Chapter 24 #2
“I am. I thought this would be tedious.” His fingers caress mine as he reaches for the pepper grinder between us.
I nearly drop my fork. “Is it?”
His eyes meet mine over the candlelight. “Not even slightly.”
Calloway reaches over with his napkin, dabbing at the corner of my mouth. “Sauce,” he explains, but his fingers linger against my lower lip.
“Thanks,” I manage, my voice breathy.
His hand returns to the table, but now his leg presses against mine. The pressure is deliberate, constant. Heat blooms across my skin.
“So,” he says, as if his thigh isn’t currently searing through my jeans, “why a cooking class?”
I take another sip of wine, the liquid doing nothing to cool the heat spreading through me. “I thought it would feel normal. Mundane.”
“And does it?” His thumb begins to trace slow, lazy circles on the back of my hand.
“Not even close.” I shift, and he shifts with me, closing the fractional space I’d created.
“Why not?” His fingers slide from my hand to my wrist, finding the frantic, jumping pulse point.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I accuse, my voice a strained whisper.
“Doing what, Jiya?” His expression is pure innocence, but his knee nudges a fraction higher against my inner thigh.
“Making it impossible to think.”
He tilts his head. “Does it bother you?”
“It’s making it hard to concentrate on dinner.”
“That’s not what I asked.” His fingers trace up my wrist, finding my pulse point. “Does it bother you?”
I swallow hard. “No.”
Calloway’s fingers haven’t left my wrist, his thumb still making slow circles against my pulse point. Our plates sit forgotten on the table, the flickering candlelight casting shadows across his sharp features.
“This pasta is getting cold,” he says, but his eyes aren’t on the food.
“It was cold ten minutes ago,” I reply.
Calloway leans forward, closing the already minimal distance between us. “Let’s go.”
“Shouldn’t we say goodbye to Chef Marco?” I ask as Calloway guides me toward the exit.
“He’s busy,” Calloway murmurs, his lips brushing my ear. “Robert and Susan are arguing about who gets custody of the leftover garlic bread. I think we can slip away.”
“Slipping away is a specialty of ours, isn’t it?”
He chuckles, a low, dark sound that vibrates through me. “I’ve never wanted to be unnoticed by you, Jiya.”
A low, unfamiliar hum starts in my stomach. It’s not the sharp thrill of a hunt or the cold dread of being caught. It’s something else, something warm and soft. “I’m not ready to go home yet.”
He gestures toward the end of the street. “There’s a park a few blocks down. Quiet this time of night.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you luring me to a secluded location, Calloway Frost?”
“Would you come if I were?” The question is low, serious.
“Probably,” I admit, and the honesty of it surprises me. I close the small distance between us, linking my arm through his. “But I’d bring a knife.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” His arm is a band of steel under my touch before he relaxes, accepting the contact.
We walk in a silence that isn’t empty, our steps falling into an easy rhythm. The park rises ahead, its iron gates like open arms. Calloway leads us down a winding path to a solitary bench overlooking a small pond.
I sit, leaving a deliberate, careful few inches of space between us. A question. He answers by moving closer, eliminating the space, his thigh a warm, solid line against mine.
A cool breeze ripples the water. He finds my hand in the space between us, his fingers lacing through mine. The contact is a quiet explosion.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, his voice soft in the darkness.
I could lie. I could deflect. But we’re past that. Honesty is the only currency we have left. “Why you turned me down. At the bar. The first time.”
His fingers tighten around mine. The moonlight catches in his pale eyes, turning them to silver. “Because the moment I saw you, I knew you were a complication. I liked you.”
I blink. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” he says, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “Liking someone is a liability. It creates attachments. It makes you…vulnerable. I don’t do vulnerable.”
“You’re doing it now,” I point out, my heart hammering against my ribs.
He turns on the bench to face me, our joined hands resting between us. “This is different.”
“Because we’re both killers?”
“Because you’re the first person I’ve ever met who speaks the same language.” The vulnerability in his voice catches me off guard.
I’ve seen this man covered in blood, seen him dismantle a human body with the detached focus of a master craftsman.
