He blinked, the wild look in his eyes disappearing. He held her gaze for another half a second and then burst out laughing, his shoulders shaking, and before she knew it, she was laughing, too.
“You should have seen your face,” he said between bouts of laughter.
“You should have seen yours!”
How could he be both of these people—the man who laughed with her and pointed out ladybug constellations,andthe guy who had just kissed her like he wanted to devour her? How could she want both parts of him equally?
“Okay, so we have our origin story,” Noah said, still grinning. “What else?”
Callie thought for a moment. “Has anything significant happened for you in the last six months? Anything a girlfriend would know?”
“I’ve really just been working. Senator Thorne announced her re-election bid right before the holidays and Wolf contacted me in January to put together a package for the documentary. Between writing my submission pieces and teaching my classes, there hasn’t been much time for anything else.”
“I didn’t realize you’d been working on this for that long.”
Noah nodded, speaking around a bite of peach. “I beat out the competition through three rounds of submission. I’m the last man standing. I just have to convince Wolf that having me on the project isn’t going to cause trouble for the senator.”
“You really want this job.”
“Big films like this have always been the goal,” he said, shrugging.
“I know. But I thought you liked teaching?”
“I love teaching. But it was never the plan.”
Right. Noah always had a plan, a defined set of rules that he lived by. If those rules said that he needed to score major films, then that was what he would do.And if the rules said he didn’t do relationships…
“You’re going to get it. You deserve it.”
“The world doesn’t work that way, Callie.”
“I know. But we’re going to get you that job.” Even if she hated the idea of him leaving to go on the road with the film crew.
“What about you? Anything significant?”
She sat back in her chair, pushing her now mostly empty plate away from her. “I went to Florida in March—West Palm Beach area—for a librarians’ conference. I had a bad flare up when I got back.”
He stilled, eyes locked on her. She hated this part, when the pity and concern overtook the conversation and she wasn’t Callie anymore, just a conglomeration of symptoms and maladies.
“How bad?” he asked.
She shrugged.
How could you quantify pain? How did you describe it to someone who’d never experienced the terror of sitting down in a chair and realizing you couldn’t stand back up? Would he understand how her legs were on fire some days, and others they were numb? Or how she felt like her body was collapsing under its own weight? Would he listen when she explained that every day was a horrible mystery, and she never knew when her body would betray her next?
“Thankfully it only lasted a few days.”
“I spent them with you.”
“No.”
“Callie, if you needed me—”
“No, Noah. I wouldn’t have let you.”
He pressed his fingers into his eyes, shaking his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You can’t even let me be there for you when it’s pretend,” he muttered.
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she said, her voice louder than she’d realized as the flash of anger shot through her, hot and stinging.
