—oblivious to the crowd and out of step with the frantic choreography around her. She didn’t see me at first. Or perhaps she did and wanted to see how long it would take me to break.
I closed the distance and, without preamble, wrapped my arms around her and swept her off the ground. She yelped against my shirt—equal parts delight and disbelief—and I spun her so fast she nearly caught her heels on the bumper. The suitcase toppled. I didn’t care.
When I finally set her down, she punched my arm—hard enough to sting, soft enough to count as affection. “Jesus, Cal,” she said, breathless. “You can’t just manhandle people at arrivals. I almost dumped my coffee all over you.”
“Apologies,” I said and kissed her—daylight, diesel, and parched Texas heat crowding around us. The world blurred, but her lips were solid and sure. A car behind us blared its horn, long and insistent, but it made no dent in the moment.
She drew back, cheeks flushed, pupils blown. “That was very public of you.”
I kissed her again, slower. “I don’t bloody care.”
I popped the boot, slid my suitcase and carry-on inside, and took a perverse satisfaction in the way the lid slammed shut—a clean, final closure on the hell of the past several days. Gabrielle moved for the driver’s side, but I caught her wrist.
“I’m happy to drive, you know,” I said, mostly to assert some token masculinity.
She snorted. “Not on your life. You look half-dead.” She kissed the back of my hand. “Still hot. But half-dead. No offense.”
I rolled my eyes and slid into the passenger seat. The perspective felt wrong—my car, but not my vantage point.
“Besides,” she said, easing from the curb, “I like driving your car. It’s smoother than mine. Less…deathtrap-y.”
“You are rather due for an upgrade. I replaced your battery in January, but it’s only a matter of time.”
The sun beat through the glass as Gabrielle navigated the airport maze and eventually merged onto the motorway. The air conditioner whined at full blast, failing to keep pace with the inferno outside. But she looked cool and untouched, the way some people are born immune to climate.
We carved through toll plazas and exurban sprawl beneath an impossibly blue sky streaked with candy-floss clouds.
Gabrielle grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the cupholder and handed it to me.
I twisted the cap, the plastic crackling over the soft hum of the engine, and drank greedily.
My mouth was parched from ten hours of recycled transatlantic air.
“How was your flight?” she asked, her tone light, but her eyes cautious. She always saw past my camouflage, even when she pretended not to.
“Long,” I admitted, “but not awful. Shockingly edible food. A few hours of chemically induced sleep.”
She smiled, but it didn’t quite land. Not hesitation, exactly—more like the moment before a plane touches down, wheels suspended, waiting for gravity to decide.
She waited me out.
I drew a sharp breath. “Boyle’s Law.”
She glanced over, caught off guard. “What?”
“Pressure’s rising, but the volume of this car is fixed. So either we talk…or something explodes.”
“Are you seriously making physics puns right now?”
“Technically, it’s a metaphor. But yes.” I tapped my temple. “It never shuts off.”
Her hands worked the wheel with a restless energy, left thumb flicking the rim in nervous taps.
“All right. I’ll just come out with it. What did Bill Watkins want yesterday?”
“To bring you a casserole,” she said dryly. “It’s a Southern thing when someone dies.”
“I’m familiar with the custom.” When she didn’t offer anything further, I prompted, “Can I assume he knows about us?”
She looked over, eyes pleading. “Yeah. I’m so sorry, but there was no way around it.” The words tumbled out fast. “He figured it out the second he saw me in your house. The boxes, the ring…”
“It’s all right,” I soothed. “It was bound to happen at some point.” I rested a hand on her bare thigh. “And it’s our house, darling.”
She fixed her eyes on the road, her face flushed from the sun or the conversation or both. “He’s worried about you. Worried about the Board of Trustees. Says they’re sharpening the guillotine.”
“Not inaccurate.”
She placed a hand on mine—solid, grounding. “He thinks I should speak to the review board. Tell them my side.”
I pulled my hand. “Out of the question.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I do when it puts you in the line of fire.”
A horn brayed as a jacked-up pickup cut too close. Gabrielle swerved with an eerie calm. She never missed a beat.
“If you give them a statement, it’ll make things worse.”
“How?” Her voice was steady, but I could feel nerves sparking off her. “It’s already as bad as it can be, and it’s ninety-five percent false. If I go in and set the record straight—say our relationship was consensual and that I’m nobody’s victim, then what?”
“They won’t hear that.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, eyes squeezed shut.
“They’ll hear: student, professor, impropriety.
I’ll be no less guilty in their eyes, but you’ll be slung through the mud along with me.
” My fingers were trembling. I flattened them against my thigh, hoping she didn’t notice.
“I can take their contempt. Hell, I deserve it. But you—”
“You don’t deserve it. That’s the whole point.” She merged onto the interstate, finally heading north. “Dr. Watkins—”
“Do call him Bill. I think you’ve earned that much.”
“Fine. Bill made a good point—I’m the only one who can set the record straight.
Sloane won’t back down or admit her role in all this, but if I go in and tell them what’s actually true, I can speak to your character.
How you’d never behave the way you’re being accused of.
Bill can too, sure, but I have a front-row seat. And nothing to lose.”
I laughed, the sound a dry rasp in my throat.
