Chapter 16
Sixteen
Iwake up and have absolutely no idea where I am.
My mouth tastes like I drank trash last night, and it doesn’t take me very long, as I look around bleary-eyed, to realize that:
A. I’m in the lighthouse
B. Caleb has pulled me up against him on the couch somehow during the middle of the night without me noticing, and
C. — oh yeah, I drank a really strong whiskey drink after talking to a telepathic kraken queen during a thunderstorm that flooded the entire town.
That’s a lot of things to realize all at once upon waking, and the most important part doesn’t even feel like it’s the fact that we need to figure out how to protect the town with the failing ward and the whole kraken queen keeping evil ocean storm magic crap or whatever at bay.
No.
The most important thing is the way Caleb is holding me, his head and nose nuzzled into my hair so tight that I can feel the warmth of his breath along my scalp.
Gunner shifted position in the night too, as now he’s firmly planted on top of my feet.
And despite the insanity of the previous night, I feel the safest I’ve felt maybe in my entire life.
I’m warm.
Cared for.
I feel loved.
Caleb knows that I’m magic. He didn’t care. He just rolled with it. I think that might be more shocking than a telepathic squid — kraken!! — hanging right outside of Silverlight Shore.
“Good morning,” Caleb says.
The words are soft, his lips brushing the outer shell of my ear in a way that sends goosebumps all over my skin.
Goosebumps that have nothing to do with the fact that something mildly horrifying and completely on brand for Silverlight Shore happened just last night.
No. It’s all Caleb.
“Hey,” I say. “That should be awkward, right?”
“What?” he asks. “The fact that your breath smells like Gunner’s after he eats raw food?”
“Well, that’s incredibly rude,” I say. The words come out garbled because I’ve slapped my hand over my mouth.
He laughs, snuggling me closer. “I’ve never been so happy to smell bad breath in my life. But if you want, I’m pretty sure I bought a bulk pack of toothbrushes, and you’re more than welcome to freshen up in my bathroom.”
“What time is it?” I ask. Subject change, subject change, subject change.
“Oh no, you’re not getting off that easy,” he says. “What about this is awkward, besides your bad breath?”
His arms have tightened around me, and he’s pulled me even closer — so close that I can feel the beating of his heart against my shoulder blades.
It’s not the only thing I can feel pressed up against me, either.
I bite my lip.
“I don’t hate it.”
“Maybe I should brush my teeth right now.”
“This isn’t awkward, Ivy,” he says. “This is perfect. This is what I’ve wanted to wake up to for years.”
For some reason, a teeny tiny jealous little imp in the back of my mind pipes up and decides to speak right then.
“There really wasn’t anybody else?” I ask him.
Turning around, he threads his arms around the back of my neck and pulls me closer.
Now that our torsos touch, it’s incredibly intimate, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that my dress totally rode up to the tops of my thighs while I slept last night.
“Are you jealous, Ivy Romantic?” he asks.
A smug, self-satisfied expression settles on his face, and damn it if he isn’t even more handsome with it.
“I’m not jealous. How am I supposed to be jealous? I broke up with you.”
“Uh-huh. And Gunner said that you’ve loved me this whole time. Nonetheless, it’s okay. You can admit if you’re jealous, Ivy.”
“There’s no one even to be jealous of,” I say, blowing out a breath.
He scrunches up his nose.
“You should really take me up on that toothbrush offer.”
“Well, now I’m just going to breathe harder in your face,” I say, huffing the words for maximum breath cruelty.
He laughs, then pinches his nose. “If you’re trying to turn me off with your bad breath, Ivy, it’s not going to happen. I’d still happily make out with you right now. In fact, I’d happily do a whole lot more.”
“Caleb.” I scrunch my nose. I was aiming for scandalized reaction, but instead his name comes out a breathy whisper that has his pupils dilating.
I wiggle slightly — and then stop, realizing we’re in a very compromising position.
Not that I’m complaining.
“Was there somebody else?” I press.
“Two somebodies,” he finally admits.
I let out a deep breath and sink against him.
“Are you mad?” he asks.
“Caleb, I would have to be the biggest hypocrite ever to be mad about that. I dated other people too.”
“You did?” he asks. “Who? I just want to talk.”
“Caleb,” I say, shocked.
I give the top of his arm a little slap, and burst into laughter.
“I thought you said I was the jealous one.”
“We can both be jealous,” he corrects. “I don’t think there’s any rule about only one person being jealous of the previous person’s relationships.”
