Chapter 7
HAZEL
Iclose up the shop a little early, which Tiffany doesn't question, just gives me a knowing look and shoos me out the back door before I can second-guess myself.
I've been walking on air since Cal kissed me in the kitchen two days ago, humming while I frost cookies, smiling for no good reason while I'm ringing people up at the register.
Tiffany's noticed and I'm sure half the customers have too.
Cal texted me this morning with a simple: come by after work? I'll cook. I don't think I've ever changed clothes as many times as I did before finally settling on a sundress and sandals, telling myself it's casual, it's just dinner, even though my stomach's been in knots all day.
His place is a small house on the edge of town, one of those older bungalows with a wraparound porch that somebody clearly put love into fixing up.
His truck is in the driveway and a garden gnome by the front steps that seems entirely out of character for him, and I'm still smiling about that when the front door swings open before I even make it up the walk.
"Hey," Cal says, leaning against the doorframe, barefoot, wearing jeans and a soft-looking henley that makes him look about ten years younger than the uniform does. "You found it okay."
"Small town, Cal. Wasn't hard."
"Fair point." He steps back to let me in, and that's when something the size of a small horse comes barreling around the corner of the hallway, nails skittering against the hardwood, tail wagging so hard his whole back end moves with it.
"Oh my God." I crouch down before I can stop myself, and I'm immediately rewarded with a face full of dog, tongue and all. "This is Biscuit?"
"That's Biscuit." Cal's voice carries something warm and a little exasperated. "Biscuit, sit. Sit, buddy. Sit."
Biscuit does not sit. Biscuit continues to love on me with the enthusiasm of a dog who has never met a stranger in his life, and I can't stop laughing as I scratch behind his ears and let him lean his whole weight against my legs.
"He's the worst listener I've ever met," Cal says, though there's nothing but affection in it.
"He's perfect. Look at that face."
"Don't encourage him."
"Too late." I press a kiss to the top of Biscuit's head, and when I glance up, Cal's watching me with an expression I can't quite read, soft and a little stunned, like he wasn't prepared for how this would look, me on his floor with his dog.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He clears his throat, offers me a hand to help me up. "C'mon. I got stuff set up out back."
The backyard is small but well-kept, a little patio with string lights already glowing against the dusky sky, and a low table set up with a spread that makes my chef's heart skip.
Cured meats, three kinds of cheese, fig jam, crackers, grapes, little bowls of olives and nuts, all of it arranged with more care than I expected from a man who told me he'd cook.
"You made a charcuterie board."
"I looked up a video." He says it like a confession, rubbing the back of his neck. "Took me two tries to make it look halfway decent. First one looked like I dropped groceries on a cutting board."
"It's beautiful, Cal." And it is. I sit down on the wicker loveseat he's got angled toward the little fire pit, and Biscuit immediately flops down at my feet like he's decided I belong to him now too. "You didn't have to go through all this trouble."
"I wanted to." He pours us both a glass of wine from a bottle already open on the table, hands me mine, and settles down beside me, close enough that our knees touch. "Figured we could use a night that wasn't about apologies or the group or any of that. I wanted something that’s just ours."
"Just ours sounds really good," I tell him, and clink my glass against his.
We eat slow, the two of us picking at the board while the sky goes from pink to purple to that deep, star-scattered navy that only shows up out here away from the interstate lights.
Biscuit begs shamelessly for scraps, and Cal caves every single time despite grumbling about it, which tells me everything I need to know about who really runs this house.
"So," I say, after a comfortable stretch of quiet, "tell me something about you I don't know."
He considers that for a second, swirling his wine. "I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid. Before everything with my parents got bad. Used to bring home every stray I found, until we couldn't afford to feed them, and then I had to stop."
My chest tightens at that, and the casual way he says it, like it doesn't still hurt him. "Is that why you got Biscuit?"
"Probably." He reaches down and scratches behind the dog's ears without looking, he obviously does it all the time.
"Found him at the shelter about to be put down.
Nobody wanted him because he's got that one ear that doesn't stand up right and he's not exactly what people picture when they think of a good-looking dog. But he looked at me, and I don't know.” He shrugs. “It felt like the least I could do. I asked him if he wanted to come home with me, and he smiled, and I couldn’t say no. He’s been mine ever since. "
"That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard."
"Don't tell anybody. Ruins my whole tough-cop reputation."
"Your secret's safe with me." I nudge his shoulder with mine. "My turn?"
"Your turn."
"I almost didn't open the bakery. I had the space rented, the mixer bought, and two weeks before I was supposed to open, I panicked and almost backed out.
Told my landlord I'd changed my mind." I trace the rim of my glass, remembering how close I came to walking away from the only dream I've ever really had.
