Chapter 43
chapter
forty-three
SHAY
“Chaotic,” Lithie said.
“Sexual,” Olly continued.
“Ball,” Eames finished.
I rolled my lips. Sheepish. I felt like Joey after he ate his date’s cake.
I’m not even sorry.
Lithie, Eames, and Olly sat on the couch across from me, arms folded.
Calder sat on our small, polar bear novelty ottoman that really wasn’t designed for a person, let alone someone who was six-four, but he’d insisted I take the only chair.
Someone, probably Lithie, had moved our standing lamp so it shone directly on us, blinding like something out of an old film noir.
“Do you do this often?” Olly asked, turning her attention to Calder.
Calder shook his head. “No.”
“Have you ever?” Eames pressed, leaning forward.
Calder shook his head again.
“Can we at least turn down the light?” I said. “I’m baking.”
“Last name?” Eames asked, ignoring me.
“Throe.”
“Blood type?” Olly continued.
“A.”
“Job?”
He paused. “Accountant.”
I started. “Guys—”
“So you get off on being a predator?” Lithie interrupted me.
I coughed, choking on my spit. “Lithie!”
“Oh, I will kink shame,” she said. “I can understand why my sister wants this. When you’re raised in a world that hates women and assaults them and then demands they give grace and empathy to the assaulter, sometimes romanticizing it is the only way to survive. But why are you into it?”
All three of them leaned off the couch, glares fixed on Calder. I turned my gaze to him. He didn’t look upset or offended by my sister’s question. His brow furrowed, pensive.
I hadn’t actually considered why Calder would be into this, or the implications of that. Now I was curious. What did he like about it?
“Because she’s into it,” he said at last.
Their eyes narrowed in unison.
“But it turns you on,” Eames probed. “The idea of overpowering a woman?”
Calder rubbed his neck, still a little wet from the shower, the ends of his curling hair dripping onto his back.
“No, not that,” he said.
“So you just don’t like a woman who says yes,” Olly said.
“Oh my god,” I said. “Stop it.”
“The idea that someone as strong as Shay would trust me enough to allow complete surrender,” he said.
Oh.
Wow.
Lithie folded her arms, settling back into the couch. “Good answer,” she said, sounding reluctant.
“You don’t know me,” Calder said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, making a triangle with his fingers between his legs, “so I know you have no reason to trust me.”
“Duh,” Olly said.
“But I don’t take the trust that Shay is giving me for granted,” he said. “My mother died at the hands of an abuser. I would rather die than become that person.”
Silence settled.
My mother died because of me. My brother went to jail for me. I’ve done much worse things than stalking. I’m not a good person.
I stared at Calder, willing him to look at me. Calder had leaned forward, so the light shining on his face now only lit up his back. His face was shadowed, his body chiaroscuro.
“Well, fuck,” Lithie said. “You played the dead mom card. You win.”
Calder leaned back, grinning, tension melting from his body. He settled onto the ottoman, as if it were the most comfortable thing in the world, as if he wasn’t balancing on furniture my sister ordered from the kids’ section.
“I don’t think Shay should be involved with me,” he said.
“Well, glad we can agree on that,” Lithie said.
“Especially since she has a grant to finish,” Eames said, and Olly nodded emphatically.
Calder shot me a look as the conversation devolved into the topic of me once again not believing in myself.
“Hey, wait,” I said. How did this turn around on me?
Tension dissipated. Their questions shifted from the “Give me a reason not to kill you and bury your body” and into the “What’s your favorite Swift song?” variety.
“Dear reader,” Eames said, repeating Calder’s answer, reluctant appreciation in his voice. “Deep cut.”
A few more innocuous questions followed, like who he would choose between Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy and Colin Firth’s Darcy.
Then, when Stroop jumped onto Calder’s lap and started purring, it all but sealed he wasn’t a monster.
“This isn’t over,” Lithie said, shaking Calder’s hand as he stood to leave.
“And don’t keep her out late,” Eames said. “She has a grant to win.”
“Shut up.”
I walked Calder to the door. I wanted to give him a kiss, but all three of them stared at us just feet away. It felt like my junior high dance, teachers waiting to pounce on anything.
“What are they talking about? What grant?”
I played with the smoothness of his nail. “Oh, just some grant they think I should apply for.”
“You don’t want it?”
“It would be pretty cool,” I said, shrugging a shoulder. “I could run my own lab, ask my own questions. I’m pretty much guaranteed job security.”
“That sounds amazing, Shay,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you want that?”
“I would rather not have it than have it and have to give it up.” I focused on the white crescent moon in his nail bed. “I never know when I’m going to get sick. It doesn’t feel right…like I’m taking something away from someone.”
Calder gripped my chin, dragging my gaze away from his thumb.
“Most people who dream don’t stop to think if they deserve it. You deserve a dream just as much as the next person. Probably more.”
He brushed his thumb along my chin, blue eyes sharp, the ice in them cracking.
Then with a deep inhale dropped me.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do the fantasy,” I said.
Calder’s mouth slipped open, his brow furrowed. He looked offended. “You think that’s all I want?”
“I think that’s all we agreed to want,” I said, focusing again on his fingernail. “This isn’t what you signed up for. You wanted one night. Not some mess.”
“Shay—”
“But I’m starting to really like you,” I confessed before he could speak, gaze flickering to his. “I don’t know if I can do casual anymore.”
He pushed my hair behind my ear, cupping my scalp. He gently tugged my gaze upward, meeting his.
Something in his eyes let me know he was going to say no.
“I mean, unless you don’t want to. That, I get. I probably shouldn’t be in a relationship anyway, shouldn’t subject you—”
He kissed me, cutting me off. “That’s not it.”
“But you don’t want a relationship?”
My chest constricted at the look in his eyes. There was something unsaid in them, something that burrowed into my chest, taking root in my soul.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Is it because you’re moving? We can do long distance—”
“It’s not the distance.”
“Is it my illness?” My voice lowered. “Or my ex? You don’t want me because I’m a mess.”
He grabbed my face, pulling my eyes to him. “I want your mess.” His voice lowered at the word want.
“Then what?” The words left me on an exasperated sigh.
He was silent. Emotion I couldn’t translate written across his tight jaw and strangled eyes.
After what felt like an eternity, he said, “I don’t think we should see each other again.”
My heart plummeted through the cracked ice in his eyes, deep into freezing water. Even then I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my face out of his hands. I gripped his wrists, clinging.
“But…we haven’t finished the list yet.”
“I never should have gotten involved in your life.” I tried to pull away, but he gripped me tighter, pulling me close. “But I need you to know something.”
A moment passed, something with teeth lingering between us in the silence.
“This isn’t casual to me, Shay,” he said. “It never was.”