Chapter 24
LILY
Will is cooking again, and he's talking to himself the whole time. Or talking to Anna, which is the same thing in this house.
I watch him move around the kitchen like he owns every inch of it again. The guilt I've been carrying since the accident fades by another degree every time I see him like this, thriving and whole and back in the place he belongs.
Callahan has been relegated to sous chef at best, occasional taste-tester at worst. He doesn't seem to mind.
Tonight it's roast chicken with herbs from the garden, and potatoes Will has spent an unreasonable amount of time cutting into perfectly even pieces. According to Will, uneven potatoes are a sign of a chaotic mind.
Cal pointed out that his potatoes had been uneven for almost thirty years and his mind was fine. Will gave him a pointed look and said nothing.
I'm sitting across from Callahan at the kitchen table.
The same table as always, the same chairs, the same view of the workshop through the window.
But it looks different now. Everything looks different now that I know what his hands feel like on my skin.
What his voice sounds like at two in the morning.
What happens when you call Callahan Holt vanilla in front of everyone he knows.
His foot finds mine under the table. I catch his eye. He's listening to Will talk about some commission, nodding at the right moments, beer halfway to his mouth. His face is the picture of a man engaged in a conversation about grain patterns.
His foot presses against mine. The corner of his mouth moves a fraction of an inch.
I press back. Hook my ankle around his.
I take a sip of water and fix my most attentive expression on Will. He's describing the specific challenges of a dovetail joint in cherry versus oak. I have no idea what a dovetail joint is, but I'm nodding like I do. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
"You're quiet tonight, Lily girl," Will says, glancing at me over his food.
"Just listening," I say easily. "The dovetail thing is fascinating."
"You don't know what a dovetail joint is," Callahan grins.
"I absolutely do not, but I'm enjoying the passion behind it."
Will chuckles, a warm rumble that fills the kitchen. Callahan's foot retreats to a respectable position under the table, and I mourn its loss immediately.
"I'm getting more water. Anyone need anything?"
Will shakes his head without looking up from his plate. Callahan says nothing, but I feel his eyes follow me across the kitchen.
I'm at the counter filling my glass from the filtered pitcher when I hear a chair push back. His footsteps are quiet on the kitchen floor. A man his size has no business moving that silently. I've stopped being surprised by it and started expecting it.
His hand finds my hip. He turns me around, my back hitting the counter edge. His mouth is on mine before the water pitcher is back on the table.
The kiss is filthy. No warmup, no preamble. His tongue in my mouth, his hand on the back of my neck, his body pressing me into the counter with an efficiency that tells me he's been thinking about this through every minute of Will's dovetail monologue.
It doesn't last long enough. He pulls back and I'm left gripping the counter behind me with both hands, the water abandoned, my face hot, my lips tingling.
"Your dad is right there," I whisper.
"He's looking at his chicken."
"Callahan, what's gotten into you?"
"You."
I check past his shoulder. I can't see Will properly from this angle, but knowing him, Callahan is probably right. I turn to him again and whisper.
"Then do it again."
His hand comes up to my face, his thumb tracing the line of my lower lip. The urgency from a moment ago is gone, replaced by something deeper.
"Gently," he says, tilting my face up. "So I don't bruise your mouth for everyone to see."
He kisses me again. Slow, like he promised.
His tongue sliding against mine, gentle and devastating and thorough.
His hand is warm, holding me still while he takes his time.
I melt against the counter. My hands find his shirt, curling into the fabric at his sides.
I kiss him back with everything I have and it still feels like he's giving more.
He pulls away gradually, his lips leaving mine in stages. His thumb sweeps once more across my lips before his hand drops.
"Water," he says, nodding at my forgotten glass. "That's what you came for."
"Right." My hands aren't entirely steady. "Water. Hydration. Important for health."
He gives me a smile that could devastate small countries and goes back to the table. I stand at the counter for another few seconds, collecting the scattered remains of my brain.
"Good water?" Will asks, looking up when I sit down.
"Excellent water, Will. Very refreshing."
"I just bet it was."
He picks up his fork and gives Callahan a look so brief I almost miss it. Callahan, on the other hand is the picture of innocence.
