Chapter 12
LILY
Everything I have done since the age of ten has been done with too much energy and force.
When my parents left me so easily, with great relief, it broke me. I never showed it, but it broke me. It hurt me and it hasn't stopped hurting since.
I have always done well in school, making sure Rome passed on the news of my achievements in the hope that they would be proud and come back for me. They never did, instead making me feel like I didn't do enough. Like I wasn't enough.
Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Johns Hopkins and Stanford, and that is it. The only two schools that ever earned me the slightest bit of attention from them. Now they have become an obsession I have to reach. They were also the reason I pushed myself so hard that I burned out at the age of twenty-one.
I have been working on my medical school applications and choosing to go to the town library. At home, I get easily distracted, but the days I go to the library I see it as working hours.
At this point my time in Harbor Hill is not as great as it started. Yes, I am resting. Yes, I am seeing my brother and everyone I love every day. Yes, I am keeping up with my studies as much as I can.
But also, very much yes, I did exactly what I shouldn't and let Callahan take too much space in my life. Space he didn't even ask for.
So I decided to apologize to him and put an end to all of this.
It took me longer than it should have. I spent two weeks convincing myself I had nothing to apologize for, telling myself I was friendly, fun, the kind of person who shows up and makes everything lighter.
If Callahan Holt couldn't handle that, it was a him problem.
Except it wasn't, and I knew it wasn't, and at some point I couldn't keep lying to myself.
The man had made it as clear as a person could without using actual words that this was not something he wanted. He left rooms and sat across from me at tables and fixed his eyes on anything that wasn't my face.
I had chosen to interpret all of that as a challenge. I'm starting to understand it was just a man asking me to leave him the hell alone.
He hadn't once been cruel about it, but he had been clear. He didn't want this, and I hadn't listened, and that was on me.
I know his schedule because I had asked for it, after all, and I know he's finished for today.
I sit in the car for sixty seconds, exactly as I told myself I would so I'd be calm when I did this, and then I gather the courage to move.
My stomach flips. My rehearsed apology has already rewritten itself three times on the drive over, and it's rewriting itself again as I push open the car door.
The bay doors are open, which is lucky. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to knock. Probably driven home and bought another iced coffee and called it a moral victory for trying.
He's at the far end, crouched beside one of the engines, doing something mechanical to a wheel housing with a focus that means he either hasn't heard me come in or has heard me and is hoping I'm someone else.
He hears me at about ten feet and straightens to his full height, his face completely unreadable.
The white t-shirt is doing absolutely nothing to help my case.
It stretches across his torso like it lost a fight with his body, and his forearms are smudged with grease as he wipes his hands on a rag and takes me in.
"Hey."
Every word I'd rehearsed in the car evaporates.
His hair is getting long, falling into his eyes before he pushes it back with his forearm, and he's still watching me approach when I forget what I came to do.
"Hey," I manage, stopping far enough to think and close enough that running would look dramatic.
"I came to apologize."
His brows pull together. He tosses the rag aside and crosses his arms over his chest.
"For what exactly?"
"I've been coming on too strong," I start. "I've been treating the whole thing like a game, which wasn't fair."
I clear my throat and take a deep breath.
"You've made it clear it makes you uncomfortable, and I should have backed off sooner."
I cross my arms, then suspect it looks defensive, so I uncross them and drop my gaze to the concrete floor.
"So I'm sorry and I will stop the jokes and all that."
He is so quiet. The kind of quiet where someone is working very hard not to say something, which in my experience is an entirely different thing than having nothing to say.
"Look, Cal," I say evenly, using his name the way everyone else does. It rolls strangely off my tongue, but it's my way of showing him I mean it. He, on the other hand, looks like he recoils at the sound of it.
"I know I was a brat. I took it too far, and I should have respected the fact that you don't want..."
"I want."
Two words. Two words and every rehearsed sentence I had left packs up and walks out.
His gaze holds mine, and I can't look away. I'm not sure I want to.
"You want," I repeat, because I need to hear it in my own voice to make sure I heard it right the first time.
"I want. So badly." His voice matches the tormented look in his eyes. "But I can't."
He's watching me with something on his face I haven't seen before, like he'd used up the last of his reserve getting those words out.
"Callahan..."
"I'm not uncomfortable. That's not what this is." He says it firmly, no room for argument.
"Then what is it?"
His jaw works. His hands flex at his sides, curling and uncurling like he's fighting to keep them there. He lets out a breath through his nose, and closes the distance between us.
Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to see him. Close enough to feel the heat coming off of him. Even before he speaks, my eyes are burning.
"I am in agony." His voice cracks on the word and I watch him swallow it down. "Every single day. That is what this is."
I try to blink the tears back, the knot in my stomach pulling tighter.
"I feel it every day. All of it, all the time, and standing here not moving is the hardest thing I have ever done."
He stops, cursing under his breath, and I instinctively grab his shirt because I can't let him stop now.
"All I do is want." His gaze moves between my eyes, all over my face, and his chest is rising and falling under my fist. "And I can't act on it because I made a promise to your brother, and I don't break my promises."
Every word cuts me a little more than the last. Then I get to the part that makes absolutely no sense.
"You promised Rome?"
"Last year. Before you moved here." He swallows hard, avoiding eye contact.
"He asked me to stay away from you, and I agreed because you were twenty-one and leaving and I figured the promise wouldn't be hard to keep."
His tortured gaze holds mine for a long moment.
"I was wrong."
I can feel the hammering of his heart against my hand. I hold tighter, feeling the fabric bunch in my fist, feeling the heat of him through the cotton. Then I shove him away.
"What about what I want?" I sound angry, but I don't take it back. "What about what you want? You're standing here telling me you want, and I'm standing here wanting back, and you promised Rome?"
I let all my frustration show because I'm so angry with my brother that I'm shaking. With Callahan, too.
"Since when does Rome get to make that call?"
"He is protecting you. He's your brother."
"He's my brother, not my keeper!"
Angry isn't the right word. I'm baffled. My brother had been holding the key to this the whole time and nobody thought to mention it.
"I'm a grown woman, Callahan. Who I choose to want, date, or fuck is nobody's business but mine. Not Rome's." I jab a finger at my own chest. "Mine."
His eyes drop to my mouth. My brain registers it before the rest of me does. His gaze drops and stays there, and whatever he was trying to keep off his face loses its hold.
I don't move as my anger melts away at the look in his eyes. His hand comes up slowly, and I track it just as he's watching himself do it too, like he'd stepped slightly outside of himself and was waiting to see if he'd intervene.
His fingers reach me, skim the corner of my mouth, barely any contact at all. My whole body goes quiet, calm.
"I shouldn't."
Is he saying it to me or himself? My tears fall just as I close my eyes, but I can't take them back.
The moment he stops fighting himself is like a rope snapping. His hand slides from my face to the back of my neck, grips hard, and pulls me in.
He kisses me. He kisses me like the promise is already ash. Hard and hungry, one hand gripping the back of my neck, the other pulling me in by the waist until there's no space left between us.
His tongue slides against mine and I am lost. So this is what all the fuss was about. This is the kind of kiss that rewrites every kiss that came before it into a rough draft.
Then he makes a low sound, something between a groan and a growl, and I stop understanding anything at all.
He kisses me like it's both the best and worst thing he's ever done, and I match him on every count because I can't get enough. I want to climb inside this moment and live there. I want to pull him closer even though there's nowhere closer to go.
Then, too soon, his hands move to my shoulders and he steps back. Two feet of space opens up between us like a wound.
I'm standing in front of him with my hands still half-reaching for a shirt that's no longer in reach. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my throat.
He is breathing hard, and his mouth, which had just been on mine, is pressed together.
I make the mistake of meeting his eyes. Sea-green turmoil, nothing else.
"Fuck." Then again, quieter, through his teeth. "Fuck."
He meets my eyes again and I watch everything close back up. Piece by piece, right in front of me, like watching someone board up windows before a storm.
"Call..."
"I have to go."
He's already moving, already gone from the bay before I can find a single word, and I stand there watching the empty space he left because I don't know what else to do.
Agony. What a perfect word for what Callahan Holt has just thrust me into.
I stand there another moment, taking stock. My heart is still going at a pace that would concern me if I thought about it too hard.
I can still taste him. I can still hear the sound he'd made.
He'd kissed me like he'd been waiting so long that when he finally let himself, he couldn't be careful about it. And then he'd walked away like it was the worst mistake of his life.
I pick up my bag from where it had apparently landed during all of that. I don't even remember dropping it. I sling it over my shoulder and walk back out into the May afternoon, squinting in the brightness after the dim bay.
The parking lot is almost empty. His car is gone. He was in agony? Good. So was I. Now at least we were even.