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Bea

Iset rules on the way over.

Rule one: You should be there twenty minutes max

Rule two: You don’t have to forgive him

Rule three: Don’t admit you’re totally and utterly in love with him

I can listen to his case, that doesn’t mean I agree with it or forgive it. I’ve sat years of lectures I disagreed with.

I stop outside his building and gather myself. Then I remember him telling me he knows the sound of my footsteps, and I stop gathering, because he’s probably already watching me do it.

He opens the door before I knock. Which in any other circumstances might be creepy. But not with Cal.

He looks terrible. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is stuck up in every direction. I want to hug him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

The apartment is exactly the same.

Some deeply illogical part of me expected it to have changed to reflect the state of things, and instead it’s unchanged.

“Do you want anything,” he says. “Water, or⁠—”

“No. Thank you.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t sit on the couch beside me. He takes the floor, back against the cabinet, one knee up, the guitar already there beside him.

He doesn’t fill the silence.

That’s the thing that unbalances me most. Callum Fox has filled every silence I have ever been in with him. It’s his primary defense mechanism, and I have watched him deploy it on his father, his brother, a room full of surgeons and me.

He just sits there and lets it be quiet, awkward, and doesn’t rescue either of us from it.

“So,” he says eventually.

“So.”

“You remember finding my notebook?” I nod. He turns the guitar flat across his lap, both hands on it, not playing. “I’ve thought about that a lot, actually. I wanted to play you something unique, just for you.”

I don’t say anything.

“This song isn’t out there.” He looks up at me for the first time since I sat down. “It won’t get released, Bea. Ever. I need you to know that.”

This is just for you.

My heart is beating too hard for a woman trying to stick to rule three.

“Okay,” I say.

He nods once, and looks down, and puts his hands where they go.

And then he plays.