Chapter 8 #3
Leaning against the powder room sink, I closed my eyes and took in deep, shuddering breaths. I was trembling. Why? It was one weekend home, and I felt like I was about to fall apart at the seams.
My phone was in my hands a moment later, and I scrolled through my social media for a few seconds, searching for distraction. Stability. Something.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Drowning or dying or being way too dramatic about a stupid trip home.
Then I found the folder where I’d sent Callum Frost’s emails. I tapped it, my heart taking off. There were five emails, starting the night we did what we did.
CALLUM
Answer my call.
Deena.
Did you fucking block me?
The following day, he wrote again.
You’re ignoring me because you’re scared, and it’s not like you, Deena. You’re better than this.
He’d sent only one more message, six days after the first flurry, just over a week ago.
Stubborn woman.
I bit my lip. My core throbbed just from that handful of emails. I should’ve left it at that. A few weeks-old emails had grounded me, made me forget how chaotic it felt to be home. I could go back out there and survive the weekend. I didn’t need Callum messing with my head too.
But my fingers moved before I could stop them. I navigated to his contact in my phone and scrolled down to the big blue word that read, “Unblock.” There was no hesitation. I wasn’t going to call him. I was just…just…
My fingers kept moving.
DEENA
Got your emails. Did you miss me that much, or are you just mad I blocked you?
As soon as I hit “send,” all the breath rushed out of me. I turned my phone face down and leaned against the vanity, squeezing my eyes shut. That was dumb. I shouldn’t have done that.
Then my phone buzzed. It was in my hand without me remembering picking it up.
CALLUM
Knew you’d crack eventually, sweetheart.
DEENA
Dodging the question, huh.
Three little dots appeared, and my heart began to gallop. A knock on the powder room door made me jump, and I stuffed my phone in my pocket before I could read his second reply. “Almost done!” I called out.
“You ran away,” my mother complained. “Don’t make this moment about you, Deena.”
I wrenched open the door and fought to find patience inside me. She was baiting me, and I wouldn’t bite. “I needed to pee, Mom.”
My mother clicked her tongue, not believing me. “Come help me clean up in the kitchen.”
I trudged behind her, my phone burning a hole in my back pocket. All the dishes had been brought in from the dining room, where my brother and father chatted.
Stacey was at the sink, and she smiled when I came in. “Feeling okay? It’s good to see you, Deena.”
“I’m great. What about you? Get away from there,” I said, shooing her away from the dishes. “You’re pregnant. You should have your feet up.”
“When I was pregnant with you, I never got a break,” my mother put in.
Stacey and I exchanged a glance, and my sister-in-law bit back a smile. “I’ll get the boys some fresh drinks,” she said, the perfect housewife that my mother had always wished I was.
I put some plates in the dishwasher while my mother put plastic wrap over the leftovers. But I couldn’t resist temptation for long, and I pulled my phone out of my back pocket to stare at the screen.
CALLUM
You know I missed you, Deena.
I could almost hear the dark velvet of his voice through the text message. Below it, he’d written again:
And I am furious with you.
Heat snaked through my belly, settling in the space below my navel where I was hollow and achy. I bit my bottom lip, not quite able to regret my decision to send that message.
I’d missed how every part of me seemed to come alive whenever we had the least bit of contact.
It could be as little as the brush of his gaze over my skin, or two simple text messages.
And I couldn’t quite resist the urge to keep going.
Everything else was bleak and fraught. Messaging Cal, by comparison, felt electrifying.
DEENA
How furious, exactly?
My heart thumped as soon as the message sent. I stared at the screen until the little check marks turned blue, and I knew Callum was reading my reply.
Then I just about jumped out of my skin when my mother asked, “Who’s Callum Frost, and why is he mad at you?”
I spun around, my butt crashing with the lower cabinets, my phone clutched to my breast. “No one,” I blurted.
She planted her hands on her hips and stared at me. Stared through me, seeing all my dirty little secrets. “Are you seeing him?”
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Deena.”
“I’m not!” I protested, and even to me, it sounded like a lie. But I wasn’t seeing him. We were…I didn’t know what we were.
Then my phone buzzed, but it wasn’t the vibration of a text message. I made the mistake of pulling the device away from my body to stare at the screen, and my pulse took off.
Callum was calling me.
Of course he was. This was what he did. I’d taunted him, and he wasn’t one to back down. But before I could click the phone’s side button to ignore the call, my phone disappeared from my hand and materialized in my mother’s grasp.
“Mom!”
She flicked her finger across the screen and dodged my clawing hands as she put the phone to her ear. “This is Deena’s mother. To whom am I speaking?”
