Chapter Thirty-Five
Callum
There’s a very specific kind of humiliation that comes with realizing you’ve turned into a damn puppy dog.
Not the tough kind with bite, either. No, the kind that follows someone around with floppy ears, a dopey grin, and a tail wagging so hard it might fly off.
That’s what I’d become.
And I knew it because there I was, standing on the top rung of a ladder in the Reckless River Laundromat, holding a stupid fiberglass ceiling tile over my head while the woman who’d invaded my life one smirk at a time stood below me, making fun of my ass.
“Do you always grunt like that when you lift things?” Lydia asked, chin tilted, amusement dancing in her eyes like she’d been waiting her whole life to ask the question.
“I’m holding a sheet of rock wool above my head while trying not to breathe in 1970s asbestos,” I said flatly. “Pretty sure grunting is in the manual.”
She laughed. That damn laugh that cracked open every guarded part of me like a crowbar to a safe.
“I’m just saying,” she teased, shifting her weight and tossing me a fresh tile. “You’re lucky the new landlord is watching. Otherwise, I’d file a noise complaint.”
“You are the landlord.”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “Exactly.”
I rolled my eyes and slid the tile into place. “You keep talkin’, and I might just accidentally drop one of these on your head.”
“Not before I make you hang the new light fixtures next,” she chirped, like this was all part of her devious plan.
God help me, I loved it.
The teasing. The banter. The way she filled a space just by existing in it.
She moved like someone who belonged everywhere and nowhere all at once, and Reckless River, my home, my stubborn, sleepy little town, looked different now that she was in it.
Better.
I climbed down the ladder, wiping my hands on the rag hanging from my back pocket, and caught her watching me. Her expression softened as I got closer, like she didn’t mean to let the admiration slip through, but it was too late.
It warmed something in my chest.
“What?” I asked, suddenly needing to touch her.
She shrugged and handed me a bottle of water. “Nothing. Just thinking this might be the best laundromat ceiling in Washington.”
I chuckled and twisted the cap off. “You’re easy to impress.”
She shrugged again. “Or you’re just ridiculously handy, which is very on-brand for a mountain man.”
“Mountain man, huh?”
She nodded. “Tall. Broody. Beard. Grunts. You hit all the benchmarks.”
“Glad to know I’m a walking cliché.”
“A very hot one,” she said before sipping from her own water bottle, her eyes twinkling like she knew exactly what she was doing to me.
I swear, this woman.
I should’ve felt like I was losing control, but letting her in meant giving up ground I’d spent years protecting. But somehow, it didn’t feel like losing anything.
It felt like coming home to something I never even knew I was missing.
“Why are you really doing this?” I asked, nodding toward the half-finished ceiling.
She looked surprised by the question and then thoughtful. “Because people deserve better.”
“Elaborate.”
She set her water down and walked a few feet away, eyes on the old machines, the scuffed floor, the walls that hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since Reagan was president.
“I used to walk past buildings like this and think, ‘Someone should fix that.’ But I never thought that someone would be me.” She turned to face me again, expression sincere. “I wanted to make something. Leave something behind that wasn’t just… regret.”
I studied her, heart squeezing tighter with every word.
“You’ve got a good heart,” I said quietly.
“Don’t let that get around,” she teased, but her voice wobbled a little.
I stepped forward, closing the space between us. “Too late.”
She stared up at me, and I could see the war behind her eyes—the same one I’d fought. Fear. Hope. The ache of loving someone when your past told you not to trust it.
But still… we stood here.
Still… she smiled.
“I can’t believe you’re helping me with this,” she said after a beat.
“Believe it.”
“You hate change.”
“I hate bad change.” I reached for her hand, curling my fingers around hers. “You? You’re the best kind.”
Her breath hitched just slightly, and it made me feel like I’d just leveled a mountain with nothing but words.
“I should probably be the one telling you not to go soft,” she said, trying to sound casual.
I leaned in, brushing my lips against her temple. “Too late for that, sweetheart.”
She rested her forehead against my chest, and for a moment, everything outside the cracked tile and flickering lights fell away. There was just us. The steady beat of something that felt like a future we hadn’t dared to dream yet.
“You’re gonna bedazzle that damn fish, aren’t you?” I murmured into her hair.
She laughed so hard I felt it vibrate through my ribs. “Only a little. Just one sparkly fin.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Oh, dramatic,” she said, looking up at me, lips curving in challenge.
“Don’t test me.”
“Oh, I live to test you.”
I growled under my breath and kissed her.
Quick. Hard. Addictive.
And yeah, maybe I was a walking cliché. A tough guy turned to mush by one sharp-tongued, big-hearted city girl who stormed into my life and made me see everything in color again.
