Chapter 40 #2
"And you're just going to leave work and everything?"
"I'm pretty sure they have fires in Chicago." Callahan turns to me with so much love I struggle to contain it.
"And if they don't, I'll set them myself. For her, I'll do anything it takes."
Rome squints at that, but his mouth twitches. It’s not a smile, not yet, but close.
"I have one condition," he finally says, "if I'm going to let you two off into the sunset." He straightens, going stern and cold, but I can see he's all talk. "I pay for her school."
Callahan frowns. "That won't be necessary. My dad and I have it covered."
"I have no doubt." Rome acknowledges it almost gently, a softness in his voice I don't hear often.
"But it has always been my mission to get her through school safely. I started saving the day I got her, and it matters to me, Cal. It is the most important thing I have ever done, and I need to finish it."
Callahan's hand on my hip loosens, and I watch the resistance leave his face as he understands what this is. What it means. Why it matters.
"You're not responsible for me anymore, Rome.”
I look at him, still holding onto Callahan, not ready to let go. "You know that, right? I'm grown. I'm okay. We did it."
Rome doesn't answer, but his throat moves several times.
"Let yourself be the partner now instead of the parent," I say. "You've earned that."
He looks so visibly sad that I have to make it better. I step away from Callahan and cross the room to my brother. I put my arms around him, and he's stiff for a second, caught off guard, and then his arms come up and hold on so tight I can barely breathe.
"Thank you," I say to him. "For everything. For all of it. You have to save for your own family now."
He scoffs, the sound vibrating through him.
"Shut up, Lily." He says it roughly, emotions too big for his vocabulary.
”I haven't had to save for you or anyone else for a long time. I'm doing this for my own sake."
Still holding me, he turns to Cal. "It's not easy to uproot your life, no matter how much you love a person. You two need to love each other and not think about logistics or tuition. Things that are still my responsibility."
He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice is quieter.
"I know it may not make sense to any of you. But it's important that at this stage you be boyfriend and girlfriend, or whatever you're calling yourselves. She still has me. And one day she will out-earn us both, and you do whatever you kids want to do."
One would think this man is old, when he is barely four years older than Callahan. But he's my brother, who loved me with a ferocity that looked like strictness and overprotection, but was really just a man terrified of failing the one person he'd promised not to fail.
My brother, who till the end wanted me to be free and independent and not rely on anyone for anything. To give me a chance to have a love without burdens, without friction.
"You're just a mushy soft teddy bear, you know that?"
"Am not." His voice is gruff. "Don't spread lies."
We stay like that for another second, and then I let go.
"Whatever you say, big bro." I push him gently toward Erin. "But can you both leave now? We're going to have make-up sex."
Callahan groans behind me. Erin snickers, already reaching for Rome's hand, and Rome looks disgusted and pained in a way that brings me enormous joy.
"Ooh, the best kind," Erin says, and starts dragging Rome toward the door. "You know what that's like, right, babe?"
The door closes behind them before we have to hear what Rome says, but Erin's squeal echoes in the hallway anyway.
I turn around slowly, and Callahan is standing in my kitchen with an expression I've never seen before. It's hungry, yes. It's always hungry when he looks at me like that. But there's a patience behind it I haven't seen before.
"So," I say. "Make-up sex."
"You just had to announce it to your brother."
"He'll survive." I take a step toward him. "Will you?"
He watches me approach, his eyes darkening, that muscle in his jaw doing the thing it does when he's holding himself back. "Remains to be seen."
"That sounds like a challenge."
"That sounds like a promise, Trouble."
I stop in front of him, close enough to feel the heat coming off his body, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat. My hands find the hem of his shirt.
"You know what's different about this?" I ask, my fingers tracing the warm skin just above his waistband.
"Tell me."
"We have time." I look up at him, and the truth of it hits me all over again, a wave of relief so strong it almost takes my knees out. "We actually have time."
"Yeah," he says happily. "We do."
He kisses me then, slow and deep, and it's different.
Everything about it is different. There's no desperation clawing underneath, no ticking clock driving us forward, no fear that this might be the last time.
He kisses me like we have forever, like he can take his time learning every corner of my mouth, like there's nowhere else he needs to be.
I melt into him, my hands sliding up under his shirt to find warm skin and hard muscle, and he makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
"Bedroom," I moan.
"We have time," he reminds me, a hint of teasing in his voice, and I pull back to glare at him.
"Callahan Holt, if you don't get me horizontal in the next thirty seconds, I will…"
He picks me up. Just scoops me right off the floor, his hands under my thighs, and I wrap around him with a laugh that turns into a gasp when his mouth finds my neck.
"You were saying?" he murmurs against my pulse point.
"I was saying you're very good at following instructions."
"I'm good at a lot of things."
"Prove it."
He carries me down the hall to my bedroom, and I'm kissing his face, his neck, the spot behind his ear that I love.
The door is already open, and he walks us through and kicks it shut behind him, and then I'm falling backward onto my bed with him coming down over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi," I say.
He's braced on his forearms, his body a warm solid presence above me, and he's just... still. Taking me in.
"What is it?” I ask gently.
"Nothing." He dips his head to kiss the corner of my mouth. "Just thinking about how I get to wake up to this face every day of my life."
My heart goes completely stupid because of this man. "You're going to make me cry again."
"No more crying." He kisses my other cheek. "I have plans for you that don't involve tears."
"What kind of plans?"
He shifts his weight to one arm and his free hand traces down my side, leaving a trail of fire through the thin fabric of my shirt.
"The kind where I can make you scream my name and the tears you cry are because I fuck you so good and so rough, just like you love it."
I shiver. "Calla..."