I know his schedule because I had asked for it, after all, and I know he's finished for today.
I sit in the car for sixty seconds, exactly as I told myself Iwould so I'd be calm when I did this, and then I gather the courage to move.
My stomach flips. My rehearsed apology has already rewritten itself three times on the drive over, and it's rewriting itself again as I push open the car door.
The bay doors are open, which is lucky. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to knock. Probably driven home and bought another iced coffee and called it a moral victory for trying.
He's at the far end, crouched beside one of the engines, doing something mechanical to a wheel housing with a focus that means he either hasn't heard me come in or has heard me and is hoping I'm someone else.
He hears me at about ten feet and straightens to his full height, his face completely unreadable. The white t-shirt is doing absolutely nothing to help my case. It stretches across his torso like it lost a fight with his body, and his forearms are smudged with grease as he wipes his hands on a rag and takes me in.
"Hey."
Every word I'd rehearsed in the car evaporates.
His hair is getting long, falling into his eyes before he pushes it back with his forearm, and he's still watching me approach when I forget what I came to do.
"Hey," I manage, stopping far enough to think and close enough that running would look dramatic.
"I came to apologize."
His brows pull together. He tosses the rag aside and crosses his arms over his chest.
"For what exactly?"
"I've been coming on too strong," I start. "I've been treating the whole thing like a game, which wasn't fair."
I clear my throat and take a deep breath.
"You've made it clear it makes you uncomfortable, and I should have backed off sooner."
I cross my arms, then suspect it looks defensive, so I uncross them and drop my gaze to the concrete floor.
"So I'm sorry and I will stop the jokes and all that."
He is so quiet. The kind of quiet where someone is working very hard not to say something, which in my experience is an entirely different thing than having nothing to say.
"Look, Cal," I say evenly, using his name the way everyone else does. It rolls strangely off my tongue, but it's my way of showing him I mean it. He, on the other hand, looks like he recoils at the sound of it.
"I know I was a brat. I took it too far, and I should have respected the fact that you don't want..."
"I want."
Two words. Two words and every rehearsed sentence I had left packs up and walks out.
His gaze holds mine, and I can't look away. I'm not sure I want to.
"You want," I repeat, because I need to hear it in my own voice to make sure I heard it right the first time.
"I want. So badly." His voice matches the tormented look in his eyes. "But I can't."
He's watching me with something on his face I haven't seen before, like he'd used up the last of his reserve getting those words out.
"Callahan..."
"I'm not uncomfortable. That's not what this is." He says it firmly, no room for argument.
"Then what is it?"