Ramsey and Poppy are due for dessert soon.
I'm looking forward to it and dreading it in equal measure.
Poppy also sees too much. She and Erin have been on me like hounds about Dean and the date they think ended in sex, and my only reliable escape route is asking Poppy to talk about the proposal.
Or what Ramsey did to her last night. That one's a constant favorite.
"Haven't seen much of Rome lately," Will says, bringing me back to the present.
Will and Rome don't spend much time together, but I can hear the genuine question underneath. He likes Rome. Likes the way Rome builds things, the care he takes with materials, the respect he shows craftsmanship. They've developed their own quiet friendship over the last few months.
"Honeymoon phase," I say, grinning. "Him and Erin are in full nesting mode. It's disgusting, honestly. But they're so happy that I can't even be mad about it. I just miss him."
Callahan watches me from across the table.
"Don't listen to her. She sees her brother every day. She's just spoiled."
It's a throwaway line. The kind of gentle ribbing that's normal at this table, normal between people who know each other well enough. It shouldn't land the way it does.
Spoiled. The word lands somewhere I keep locked and doesn't leave.
My smile holds. I'm good at holding smiles after watching my parents' backs as they walked toward another gate, another country, and not turn back for me.
"I'm not spoiled." I know immediately the tone is wrong. The lightness I've been carrying all evening has slipped, and what's underneath is showing.
Callahan's face drops. "Lily, I didn't mean..."
"I know." But it hurts. "I know you didn't."
Will is watching me with those brown eyes that miss nothing and say even less.
"Since I was ten Rome has been my mother, my father, my brother, my friend, my everything.
I love him more than I love anyone on this earth, and I know how lucky I am to have him.
" I hate the tears that threaten to come.
"So wanting your only family to always be around and eat dinner with you isn't the same thing as being spoiled. "
I can't look at them for a minute longer, so I just say, "It's the opposite. It's knowing what it feels like to eat dinner alone."
Will's hand moves across the table and covers mine. I stare at our hands and ache in my heart. This man has been more of a father to me in the last few months than my own has ever been. I squeeze his hand before I let go and stand up.
"I'm going to get some air."
I can feel Callahan's eyes on me, sad and heavy, but I can't look at him right now.
"Take a jacket," Will says. "It's cooled off."
I grab Cal's hoodie from the hook by the back door. It's the closest thing, and it smells like him. Right now I need both warmth and him, and the hoodie is the version of that I can have in front of other people.
The back of the Holt property is private in a way the front isn't. The yard slopes gently toward the tree line, no street, no sidewalk, no windows from neighboring houses. Just the smell of sawdust carrying faintly on the evening air.
I sit on the back step and pull the hoodie sleeves over my hands.
I shouldn't have said that. No one needs to know how small I feel, how bad I am at being a grown-up.
It's a given that people leave their homes, cross countries, build lives from nothing, all for education or a career.
Meanwhile, I follow my brother around like a lost puppy and can't even hack that.
I try not to dwell on the fact that my parents didn't even come or call for my high school graduation. How long I waited. How not a single word came.
Rome had been there. Rome, who hates people, had sat in the front row. He took photos. Bought me flowers. Told me he was proud of me. And when he saw the sadness in my eyes, he pulled me close and muttered, "Fuck the Paleolithic."
I didn't even care to attend my undergrad graduation a few months back because I had burned so hard to get there that there was nothing left of me by the time I did.
I hope I'm not ungrateful. I am not spoiled. I'm a girl who wants a big family to love, and to be close to them. Why is that so wrong?
But I only have Rome, so maybe that is wrong to keep asking for more from him still. He, just like me, needed parents, plural. The absence of that has shaped me in ways I'm still discovering, like finding bruises that only show up when someone presses on them.
Callahan hadn't meant to press, he didn't know the bruise was there. Nobody does, really. I keep it well hidden, even from myself, as I try to focus on the better parts of life.
And I do love life as it is now. I know I sometimes stir shit up just for the fun of it, but I only do it when I feel safe. Rome makes me feel safe. That's why I love tormenting him. He loves it too, if he's being honest.
