Chapter 17
Milo
Ilet myself in with my key. The apartment smells like garlic, basil, and Callum. I drop my bag by the door where it always goes, kick off my shoes, and start talking before I'm even fully inside because I can't hold it in for another second.
"She knew," I announce, rounding the corner into the kitchen.
Callum is standing at the stove in a worn T-shirt and bare feet, stirring the pasta thing he makes when he doesn't want to think about dinner.
"Ava. She knew the whole time," I say, leaning against the counter. "About my crush. She knew, Callum. Since the first time you picked her up from campus—she said I froze mid-sentence and she just figured it out."
Callum turns. He gives me that steady, easy look. The one of a man standing in his kitchen, unhurried, just watching the person who walked through his door.
"She told you that?" he asks, handing me a piece of bread with butter on it because he can't help himself. He feeds everyone who enters his orbit.
"She told me that. And then she told me you iron your T-shirts, which I already suspected because I've seen the ironing board, but hearing your sister confirm it as a lifelong pathology was extremely validating."
"It's not a pathology. Wrinkles are—"
"Disrespectful. She told me that too."
He shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth ticks up in that not-quite-smile that means he's enjoying himself but refuses to give me the satisfaction of showing it. "What else did my sister share about me?"
"Dog food commercial. Two Christmases ago. Tears."
"She swore on our mother's life—"
"And she broke that oath with zero hesitation, which honestly, I respect." I take a bite of the bread. The kitchen is full of steam, the light hitting that golden, late-afternoon softness.
He asks about the rest of it, the real part where Ava said she knew and I admitted how ashamed I'd been, and he listens while he plates the pasta.
Two bowls. I grab the forks without being asked because I know exactly where they are.
This is my kitchen too, and that thought doesn't make me flinch anymore.
"She invited me to your dad's birthday," I say, forking pasta into my mouth as we sit across from each other at the small table by the window. "As your date. Not as her friend."
"Good."
"I'm bringing cookies."
"My mom will love you."
"Your mom will love my cookies. I'll earn the rest."
He looks at me across the table, his expression settling into something quiet and certain. He's been waiting for this. Not anxiously, not bracing himself for me to run, but patiently waiting for me to show up at his door and tell him the world didn't end.
"I should probably tell the guys I'm basically moved out," I say, the words slipping out as easily as mentioning the weather. "My toothbrush has been here for three weeks. My good sweater is in your closet. I think I have more food in your fridge than in theirs."
"Our fridge," Callum corrects quietly.
It takes a second to land. "Our fridge," I repeat. "Our kitchen. Our Gerald."
"Gerald was always ours."
"Gerald was mine. I named him."
"You named him in my apartment. Joint custody at minimum."
The corner of his mouth lifts again. We're negotiating plant custody across a dinner table, and neither of us has actually said the words "move in" because we don't need to. It happened in inches—the drawer, the key, the toothbrush, the sweater—and here we are.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay," he agrees.
We eat. He tells me about Marco's mom's gallbladder—she's fine, it was gallstones, Marco cried at the hospital, which Callum refuses to admit he finds endearing—and I steal bread off his plate. He lets me.
I watch him talk about the new probie at the station who doesn't know how to coil a hose.
His hands gesture, his forearms flex, the worn collar of his T-shirt showing the dip of his collarbone.
Ava mentioned he was staring at his phone all day waiting for me to text.
I think about his hands and his mouth, and the fact that I haven't touched him properly since the couch, and my body is suddenly very aware of the gap.
He catches me looking. "What?"
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"The thing where you pretend you're not staring at my mouth while I talk. Except you're the one talking and I'm the one staring at your mouth, so I guess I'm doing it." I put my fork down. "You have pasta sauce on your lip."
He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Gone?"
"No." I lean across the table and kiss him. He tastes like garlic and basil, and I smile against his lips when I feel his surprise—not at the kiss, but at the version of me who just leaned across a dinner table and took it.
"Still there," I murmur against his mouth, which is a lie.
He pulls me closer and kisses me back. His hand comes up to the side of my neck, his thumb resting on my jaw. The smile fades into something heavier. I climb out of my chair because the table is in the way and that's unacceptable.
"The pasta—" he starts.
"Is cold."
