Chapter 40
LILY
The morning after the wedding, I stand in my kitchen with a glass of water and absolutely no idea what comes next.
Erin and Rome had come home with me after the reception, afraid I'd shatter if they let me out of their sight. Which, fair. I probably looked like shattering was imminent.
I didn't want to talk when they got back. It was like my words had dried up, evaporated somewhere between the dance floor and my front door. Erin had tried, gently, and I'd just shaken my head.
Rome was small in a way I'd never seen him, his eyes carrying something a lot like guilt, and I'd given him a reassuring smile before deciding that bed was the only place I could survive the night.
Erin had slept with me, curled around my back like she could hold me together through sheer proximity. Rome had taken the couch, and I'd heard him get up twice in the night to check that I hadn't dissolved into nothing while he wasn't looking.
Now they're both in my bedroom, whispering about something. I hear the low murmur of their voices through the wall, the occasional pause that means they're listening for me. Checking. Waiting.
I take a sip of water and stare out the window at Main Street, at the morning light falling across the sidewalk, at the life I'm supposed to be leaving in a couple of weeks.
The knock at the door makes me jump. I cross the living room on autopilot, my brain not quite caught up to my feet, and pull open the door to find Callahan standing there.
He looks tired. There are shadows under his eyes and his hair is still damp and he's wearing a gray t-shirt just like the three others I have stolen from him
And he's smiling. He looks happy. I don't understand. I am feeling raw and broken, and he looks happy?
"When will I get over how beautiful you are?" he murmurs, more to himself than to me, his eyes tracing my face like he missed it.
I can't speak. I just stand there, holding the door, trying to make sense of him on my doorstep watching me like that.
"Can I come in?"
I nod and step back, and he moves past me into the apartment.
He smells freshly showered, that familiar combination of his shampoo and body wash, the same ones he keeps in my bathroom now because mine are "too expensive and girly.
" The scent of him hits me straight to my foolish heart, and I have to close my eyes for a second to steady myself.
We end up in the kitchen, facing each other across the small space. He seems nervous, his hands flexing at his sides, and it would be adorable if he wasn't breaking my heart.
He reaches out and takes the glass of water from my hand. He drinks the whole thing in three long swallows, then sets it on the counter with a soft click.
"I'm coming with you."
I blink. And then I blink again. "What?"
"Chicago." His eyes hold mine. "I'm coming with you."
I stare at him. My brain is running behind my pulse, trying to catch up, trying to make sense of the words in the order he said them. Chicago. Coming. With me.
"Callahan..."
"I love you."
And just like that everything in me goes still. Calm. Quiet. Peaceful. Like a lake after a storm, all the churning finally settling into stillness. The fight leaves my body so completely that I have to set a hand on the counter to hold myself up.
He takes a step closer, then stops himself, backs up slightly to give me space. Like he knows I need room to process this. Like he's spent enough time studying me to understand exactly how I work.
"I wanted to tell you last night," he says on a swallow.
"I have loved you since the moment I saw you and you told me you weren't everyone."
My tears are impossible to hold back, blurring his face in front of me.
He takes one step closer. "I have loved you every single day since then."
His eyes hold no doubt. Just certainty, the kind that comes from finally saying something you've been holding back for far too long.
"I spent a year avoiding you." His voice catches slightly. "And almost another falling more and more in love with you. And I said nothing because I thought it was all impossible and I needed to let you go in order to love you properly."
He pauses, and something shifts in his expression.
"But I can't do that."
He once told me he was in agony because of me. I remember that day, the hunger in his face for something he couldn't have and couldn't stop wanting. All of that is visible right now, written across his face, finally allowed to exist in the open.
He loves me. I close my eyes to savor the moment, and hot tears spill down my cheeks.
"Don't cry, please." His voice goes thick, urgent. "I love you so much. And I am never leaving you. Ever."
I break. I cross the space between us and go into his waiting arms, and he catches me like he's been waiting his whole life for exactly this.
We cling to each other, my tears soaking into his shirt, his voice in my ear telling me over and over how much he loves me. The words come out a litany, a prayer, a promise he's making to both of us.
"You're coming with me?" I whisper it against his shoulder, still not quite believing.
"I'm coming wherever you go."
"But all your life is here."
