18. Freddie
Freddie
The click-click-click noise burrows itself into my skull before the rest of me has any interest in being conscious.
I sit up too fast and the room tilts, the bedside lamp searing my eyes, and Callum’s side of the mattress is cold and flat and empty.
I scrub a hand through what I can only assume is a spectacular disaster of hair and squint around the room until I find him.
He’s on the floor, wedged into the corner between the wall and the oak dresser like he’s trying to become part of the furniture. He’s staring at me, eyes wide, jaw somewhere in the vicinity of his lap, the clicking source—a pen, maybe?—completely forgotten between his fingers.
“Wha—?” I start to ask, my voice raspy with sleep.
That’s when the cold air finds me.
Oh.
Oh no.
My tits are on full display in the bright lamplight. Because I foolishly assumed the fucking light would be off when I woke up.
I grab the comforter and haul it up to my chin so fast I nearly take out a tooth, tucking the edges under my armpits with a desperate precision. I sleep without a shirt, and I’ve almost always slept without a shirt, which has never been a problem because the light is supposed to be off—
“Oh my god.” My face is on fire. My entire body is on fire. I might actually be dying, my soul levitating to whatever afterlife is waiting for me.
Callum blinks. Once. Twice. Then he swallows like he’s trying to remember how his throat works. “Did that hurt?”
I blink back at him, completely thrown off. “Did what hurt?”
“The…n-nipple piercings,” he stammers, gesturing vaguely toward his own chest without making eye contact anymore. His neck is already turning a furious shade of pink.
Oh my god.
Normally, I don’t give a damn about who sees my body.
I have a good body, I like showing it off, and I’m proud of every piece of ink and silver I’ve chosen to put onto it or into it.
I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin, and anyone who has a problem with it—or anybody’s body, quite frankly—can take a long walk off a short pier.
But this is…different. This is Callum. And as much as I hate to admit it to myself, a small part of me actually cares if he likes what he sees. It’s irritating as hell.
I squint across the room at him, trying to will the blush off my face. “Why are you hiding out in a dark corner like Gollum? What are you even doing?”
My eyes track down his bare chest, and I nearly drool right onto the duvet.
The man is absolutely built. Broad, cut shoulders that taper into a lean waist, defined abs, and a light trail of reddish hair disappearing right into…
Dear god. Are those just plain grey briefs?
He still hasn’t answered, which means I have to move closer to figure out what’s in his hands. I haul the comforter with me and shimmy to the edge of the mattress.
“Are you—” I stop. Tilt my head. “Knitting?”
I stare at the two metal needles, a fat ball of yarn unspooling across his thigh. His big hands freeze mid-stitch like I’ve just caught him doing something far more incriminating than knitting.
The flush starts at his collarbone and climbs—slowly, involuntarily, deeply satisfyingly—until the tips of his ears go the same color as his hair. I could watch that happen every day for the rest of my life.
“It’s, um.” He stares down at his hands. “It’s something I do when I can’t shut my brain off. Too many thoughts going at once, or—” He stops, clears his throat. “A therapist suggested it, actually. My gran taught me when I was small, and I picked it back up a few years ago. Turns out I like it.”
He says the last part like he’s bracing for me to laugh.
I don’t.
A soft smile tugs at my lips. Seeing this big, serious, grumpy detective sitting in his underwear on the floor, sheepishly holding knitting needles, is so unfairly wholesome it hurts.
I slide off the high mattress, wrapping the comforter around myself like a giant burrito, and shuffle across the floor to drop down next to him. The cold hardwood bites through my socks, but I don’t care.
“Can I see what you’re making?” I ask gently.
He cuts his eyes toward me, wary, like he’s bracing for a joke he’s heard a hundred times before. It isn’t until he clocks the genuine curiosity on my face that he relents, easing the work into the space between us.
It’s softer than I expect—yarn in deep forest green, shot through with plum and a thread of cream, the cables braided into tight, even rows that look almost architectural in their precision.
“It’s a blanket,” he says, that low voice of his doing something unfair to my pulse. “For Isla. She hoards throw blankets, they’re her favorite gift. If I do twenty minutes a night, I figure I’ll have it done by Christmas.”
I stare at the intricate stitches, my heart doing a fluttering roll in my ribs. A thoughtful, detail-oriented man who goes to therapy, loves his sister, and knits custom blankets in his underwear.
“Callum,” I whisper, reaching out from my blanket-burrito to drag my fingertips lightly over the soft wool. “This is beautiful.”
