15. Sophie
Sophie
“The magic of love is felt more than it is understood.” – Leo Tolstoy
H e called me Sophia Lovinski.
I should be freaking out about the mess I got myself into. Instead, I’m watching his broad, strong shoulders as he hauls me up the streets toward my apartment with a barely hidden giddy smile on my face.
He called me Sophia Lovinski!
I know I shouldn’t look into it, it’s just my new last name now, but try telling that to the butterflies he stirred in my stomach with his words. And it wasn’t just this. It was the way he spoke about me.
Like he sees this girl I’m desperately trying to recover. Like he knows that’s exactly who I am when even I don’t believe in myself half the time. When was the last time someone looked at me like that?
I’m so lost in my daydream that I don’t notice that we’re already here as Clover ushers me to climb the steps to our floor first. I do so quickly, opening the door and shutting it as soon as we’re in.
We’re slumped against the said door, breathing hard and labored when we hear feet pounding on that same staircase. “Sophie Levidis! What in the expecto patronum did you do?” Grace shouts from what sounds to be the second floor.
“Damn, she’s so tiny but she sure has a set of vocals on her,” Clover muses, and I let out a breathy chuckle, still trying to catch my breath from our mad run.
“Oh, you thought my singing was loud and bad, wait till you go to a karaoke bar with that one.” I throw my thumb back at the door.
“Open the door! I know you’re in there! I saw you two running for your life in here.” Gracie bangs on the door that rattles from her fist.
“Jesus, and she’s strong,” he mutters.
“And she has an excellent hearing,” Grace shoots back. “Open the door right this second. What were you two thinking?”
“Wild one?” A new voice, Luke’s, sounds from the other side. “That asshole never showed up to work. Are they in there?” he asks.
Clover rolls his eyes, making me snicker.
“Yep.” Grace bangs on the door again. “And they’re ignoring me.”
“Callum, get your ass out here! We need to talk.” It’s Griffin this time.
“You two can talk all you want now, would you mind leaving my wife and I alone?” Clover shoots back, and a tingle runs down my spine every time he calls me “his wife.” Argh, it shouldn’t be so hot, right?
“The idiot has the audacity to joke around right now.”
“Shh, Luke, maybe he got hit on the head during a call or something. Let’s tread lightly.”
“You’re right,” Luke agrees. “Hey, buddy, open up the door, let us see your pupils.”
“Fuck offfff,” Clover drags out .
“Do they look dilated to you, Griff?”
“Definitely.”
“Call in the ambulance, we’re taking him in.”
“You can’t even see my pupils, idiots.”
“We can smell that concussion with a dash of insanity through the door,” Luke says, and I try to stifle a laugh—unsuccessfully—at their antics with each other.
It’s like grumpy and grumpier taking digs at one another.
“Sophie! Are you laughing over there?” Grace squeaks. “She’s laughing!”
“Well, it is funny,” I tell her.
“I’ll show you funny,” Gracie says in a strangled voice. “Let go of me, Luke!”
“Wild one, you can’t take down the door.”
“Watch me.”
“Okay!” Clover shouts. “No one is taking down any doors—”
“Callum Clover Lovinski!” Yet another new voice shrieks. This time it belongs to Julie.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” He drags a hand over his face. “Julie, what are you doing over here?”
“I came to make sure no other spirit possessed you.”
“Oh, for the love of…”
“Okay, then can you explain how this happened? We didn’t even know you liked Sophie, let alone this much. And Sophie, dear, I love my brother, but are you sure about this?”
I go to open my mouth but the low, threatening growl coming from my new husband shuts my mouth right back.
“Do not question my wife,” he tells them. “I liked her. We had a connection. I married her. End of the story.”
“I just saw you this morning, asshole, and you didn’t mention a word about getting married,” Luke says. “So, spill, because we’re not buying what you’re selling.”
“I already told you; we had a connect—”
“Callum,” Griffin interrupts. “Just a couple of days ago you didn’t want to hear anything about any women.”
“Well, she’s not just any woman now, is she?” There’s a loud ping of silence around us after his words. And my eyes shoot up to his just as Clover’s gaze slides over me.
He didn’t mean it like that, Sophie. He didn’t, I tell myself, but that look in his eyes…why is he looking at me like he meant every word, every letter and sound.
My breath quickens and it has nothing to do with our run earlier. Nothing at all.
I’m losing all air to a wholly other experience. Something I wasn’t supposed to feel. Something I was sure I wouldn’t mere hours ago when I agreed to this scheme.
I don’t take my gaze off his, trying to see deeper, to figure out what happened in this short span of time when he didn’t allow me even a glimpse of himself earlier, yet now…
His jaw works and he swallows hard before looking away from me, effectively shutting down and erasing the small connection we shared and adds, “She’s the only one I’d ever marry. Now, can you all go?” His tone is monotone and almost bored as he says it and I let out that breath I was holding.
That was a fluke.
Just like the kiss.
He meant it as in I’m the only woman crazy enough to do this.
Good. Good.
“When did this even happen?” Griffin asks.
“I arrested her last night, we bonded.”
“You got arrested? Without me?” Grace shrieks.
“Yeah, not something to be upset over, wild one—” Luke stars but gets interrupted by a set of yet another two voices.
“Jacob! You slow poke! I told you we’d miss all the fun,” Alec chastises his best friend. “Hey, guys, we brought cupcakes! What’s the news? Did they really get married?”