“Mom,” I hissed, sounding very much like that teenager I hadn’t been for over a decade. I reached for the phone, but she dodged around the corner of the island and ducked away from me—but not far enough that I couldn’t hear Callum’s voice coming through the earpiece.
“Callum Frost. Nice to meet you, Ms. Brand. Deena’s told me so much about you.”
I could hear the laughter in the dirty liar’s voice. I was going to murder him. Both of them. Everyone. I’d be in prison for the rest of my life, and it would be worth it.
My mother arched her brows at me. “Has she?”
Callum’s reply was lost in the noise of me trying to scuffle with my fifty-five-year-old mother to get her to stop talking to the guy I had a crush on.
Wait, no. I didn’t have a crush on him. He was just—he was just Cal. He’d put some sort of spell on me. He’d opened the top of my skull with a can opener and scooped out all my brains. Clearly.
Why had I messaged him in the first place?
But my mother chuckled. “All good things, I hope.” She paused, listening, and considered me with glittering eyes.
“Oh, good. Mmhmm. Well, we’re talking now, aren’t we?
Are you in the travel business as well? Deena’s been chipping away at her little business for so long, you know. We’re terribly proud of her.”
My eyelid twitched as my mother dodged another attempt to grab the phone. Proud of me? Ha!
“Venture capital!” My mother turned, looking at me like she’d never seen me before. Because how could I, of all people, be interesting to a man with venture capital kind of money? “Oh, how fascinating.”
This was my worst nightmare. I’d only wanted to take the edge off by feeling a glimmer of his attention. That was pathetic, I knew. But this—this was an unmitigated disaster.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Cal—can I call you Cal?”—she giggled again—“I’m sorry to tell you, but she hasn’t breathed a word of your existence to us. But Deena’s like that.”
I glared at her, motioning for her to give me the phone.
“And did she tell you about the party this weekend? No?” A pointed look with eyebrows so arched they nearly touched her hairline.
“What a shame. I would’ve loved to meet the man who captured her heart.
Deena’s been single for so long, you know.
I had half a mind to try to set her up with her old sweetheart while she’s here. But now…”
I vaulted halfway over the island, banging my knee on the edge of the marble so hard I saw stars, and finally got a good claw grip over the top of my phone. I wrenched it out of her hands as I collapsed on top of the island, the dirty roasting pan clattering to the ground when I rolled into it.
“I need to go,” I yelled into the phone, and I mashed at my phone screen until I ended the call. Then I lay on top of the island, my phone gripped in my hand, pain pulsing through my knee, and forced myself to lift my head so I could meet my mother’s gaze.
“He seems nice,” she said. And she smiled.
My phone buzzed.
CALLUM
You didn’t tell me you were out of town.
Somehow, my mother managed to read the message upside down from where she stood above me. “Honey, you’ll never keep a man if you keep acting like this. They need to feel like they’re in charge.”
Ugh. “I’m not trying to keep him,” I grumbled.
“Well, you’re doing a good job, then.”
I stuffed my phone back in my pocket without answering.
My heart was thundering, and my hair had fallen out of its bun.
I knew I was red-faced by the heat I felt on my cheeks, and the back of my shirt was damp with sweat.
“I need a shower,” I announced, and I marched out of the kitchen without finishing the dishes.
For once, my mother didn’t call anything out after me, and I was able to escape in peace.
I locked myself in the guest room and collapsed face-first on the bed. A groan slipped out of me along with a bit of drool that soaked into the floral-patterned comforter.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket felt like I was prodding at an unexploded land mine with a stick I found on the side of the road. I rolled onto my back and unlocked it, staring at Callum’s last message. No, I hadn’t told him I was out of town. Why would I?
And why did it feel like I’d been naughty for not clearing with him first? And why on Earth did I like this feeling?
My fingers went on a journey across my screen again, and I hit send before I could overthink it. Because despite everything, it felt too good to talk to him. I was an addict, and he was my fix.
DEENA
You enjoyed that, didn’t you?
CALLUM
Immensely.
DEENA
I’m blocking you now.
CALLUM
Try it and see what happens, Deena.
I bit my bottom lip, because even now—even after all that—he turned me the hell on. I couldn’t keep doing this. The more contact I had with him, the more it felt like I was unraveling. In a few quick taps, his number was blocked again.
Relief warred with disappointment inside me, but this was the right thing to do. After scrubbing my face and unpacking my bag, I felt a little better. I refocused on my plan: make it through this weekend and then go back to my regular life with all its mundane, all-consuming problems.
Keep trudging. Keep paying off debt. Keep surviving.
And most importantly, ignore the temptation of talking to Callum Frost.