He looks down at the yarn, then back up at me through his lashes. “You don’t think it’s…weird? "
I shake my head, meeting his eyes in the warm glow of the lamp. “I think it’s perfect.”
A laugh rumbles out of him, one that I feel more than hear. “Perfect’s a stretch, Win. But yes, I’ve had a bit of practice.”
“Teach me,” I say, nudging my knee against his bare thigh.
One eyebrow lifts, like he’s checking if I’m serious or just bored. “Really?”
I laugh, adjusting my grip on the heavy comforter so it doesn’t slip down my shoulders again. “I’m probably going to suck terribly at it, but yeah. Why not? It’s two in the morning and clearly neither of us is sleeping.”
“Fair point,” he murmurs. He reaches over to his left, rummaging through a crinkly plastic shopping bag tucked on the side of the dresser. He digs past a few extra skeins before pulling out a mustard-yellow ball of wool and a pair of shorter needles. “Right then. Brace yourself.”
He unwinds a length of the yellow yarn, wrapping it around his thumbs with a speed that proves he’s done this a thousand times. “First thing is casting on. You’re basically making a row of slipknots.”
I watch his big, broad fingers work, but my brain completely refuses to cooperate. Fuck, I think, staring at the loops. I’m in way over my head thinking I can just casually pick up a needle-and-thread hobby in the middle of the night while sitting next to a half-naked detective.
“Here,” Callum says. “Hold these.”
He hands me the needles and I take them, immediately arranging my hands like I’m about to eat noodles with the world’s worst chopsticks.
“Not quite,” he says, laughing under his breath.
Before I can joke my way out of it, Callum shifts behind me. He leans in, his warm chest pressing lightly against my back, and brings his hands over mine. His calloused palms wrap over my knuckles, guiding my fingers into place.
His chin rests right near the crook of my neck, his breath fanning across my collarbone. I pray to whatever higher power is listening that he can’t feel me tense up under his touch.
Why the hell does he smell so good at two in the morning? Like crisp laundry detergent and minty mouthwash. It’s completely ruining my concentration.
“Keep your left thumb hooked under the working yarn,” he murmurs right against my ear. “Then bring the right needle through the back loop. See?”
I do not see. I cannot focus on a single word coming out of his mouth.
All I can register is the soft prickle of his mustache tickling the skin along my jaw, his lips moving just an inch from my neck every time he speaks.
It sends shivers all over my body that has nothing to do with the draft in the room.
“Alright,” he whispers, his hands lingering over mine for one beat too long before he slowly pulls back. “Your turn to try.”
He sits back on his heels, resting his elbows on his knees, and just watches me.
The heat of his gaze is tangible. It’s heavy, deliberate, and entirely focused on my hands, my face, the way my bottom lip gets caught between my teeth as I struggle with the mustard yarn.
I’ve had plenty of men look at me before, but being the absolute center of his attention feels entirely different.
This feels like standing in a patch of sun on a cold day—like his focus alone could keep me warm.
I kind of love it.
“Like this?” I ask, managing to poke the right needle through a knot without dropping the whole thing.
Callum leans in just a fraction, a warm grin spreading across his face. “Yep, Win. Just like that.”
I keep my eyes fixed on the mustard wool, looping the yarn over the needle’s tip with more concentration than the stitch probably requires. Anything to keep from looking at him.
“That’s the second time you’ve called me Win,” I say, aiming for casual.
There’s a beat of quiet between us, broken only by the faint click of his own needles settling besides his thigh on the floor. “Do you like it?” he asks softly.
I shrug, but a smile sneaks up on me anyway. “Yeah. I do. Nobody’s ever really called me that before.”
He shifts behind me, the hardwood floor creaking under his weight. “Really?”
“Yep.” I coax a stubborn loop down the needle. “I’ve always been Freddie. That’s what my parents have called me since the day I was born. But Win—” I let the name sit there a second. “Win is cute.”
“It is,” he says, and something about the way he says it goes straight through me.
I don’t let myself think too hard about that. But my fingers betray me anyway—twitching and slipping—and two loops slide clean off the needle, tangling into a small yellow knot in my lap.
“Dammit,” I mutter under my breath, staring at it. “What did I just do?”
“Here, let me see.” Callum leans in again, closer than fixing a stitch really calls for. I can feel the warmth radiating off him before he even touches me, his jaw a breath from my cheek. “You dropped tension on the back loop. You’re holding the working yarn too loose.”