Chapter 26
CAL
She eats breakfast like it's a competitive sport. I ordered room service while she was still asleep, the tray arriving with eggs, toast and fruit and coffee and some kind of pastry things I couldn't identify.
Lily surfaced from the sheets at the sound of the cart, blinking at the light like a creature emerging from hibernation, and now she's sitting cross-legged on the bed in my t-shirt and panties and nothing else.
Eating a croissant, and getting flakes on the duvet.
Talking about the interview with her mouth half full.
Her hair is knotted on top of her head in a way that's already coming undone, and there's a pillow crease on her cheek that she hasn't noticed yet.
I sit opposite her with my coffee and watch her, enjoying every single thing about this moment, about her, how she exists in space like the world arranged itself around her and not the other way around.
I lose myself in her. The way her hands move, the way she licks butter off her thumb, the way her whole body participates in the story she's telling. When I refocus, she's mid-sentence.
"…and then it came back and I just went with it. I either nailed it, or I sounded confident enough that no one could tell the difference."
"You nailed it," I tell her.
She meets my eye over her croissant, skeptical. "You don't know that."
"I know you."
The smile creeps in slowly and pleased, spreading across her face like sunrise over water. She goes back to eating without commenting on it.
In the months I've known her, I've come to understand that she handles compliments by tucking them away quietly, storing them somewhere safe where she can take them out later and turn them over in private.
The ones she expects, the surface-level ones about her face or her body, she bats around like a cat with a toy.
But the ones that see her, really see her, those she keeps.
This is day three in Baltimore. Her interview was Thursday morning, and I waited outside in the rental car trying not to think about what it would mean if she got in.
I knew before she said a word that it had gone well. Her whole body was buzzing with that specific Lily energy, the kind that meant she had walked into that room and owned it, made them remember her, and left them no choice but to want her.
I kissed her in the parking lot, in broad daylight. No checking the mirrors, no scanning for familiar plates, no calculations about who might see and what they might say.
We spent the days after exploring. She wanted to see everything, and I was content to follow her through whatever caught her attention, which turned out to be a lot.
The harbor. The bookshops. A bakery she'd read about online that had a line around the block, which she insisted was worth the wait, and she was right.
She dragged me into a vintage store and made me try on a leather jacket that I looked ridiculous in. She took a photo, smiled at it, and hugged her phone to her chest like she'd captured something precious.
We ate dinner at a restaurant where the waiter called her ma'am and me sir, and we sat on the same side of the booth because we could. She put her head on my shoulder somewhere between appetizer and main course, and I rested my chin on her hair as calm and ease found me.
I hadn't known how much I needed that, the freedom to have her close in the ordinary middle of an ordinary evening, and not only in stolen moments after dark. I hadn't known until I had it.
Every block we walked was a block in a city that could become hers. On campus, students moved in clusters with their backpacks and their tired faces and their whole lives ahead of them, and I watched Lily watching them.
This could be her life next year. These streets, these people, this pace. A big life. A life far away from me.
I want it for her. I want Hopkins to call her in the spring and say yes.
I want her face to light up the way it lit up in that parking lot.
I want her to go. I want all of it for her, every bit of the future Rome has been pushing for, every door that opens onto something bigger and brighter than what she'd have if she stayed.
It also hollows me out from the inside every time I think about it for longer than a few seconds. So I don't think about it for longer than a few seconds.
"What are you thinking about?"
She's finished the croissant and moved on to a strawberry, holding it by the stem and considering it the same way she once considered a cantaloupe at the grocery store back home. With grave suspicion and total commitment.
"Nothing," I say.
"Liar." She bites the strawberry, her eyes never leaving my face. "You have that face."
"Same face I was born with, I imagine."
"The one where you're thinking deep thoughts in your head about things you won't say out loud, smartass." She gestures at me with what's left of the strawberry. "That face."
"I was thinking about how you eat," I tell her, which is not a lie, just not the whole truth. "Like someone's going to take it away from you."
"Survival instinct." She throws the strawberry stem at me, and it lands on my chest. "This is the last room service I'm getting before we go back to sneaking around like teenagers, so I'm making it count. Stop deflecting."
