Chapter 38
CAL
I'm losing her in a garden full of people who have no idea.
The reception is loud and bright and everywhere around me, clinking glasses and music from the live band I'm half-listening to, some upbeat song that has couples spinning on the dance floor.
Ramsey has Poppy out there now, his hands on her waist, looking at her like she is his whole world. Everyone is watching them like they're the only two people who exist.
I'm watching Lily. She's across the room, near the makeshift bar, holding a glass of champagne she hasn't sipped from. Erin is beside her, saying something that makes her nod. She's smiling. Bright and wide and perfect, the kind of smile you wear when you're performing joy instead of feeling it.
She is so beautiful I have to look away in intervals.
When she walked down the aisle this afternoon, holding flowers, her chin high and her eyes bright, I forgot how to breathe entirely.
And then my brain did the cruelest thing, just for a second.
It put her in white. Just long enough to destroy me.
I take a drink. It tastes like nothing. Everything has tasted like nothing for weeks.
The evening wears on. The toasts are done. Lily's speech was funny and warm and she made the whole room laugh, made Poppy cry, made everyone fall a little bit in love with her because that's what Lily does. I sat at the head table and watched her command the space like she'd been born for it.
Because she was. Lily was made for rooms full of people. Made to be seen, to be heard, to fill spaces with the energy she carries that makes everyone around her feel more alive. She was made for bigger rooms than this one.
I've known it since the first moment I saw her and understood, with a clarity that felt like a blade, that this woman was going to leave.
That she was always going to leave. That Harbor Hill was a stop on her way to somewhere else, and I was just the man who happened to be standing there when she passed through.
I dance with Gran because she's Gran and because her hand on my arm is the kind of steady I need right now.
I dance with Erin, who doesn't say anything, but squeezes my shoulder in a way that tells me she sees right through me.
I dance with Poppy, briefly, and she leans close to my ear and whispers, "It doesn't have to be this way, honey," squeezing my hand once before spinning back to her husband.
I don't know what to say to that. So I say nothing. I go back to my corner and watch Lily across the room and pretend I'm fine.
Ramsey finds me a few minutes later.
"You good?" He hands me a fresh beer, his tie loose, his eyes bright from the happiest night of his life.
"I'm good," I say, which is a lie we both recognize immediately.
"You're not." He tips his beer toward the bar, toward Lily. "You've been standing in this corner for twenty minutes looking like someone stole your dog."
"My dog died, you evil fucker."
"Exactly my point." He takes a sip, watching me over the rim with patience. "You do know that's your girl over there, right?"
"It's your wedding, you ugly fuck," I tell him, which only makes him laugh. "Go be with your wife and leave me alone."
"My wife is currently teaching Gran how to do the Macarena and they're both failing spectacularly and it's the best thing I've ever seen." He shifts his weight, settling in. "Talk to her, Cal."
"And say what?"
"You know what."
I take a drink. Still nothing. Still tastes like absolutely nothing.
"She's moving across the country in a few weeks," I mutter. "What's the point of saying it now?"
Ramsey fixes me with the kind of impatience that only a man deliriously in love can muster for a man too stupid to figure his own shit out.
"The point, man, is that you're both standing sad and alone on opposite corners of my wedding like it's already over. You're mourning before it's even ended."
He claps my shoulder hard enough to rattle me. "You're both miserable. It's bringing down the aesthetic. Fix it. That's an order from the groom."
He walks away before I can respond. Probably for the best.
But he is right. I can't stand it. I can't stand across a room from her and watch her be sad and do nothing about it. I can't keep pretending that distance is the noble choice when all it's doing is making us both miserable.
I can't be this man anymore. The one who watches. The one who waits. The one who loses everything to the right thing.
I'm moving before I've made the conscious decision to move. Rome sees me coming. One look at his sister's face and he's crossing to her, stepping into my path before I can reach her.
“Not right now." His voice is low, meant only for me. His eyes flick to Lily and back. "She's upset. Leave her be, Cal."
