Chapter Seventeen
Callum
I lasted ten minutes behind the bar before I gave up pretending I wasn’t losing my damn mind.
Ten minutes of pretending to organize bottle caps. Ten minutes of trying to listen to two guys argue over the local baseball team’s new players. Ten minutes of not staring down the bar where she’d been sitting, laughing, leaning in, throwing around that voice that curled around my neck like smoke.
I muttered something to Travis about going to check the back inventory and pushed through the swinging door with a little more force than necessary.
The storage room was dim and quiet and smelled like cardboard and hops, but it was not like Lydia.
I braced both hands on the edge of the prep table, lowered my head, and let out a breath that came from somewhere deep in my gut.
What the hell was happening to me?
I’d been attracted to women before. I wasn’t a monk. I wasn’t blind.
But this wasn’t just an attraction.
This was an obsession of the slow, unbearable variety. The kind where I couldn’t stop thinking about how her lips curled when she was trying not to laugh, or how she said my name like it was equal parts challenge and promise.
Lydia.
Even her name sounded like something I could get addicted to.
I straightened and paced the room's length, trying to get a grip.
She’d walked in here tonight like it was no big deal—just dinner at a bar. Like she didn’t know she’d be sitting ten feet away from the man she’d been locking horns with since day one. And maybe she didn’t come for me. Maybe she really was just hungry. Hell, maybe she came for Drew.
My stomach twisted at that.
I didn’t want to admit it, but watching him laugh with her, lean in close, looking too comfortable in her orbit… got to me.
More than it should have.
Drew was a flirt. Always had been. But something about the idea of him getting under her skin the way I already had made my hands curl into fists.
I leaned against the wall, palms flat, and dropped my head back with a thud. The drywall thumped behind me, dust drifting down like even the damn building was judging me.
I couldn’t afford this.
Not now. Not ever.
She was my landlord—a force of nature wrapped in paint-splattered denim and bold opinions. She was turning the building upside down, rewiring my routines, and repainting the pieces of my life I’d worked hard to keep the same.
And I couldn’t stop watching her do it.
She was chaos. And I’d lived too long building a life that made sense to invite chaos back in.
But when she leaned in tonight, all heat, cleverness, and spark in her eyes? When she said, “Then stop biting, ” with that look on her face?
Yeah. That had gutted every ounce of logic I had left.
And that moment…God, that moment when our hands touched?
I still felt it like static under my skin.
I dragged a palm down my face and let out a low growl.
I needed to get a grip. Needed to reset, find my footing, something before I did something even dumber than everything I’d already done, which included staring at her like a lovesick teenager every time she walked into the room.
I pushed off the wall and grabbed a crate of clean pint glasses to give myself something to carry. Something to anchor me. Something that wasn’t her.
But as I headed back toward the door, Drew was already coming in, his silhouette smug and way too knowing.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “You alright there, big guy?”
“Fine,” I snapped.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “I could tell. Real calm and collected, storming out of the bar like you were about to have a breakdown in the mop closet.”
I shot him a look. “Not in the mood.”
He grinned. “No kidding.”
I tried to push past him, but he blocked the door with one foot. “So, what’s the plan here?”
“What plan?”
“With Lydia.”
I set the crate down a little too hard. “There is no plan.”
He lifted a brow. “Right. That’s why you look like you want to throw every chair through the window when she so much as talks to me.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did .”
I glared at him. “She’s our landlord.”
“And?”
“And I don’t need to complicate things.”
He held up his hands. “Okay. But you might want to tell your eyes that, because they’ve been undressing her with Olympic-level precision for the last week.”
I turned away, hands clenched. “This isn’t funny.”
“No,” Drew said. “It’s not. It’s also not sustainable. You can’t keep pretending you’re not interested when everyone in the room can see you’re one insult away from kissing her or combusting.”
I didn’t answer.
Because he was right.
And that pissed me off more than anything.
Drew sighed and stepped aside. “I’m not saying go make her your girlfriend. I’m just saying, maybe stop pretending you don’t want to know what she tastes like.”
I flinched.
He grinned. “Yeah. Thought so.”
I grabbed the crate and walked past him without another word, straight back into the bar.
The moment the door swung open, the noise swallowed me up again—chatter, glasses clinking, the bassline from the jukebox thudding low. But all I could think about was her.
Lydia.