"You are my life."
I have to kiss him. I go up on the tips of my toes and find his mouth with mine, and he meets me halfway, his hands coming up to frame my face.
We kiss and kiss and kiss, and it feels like every kiss we've ever shared was a rehearsal. A practice run. This is the real one. This is the one that counts.
I pull back gasping, and his forehead drops to mine. We're both panting, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones, wiping away tears that keep coming no matter how many times he brushes them away.
"Say it again," I manage.
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, Lily Moreland." His voice breaks on it, raw and full. "Fuck, I just love you so much."
"I love you, too."
We kiss again, murmuring love and promises against each other's mouths, words that don't quite form all the way but don't need to.
"Wait." I pull back, my hands flat against him. "Wait."
He stills immediately, his eyes searching my face.
"What about your dad?" The worry that's been there since the first time I imagined this scenario rises to the surface. "Callahan. Your dad. You can't leave him. He needs you. He can't be alone in that house."
He grins. It's tired and happy, the kind of grin I've seen maybe three times since I've known him. It changes his whole face, makes him look younger and lighter and impossibly beautiful, and my stomach flips.
"He said he'd come with us."
I stare at him. "No way."
"I went home last night and told him everything." His hands settle on my hips, anchoring us both. "He said if I wouldn't go alone, he'd go too."
"No," I manage.
"He said Chicago has wood. Chicago has workshops." Cal's grin softens into tenderness. "He said Mom doesn't need a zip code. He said she'd haunt him properly if he let me lose you over a workbench."
The crying that comes out of me is full-body, ugly, gasping crying, the kind that makes your whole face crumple and your shoulders heave and you can't breathe between the sobs.
I press my face into him, and weep for his father. For that gentle man, who has every reason to hold onto his son and his home and his memories. And he's willing to walk away from all of it. For Callahan. For me.
My own father wasn't able to do that for me when I was a child. He chose himself, chose easy, chose gone. But Will would choose us. Will would follow.
"I love him," I sob into his shirt. "I love your dad so much."
"He loves you, too. You made him happy, baby. You made us both happy."
He swallows hard, his brows coming together as he searches his words.
"Since you came along, he's been more alive than I've seen him in years. I can't thank you enough for that."
I cry harder, which I hadn't thought was physically possible. Happy tears, all of them, but my eyes burn and Callahan's shirt is ruined beyond all redemption.
"Callahan..."
"Yeah, baby?"
"I love you."
"I hope you always will."
"I love you very much and I am going to say it constantly now." I pull back just enough to see his face through blurry eyes. "Multiple times a day. You'll get sick of it."
"I will not get sick of it."
"You say that now." I wipe my face with the back of my hand, probably smearing everything everywhere. "Give it a week. I'm relentless."
He laughs and kisses me again, the kind of kiss that has time in it. The kind that isn't rushing toward anything because it doesn't have to. We have time now. The countdown has stopped.
"Safe to say you're shit at keeping promises, Holt."
We both startle and break apart to find Rome and Erin standing in my living room, watching us with vastly different expressions.
Oh. Right. They're here.
Rome is frowning, looking like someone has offended him deeply by being happy in his presence. Erin is beaming at me with so much love and joy that I can feel it from across the room.
Callahan looks at me with surprise, and I laugh. "I forgot they were here."
He scoffs and shakes his head, one hand still warm on my hip. "Of course I had to have your fucking brother as a witness to all this."
"Hey, be happy you didn't lose your head and fuck me before I remembered they were here."
He tries to hold it back, but he can't. The laugh breaks out of him, and then I'm laughing too, both of us cracking up in my kitchen like idiots. It's probably the relief, the adrenaline of the past two days finally slipping, but we're laughing together at the absurd situation and I can't stop.
"You are both children and deserve each other," Rome mutters.
Erin is holding onto his arm, and if I didn't know better, I'd say she's caressing his forearms. Which. Yuck.
"If you both are finished," Rome says, beyond annoyed. "What's this about Will also coming?"
"He's ready to come with us." Callahan's arm tightens around me. "If that's what it takes."
"That's insanity."
"I think that's so sweet," Erin counters, her eyes soft.
"No, man." Callahan meets Rome's gaze head on. "That's how my father loves."