5. Obsession
Chapter five
Obsession
Over the next week, I conducted an informal study of Callum Voss.
It wasn't intentional, at first. I was simply aware of him in a way I couldn't seem to control. My body tracked his presence the way a compass tracked north, orienting toward him without my permission, cataloguing his movements even when I was trying to focus on something else entirely.
Day one: I passed him on the stairs, coming down while he was coming up.
The staircase was narrow, the morning light slanting through the railing in golden bars, and there was a moment where we had to navigate around each other, bodies close enough that I caught his scent.
Cedar. Something earthy, warm and animal, nothing like cologne.
"Good morning," I said.
"Morning," he said.
And then nothing. He continued up. I continued down. The entire interaction lasted maybe four seconds.
But I noticed the way his eyes tracked me.
Not just looking, but watching, the same way I'd seen him watch the treeline from the yard.
Taking inventory. Assessing. The way his nostrils flared slightly when I passed, like he was breathing me in.
The way his whole body seemed to orient toward mine, a subtle shift in posture, shoulders squaring, weight settling differently on his feet.
I wanted to write it off as imagination. The certainty in my bones wouldn't allow it.
Day two: I was on my porch with coffee, watching the morning happen, when movement in the yard below caught my attention.
Callum was in the backyard, shirtless now, chopping wood.
The morning sun turned his skin golden, highlighting every ridge of muscle across his back, every flex of his arms as he swung the axe.
His body was a sculpture of controlled power: broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, abs that looked like they'd been carved from stone, obliques cutting sharp lines toward his hips.
A line of dark hair trailed down from his navel and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.
I watched the axe rise. Watched the controlled explosion of force as it came down. Watched the wood split clean, falling away in two perfect halves.
He paused, sensing something. Looked up.
Our eyes met across thirty feet of yard. I waved, feeling caught, feeling stupid for waving like this was a normal thing, like I hadn't been staring at him for the past ten minutes.
He nodded. One sharp dip of his chin. Then turned back to his work.
Words exchanged: zero. But his gaze had lingered on me for a long moment before he looked away, and I could have sworn I saw his jaw tighten. Could have sworn something flickered in those dark eyes, something that looked almost like frustration.
I stayed on the porch longer than I needed to. Told myself it was the coffee. The morning air. The way the light played through the magnolia leaves, turning everything soft and golden.
It was none of those things.
I watched him work until he finished the pile.
Watched the economy of his movements, the way he never wasted effort.
Every swing was precise. Every motion had purpose.
There was something almost hypnotic about it: the rhythm of the axe, the crack of splitting wood, the way his body moved like it had been designed for exactly this kind of work.
When he finally set the axe down and stretched, rolling his shoulders, I looked away too fast. My coffee was cold. I'd been sitting there for forty-five minutes.
This was becoming a problem.
Day three: We ended up at The Daily Grind at the same time.
I was in line, studying the chalkboard menu I'd already memorized, when the bell above the door jangled. The shift in the air told me before I turned.
Callum.
He took his place in line behind me. Not quite beside me, not quite behind me, but somewhere in between. Close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off his body. Close enough that when I shifted my weight, I almost brushed against him.
He went still when that happened. Completely, perfectly still, like a man forcing himself not to move.
"Hi," I said, because the silence was becoming unbearable.
"Hi," he said.
His voice was low, rough, like he didn't use it often enough to keep it smooth. Two words. Two syllables. It shouldn't have affected me the way it did.
He ordered black coffee, no eye contact with me, and left before I got my drink. But when Mel handed me my cup, she was smirking, that knowing expression I was beginning to recognize.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." Her eyes danced. "It's just... Callum never comes in here during the morning rush. Says it's too crowded."
I didn't know what to make of that.
But I thought about it all day. The way he'd positioned himself, that careful distance that wasn't quite distance. The stillness when I'd almost touched him. The way he'd left without looking back, like looking back might cost him something.
