Chapter 15 #2
"Actually, I don't," I say, and it isn't entirely true.
"Because every time I try to get a clear answer, I get Rome's name or my age. Or some version of you deciding what's good for me." I step closer. Not much, but enough. "Which again, for the record, is my call to make. Not yours."
He holds my gaze for a long second, and I keep my chin level. I've gotten very good at keeping my chin level around this man.
"You're leaving soon."
Apparently he's ready to name all the reasons we're wrong.
"I'm leaving next year. But sure. I'm leaving."
"So in your version of this, what, it's a summer fling? You go back to school and we..."
He doesn't finish. I don't want him to finish. Picturing an end to something that doesn't even exist yet is hard enough. Maybe he's right.
"I'm saying it doesn't have to be a whole entire catastrophe," I tell him, and I hear my own frustration bleeding through. "I'm saying other people have managed casual without the world caving in. I'm saying..."
"You're not someone temporary, though, are you?" he grits out and I am taken aback.
"Our lives are too entangled," he continues, leaning closer now, pointing between us.
"Erin and Rome. Poppy and Ramsey. Which means you and me...
is forever. Your grumpy-ass brother is someone I actually like, which doesn't happen often, and this isn't something we can just do and have it be nothing.
For the other people in this equation, if nothing else. "
I know what he means, I understand what he means. I also hate what he means. I want to cry and scream because he's right and I don't want him to be right and none of that changes anything.
"Fine."
Because I'm angry and embarrassed and frustrated. At him. At me. At everyone and everything.
"Fine?" He says it like he doesn't quite believe me.
"Yes. Fine!" I say evenly, though my throat burns with it. "That grumpy-ass brother taught me in sixth grade that I would never, not once in my life, chase a boy who didn't want me. So..."
I pick up my bag strap, adjust it on my shoulder, armor in place.
"You don't have to manage my feelings about it. I'm a big girl."
"Lily..."
He reaches for me. I take a step back.
"I mean it. You made your decision. I respect it."
I do not fully respect it, but that's my business.
"I'll still come see your dad. We're fine."
"That's not..." His hand comes up like he's going to touch something, and then doesn't. "It's not that I don't want you."
"Callahan."
I say his name the same way I always do. All I want is to throw a "Cal" his way, unbothered, but my brain won't cooperate.
"You don't have to save my pride. Truly. I'm a big girl, believe it or not."
And then his hands are on my face. I have approximately half a second to register what's happening before he's right there, close enough that I can see the exact color of his eyes in the afternoon light. Sea-green with golden edges, positively on fire.
"You keep saying I don't want you and it drives me mad."
He says it through gritted teeth, his grip tightening just barely, like he needs me to stay still and hear it.
"You know what you do to me. You know damn well what you do to me by just existing in the same goddamn town."
His forehead drops to mine and I stop breathing. Just this. Just him. Just the quiet collapse of every wall I'd tried to put between us.
"Just stop saying that," he pleads. "When you know what you do."
I’m in free fall. Heart pounding, breath shallow, everything in me leaning toward him like he's gravity.
"And what do I do, exactly?" I whisper it, because apparently I'm going to keep talking until someone stops me.
"Drive me fucking crazy."
Then he kisses me. This is not the impulsive kiss of the firehouse. This is a man who has made a choice.
His mouth is on mine without hesitation, and my back hits the porch wall behind me before I've entirely processed the sequence of events that led there.
I kiss him back because there is no version of me that doesn't, and his hands move from my face into my hair, getting tangled in it like he doesn't care what it takes to undo.
I'm dimly aware that I have my fingers in his hair and I'm pulling him closer, which is unnecessary given how little space remains between us.
The kiss goes long and deep and a little desperate. The kind that carries the weight of the time since our first kiss, and the six months before that, and every charged, maddening interaction in between.
His mouth moves to my jaw, then down to my neck. He murmurs something against my skin that I don't quite catch, and when I tilt my head, his hands slide under the hem of my shirt.
He finds the curve of my shoulder and lingers there, warm and open. For a few minutes, the whole afternoon narrows down to just this. Just here. Just the specific, concentrated reality of Callahan with his hands under my shirt and his body pressed against mine.
Then he pulls back, this time gentler. Neither of us says anything for what is probably a very short amount of time, but feels considerably longer. His hands are still under my shirt. My fingers are still loosely in his hair.
"Hi," I say, because I have to say something.
He makes a sound that could generously be called a laugh. "Hi."
We stay like that for another moment. His thumb moves once against my ribs, and I close my eyes.
"People can see the porch from the street," I manage, steadier than I deserve credit for.
His forehead rolls against mine as he curses once, and his hands slip out from under my shirt so he can push them through his own hair instead. He steps back, and I miss his warmth the second I lose it.
His hand comes up, brushes a strand of hair from my face, tucks it back carefully. He follows the movement with his eyes, watching where my hair falls. The tenderness of it after everything else is almost worse. Almost harder to survive than the kiss.
"Go inside."
"Are you..."
"Go inside." A pause. "Please."
I want to ask why, want to argue, but something in his expression tells me this is not the time. I pick up my bag from where it ended up on the porch floor and hold his gaze once more.
He's watching me with his hands in his pockets, eyes saying everything he's not saying out loud.
I go inside. Quickly, before I change my mind and kiss him again.
I stand in their hallway for a moment, in the cool and the quiet, listening to the sound of my own heartbeat.
Through the front window I see Callahan still on the porch, forearms on the railing, looking out at the street, his shoulders lifting and sinking with the effort of his restraint.
The house smells like wood shavings and something herby from whatever's left on the stove.
I know where the glasses are. I know which floorboard in the kitchen creaks.
I know that the radio in the workshop stays on all day, and that the good teabags are on the second shelf, and that Will takes his coffee with one sugar and will tell you he doesn't have a sweet tooth while eating directly from a bag of chocolate chip cookies he keeps in the second drawer.
I know this house. I know these people. And I know I have just been kissed by Callahan, and instead of being sent away, I'm tucked securely inside his home while he stays outside with whatever he's working through.
Same time next year, I won't be here. Same time next year I'll be back to "living my life," the one everyone keeps insisting on.
And I have a feeling that for a long time after that, I will think about this exact moment, this exact house, this exact afternoon.