"My dad talked me into going through with it.
Told me I'd regret it worse if I didn't try than if I tried and failed. "
“He’s a smart man.”
"He was. He passed before I actually opened, though.
It was a heart attack out of nowhere." Cal's hand finds mine, threading our fingers together, and I let him hold it, grateful he doesn't try to fill the quiet with anything more than that.
"So every time the shop does well, I think about how he pushed me into it.
Kind of feels like he's still a part of it, somehow. "
"He'd be proud of you. The whole town practically worships that bakery."
"Whole town also watched me get arrested and then dragged into a very public romance, so." I laugh, a little wet, and wipe under my eyes before it can turn into anything more than that. "Small towns."
"Small towns," he agrees, and squeezes my hand.
The night stretches on, easy and unhurried.
I haven't felt this comfortable with anybody in longer than I want to admit.
At some point Biscuit gives up on us entirely and curls into a ball near the fire pit, snoring softly, and Cal moves closer, until his arm slides along the back of the loveseat behind me.
"Can I ask you something?" he says, quiet.
"Always."
"What changed your mind? About giving this a real shot, I mean. Not just the dinner and the apology stuff. Us."
I think about how to answer that honestly, because he deserves honesty after everything he said to me in that kitchen two days ago.
"I think I was scared," I admit. "Of everybody watching, waiting to see if we'd work out or fall apart.
Scared that if we did fall apart, I'd have to watch the whole town pick through the pieces of it.
" I glance up at him. "But then I got tired of being scared instead of just being happy.
And I've spent years wishing I'd said something to you back in high school, so I figured I'd finally stop wasting time. "
"Years, huh?" Something like a smile pulls at his mouth. "Guess we're even, then."
"Guess we are."
His hand comes up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward his, and there's nothing rushed about the way he kisses me this time. There’s no audience and no reason to hurry.
It’s just the two of us and the crickets starting up in the grass and Biscuit's soft snoring somewhere off to the side.
I lean into it, my hand fisting in the front of his shirt, and when he pulls back just far enough to rest his forehead against mine, I can feel his breath, unsteady, matching mine.
"Hazel." My name sounds like something precious ripped out of his mouth. "I want to be with you. For real. Not because of the group, not because my boss told me to fix things. Just because I want you."
"I want that too." I press my lips to the corner of his mouth, then his jaw, feeling him shiver under the touch. "I've wanted that for longer than I probably should admit."
"So we're doing this? Really doing this?"
"We’re really doing this," I confirm, and the smile that breaks across his face is the kind I want to see every single day for the rest of my life.
He stands, pulling me up with him, and Biscuit lifts his head just long enough to watch us head toward the back door before flopping back down with a heavy, contented sigh, like even the dog approves.
Cal pauses in the doorway, framed by the porch light, looking at me like he still can't quite believe I'm here.
"You sure?" he asks, low, giving me every chance to change my mind.
"I've never been more sure of anything." And I mean it, all the way down. “I wanna be with you.”
He kisses me again, his mouth claiming mine in a slow dance only the two of us know.
I can feel his hard cock against my stomach, and I want him more than I’ve wanted anyone else.
He reaches down, palming my ass in his hands as I circle my legs around his waist. “You’re sure?
” He asks again, smearing his lips down across my jaw line and down my neck.
“Fuck me, Officer Sutton.”
He growls, and heads toward what I assume is his bedroom.
We’re a mass of arms and legs, fighting to get clothes off one another.
I fist his cock in my hand, working the length up and down while he takes my bare nipple in his mouth, sucking and biting.
When he slips two fingers into my pussy, I thrust up against him, holding his wrist so that he can’t pull away.
“Gotta get a condom,” he whispers.
I let him go, but I don’t want to. He watches me as he searches the night stand, and I give him a glance as I move my hand down to the middle of my body, working my finger against my clit.
“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he hisses, jacking his length as he opens the wrapper with his teeth.
“So are you.”
He finishes suiting up, and then he layers his body over mine. We both groan as he plunges inside me and begins thrusting.
It doesn’t take long until we’re coming against each other, my nails scratching down his back, and his teeth buried in my neck, biting my flesh.
Later, tangled together under his sheets with Biscuit's snoring drifting faintly through the door Cal forgot to close all the way, I trace lazy patterns against his chest and feel him press a kiss to the top of my head.
"Worth the wait?" he asks, voice rough with something like wonder.
"Every bit of it." I tilt my face up to look at him, this man I've wanted since I was a teenager and too scared to say a word to him in a school library. "It was a long time, Cal Sutton."
"Then I guess I better make up for it." He pulls me closer, and I fall asleep to the steady beat of his heart, thinking that whatever the town has to say about us come morning, none of it matters half as much as this.