But if that made me a fool?
Then I’d be one gladly.
Because I was hers.
Even if she didn’t know it yet.
The whirring started slowly, and she stepped back and got right to work again.
A soft mechanical hum in the background of Lydia’s teasing voice as we stood in the middle of the laundromat. She was reading off some list she’d scrawled on a notepad, pacing the cracked linoleum in her too-cute work boots and the vintage tee I swear she wore just to mess with my head.
The machine in the corner gave a hard jolt.
I glanced over.
The spin cycle had kicked in.
Hard.
The ancient washer rattled against the wall like it was about to launch into orbit. Metal against tile. Wobble left. Wobble right. The damn thing was dancing more than half the high school prom crowd ever did.
And for some reason—maybe the fact that I’d barely slept, or that Lydia was standing right there like temptation wrapped in paint smudges and sass—I started laughing.
Not just a little chuckle.
A full, low, wicked laugh.
Lydia paused mid-sentence and narrowed her eyes. “What?”
I tried to shake it off. “Nothing.”
She cocked a hip. “No, no. That was a look . You had a plan face. That’s not your usual grumpy ‘I hate everything’ look. That was… something sinister.”
I dropped my hands on my hips and stared at the machine.
It vibrated again, just a little.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, already stepping toward her.
Her brows pulled together. “Generally speaking? Not when you sound like that. ”
But she was smiling. Lips twitching. That spark in her eyes flared to life.
She didn’t back away.
Didn’t even blink.
“I’m serious,” I said, sweeping her into my arms before she could object.
“Callum!”
She squealed and wrapped her arms around my neck as I carried her across the room.
“What are you…?”
“Just testing something.”
“Oh my God .”
I set her down—gently, carefully, wickedly—on top of the violently spinning washer. The hum turned into a heavy thud-thud-thud, like the drum inside was trying to escape.
She bounced slightly with each cycle, her thighs parting instinctively for balance.
Her eyes locked on mine.
And then we were laughing.
Giddy, ridiculous laughter that made my chest ache in the best damn way.
“You’re completely out of your mind,” she gasped, breathless and blushing.
“Maybe.”
I stepped between her knees, planting my hands on either side of her hips, holding her there as the machine bucked beneath us.
“But if this thing rattles us both into another dimension, I want it on the record that it was your idea,” she said.
I dipped my head, brushing my lips across hers. “Noted.”
The kiss started softly.
Gentle. Curious.
But something about the hum of the washer, the way she fit so perfectly in my arms, the electric buzz under my skin that had been there since the first time she threw attitude at me in my bar…
It all exploded.
Her hands flew into my hair. Mine tightened on her waist.
The kiss deepened.
Hot. Hungry. Full of everything I hadn’t said and couldn’t stop feeling.
The washer jerked beneath us, and she gasped into my mouth, laughing again. I growled low in my throat and kissed her harder, needing more, needing all of her.
She was completely game. Wild and wicked and tangled in my flannel shirt, kissing me like she was never letting go.
And just like that, right there, in the middle of the damn laundromat with a machine on spin cycle and her legs wrapped around my hips, I knew.
I was going to marry this woman.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not even this year.
But someday.
One way or another, she was it.
The woman who could match me stride for stride. Who made my bar feel too small, my bed too cold, and my future feel like more than just something to endure.
She was the spark I didn’t know I needed. The fire I’d been afraid of striking again.
And here she was.
Kissing me breathlessly in a laundromat and laughing while she did it.
I pulled back just enough to look at her, really look at her.
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes full of something that twisted my chest in ways I wasn’t ready for but didn’t want to fight anymore.
“You’re trouble,” I murmured.
Her fingers slid through the hair at the back of my neck. “You like trouble.”
I nodded. “Only when it looks like you.”
The washer finally finished its cycle, jerking once and going still.
We stood there, catching our breath, the silence settling like a warm blanket over our heads.
She looked at me and tilted her head. “So, was that your version of romantic?”
I leaned in and kissed her again, slow this time, letting it sink in. “No.”
She arched a brow. “No?”
“That,” I said, brushing her hair back from her face, “was my version of inevitable.”
She blinked. “What does that even mean?”
“It means… I’m already yours.”
Her eyes went glassy, and she bit her bottom lip, nodding like maybe she’d been waiting to hear that all along.
“I guess,” she said softly, “that makes us both doomed.”
“Good,” I smirked. “I like a little doom.”
She laughed and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me in again.
And for once, the world outside that laundromat didn’t exist.
There was just the woman on the washer.
And me, falling deeper every damn second.