Page 165 of His Good Girl

Callum Rowe:That promise is the only reason I’m not getting in the car right now and coming to you.

My chest tightened.

Me:I know.

Callum Rowe:Lock the door.

Me:Already locked.

Callum Rowe:Good girl.

I closed my eyes as the words moved through me, warm and complicated and mine. When I opened them, Jules was watching me with a mixture of apology, worry, and the beginning of a very bad idea.

“What?” I asked.

She wiped under one eye with her sleeve. “You know he’s going to lose his mind.”

“Probably.”

Jules looked at the notebook again, then back at me.

“So,” she said, voice steadier now. “What do we do first?”

I turned the page.

“First,” I said, “we figure out who they really are.”

“And then?”

I looked down at the page and wrote the first line.

“Then,” I said, “we use it against them.”

CHAPTER 19

Callum

By the time Avery texted that she would explain when she saw me on Monday, it was after two in the morning, and I had never wanted to get in a car more in my life.

That was the problem with power, or one of them. There were very few practical barriers between a man like me and the thing he wanted to do. If I wanted to go to Avery’s apartment, I could. If I wanted to put a security team on her door, I could. If I wanted to buy the building, replace the lock, tear open the city, find the person who had left that photograph on her desk and make him regret ever learning to hold a camera, I had the money and the reach and the kind of anger that made bad ideas feel like moral obligations.

Instead, I sat in my study with my phone in my hand and did nothing. I did, however, call Benjamin, because restraint had limits and mine ended at suffering alone.

He answered on the first ring. “If you are calling to ask whether I think you should drive to her apartment, the answer is no.”

“I hadn’t asked.”

“You radiate intent through cellular networks.”

“She said she’ll explain Monday.”

“Then she will explain Monday.”

“She’s up to something.”

“Obviously.”

“You know?”