“Oh,” I say, raising my eyebrows. “Is that what you had? You had previous relationships?”
“Well, there was, you know, this one girl that I was madly in love with all through high school and college. You know, I thought we’d always end up together. She kind of looks like you,” he says.
I roll my eyes, slapping at the top of his bicep again, and we both laugh.
My fingers linger on the top of his arm a little too long.
“You’ve found a lot of muscle since then.”
“Was wondering how long it would take you to notice,” he says. “So tell me about your other relationships,” he prods, poking me gently in the chest.
His arm climbs up the base of my neck, my jawline, his hand landing there, holding me in place, forcing me to look at him instead of looking away. Looking anywhere else but him right now sounds like an absolutely terrible idea.
I lean into his palm and close my eyes.
“They were more like dates. A series of them. My sisters really were freaked out about me never wanting to be in a relationship with anyone ever again.”
“Well, finding the love of your life and losing them will do that to you.”
“Ohhh, is that right?” I roll my eyes.
“I speak from experience.”
“So you didn’t have the relationships?” I press.
“Well, I had one girlfriend, and I dated a few others. My girlfriend and I lasted about two months before I realized that everything about her was a total deal breaker.”
“Everything about her?” I interrupt. “What kind of things to say about someone? That’s a red flag, sir. A red flag. Bright red. So red that I’m not sure I can see past it.”
I start to pretend like I’m going to roll off of him when he holds me back down to his chest. Our lips are so close that just one hair’s breadth of a movement closer and we would be kissing.
Not a bad idea.
“Yeah, everything about her was a deal breaker, Ivy,” he insists. “Because she wasn’t you.”
He had to go and spoil my irritation.
“Red flag for her,” I say, trying for levity. Inside, though, I’m completely and utterly delighted. The thought of him breaking up with someone because she wasn’t me should be toxic as hell, and yet here I am, absolutely eating it up.
“Maybe we should kiss,” he says.
“You think we should kiss again?”
“Yeah. You know, just to make sure that we still have chemistry. I wouldn’t want to waste our time if I’m remembering badly. You know, high school. Maybe those kisses really weren’t that great. We didn’t know what we were doing. And we’ve had some practice.”
“Is that what we were doing? We were practicing?”
He cuts off my statement by pressing his lips to mine again, and I melt.
It’s not tentative this time. Not a question. His hand slides up into my hair like he already knows exactly where it belongs, like he’s been waiting years to put it there again. My fingers catch in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer even though there’s nowhere left to go.
“Still terrible,” I murmur against his mouth.
“Yeah?” he says, already smiling, already leaning back in. “We should probably keep testing.”
“For science.”
“Obviously.”
The couch creaks softly as he shifts, and suddenly I’m half sprawled across him, my knee sliding between his, his arm braced around my back like he’s not going to let me drift even an inch too far away.
The world narrows to warmth and breath and the slow, deliberate way he kisses me — like he’s relearning me, like he’s savoring it.
It’s different from all those years ago. Deeper. Slower. There’s no rush in it, no awkward uncertainty. Just certainty, just him.
I laugh softly when he breaks away, chasing his mouth for a second before catching myself. “You’re taking this very seriously.”
“I am,” he says, brushing his thumb along my jaw, his voice quieter now. “I’ve had a long time to think about it.”
Something in my chest goes soft at that, at the way he’s looking at me like I’m not a surprise, not a mistake — like I’m something he’s been expecting all along.
“Caleb—”
He kisses me again, gentler this time, like he’s answering something I didn’t quite say out loud. His hand slips lower, slow, careful, giving me time to stop him, to shift away. His mouth follows, tentative, waiting for me to move.
I don’t.
“Is this okay?” The words are warm on my inner thigh.
“Caleb, please, more,” I say on an exhale, my hips rocking.
He chuckles lightly, and I inhale sharply, causing him to pause, like he’s waiting for me to say no.
Instead, I sink into him, into the familiar-unfamiliar rhythm of it, into the way my name sounds when he murmurs it under his breath like it means something. Like it always has.
“Still just testing?” I manage, a little breathless now.
“Mmm. Very thorough testing.”
I huff out a quiet laugh that turns into something softer when he presses a line of kisses along my jaw, my neck, the place just under my ear that makes my fingers tighten reflexively in his shirt.
“Oh,” I say, because apparently I’ve lost the ability to form full sentences.
“Yeah,” he murmurs.