"I'm not asking you," I tell him through gritted teeth. I know I come on too strong, but I'm past deferring to his judgment, past treating his approval like something I need in order to love her.
Rome is one of my best friends. Rome is family, but he's standing between me and the woman I love and I would ruin this whole goddamn wedding just to get to her right now.
He must see it in my face, what I can't shove back down. He steps aside with one last glare, a warning I'm choosing not to hear.
I stop in front of her, close enough to see the way her eyes widen when she realizes I'm there, the way she's holding herself together by sheer force of will.
"Dance with me," I say, and hold out my hand.
She sets her glass on the bar with a sad smile and takes it.
I lead her to the floor. The upbeat song is fading out, and a hush falls over the speakers as a woman steps up to the microphone at the end of the small stage. The first notes come in slow. Piano only, sparse and fragile.
(My mother said I'm too romantic…)*
I pull Lily in and she comes without resistance, her body fitting against mine like we were designed for exactly this. Like every other way of standing is wrong. I am happy the music is just enough for us to sway together.
(I'd like to think it's how you lean on my shoulder. And how I see myself with you…)
Her forehead presses against my chin. I can feel her breathing, trying so hard not to shatter.
The singer's voice is wrecked in the way only live voices can be and I can only hold my girl as we keep swaying. I pull her closer because closer is never close enough and I'm running out of chances to prove it. I close my eyes and let myself have this.
(Fire on fire would normally kill us. With this much desire, together, we're winners…)
She makes a sound against my neck. Then her shoulders shake once and I feel the first tear soak through my collar.
"Please, don't cry," I whisper into her hair, because I can't survive her face right now. "I can't stand it when you cry."
She shakes her head, but doesn't answer. She presses her body harder into mine like she's trying to disappear into me, like if she gets close enough maybe she won't have to leave.
I hold her tighter still and it's more of a hug, both arms wrapped around her completely, her face buried in my neck.
People are watching, I can feel it. The peripheral awareness of eyes turning toward us, conversations pausing, the whole room noting that the best man is holding the bridesmaid like she's the only thing keeping him upright.
I don't care. I'm so far past caring that the concept has lost all meaning. Let them see. Let the whole town see. Let Harbor Hill log it in the gossip record that Ruth will distribute by morning.
Callahan Holt held Lily Moreland on a dance floor and didn't let go, and everyone who looked at them knew exactly what it meant.
She pulls back just enough to tip her face up to mine. Her eyes are wet and wide and full of something that looks like goodbye, and I want to grab that look and shove it somewhere it can't hurt us. I'm not ready. I'm never going to be ready.
"I know I'm young compared to you." Her voice is barely there, cracked down the middle. "It's a fact you and my brother won't let me forget."
"Lily..."
"But you never forget, Callahan." Her lip trembles. Her eyes fill fresh and she doesn't blink them back, just lets them spill down her cheeks. "That this stupid young heart loves you very much."
And there goes all the air inside my chest.
"And always will."
I open my mouth to say it back. Her name. The truth. The words I've been choking on for months.
But she steps back before I can get them out. Holds her hands up, palms toward me, warding me off.
"I need to go."
"Baby..."
She shakes her head once, the kind of shake that says don't follow me, don't touch me, don't say a single word because I am barely upright and if you speak I will fall apart completely and I cannot do that here.
She turns and walks off the dance floor. Fast, heels sharp on the wood, shoulders squared, head high.
She doesn't look back. Not once. I stand there, frozen in the middle of the floor while the song ends and another begins and people move around me like I'm a stone in a river.
She told me she loves me. She told me she loves me and I let her walk away without saying it back.
Rome's hand closes around my arm and hauls me off the floor, guiding me toward the shadows at the edge of the venue where the music goes muffled and the fairy lights don't reach.
A shuddering breath tears out of me. "Don't fucking touch me, man.”
I grab the back of my neck because I'm coming apart.
