Chapter 13
thirteen
WILLOW
I still hadn’t completely gotten over the fact that I was in Callum Hayes's bed.
Not the bed itself—I'd adapted to the obscene thread count and the mattress that probably cost more than my car in approximately four seconds.
My body was a traitor with excellent taste.
No, the adjustment issue was the man beside me.
Specifically, the man's arm draped across my waist, his nose buried in my hair, his breathing deep and rhythmic against the back of my neck.
Callum Hayes spooned.
The man who alphabetized his architecture books by sub-genre, who ironed his pocket squares, who drank his coffee black as a moral stance—that man curled around me in his sleep with the possessiveness of a person who'd forgotten how to let go.
It did things to me every single morning.
I lay still, noting the details I'd been accumulating over three days of waking up next to him.
He ran warm. His left hand always ended up on my stomach, palm flat, fingers spread.
He made a sound in his sleep—not a snore, not a groan, more of a low rumble that vibrated against my spine.
His legs were long enough that his feet hung off the edge of the mattress, which I found unreasonably endearing for a man who'd designed buildings to accommodate human proportions.
His alarm would go off at five-forty-five. He'd shower, dress, make coffee in that French press he treated with the reverence of a holy artifact, and be out the door by six-thirty with the Swiss-clock punctuality that should've annoyed me.
And realizing that despite starting his day with coffee in the privacy of his kitchen had never stopped him from stopping by my shop to get another black coffee made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I checked my phone. Five-twenty-three. Twenty-two minutes before his alarm.
I had two options: slip out, shower, maintain the illusion that I was a person who didn't drool in her sleep.
Or stay. Exist in this warm pocket of bed and man and the particular luxury of being held by a person who wanted to hold me.
I stayed.
Behind me, Callum stirred. His arm tightened. His mouth found the curve where my neck met my shoulder, pressed a kiss there—still mostly asleep, operating on autopilot, which made it better. The conscious kisses were devastating. The unconscious ones were annihilating.
"Morning," I said.
A sound against my skin. Not a word. An acknowledgment of my existence rendered in vibration. Then: "What time is it?"
"Early. Go back to sleep."
"Can't." His hand slid from my stomach to my hip. "You're here."
"I've been here all night. That didn't stop you from snoring."
"I don't snore."
"You have a deviated septum's opinion of yourself."
His laugh was a rumble against my spine. He pulled me tighter, and I let myself be pulled, and for five minutes we lay there in the gray pre-dawn of his ridiculous apartment while the city woke up around us.
This was the part nobody warned you about.
Not the sex—though, God, the sex was a revelation I was still processing—but the mornings.
The ordinary, half-conscious, bad-breath-and-bedhead mornings when a person chose to hold you before either of you had assembled your public selves.
This was where the real danger lived. In the tenderness of a man who kissed your shoulder before he opened his eyes.
Callum Hayes was going to ruin me. Not with grand gestures or expensive gifts or the kind of cinematic declarations that made good Instagram captions.
With this. With mornings. With the quiet, accumulating evidence that he wanted me here—not as a performance, not as a prop for Richard Ashford's benefit, but as a permanent fixture in the architecture of his day.
I was in so much trouble.
His alarm went off. He reached over me to silence it—his body pressing into mine in a way that was unfair at five-forty-five in the morning—and then he was up. Shower running. The muffled sounds of a man with a routine so ingrained it functioned on autopilot.
I sprawled into the warm space he'd vacated, starfished across his absurdly large bed, and grabbed my phone.
Three texts from Mika.
5:02 AM: you alive? 5:04 AM: or has mr. silver fox literally screwed you into another dimension 5:07 AM: if you don't respond by 6 I'm calling a welfare check
I typed back: Alive. Very alive. Possibly too alive. My nervous system has been permanently recalibrated.
Her response was instant. DETAILS. NOW. Scale of 1-10 how good.
I stared at the ceiling. Thought about last night—Callum's mouth on my neck, his hands anchoring my hips, the way he'd said my name at the end as though it were the only syllable that mattered.
Eleven, I typed. Then deleted it. Then typed it again and hit send before I could overthink.
Mika's response was seventeen exclamation points followed by a GIF of a woman fanning herself.
I'm happy for you, she sent a moment later. You deserve this. Also I need a full debrief at work tomorrow but for now just enjoy it you disaster of a human being.