I was probably reading too much into it. Three years with Marcus had wrecked my ability to interpret male attention. Everything felt like a threat, a trap, or a test I was failing. The idea that someone might simply want to be near me, without an agenda, without a price...
I didn't trust it. I didn't trust myself to recognize it even if it were real.
Day four: I passed him on the stairs again. He was carrying something heavy, a toolbox maybe, and his t-shirt was damp with sweat, clinging to his chest in ways that made it hard to look anywhere else.
"How's it going?" I asked, because I was apparently a glutton for monosyllabic rejection.
"Fine," he said. And kept walking.
But his eyes, when they met mine, held something that wasn't disinterest. Something that looked almost like restraint. Like he was holding himself back from something, leashing some impulse I couldn't see.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the word restraint. About what it might mean when a man looked at you like he was fighting himself.
With Marcus, I'd learned to read restraint as a warning.
The tight jaw. The controlled voice. The way he'd go silent before the explosion came.
Restraint meant danger. Restraint meant you've done something wrong.
Restraint meant the violence was gathering, building pressure, waiting for the moment to release.
But Callum's restraint didn't feel like that.
It felt like a man holding back a tide. Like something inside him wanted to surge forward, wanted something he wouldn't let himself take. And that should have scared me, that should have triggered every alarm Marcus had wired into my nervous system.
Instead, it made me curious.
Something is wrong with me, I thought. I'm broken.
Day five: I counted. In the entire week, Callum Voss had spoken exactly forty-seven words to me. I knew this because I'd started keeping track, which probably said something unflattering about my mental state.
I called Tara about it, because Tara was my designated recipient of complaints about confusing men.
"He's the oldest brother?" she asked.
"By seven minutes, apparently."
"And he just... doesn't talk?"
"He talks. He talks to his brothers. He talks to Rowena. I've heard him have actual conversations with other humans." I was pacing my apartment, phone pressed to my ear, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet. "Just not with me."
"Is he hot?"
"I don't see how that's relevant."
"It's always relevant. Is he hot?"
I thought about Callum. The breadth of his shoulders, the way they blocked doorways.
The way he moved through space like he was always slightly on alert, always aware of everything around him.
His dark eyes that, on the rare occasions they met mine, seemed to catalogue everything they saw.
The suggestion of barely leashed power in every controlled movement, every deliberate gesture.
"He's dark... and intense," I said.
"That sounds kinda hot."
"Yes, fine, he's seriously fucking hot. They're all hot.
It's honestly unfair. It's like someone designed them specifically to be devastating and then tripled the effect.
" I paused by the window, looking out at the magnolia tree.
"Callum's hot in a dark, brooding, possibly dangerous kind of way.
Jasper's hot in a charming-rogue-who'll-break-your-heart way.
And Eli's hot in a quiet-genius-who-sees-everything way. "
"Yum. Three brothers." Tara's voice was thoughtful. "Three different kinds of hot. That sounds like the setup for a all kinds of fun. You know, if life were like a spicy novel."
"Don't."
"I'm just saying—"
"I know what you're saying. And I'm not... I can't... I just got here. I'm supposed to be invisible."
"You don't sound invisible." Her voice softened, that gentle teasing I'd missed. "You sound interested."
"I can't be interested." The words came out sharper than I intended. "I can't be anything right now. I'm supposed to be healing, remember? Getting my head straight. Not noticing how men look with their shirts off."
"Serena." Tara's voice went gentle in that way that always made me want to cry. "Noticing attractive men doesn't mean you're not healing. It means you're alive. Those are different things."
"What if I notice the wrong thing? What if I'm attracted to someone else who's... who turns out to be..."
I couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't say Marcus's name out loud, even now, even in the safety of my own apartment with more than a thousand miles between us.
"You learned the warning signs," Tara said firmly. "You know what to look for now. And from what you're telling me, these brothers aren't giving off any red flags. Weird, sure. Mysterious, definitely. But not controlling. Not possessive. Not him."
She was right. I knew she was right. But the fear was older than logic, wired into a part of me that no amount of reasoning could reach.