“Yes!” Clover and I both shout at the same time, and briefly our eyes connect, a small smile grazing both our lips.
A chorus of unintelligible shouts starts anew with each one of them demanding to know more about us, or to see us, or, in Alec and Jacob’s case, to give us marital advice .
“So, out of mere curiosity, why did you decide to move to this mad town?” Clover asks me as we’re still leaning against the door listening to the shouting.
“Shouldn’t you ask me that later, when they can’t hear that we know nothing about each other?” I whisper.
“Good idea. Cover your ears,” he says.
I do as I’m told right before he brings two fingers to his lips and sends a shrill whistle through the whole space, effectively shutting everyone on the other side of the door off.
“Hey, assholes, plus Grace and Julie, how about you all go away and let us have our wedding night in peace?”
“Callum, it’s barely noon,” Luke deadpans.
“What can we say? We’d like to get a head start. Now, can you all move it?”
“Ew, Cal, that’s not something I wanted to know. Let’s go, Griff,” his sister says, and we hear footsteps.
Great, two gone, four more to go.
“I’m not leaving until I see her face,” Grace says—to Luke, I assume. “What if he drugged her and did all this against her will.”
“Wow, and here I thought only my wife had such vivid imagination.” Clover rolls his eyes as I giggle.
“I assure you, I’m of sober and sane mind, and I promise to call you tomorrow,” I call out to my friend.
“That’s to be determined,” she says back.
Finally, after another ten minutes of coaxing, everyone leaves.
“You know, I’m totally ready to start our wedding night at noon,” I say, still leaning against the door, my eyes closed, feeling exhausted as if I ran a marathon.
“Sophie, you know I only said that so they’d leave us alone. Um, there won’t be any…you know…”
My eyes pop open at the flustered sound of Clover’s voice.
“Sex?” I help him finish the thought, a mischievous smile forming on my lips .
“Yes, sex.” His jaw ticks.
“Aw, man.” I snap my fingers. “Really?” I pout, and make it so believable, he pales.
Keep a straight face, Sophie. Keep a straight face .
“Fuck,” he curses on an exhale. “Sophie, you’re a very attractive woman. More than attractive.” He clears his throat, pulling the collar of his shirt away from his blushing neck. “But I think that will ruin the lines we have here, you know.”
“But I want orgasms,” I fake-whine and watch that blush spread to his pale cheeks. “Ah, I guess my toy will do.”
“Toy? You mean like a vibrator?”
I burst out laughing, doubling over from the frantic look on his face. “Relax, Clover. I’m just joking—not about the toy—I only meant wedding night as in rest time without our friends interrogating us.”
“Ha-ha.” He rolls his eyes, clenching his teeth. “Hilarious.”
“Admit it, it was kind of funny. And you fell into it all on your own.” I wipe a tear off my eye, catching the smallest of tilts to the curve of his lips.
Ha, got ya, hubby . I wink, telling him I saw that without saying the words he’d most definitely deny until he was blue in his face.
“Come on, do you want some beer?” I push away, striding into my kitchen.
“Yes, please,”’ he says, moving toward the couch.
I grab two bottles out of the fridge and join him, handing him one.
“Cheers.” I clink my glass against his, falling to the seat with a relived sigh. “Getting married is exhausting, can you imagine doing it for real?”
“No, I cannot.” He takes a long sip of his beer, and I’m mesmerized by his thick throat working with each gulp.
I might’ve joked about the whole wedding night, but I was dead serious about orgasms. I need them from something or else I’m liable to jump my very, very, very hot husband.
“What’s your favorite color?” I ask the first thing that pops into my mind to distract myself .
Clover lifts his head up from the back of the couch. “I don’t have one.”
I frown. “Impossible, everyone has one.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s just a color, I’m fine with all of them.”
I gasp. “There is nothing just about color. It makes up your life, your personality, your soul.”
Clover eyes me for a second, then stares off into the window on the other side when he says, “Then I guess mine is dark-dark blue.” He pauses, turns his head back to me, and adds, “Like the bottom of the ocean.”
I tilt my head to the side, watching him.
No one willingly chooses that color to be the color of their soul. My sister-in-law taught me that much. As did my brother.
“Who do you have at the bottom of the ocean?” The question slips past my lips quietly. It’s not a whisper, and I’m not sure why I ask it when I have no clue if that’s the case, but it felt like it.
He has that same look in his eyes as Kira does when she talks about the baby she lost at a very young age. It’s that same pain and grief reflected in his green eyes.
The silence stretches between us as Clover regards me, but he doesn’t deny it. It’s quiet for so long, I’m certain he won’t respond when he says, “People.”
One word. Only one word that weighs a ton and it cost him as much to push it out, to tell me. I can see it and the internal fight he’s having with himself for telling me even that much.
“Mine is orange,” I say, and Clover stills, slowly turning to look at me.
“You won’t ask?” I know what he means. He was expecting me to pry, to try and learn more details about his story, but I won’t do it, so I shake my head.
“Nope, you already told me what you wanted. I’ll never put my nose where it’s not invited.
Now, are you going to ask me about why orange or what kind of orange?
You know, there are a million shades of that color.
And some I hate with a passion. Like, coral for example.
Ew! It should be banned from the color wheel.
Coral.” I’m still making a puking face when Callum startles the bejizzles out of me.
Laughing. He’s laughing.