Chapter 10 #2
"Girlfriend," I finished. "And she's not your sweetheart, your dear, or your concern."
Reeves blinked. “Hey, calm down, I was just making conversation—"
"No, you were being a predatory prick to a woman who could take you apart in thirty seconds if she felt you were worth the effort." I stepped closer. Holding back the bristling urge to rearrange the fucker’s face. “Which she doesn’t. I’m less generous."
I felt Willow's gaze on the side of my face. Didn't look at her.
Reeves's smile curdled. "Callum, I didn't mean—"
"We're done here." I put my hand on Willow's back, already turning us away. “I’m well aware of what you meant and if you ever try it again, I’ll make sure you aren’t able to comfortably hold a pen ever again. Got it?”
I guided her away before Reeves could respond. My hand stayed on her lower back—possessive, deliberate.
We walked until we found a quiet corner near a window overlooking the city. Only then did I turn to face her.
"Sorry," I said. "That was—"
"Don't apologize." Her voice was strange. Almost wondering. "No one's ever done that before."
"Done what?"
“Stood up for me.”
I tried to push down the immediate rage for how Willow’s been treated in the past. “No woman deserves to treated like that. I’m sorry. I would’ve rather punched his lights out but getting kicked out of a gallery doesn’t look great on my social card.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” she murmured with amusement but something else sparkled in her eyes. “But I appreciate what you did, even if you didn’t get to punch him in the nose.”
I smiled. “It would be nothing less than he deserves. Phillip has a reputation for being a handsy dickhead. The only reason he’s tolerated is because his daddy owns the largest plumbing company in the area and contracts with most of the people in this room.”
“The politics of connections.”
“Exactly.”
Her hand tightened in mine as her smile brightened. “Still, it felt good to have a champion. Thank you.”
This is what you deserve, I thought. This is how you should always be treated.
But I wanted to be the one who showed her.
The gallery had live music—a jazz quartet in the corner, their sound drifting through the space with the understated elegance that matched the venue.
People had started dancing. Couples moving in small circles near the musicians, champagne abandoned, bodies pressed close.
I should have suggested we mingle. Work the room. Maintain the performance that had become increasingly difficult to sustain.
Instead, I said: "Dance with me."
Willow raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't dance."
"I don't. Not well. But I want an excuse to hold you, and this seems less conspicuous than the alternatives."
Her mouth curved. "Smooth."
"I try."
We moved to the makeshift dance floor. My arm circled her waist; her hand found my shoulder. Close. Closer than the "tasteful public affection" we'd negotiated weeks ago in my office, back when I'd been foolish enough to think boundaries could contain this.
She fit against me in a way that made rational thought difficult. Her head came to my shoulder. Her fingers curled against my jacket. I could feel her heartbeat through the layers between us—steady, quickening.
Is she acting?
The question wouldn't leave me alone. Every time she leaned closer, every time her thumb traced a pattern on my shoulder, every time she looked up at me with warmth I couldn't parse—I wondered. Speculated. Searched for evidence one way or the other.
She was good at this. At performing intimacy, at selling the story of us. For all I knew, every gesture was calibrated for Richard Ashford's benefit, for the benefit of this room full of architects and developers who'd carry gossip back to their offices.
If this is performance, she deserves an Academy Award.
If it's not...
I pulled her closer. She came willingly, her head resting against my shoulder, her body relaxing into mine with a trust that made my throat tight.
Memory: the last time I'd danced with Jessica. A firm holiday party, a year before she'd filed for divorce. I'd put my arms around my wife and she'd held herself an inch away, body stiff, eyes scanning the room for more interesting company.
"People are watching, Callum," she'd said when I'd tried to pull her closer. "Don't make it weird."
I'd danced with her at a distance, performing the motions of a functioning marriage while the reality crumbled between us.
Willow wasn't holding herself away. Willow was pressed against me—warm and solid and present in a way Jessica hadn't been in years. In a way I'd forgotten people could be.
The contrast hit me. Not as a thought, but as a physical sensation. The difference between tolerance and welcome. Between obligation and want.
"You're quiet," Willow murmured against my shoulder.
"Thinking."
"About what?"
About how I've spent eight years convincing myself I wasn't capable of this. About how the last woman I held on a dance floor counted the minutes until she could escape. About how your head on my shoulder has undone a decade of careful emotional fortification.
"About how bad I am at dancing," I said.
"Liar." She pulled back enough to look at me. “You’re as bad at dancing as you are in the kitchen. I'm starting to believe there isn't anything you aren't just naturally good at.”
I chuckled. “You flatter me.”
“Not really, just being honest.”
The music shifted—a slower number, the kind that invited people to draw closer. Around us, couples swayed. The city glittered beyond the windows. And Willow Monroe looked at me with an openness that touched me.
"Callum."
"Yes?"
"I'm not acting."
My breath caught. Every muscle in my body went still.
"I should tell you that," she continued. "In case you were wondering. In case you thought—" She paused. "I'm not performing. Not anymore. Not with you."
I stared at her. Searched her face for evidence of deception and found none. Just Willow, raw and honest, admitting to a vulnerability I'd been too afraid to voice myself.
