Page 143 of Neap & Spring

It feels like the beginning of something. Or maybe the middle. Maybe I’ve been in the middle of it for weeks and only just noticed.

The door bangs open with the storm breeze, and Roman comes through it already talking, his bandaged hand raised like a trophy. Beckett is right behind him, hair damp from the rain that’s starting outside. Hayes files in after him, hands in his pockets, looking exasperated like he’s been listening to Roman complain for hours and has not a second of silence. Wesley drifts in behind them, unhurried as usual, stopping to say something to the bartender on his way past like he, again, has nowhere particular to be.

And then Callum steps into the doorway.

He just stands there, one hand on the doorframe, letting the others go ahead. His eyes move across the bar, scanning, before they find me.

And I forget how to breathe.

He’s slightly wet from the rain. His dark hair is damp and curling more than usual, drops of water still clinging to the ends. His henley is darker across the shoulders where the rain has soaked through. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, revealing both forearms completely covered in ink, the tattoos glistening slightly from the moisture. Even from here, I can see the small white scars scattered across his hands and the burn marks on his inner wrists, all that evidence of years spent in kitchens.

The low light from the bar catches the angles of his face. The strong line of his jaw, the fullness of his mouth under that mustache, the particular blue-green of his eyes that looks more gray right now in the dim amber glow.

He’s stunning. So beautiful in a way that shouldn’t be legal. He’s rain-damp and tattooed and looking at me like I’m the only person in this entire bar.

A smile flashes across his features, just for me, and he stays there for just a moment longer in the doorway, just looking at me, before he lets go of the frame and comes inside.

I’m still not breathing as I watch him cross the room.

There’s a small war of rearrangement as they converge on our table. Beckett steals a chair from a neighboring table. Hayes pulls up another from who knows where. Wesley claims the end. Roman lands next to Iris and immediately starts telling her something with the hand that isn’t bandaged. Frannie slides closer to Cora to make room.

Callum slides into the booth next to me.

It’s not a big booth. His shoulder finds mine before he’s even settled, and then he reaches up and drops his arm along the back and starts talking to Beckett across the table like it’s nothing.

I lean back slightly into the space his arm makes, slightly buzzed and high on the smell of him.

It feels so unremarkable that I almost miss how remarkable it really is. I’ve been in this town for months, yet I’ve been holding myself at a slight distance from everything. From the restaurant and the staff and the cottage on the water. I’ve been keeping one foot pointed toward the door without quite meaning to. And now I’m sitting in a bar with my back against Callum Reid’s arm and the storm coming in off the harbor, and I’m not thinking about the door at all.

Huh.

Frannie looks up and sees Callum, and her eyes go wide. “You never come out,” she cries, pointing at him with her drink like he’s been caught.

“Frannie.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re doing a face.”

“This is just my face!” She exclaims, grinning, clearly delighted.

Beckett leans across the table toward me, completely oblivious to all of it, that easy grin already in place. “Iris says you two had dinner in Crescent Bay again last week.”

“We did. We’ve been going weekly.”

“She said you ordered the whole left side of the menu.”

“It was for research,” I huff, shooting Iris a look.

“She ordered the whole right side of the menu,” Iris confirms, not looking up from whatever Roman is showing her on his phone.

“I like to be thorough.”

Beckett laughs. He has Callum’s laugh, I notice. The same cadence of it. But where Callum holds his back, Beckett just lets it go. Callum used to laugh like that. Before.

The table is suddenly very loud. Everyone talking at once, conversations crossing and weaving together. Beckett steals Roman’s drink, and Roman doesn’t notice because he’s mid-story. Cora is chuckling at something Frannie said. Wesley is quiet at the end but not absent. He’s just watching his brothers with a smile, the way you look at something you’ve looked at your whole life and still like.

The warm air coming in off the water is charged with the approaching storm. The candles on the bartops flutter all at once. The conversations around us dip for just a second and then pick back up again.