“You have everything to lose, darling. You’re about to start at SMU.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking Dallas is far enough away or that a bigger school is big enough to hide in.
Don’t you see? If you go on record—if your name gets attached to any of this, the fallout will follow you.
It never goes away. And I’m speaking from experience here. ”
She absorbed it the way she did everything—without flinching, without showing where it struck. “About that…”
“Which part?”
“SMU.” She inhaled, her jaw set. I nearly reached for her hand again, but I held back. “Tomorrow’s July first,” she continued. “That’s the notification deadline. I haven’t confirmed enrollment yet.”
I stared, uncomprehending for a beat, as the bottom dropped out of my chest. “You haven’t notified?”
She shook her head, hair swishing softly over her shoulders.
“Gabrielle, no. Absolutely not. You are not giving up your future for any of this—least of all for me.” My voice had gone sharp, louder than intended, but I didn’t care. “I’ve already stolen so much from you. I won’t take this as well.”
She gave me a faint smile—the kind that said she’d rehearsed this and knew every line I was about to speak. “Will you shut up and let me explain?”
“It had better be the argument of your life,” I muttered, arms crossed.
She shifted in her seat, subtle as a gymnast’s pivot on a balance beam.
“Yes, SMU’s engineering program is amazing.
And yes, it’s the obvious choice. But the only reason I applied there was so I wouldn’t be too far from you.
I wanted a life with you. And, at the time, that meant you’d still be at Page.
” She flicked a glance at me—cocky, almost, if not for the sheen of fear behind it.
“But that’s not a factor anymore. I’d rather we take a beat and figure out what comes next. Together.”
“Gabrielle, it’s too late to apply anywhere else. You know that, right?”
“For the fall, sure.” She shrugged—a sun-warmed roll of her shoulders, like she’d never been burdened by a thing. “But I can take core classes online for a semester or two. Comp sci, calculus, whatever. I won’t fall behind, I promise.” She changed lanes to pass a slow-moving horse trailer.
“You can still accept the offer,” I said. “The deadline hasn’t passed. You could be in Dallas in six weeks. I’ll come with you, if that’s what you want. You know I’d go anywhere.”
She smiled at the road. “And do what? You think the Cartwrights—or their sycophants—will just let us start over an hour down the interstate? It’ll follow us, Cal.
All of it. Sloane’s dad is on every board in the Metroplex.
I guarantee he’s already making calls.” She pointed to a gleaming blue glass spear jutting up from the Dallas skyline.
“Isn’t that their building? Cartwright Tower? ”
I watched the spire flicker in the sun, the daylight fracturing along its surface. She was right—the scandal would trail us if we stayed. That was the beauty and the poison of America: reinvention was possible, but only if you were willing to cut loose every anchor.
She swerved around a gravel-streaked semi and exhaled, slow and steady. “I don’t regret any of it,” she said. “I’d do it all again.”
“Gabrielle—”
“Let’s just regroup, Cal.” Her voice softened, the edge giving way to resolve. She signaled, slipped into the HOV lane, and let the world blur past us at eighty miles an hour. “We can go anywhere. Anywhere we want. No constraints. Unmoored.”
I considered what it actually meant to be unmoored.
I’d never been that, not really. Not when I’d first slipped the velvet leash of my family.
Not even now, after my father’s death and the second implosion of my career.
I looked at Gabrielle—gilded in profile, emerald eyes fixed ahead—and knew she was my tether point now.
My lifeline. Nothing else mattered. I would go anywhere, do anything, be anyone—for her.
She caught me staring. Color crept into her cheeks. “What?”
“Where do you want to go?”
She licked her lips, eyes on the bright ribbon of freeway.
“Somewhere I choose for myself this time. Not because it’s close, or safe, or what anyone else expects—because it’s right.
” She glanced at me, a faint smile curling at the corner of her mouth.
“And not just for me. For us.” She drummed the wheel, thinking.
“But since you’re asking…let’s aim for someplace with amazing food and temperatures that don’t make me want to peel off my skin.
Mountains might be nice. Maybe somewhere with actual seasons—not just ‘hot’ and ‘surface of the sun.’” She let the idea hang—sounding shy at first, then more sure-footed—before turning it back on me. “Where do you want to go?”
I didn’t answer right away. Just watched the landscape rush past, mile by mile, the city giving way to rolling farmland. “Wherever you are,” I said finally. “That’s home.”
She rolled her eyes, but the smile that followed was real. I reached over, threaded my fingers through hers, and held tight.
“But if you’re after specifics…” I tilted my head, pretending to consider.
“Crisp air. Snow in winter. Trees that actually change color. Somewhere I can research and write. Maybe even teach again.” I brushed my lips over her knuckles.
“And build us a life where no one gives a damn what we were—only who we are.”
“Sounds perfect. If we weren’t in a moving vehicle, I’d climb over there and kiss you.”
I grinned. “We’ve got twenty miles until we’re home. Let me have a shower first, and you can do anything you want.”
I loved how I made her blush.
Gabrielle braked gently for a construction zone, orange cones flashing past in neat formation.
“Gabrielle, love.”
“Yes?”
I kissed the back of her hand and drew in a breath. “I know you’re determined to help clear my name. But I would ask—beg, really—that you reconsider speaking to the review board.”