I set the phone down and smiled at the ceiling. Oh, I fully plan to.
Callum emerged from the bathroom in a towel, hair damp, and I watched him cross to the closet with the shameless appreciation of a woman who'd earned the viewing rights.
"Stop staring," he said without turning around.
"Can't. It's a free country and you're walking around half-naked."
"In my own bedroom."
"Details." I propped myself up on one elbow. "Hey. What are you doing today?"
"Working. The Riverside sustainability report is overdue. Graham's been sending passive-aggressive emails about the material samples." He selected a shirt—white, crisp, indistinguishable from the fourteen other white shirts hanging in neat formation. "Why?"
"It's Saturday."
His hand paused on the hanger. "Is it?"
"Callum. It's Saturday."
"I work Saturdays."
"You work every day. That’s bad for your health.” I sat up, pulling the sheet around me—a gesture of modesty that was absurd given what we'd done in this bed approximately nine hours ago. "Take the day off."
"I can't just—"
"You can. You're a founding partner. You set the rules. Declare a personal holiday. Callum Hayes Day. I'll make a banner."
"The report—"
"Will still be overdue tomorrow. The material samples aren't going to decompose overnight." I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. "Spend the day with me."
He turned, shirt in hand, and looked at me with a calculation I recognized—the mental arithmetic of a man weighing obligation against desire, running the numbers on whether he could afford to be irresponsible.
"Doing what?" he asked.
“For starters? Me." I stood, gathered his discarded t-shirt from the floor, pulled it over my head. “But after that? A date. A real one. With your actual girlfriend, who is asking you an actual question and would appreciate an actual answer."
Actual girlfriend. The phrase dropped between us—new, untested, carrying a charge.
His mouth curved. "You're very demanding."
"You knew that when you signed up."
"I didn't sign up for this. I signed up for a business arrangement."
"Contracts evolve. Consider this an addendum." I padded to him, bare feet on his heated floors, lifting on my toes to plant a kiss on his delicious lips. “Yes or no?”
I felt his energy change, that primal shift that curled my toes and made me feel like I was about to get destroyed in the best way.
“That sounds suspiciously manipulative."
"I learned from the best." I patted his chest. “Now,” I pulled his towel free, exposing his hard shaft springing from a nest of dark hair. I grinned at the discovery. “Oh! I think that’s a pretty solid answer to my plan, wouldn’t you say?”
I had exactly two seconds before Callum scooped me up and carried me to the bed.
I squealed with laughter as Callum proceeded to knock the first task off the list.
God, I loved a man with a work ethic.
An hour later, we were both showered, dressed and ready for my planned day of hooky but I threw him a curveball that immediately made him look endearingly apprehensive.
“I’m driving,” I announced.
“You?”
“That’s right. You need to relax. Let me show you a good time for a change.”
He grinned. “You did a pretty good job of that already…I thoroughly enjoyed the way you—”
I mock gasped and shushed him with a finger against his lips. “Shoosh!” He grinned and kissed my finger but the devilish look in his eye remained as he quipped, “I guess it’s a good thing I just got my tetanus shot booster.”
I laughed, then stuck my tongue out.
My Honda Accord was not winning any awards in the aesthetic department but she was reliable, if not pretty.
And, if I’m being honest, a little smelly.
The passenger seat still harbored a rogue French fry from its archaeological period.
The dashboard bore a crack that I'd been covering with a sunflower sticker since last spring.
The radio worked on three of its six preset buttons.
And the air freshener I'd hung from the rearview mirror—a tiny pine tree, optimistically labeled "Forest Breeze"—had long since surrendered to the prevailing aroma of drive-through heritage.
Callum folded himself into the passenger seat with the careful movements of a man entering a structure he suspected was not up to code.
He wore jeans. Actual denim. Dark wash, well-fitting, paired with a navy pullover that made his gray eyes look almost blue.
I'd never seen him in jeans. The effect was disorienting—less architect, more human.
A dad at a Saturday farmer's market. A guy you'd see carrying groceries.
A man who knew how to make a woman come six ways from Sunday and enjoyed the process.
I wanted to eat him alive.
"Your seat belt mechanism is broken," he observed.
"It's not broken. You have to jiggle it."
He jiggled. The belt clicked. His gaze swept the interior with the barely contained anguish of a man whose own vehicle had never seen a crumb.