Sitting there in my bar like she belonged. Like she didn’t even realize she was turning every gear in my head until I didn’t know which way was up.
I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.
Hell, I wasn’t even ready to say it to myself .
But I knew this.
She’d walked into my life like a wrecking ball in lipstick.
And the scariest part?
I was already letting her rebuild something in the ruins.
She walked out of the bar like she didn’t know she’d just lit a match and left me standing in gasoline.
I watched her go—tight ponytail swinging, her bare legs catching the last of the streetlight glow—and I couldn’t stop myself.
Not this time.
I threw my bar rag on the counter and followed her out, the door slamming behind me hard enough to rattle the hinges.
“Lydia,” I called, voice rough and too loud.
She slowed. Turned halfway. Didn’t look surprised to see me.
Like she’d been waiting for me to come after her.
I stopped a few paces away. I didn’t trust myself to get closer. Didn’t trust what I’d do if I let myself stand too close and look too long.
“Did I forget something?” she asked, chin tipped up, all calm and cool like I hadn’t been burning alive from the second she walked into the bar.
“You shouldn’t flirt with Drew,” I said.
It came out more territorial than I meant.
No, that’s a lie. I meant it exactly like that.
She blinked once. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t need to play games.”
“You think I’m playing ?” she said, her voice sharp now. “You think I’m doing this to get a reaction out of you?”
“You were doing it in my bar. With my brother.”
I could hear how irrational it sounded. I could see the disbelief on her face.
But I didn’t back down.
“You like seeing me twisted up,” I muttered.
She stepped in—close enough that I could feel the heat rolling off her. “You don’t get to accuse me of playing games when you’ve been staring at me like you want to devour me and then turning to stone every time I get close.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Because she wasn’t wrong.
And she knew it.
“You don’t get to glare at me like I’m your problem one second and then act like I’m your prize the next,” she said. “You don’t get to do this —” she motioned between us, frustration spilling out of her in waves, “—and pretend it’s only happening on my side.”
I stepped closer. Just enough to shut her up. Just enough to feel her breath catch between us.
One hand came up before I could stop it, brushing her jaw, my thumb grazing her cheek like I needed to feel she was real before I crossed the line I’d been dancing around for weeks.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, voice low and strained.
“I know.”
And then I kissed her.
Or maybe she kissed me. I don’t know who leaned in first. It didn’t matter.
The second our mouths met, the world stopped spinning.
She tasted like whatever I’d been starving for—sweet and sharp and so damn alive . Her fingers twisted into my shirt, pulling me closer like she needed something to hold onto, and I kissed her like I was trying to make up for every second I’d wasted pretending I didn’t want to.
It wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t careful.
It was fire.
Her lips were so soft, and the little murmur escaping her lips made every part of my body tense.
It was finally .
When we broke apart, we breathed hard, like we’d run from something and collided halfway there.
Her forehead rested against mine.
I should’ve said nothing. I should’ve let it sit in silence.
But I couldn’t.
“I told myself not to touch you,” I whispered.
She ran her fingers over my chest. “We’re way past that.”
That’s when the weight hit me.
I stepped back, dragging in a shaky breath.
She blinked, eyes confused, mouth still parted from the kiss.
“This complicates everything,” I said.
She straightened. “It doesn’t have to.”
I shook my head. “You’re my landlord. You’re changing everything. And I don’t know how to want you without resenting you for it. And I’m…”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d screwed it.
Her face fell. It felt like someone kicked the floor out from under us just slightly, but enough.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I didn’t—”
“You did ,” she snapped. “You just said it.”
“It’s not that simple, Lydia.”
“No, it is ,” she bit out. “You want me. But you don’t respect me. That’s what you just told me.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
She took a shaky step back. “You kissed me like I meant something, and then you said I’m ruining everything.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s exactly what you meant,” she said. Her voice was quieter now. Wounded. And it killed me.
She shook her head. “I came here to build something. I didn’t ask for you to make room for me. I just needed you not to shove me out of the way.”
“Lydia, I don’t—”
“No,” she said. “You just don’t want to. ”
And then she turned.
Started walking.
I could’ve called after her. Could’ve said anything . Something honest. Something right.
But I didn’t.
Because I didn’t know how.
So I stood there, useless, my mouth full of regret and my hands clenched into fists as I watched her walk away.
And I realized that somehow, in trying to keep her out, I’d just made damn sure she’d never want back in.