Chapter 9
HAZEL
Afew days after Cal's post, I wake up before my alarm, tangled in his sheets with his arm slung heavy over my waist, and I lie there for a long minute just listening to him breathe.
Biscuit's snoring from his spot on the floor by the bed, sunlight's just starting to creep through the blinds, and I think, not for the first time these past few weeks, that I could get used to waking up exactly like this for the rest of my life.
"You're staring," Cal mumbles, voice thick with sleep, eyes still closed.
"I am not."
"You are. I can feel it." One eye cracks open, and he gives me a slow, sleepy smile that does something warm and dangerous to my chest. "What's on your mind?"
I could brush it off, tell him it's nothing, roll over and let the morning slide into the easy routine we've built these past few weeks.
But something about the quiet, about the way he's looking at me like he's got nowhere else in the world he'd rather be, loosens something in my chest that I've been holding onto a little too tight.
"I’m thinking about your post from the other night and what you said," I say. "About your childhood. About the nickname."
"Yeah." He shifts, propping himself up on one elbow, giving me his full attention now. "What about it?"
"It made me think about something." I trace a lazy line along his forearm, gathering my nerve.
"I've spent the last few weeks kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, if I'm honest. Like this was too good to actually stick.
Like eventually you'd realize I'm not worth all the trouble this town's put you through because of me. "
"Hazel—"
"Let me finish." I press my palm flat against his chest, feel his heartbeat under my hand, steady despite the tension between us with what I’m about to say.
"But reading what you wrote, how honest you were with an entire town full of people who've spent years being unkind to you, it made me realize something.
If you can be that brave about your past, I can be brave about what I actually want.
" I take a breath. "I want a future with you, Cal.
Not just dating, not just seeing where this goes.
I mean actual plans. I want a life that we can build together.
I love you, and I know it's fast, I know we've only been together a few weeks, technically, even though it feels like we've been building toward this for years.
But I don't want to hold back what I'm feeling just because it's scary to say out loud. "
He doesn't say anything for a second, just looks at me with an expression that makes my breath catch, something between disbelief and pure, unguarded happiness.
"You mean that."
"I mean every word of it."
"Good." He reaches up and cups my face in both hands, thumb brushing along my cheekbone.
"Because I've been trying to figure out how to tell you the same thing without scaring you off.
I don't want anybody else, Hazel. Never really did, if I'm honest with myself.
It just took me a long time and one really stupid arrest to finally do something about it. "
"Best mistake you ever made."
"Worst judgment call of my career. Best thing that ever happened to me.
" He kisses me then, slow and unhurried, and I melt into it the way I've melted into every kiss since that first one on my doorstep.
His hand slides from my jaw down along my side, pulling me closer, and I go without hesitation, my fingers threading into his hair as the kiss deepens.
"Cal," I murmur against his mouth.
"Yeah."
"Don't stop."
He doesn't. His mouth trails from my lips down along my jaw, my neck, and I arch into him, every nerve in my body lighting up under his hands.
Biscuit, sensing the shift in energy or maybe just bored of the floor, hops up onto the bed uninvited, and Cal groans, pulling back just enough to point a stern finger at him.
"Biscuit. Down. I mean it."
Biscuit does not get down. Biscuit simply relocates to the foot of the bed and curls into a ball like he owns the place, and Cal sighs the put-upon sigh of a man who has clearly lost this particular battle many times before.
"We're gonna have to talk about boundaries with that dog," he mutters, and I laugh so hard I nearly forget what we were in the middle of doing, until his mouth finds mine again and every thought in my head narrows down to just him.
We move slower this time than we have before, without the urgency of that first night here, without anything to rush toward except each other.
His hands map out places on me he's already learned, and I do the same to him, memorizing the scar along his ribs from a construction accident years back, the rough calluses on his palms, the way he shivers when I press my lips just below his ear.
There's nothing performative about any of it.
It's just us, slow and unhurried, learning each other over and over like we've got all the time in the world to do it, which, I'm starting to believe, we might actually have.
Afterward, tangled together with the morning light stretching further across the room, I trace idle patterns against his chest and laugh, low and a little breathless.
"What?" he asks, glancing down at me.
"Nothing, I’m just thinking." I prop my chin on his chest to look up at him properly. "If I'd known it would be like this with you, I would've marched right up to you in that library in tenth grade and told you exactly how I felt. Would've saved us both years of wondering."
"You think I would've done anything about it back then?" He raises an eyebrow, amused. "I could barely string two words together around you in high school. You march up to me back then, I probably would've turned six shades of red and run in the other direction."
"That's adorable, actually."
"It was mortifying, is what it was." He pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
"I used to sit two tables over in the library just so I could watch you without you noticing.
Never had the guts to actually talk to you.
Figured a girl like you wouldn't want anything to do with somebody like me. "
"A girl like me wanted exactly that, for the record. Wasted a whole lot of years being too scared to say so."
"Guess we're both idiots, then."
"Guess we are." I settle back against him, listening to the steady thump of his heart, feeling more certain about this, about us, about whatever's coming next, than I've felt about anything in longer than I can remember.
"For what it's worth, Cal Sutton, I don't regret a single bit of how we got here. Even the part where you arrested me."
"Still can't believe that's our origin story."
"Best one this town's ever had, according to Spotted in Whispering Pines."
He laughs, the sound rumbling up through his chest under my ear, and I close my eyes, thinking that whatever the future holds, I want every bit of it to look exactly like this.