"It's not cold, I just—"
"Do you want to eat pasta or do you want to kiss me? Because I'm making an executive decision and the pasta is losing."
He lets out a real laugh, the kind that comes from deep in his chest and makes his eyes crinkle.
He pushes his chair back, and I'm in his lap in two seconds flat.
My knees bracket his thighs, and his palms settle on my hips like they were built exclusively for that spot.
The kissing goes from playful to heated in the time it takes me to roll my hips once.
"Ava also told me," I say between kisses, "that you were a terrible teenager."
"Irrelevant."
"Apparently you had a phase where you wore cargo shorts exclusively."
"I'm not discussing this while you're on my lap."
"Cargo shorts, Callum. With the little snaps on the pockets."
He shuts me up by kissing me hard enough that my head tips back.
His mouth drags down my jaw to my neck, and the cargo shorts commentary dies in my throat, replaced by a pathetic, needy sound.
His grip slides from my hips to my ass, pulling me flush against him.
I can feel him through his jeans, hard and thick, and a heavy kick of heat pools low in my stomach.
"Bedroom," I say, my voice dropping into a register I didn't know I had three weeks ago.
"You sure? I think there were more embarrassing stories—"
I bite his neck. Not hard—just enough. He makes a low sound that tells me exactly how the rest of this evening is going to go.
He stands up with me still wrapped around him. I yelp, grabbing his shoulders as he carries me down the hall. It's ridiculous and incredibly hot. I laugh into his neck, my legs locked around his waist as he navigates the doorframe. One of us clips the wall, he swears, and I laugh harder.
He drops me onto the bed—into the nest, our nest, the tangled pile of blankets that smell like both of us mixed together.
I pull him down on top of me and kiss the swear word right off his mouth.
His body covers mine, heavy and solid, and I arch up against him.
The weight of him is my favorite thing in the world, and I'm done being patient.
"Off," I say, tugging at his shirt.
He pulls it over his head. I take the opportunity to shove him sideways and climb on top of him. His back hits the mattress and he looks up at me—hair messed up, chest bare, his palms landing heavy on my thighs. His expression shifts from surprise to a dark, wrecked kind of hunger.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi."
I pull my own shirt off and toss it over my shoulder. Callum's fingers slide up my thighs to my hips, tracing my waist. He looks at me like I'm something he didn't know he was allowed to ask for.
"You're staring," I tell him.
"Yeah." He doesn't apologize. His thumbs trace circles on my hip bones, his eyes tracking the movement.
"Good," I say. I roll my hips down against him.
The friction through our denim drags a groan out of both of us.
Getting the jeans off takes longer than it should.
He tries to help with mine, pulls the wrong way, and I accidentally kick him.
He retaliates by grabbing my ankle and pressing his lips to the inside of it, which is entirely unfair because it makes me shiver and forget what I was doing.
His jeans are harder—he's hard, and the denim doesn't want to cooperate.
I finally get them off and shove them off the side of the bed.
Skin to skin. I straddle him again, settling onto his hips. His cock presses against me, thick and hot. I can feel every inch of it sliding against my slick, and my body clenches around nothing, desperate for what comes next. His thumbs press into the inside of my thighs.
I reach back and wrap my hand around his cock. He sucks in a sharp breath. I smile down at him, because that sound belongs to me.
"You're so fucked right now," I tell him. My voice is low, teasing, coming from a version of myself I've been building since the night I showed up at his door and chose not to run.
"Am I?" he rasps.
"Mm-hm." I position him against me, the broad head of his cock pressing right where I'm soaked and open. "You deleted your app. You gave me a key. You let me name a plant."
I sink down. Slow, deliberate. Taking him in one long, steady slide that stretches me open and fills me up perfectly. I close my eyes as the fullness hits. "You're stuck with me."
His grip tightens on my hips hard enough to leave bruises. The sound he makes is half-groan, half-prayer. I sit there for a second, all the way down, letting the stretch settle deep inside me.
Then I move.
I roll my hips experimentally, find an angle that makes his breath hitch, and do it again just to watch his jaw tighten. I'm smiling, and he knows I'm smiling. He thrusts up to meet me, the collision making me gasp, and then laugh because his face looks absolutely wrecked.
"You think you're in charge up there?" he asks, his voice cracked and messy.
"I know I'm in charge up here."