Chapter 19
LILY
The thing about Dean Calloway is that he has a very nice face.
I've been staring at it for forty-five minutes now and I can confirm: objectively, verifiably nice. Good jaw. Eyes that are some kind of hazel, the kind that probably shifts in different light. Candlelight. Morning sun. Whatever.
He's funny in that small-town way, dry and self-deprecating, built from years of having nothing else to do but develop a personality.
He's easy to talk to and he laughs at the right moments and he hasn't once made me feel like I need to perform.
I am also completely, catastrophically unmoved. Which is fine. This is fine.
I take a sip of my drink and remind myself why I'm here. Rome has been slowly losing his mind that I'm spending my gap year on just Harbor Hill. Erin says I'm wasting my summer on being boring. Poppy was more direct.
"You are twenty-two years old and hot, and you are spending your break on old people and not enough sex."
She's not wrong. She's also very wrong. I love every old person in this town, genuinely, without irony, which is maybe its own kind of problem.
But I get the point. There's a version of my summer that looks less like a retiree's social calendar, and everyone in my life feels strongly that I should be living it.
So. Date.
Dean is the grandson of somebody in this town.
Ruth's neighbor's cousin, maybe. He was sweet when he walked into Erin's shop last week, all easy smile and good manners.
His face is, as established, very nice. And when he came back the next day to ask me out, I said yes with a smile and a heart heavy as a stone.
Because here's the thing I'm not thinking about. Callahan and I have gone back to our favorite game since the car. It's called avoidance, and I'm playing it with genuine dedication.
The thing is, I've been kissed before. I have a whole catalogue of kisses. Nice ones. Perfectly fine ones. One very enthusiastic one from a guy at a party sophomore year who clearly thought he'd invented kissing.
Callahan didn't kiss me. He unraveled me. Three days later, I still hadn't recovered.
I am, unexpectedly, a little afraid. Not of him. Never of him. But of the very clear implication that I've been walking around for years thinking I understood something I did not understand at all.
So I'm on a date with Dean Calloway, who has a very nice face.
He picked this restaurant on Fourth because he said the nachos were good, and he wasn't wrong about the nachos. He's asked me actual questions about pre-med and listened to the answers instead of waiting to talk about himself. He's good. He's perfectly good and I'm counting the nachos.
"You've gone somewhere," Dean says, tilting his head at me.
I refocus. Smile. "Sorry. Long week."
"Gap year long week or just regular person long week?"
"Is there a difference?" I reach for my drink again. "I have too much time and I'm filling it badly and my body has forgotten what a schedule feels like."
Dean laughs. It's a good laugh, the kind of laugh a person should want directed at them. I feel nothing.
Then something catches in my peripheral vision before I can register why, and maybe I'm imagining it, but I know before I turn around because my body has already decided to be stupid about this.
Of course. Of course he's here. Of course this is happening when I try to move on.
Then he's at our table, standing over me with an expression I don't get time to read.
Callahan reaches out and takes my face in his hand, not even a little gently.
He's big enough that his palm spans my jaw, fingers curling in, thumb pressing into my cheek, and I get one full second of him before my brain catches up.
Sea-green eyes. A jaw held so tight I can almost see the effort of it. He smells like outside. He looks like trouble.
He turns my face toward him, tilting it up like I belong to him.
"Finish your little playdate," he says, voice low and dangerous. "I'm driving you home."
Then he pushes his tongue into my mouth. One slow, filthy lick. My hand comes up to grab his wrist, thick enough that my fingers don't meet, and I don't know if I'm going to pull him closer or push him back. Which is the whole problem with Callahan and me.
Then he lets go of my face and steps back and walks out without so much as a glance at Dean.
The restaurant resumes its regular volume. My blood has not gotten that memo. My face is hot. Other parts of me are also hot, which I'm going to need a moment to process.
Dean watches him leave, then turns to me with raised eyebrows, clearly in shock.
"I want you to know I think you're great," he says pleasantly. "Genuinely. But I am also pretty and I would very much like to stay that way, so…"
I laugh, grateful for the help.
"It's not that serious."
“Well, I’m serious. Have you seen the size of him?"
He gestures to his face, making a sweeping motion. "I have a good thing going with this face. I'm not letting Cal freaking Holt mess with that."