"I saw," Rome says behind me. "The whole place saw, Cal."
"I can't do it." I press my fist against my chest like I can make the pain stop through force. It doesn't work. Nothing works.
"Go home, Cal. We'll talk tomorrow."
"No." I straighten up and turn to face him. "We talk now. It has to be now because I physically cannot hold it in anymore."
Rome waits. He's always been good at that.
"I love her."
The words come out clean, the easiest words I have ever said. I choked on them five minutes ago in front of the woman they belonged to and I refuse to choke on them again.
"Cal." Rome's voice is careful. "Come on, let's sit down. We don't have to do this here."
"You have no idea how hard I fought this," I say, ignoring him. "No fucking idea."
He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. His face is a mask and his hands are shoved in his pockets and he just stands there and lets me talk.
"I'm so fucking tired." I scrub a hand over my face. "I am exhausted from fighting this."
For a second, something flickers in his eyes. Something that might be understanding, but it's gone before I can be sure.
"I know you said not to hold her back." I'm going to say all of it now because I've been silent for too long and silence just cost me the best thing I've ever had.
"She's so close, so don't for a second think of holding her back."
"It pisses me off to know you think I would do that when I tell you I love her.” I stare him down.
“And I know this might cost me our friendship.
I know it might blow up everything we've built, this whole family we have patched up together.
But I won't give her up for that. I can't. If that's the price, I'll pay it. "
His mask is holding, but barely. I see the cracks starting to spread.
"I am not going to stand in another room and watch that woman walk away from me without telling her what she is to me. I've done that. I've been doing it for months. And I can't do it anymore."
I step closer.
"You want to be angry, be angry. You want to shut me out, go ahead. I broke my word and I'd do it again tomorrow and I'll stand here and take whatever you need to throw at me."
My voice drops. "But don't you dare tell me I don't love her enough. Don't tell me this is casual or reckless or something I stumbled into because she's young and pretty and I have to stand back.”
My voice cracks on the next part, but I keep going.
"I have been in love with your sister since the moment I saw her and forgot my own goddamn name. It hasn't changed. It's never going to change."
Fuck, I am tired. Fuck.
Rome holds my gaze for a long moment before his eyes drift somewhere past my shoulder, staring at something I can't see.
"You're a hypocrite," I tell him quietly. "You fell in love with Erin even though you didn't want to. You didn't choose it any more than I chose this. The only difference is nobody stood in your way."
His face changes, just a small crack, and when his eyes find mine again I see his struggle, too.
His hands come out of his pockets and hang at his sides.
"She's my baby sister." His voice is rough now, stripped of the control he's been wearing all night.
"She's the only family I have, Cal. I gave up years of my life to make sure she got a chance at hers.
And now she's about to get everything she's worked for, and you're telling me you want to be the thing that pulls her back? "
"I'm not holding her back!" I yell. "I'm going with her."
Rome goes completely still, shock visible.
"I'm not asking her to choose between me and her future. I'm going with her to Chicago."
It's the first time I've said it out loud. The thought that's been taking shape in the back of my mind for weeks, too fragile to look at directly. But it's real now. Solid. The only answer that makes any sense.
Rome only stares at me. "You'd leave Harbor Hill?"
"Yes."
"The firehouse. Your house. Your whole life?"
"Yes!"
"Your father."
That one lands exactly where he aimed it, in the center of my entire existence.
"I'll figure it out." The composure is crumbling and I need to get out of here before it goes entirely. "I'll figure it out because she's worth figuring it out for."
Rome doesn't speak. He isn't going to. Not tonight. Maybe not for a while.
I turn and walk away without saying goodbye. I sit in my car with the engine off.
She loves me. She told me she loves me and I stood there like an idiot and let her walk away. I should have said it back. I should have grabbed her and held her and said every word I've been swallowing since the day we met.
But I'm going to fix it. I'm going with her. The thought settles like something that was always supposed to be there.
* Fire on Fire. Sam Smith.