But this… The predator is gone. In his place is something raw and fractured.
It’s not about us being killers. It’s that I can see the fault lines in him, the architecture of his pain, as clearly as if it were mapped on his skin.
He’s terrified of me seeing it; I can feel the tremor in the hand holding mine.
But underneath the terror is something else, a desperate, flickering hope that I won’t look away.
The silence between us feels comfortable in a way I’ve never experienced, but there’s still so much I don’t know about him.
“Can I ask you something?”
He gives a single, tense nod.
I take a deep breath. “What happened to you?”
His hand slips from mine. He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, his face falling into shadow. The silence stretches, thick and heavy.
“My parents were artists,” he begins, his voice flat, detached. “They traveled. A lot. I was left behind.” He pauses. “One of their friends, another artist… He had a…preference. For young boys.”
A cold, clean rage settles in my chest. It’s a familiar feeling. The urge to find a name, a face, and correct a problem.
“How old were you?”
“Eight. The first time.”
I clench my fist to stop myself from reaching for him. “Your parents didn’t know?”
A bitter laugh escapes him. “I tried to tell them. They believed him when he told them it was—” his voice catches “—artistic.”
I don’t reach for him. I don’t offer empty comfort. I give him the only thing I have. The truth. “If he’s alive, I would kill him for you.”
Calloway’s head snaps up, his eyes searching mine in the darkness. He’s not looking for pity; he’s looking for a lie. He finds neither.
A ragged breath escapes him. “He’s already dead.”
“Good.”
“That's why I don’t do this,” he says, the words a torrent now. “Relationships. I don’t stay the night or cuddle.”
“You’ve never told anyone about—” I gesture vaguely, not wanting to name the trauma he’s just shared.
He shakes his head, a slow, deliberate motion. “I’ve never told anyone. Not the words. Not like this.” He runs a hand through his hair, the gesture frayed and uncertain. “Thorne and Xander… They’re observant. They’ve pieced together enough over the years to know they shouldn’t ask.”
“Why me, then?” I search his face for answers. “Why trust me with all of this?”
He takes a shaky breath, his jaw clenching as he fights some internal battle.
“Because when I’m with you, everything goes quiet.” His eyes find mine, raw and unguarded in a way that makes my chest tight. “The voices, the memories, all the noise in my head. It just stops.”
He shifts on the bench. A jogger passes by, earbuds in, oblivious to our conversation.
“I kept thinking if I was strong enough, I could stop wanting sex entirely. I’d go weeks or even months trying to ignore it, and then I’d break. I’d find someone, get that release, and immediately hate myself for being too weak to live without it.”
I lean closer on the bench, my hand finding his arm. “What happened to you was horrible, but your body responding the way bodies are supposed to respond? That doesn’t make you weak or broken or anything else you’re telling yourself.”
“I know that,” he says. “Intellectually, I know it. But knowing something and feeling it are different things. Knowing doesn’t make the guilt go away. Knowing doesn’t stop me from hating myself every time I want someone.”
He picks at a piece of peeling paint on the bench’s armrest. “But with you, it’s different. The guilt isn’t there. The noise stops. I can be present without punishing myself for feeling good.”
When he meets my eyes again, there’s something vulnerable but determined in them. “You’ve seen what I am. The darkness I carry. Most people would run, but you didn’t. You stood right there in it with me.”
His thumb traces across my knuckles. “Maybe nothing will come of this. Maybe you don’t want someone as fucked up as I am. But I figured you should know who you’re dealing with before you decide. So there it is. The truth. All of it.”
My pulse hammers against my throat. This beautiful man, who kills people and trusts me with his darkest secrets. Who just told me I make him feel whole for the first time in his life.
God, I want him. Right here, right now, on this bench in broad daylight. The thought makes my cheeks burn.
I bite my lower lip. What if I ruin this? What if I won’t be what he needs?
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit. “I’ve never been with someone just because I wanted to be.”
“So we figure it out together,” he says. His free hand comes up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers lingering against my cheek. “Two killers attempting normalcy. How hard could it be?”