"Neither am I," I managed. "For the record."
Her smile broke through—real, radiant, completely unselfconscious. "Good. That would've been embarrassing otherwise."
"Extremely."
"Glad we cleared that up."
"Me too."
We kept dancing. The song ended. Another began. I didn't let go.
Graham caught me near the bar an hour later, while Willow was in the restroom.
"Who are you," he said, "and what have you done with Callum Hayes?"
I set down my empty champagne glass. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You laughed. Out loud. Multiple times. I counted four."
"That seems excessive."
"It's unprecedented." Graham leaned against the bar, studying me with undisguised curiosity. "You're different tonight. Looser. More... human."
"I'm always human."
"You're usually an impressive facsimile of human. Tonight you're actually enjoying yourself." His gaze moved to where Willow had disappeared. "This is her doing."
"Don't—"
"I'm not criticizing." He held up his hands. "I'm observing. Whatever's happening between you two, it's good for you. I haven't seen you like this in... honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen you like this."
I didn't have a response for that. The observation was too accurate to deflect, too close to home to acknowledge.
"Just be careful," Graham added. "You've got a lot riding on the next few months. The Ashford contract, the firm's trajectory, your reputation. Don't let—"
"Let what?"
"Don't let your heart overrule your head."
Too late, I wanted to say. Much too late.
We left at eleven.
The gallery crowd had thinned, the jazz quartet packing up, the waitstaff collecting abandoned glasses with the quiet efficiency of people who'd done this a thousand times. Willow's hand found mine as we walked to the car—casual, proprietary, no longer pretending.
I opened her door. She slid inside. I walked around to my side and sat behind the wheel.
Neither of us moved.
"Tonight was..." She trailed off. Tried again. "I had a good time. A real one. Not a 'this is going well for our arrangement' good time. An actual, genuine, I-didn't-want-it-to-end good time."
"Me too."
"You defended me to that slimy developer guy."
"Reeves deserves worse than what I gave him."
She turned in her seat, facing me. In the dim interior, her features were soft, her eyes bright.
"Callum." My name in her mouth did things to my composure. "What are we doing?"
The question I'd been avoiding. The question that had been building since the couch, since the piano, since the moment she'd walked into Brew & Bean and handed me a coffee with an insult and rearranged my entire life.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But I don't want to stop."
"Even though the arrangement—"
"Forget the arrangement." The vehemence in my voice surprised us both. "The arrangement was a scaffold. A reason to be near you without admitting why I wanted to be near you. It served its purpose. I don't need it anymore."
"What do you need?"
You, I thought. Just you.
"Time," I said instead. "Space to figure this out without the pressure of performing for an audience. A chance to see what we are when we're not pretending."
"We're not pretending," she reminded me. "You said so. I said so. We established that on the dance floor."
"We did."
"So what's stopping us?"
A dozen answers. The age gap. Her youth and my accumulated damage. The fact that I'd already failed at one relationship and couldn't promise I wouldn't fail at another. The very real possibility that I'd disappoint her the way I'd disappointed everyone else.
But none of those answers felt true tonight. Not after the gallery. Not after watching her hold her own against Philip Reeves, bicker with me about modern sculpture, rest her head on my shoulder as if she trusted me to hold her up.
"Nothing," I said. "Nothing's stopping us except my tendency toward overthinking."
"So stop overthinking."
"It's not that simple."
"It is, though." She reached across the console, her hand finding mine in the dark. "We like each other. We want each other. The arrangement gave us permission to explore that, and now we don't need the permission anymore. What else is there?"
I looked at our joined hands. Hers, small and warm and alive. Mine, capable of designing buildings that would stand for a century, incapable of holding onto the people I loved.
"I've never built anything this fragile before," I said. "Every project I've worked on—there are margins for error, redundancies, backup systems if the primary fails. But this—" I gestured between us. "There's no safety net. No contingency plan. If I get it wrong, I can't revise and resubmit."
“No one gets that option. You just have to go for it and hope for the best.” Her smile bloomed—slow, genuine, carrying a tenderness that made my throat tight. "Callum Hayes. Architect of things that endure. Building a relationship with no blueprints."
"It goes against everything I believe in."
"I know." She squeezed my hand. "That's how I know you mean it."
I started the car. Pulled out of the parking space. Drove us home through city streets that glittered with lights and possibility and the unfamiliar promise of a future I hadn't planned for.
Willow kept her hand in mine the entire way.
And I thought about architects—how we spend our lives designing structures meant to outlast us, meant to stand long after we're gone, meant to matter in ways that human connections are too fragile to guarantee.
I'd built buildings. Won awards. Constructed a career that anyone would envy.
But I'd never built anything that mattered as much as the woman sitting beside me, holding my hand in the dark, trusting me not to let go.
Four days left under the same roof.
For once in my life, I didn't want the project to end. I wanted to keep building. Keep risking. Keep showing up for a woman who'd stumbled into my carefully ordered existence and made me want more than efficiency and success and the cold comfort of enduring alone.
I wanted Willow Monroe.
And the wanting—raw, unguarded, stripped of every defense I'd spent decades constructing—was the most frightening thing I'd ever felt.
Also the most alive.
I'd take it.