"I'm not deflecting."
"You're deflecting, and you're doing it charmingly, which is your most annoying move."
I pick up the stem, and flick it back at her. She catches it, which is genuinely impressive, and I file that away as another thing I now know about Lily Moreland. Quick reflexes. Good hands. Competitive about everything, even fruit projectiles.
"I like this," I say, and the words come out before I've fully decided to say them.
"Throwing fruit at each other?"
"This." I turn my coffee cup in my hands, studying the dark surface instead of her face because her face is too much right now.
"Being here. With you. I've never done this before. The whole thing. Hotel, breakfast, three days of just being somewhere with someone."
She stops chewing and sets the strawberry down.
"I didn't know that," she says, the teasing edge gone from her voice.
"Now you do."
Her eyes soften, and my mouth curves into something that's probably embarrassingly tender. She is so very beautiful. All of her, though her face is a problem I will never solve
"Come here," she murmurs, setting the tray aside.
I go. There's no version of me that doesn't go when she asks.
I scoop her up and she climbs into my lap, her legs folding around me, her arms circling my neck.
Her fingers move through my hair in slow, lazy strokes that make my eyes close.
I could stay here. I could stay right here in this specific moment for the rest of my life and need nothing else.
"I like this too," she whispers. "For the record."
I pull her closer, my arms crossing behind her back, and take her in.
I broke my promise to Rome, but I can't find it in me to regret it, even knowing what it will cost when it comes out.
What I can do, what I owe her, is never hold her back.
Never let whatever this is become the reason she stays in Harbor Hill instead of chasing the thing she's been building toward her whole life.
I kiss the top of her head. She burrows deeper into my neck, her arms tightening around my torso. I hold her there, and I do not think about spring.
Last night here. The hotel room looks lived in now, three days of us scattered across every surface. Our shoes by the door. My jacket on the chair. A shared mess that feels more intimate than anything we've done in the dark.
She comes out of the bathroom in a towel, her hair dark and wet against her shoulders, and stops in the doorway like she knows exactly what she's doing to me.
"Last night," she says, biting that lip. That lip that is mine to bite.
"I know."
"Early flight tomorrow."
"I know."
She tilts her head, and water runs from her hair and trails down her collarbone and disappears into the towel. I track it, jealous of a single drop of water that gets to caress her body.
"You're staring, Callahan."
"Yeah."
She giggles in a way which can only mean trouble is coming and she's the one delivering it. She walks toward me, stops between my knees where I sit on the edge of the bed. I reach up and pull the towel loose. It drops and pools at her feet, and she stands there naked and warm from the shower.
I put my hands on her hips and pull her forward. Press my mouth to her stomach, the skin below her navel. Feel her breath catch above me, her hands finding my hair.
"On your knees," I say against her skin, the fire raging inside at the thought of her leaving me for this very city.
She goes down without a second of hesitation, her knees hitting the carpet, her hands sliding down my thighs. Those eyes hold mine from between my legs, and the sight of her there, willing and waiting, makes my insides twist and it has nothing to do with what is about to happen.
I cup her face, tilting it up, my thumb tracing her lower lip, love seeing the dent it makes.
"You've been so good this week. So patient. So sweet." I let my thumb drag across her mouth again, watching her lips part. "It's making me suspicious."
"Maybe I've reformed."
"You haven't reformed. You're saving it up." I lean forward, close enough to feel her breath. "Open your mouth."
She opens. I run my thumb across her lower lip once more, before pushing two fingers into her mouth. She sucks on them immediately, her eyes locked on mine, and I am so hard it hurts.
The wet heat of her mouth, the way her cheeks hollow, the way she stares up at me like she would do anything I asked. Anything at all.
I remove my fingers and stand, pushing my underwear down. Then I give her what she's asking for, guiding my cock to her mouth.
The sound I make when her lips close around me is not something I could have held back if I'd tried. Her mouth is hot and wet, and she takes me slow, her eyes never leaving mine, gray and molten in the low light.