I pull my knees to my chest and rest my chin on them, and think about Anna Holt.
Anna, who kept flowers in every room. Who went to lumber mills with her husband and touched every piece of wood until she found the warm one.
Anna, who was twenty-one with a baby, a happy marriage, and a kitchen that smelled like her favorite candle.
Anna, who had been a mother in every way my mother hadn't been.
I’m so dumb to complain, to miss, to grieve, parents who are very much alive, when Callahan lost his mother in a way that must have broken his heart. When Will, eleven years later, still loves her so much he carries her everywhere.
Time is a living thing these days. I hear the clock ticking every time the calendar turns another page. Interviews will start soon. Decision letters in the spring. And then I'll leave Harbor Hill and everyone in it, coming back only for holidays and birthdays.
I'm going to leave Callahan. The thought twists in my stomach like a knife. I press my forehead to my knees and breathe through it.
I'm foolish. Reckless. I walked into this with my eyes open, knowing the expiration date. Knowing that Callahan was a man who belonged here, who was staying here. And I wasn't.
Maybe I am spoiled. Maybe I'm used to having what I want. Maybe I went into this carelessly, not knowing it would hurt.
The back door opens and I know it's him before I turn around. My body knows his just by being in the same room.
His arms come around me from behind, strong and warm. He pulls me back against him, and I let him. I let myself lean into the breadth of him, the heat of him, the particular way he holds me that makes the rest of the world go quiet. He hugs with his whole body. His whole self.
His chin finds the top of my head, arms crossed over my chest. He holds me like he's trying to absorb whatever I'm carrying and take it into himself. I close my eyes and let him.
"I'm sorry," he says close to my ear, rough with regret. "That was thoughtless. I didn't think."
I turn in his arms as much as I can. Press my face into him, my hands flat against his back and hold on.
We stand there on the back step in the dark with the crickets and the distant sound of water.
I breathe him in. "You didn't know it was a sore spot," I say into his shirt. "It's not your fault."
"Still."
I tilt my head back to find his face. His eyes full of concern and guilt, but tender too. Something he probably thinks he's hiding and isn't.
I reach up and touch his jaw. "I'm okay. I just needed a minute."
He catches my hand and presses his lips to my palm and holds it there. How could Rome, or anyone, say this was wrong, when it's the only thing that's ever felt right?
"I have interviews soon," I say, carefully.
I feel the stillness, a slight bracing.
"For medical school. They start in the fall. I've applied to several programs."
"Where?"
"Johns Hopkins. Stanford." I pause. "And Chicago, where I was before."
He nods with each name, his attention on my hand where he's playing with my fingers. Like each name is landing on him heavier and heavier. I can feel him doing the math the same way I've been doing it for weeks. The geography of it. Hopkins is Baltimore. Stanford is California. Chicago is Chicago.
None of them are here. We sit in peace and let that sit between us. The cricket sounds feel louder than before. Inside, I hear Poppy and Ramsey have arrived.
This was always going to be the part that hurt. The fact that I was always going to leave and he was always going to stay.
I feel the tears, but I blink them back and smile at him instead.
I drag him up until we're standing facing each other, but his eyes aren't quite meeting mine.
So I go up on my tiptoes and kiss him, gently.
The kind of kiss that's more about closeness than heat.
My lips barely moving against his, just wanting to be there.
"Come with me," I say against his mouth. "For the interviews."
I half expect him to pull back. To give me the list of reasons, the impossibility of it. The irresponsibility of asking. I expect him to be sensible about it, because one of us has to be and it's never going to be me.
He searches my face with an expression I've never seen from him before. Unguarded. Raw and terrified and hopeful all at once.
He pulls me closer and kisses me, as gently as I kissed him. When he's satisfied he pulls back, his forehead dropping to mine, his eyes closed.
"Okay," he whispers.
I close my eyes and lean into the warmth of him, needing every inch of closeness. He holds on to me and the night holds both of us.
"Okay?" he asks against the top of my head.
"Okay," I whisper back.
Then I take his hand and we go inside, back to our friends and family, back to the warmth and the noise and the people who love us. And for tonight, that's enough.