I laugh harder than I've laughed all night.
"He's not going to do anything to your face. I think."
"That is deeply not reassuring," he sighs, leaning back to study me. "I am pretty sure he's not your boyfriend seeing as you're here, but he definitely looked like a jealous boyfriend."
I let out a shaky breath and take a sip of ice water. I feel like I'm on fire.
"You're not even a little bit mad?" Dean asks.
"I'm furious," I admit, but I can't wipe the smile off my face.
He picks up a nacho and points it at me.
"You know what? You deserve nothing less than whatever got that man to act like that in public."
Dean is a sweetheart. Dean is exactly what a person is supposed to want, and I just spent forty-five minutes across from him waiting to want it.
All I've ever actually wanted was for Callahan to pull and not push. I am so tired of both of us being so careful about something that is making me reckless from the inside out.
I have no idea how he found out I was here. I am, however, staying put for a few more minutes, because I'm not about to walk out of here all biddable and solved, like I'm just going to hop to it because he told me to.
So I have another drink. I finish my date with a man who has a very nice face.
Sixteen minutes later, I walk out. His black car is right outside, parked under a streetlight, engine running. I get in without looking at him, buckle my seatbelt, and stare straight through the windshield.
"I know you have a lot of words," he grits out, "but give me a minute."
I press my lips together and turn to the window.
He's not driving the way he usually drives. I've been in this car enough times to know. Both hands on the wheel, always. I've understood for a while now that both hands on the wheel means both hands accounted for.
Tonight only one hand is on the wheel. Black watch on his wrist, the streetlights catching it every few seconds as he steers. White t-shirt, jeans, the exact outfit a man wears when he isn't trying.
I turn back to the window and do my best to calm my frantic pulse. It doesn't work, but I try.
The silence in the car is dense and I decide to let it stay that way. Callahan is coming apart right next to me. I can see it in the tense line of his shoulders, in the way his fingers flex on the wheel.
I like that he walked into that restaurant and put his hands on me like he had the right to. I like that he's sitting over there trying to hold himself together and not quite managing it.
That probably says something about me, but Callahan is the kind of man who holds doors and checks in and never pushes. The kind of man who has kept his hands to himself for months even when I could feel how much he didn't want to.
So the fact that he finally couldn't help it? Yeah. I like that a lot.
He pulls up outside my building and kills the engine. I unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door, and I don't look back when I say it.
"Your minute is up."
I don't wait for an answer. I don't need to. I hear his door open behind me, hear his footsteps on the pavement.
I turn around once we enter my place and he stays there, leaning against the doorframe like he's been waiting a while.
He's not composed anymore. He's holding very still, and I think about every inch he's kept between us and how hard it must have been. I see it now. I don't know how I ever convinced myself I couldn't.
He pushes off the doorframe and comes toward me and I take one step back before his hand finds my face, and then I'm not going anywhere.
There's just his mouth coming down on mine. The lick at the restaurant was a preview. This is the actual thing, and the actual thing pulls a sound out of me I have never made before.
His thumb presses into my cheek and I open for him, letting him take my mouth with the same force he's using to hold me there.
I soften against him, and it doesn't feel like giving in.
It feels like recognition. Like my body has been waiting for someone to stop being careful with it and I just never knew how to ask.
I sigh into him and his mouth comes harder down on mine. Lips bruising, tongue pushing past my teeth, and I moan into it. My hands fist in his shirt. My back finds the wall and I stop noticing anything that isn't him.
His body presses flush against mine, all solid muscle and heat, pinning me there. One hand stays on my face, tilting my head exactly where he wants it, while the other slides down my side and grips my hip hard enough that I know I'll feel it tomorrow.
That undoes me a little. More than a little. The way he's kissing me leaves no room for anything except being kissed, and I go boneless against him.
"Lily," he rasps roughly.
This feels too big. Like something I don't know how to navigate. I try to lighten the mood, smirking up at him even with my pulse frantic.
"What, Callahan? Finally gonna do something about all that staring?"
A low sound comes out of him that I feel more than hear, and he rolls his forehead against mine while his hands move over my body.
"Nice dress," he murmurs gruffly, eyes shut.