Everyone settles, Callahan's breathing returns to normal. Ramsey gives his shoulder one final pat and goes back to his food. The visible crisis is over.
But Rome isn't watching Callahan. Rome is watching me.
I can feel him connecting dots I don't want connected, and that wipes the smile from my face fast. I need to redirect. Now.
"I'm sorry, Callahan," I say, putting on my most apologeticface, pitching my voice to carry exactly the right amount of sisterly teasing. "I should have known that conversation would be too much for you. You strike me as more of a vanilla type."
His eyes across the table are still watering, still red-rimmed, and absolutely murderous.
"Yeah," he says perfectly controlled, with just the faintest edge of something that makes my toes curl under the table. "I wouldn't know what you're talking about."
From beside him, Ramsey coughs. It's small, half-swallowed into his beer glass. Callahan turns and fixes him with an expression that could have curdled every dairy product in a five-mile radius.
Ramsey takes another sip of his beer, face in perfect neutrality, eyes fixed on some fascinating point in the middle distance.
I allow myself one small victory-lap smile, which turns out to be one smile too many. Poppy's eyes narrow. I see her assembling the pieces in real time, clicking them together like a puzzle she didn't know she was solving. She looks at Erin. Erin looks at Poppy and it's an entire conversation in a quarter of a second.
I pick up my wine and hide behind it, making sure I don't go too far. Callahan's eyes find mine one more time across the table, a second that carries a warning I can read as clearly as if he'd written it on a billboard.
You're going to pay for that.
I hold his gaze just long enough to make sure he sees my answer.
I'm counting on it.
Then I smile at Beth and ask about the roast potatoes,and I spend the rest of the evening being the most charming, innocent, well-behaved version of myself.
Keeping this secret is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than organic chemistry. Harder than pretending I didn't want him for all those months when he was pretending not to see me.
I'm going to enjoy every second of it.
23
CAL
Imake it to her apartment before I completely lose my mind, driving through dark streets with her voice playing on a loop in my head.
Boys with dirty mouths and a little degradation streak.
Said across a family dinner table, for fuck’s sake. Said with that innocent face she can put on like a coat. Said while I sat there choking on my own tongue because Rome was right fucking there and she knew it.
She knew exactly what she was doing. She probably thinks she's hilarious. And the thing is, she kind of is. Under any other circumstances I'd be laughing about this, but I'm not laughing.
I'm driving with my blood at a low boil, and every time I blink I see her sitting there with her wine, pressing her tongue against the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.
She called me vanilla. In front of everyone I know. And the worst part, the part that's currently rewiring somethingfundamental in my brain, is that she got me figured out in one go.
This is exactly why I never fuck anyone in the same zip code, it took exactly one time and the words connected too close to me.
This is also exactly why I've kept that line drawn for so long when it comes to her. Because I knew, somewhere underneath all the rationalizing, that if I ever let myself have her I wouldn't be able to stop. That whatever careful, controlled thing I'd built would come apart the second she pushed back.
And boy did she push back. Now whatever was holding that line in place has let go completely.
I find myself in the parking lot outside her building without any memory of the last stretch here. My phone is in my hand before I've finished turning off the engine.
Me
Unlock your door.
