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He’d known the question was coming. Had always known that any chance at reconciliation would require an honest answer. “Do you remember the guy that asked to talk to me, just before you got in the taxi?”
Leah nodded.
“He’s a music producer. My agent had sent him a recording of ours. He’d sent shitloads, actually. To anyone and everyone he could think of. But this one stuck.” Callum paused, stroking the back of Leah’s hand with his thumb. “He said he had some people he wanted us to meet up with. We flew to Sydney the next day. Then out to LA a few days after that. It was crazy. I wrote your number on a piece of paper and put it in my luggage before I left. I planned on calling you the second I got back to Melbourne. But we were gone for weeks. In all the craziness, I lost your number.” He scrubbed his hand over his face.
“I see.”
“It was so stupid.” He looked at her and felt like the world’s biggest asshole.
“What are you thinking about?”
He looked away. He didn’t know how to say the next part, because it hurt him too much.
“Callum?”
He glanced at her, then went back to staring out into the darkness through the windscreen. He ran his palm along the steering wheel, trying to gather his thoughts. “I’m thinking about what might have been. If I’d kept your number. If I’d rung you. It might have been enough.”
“Enough for what?”
He faced her fully. It was hard, but he needed her to see how he felt about this. “Enough to stop you getting married. Even if we just dated, or nothing came of it, who knows. What if it was a sliding doors moment and it was enough to save you all those years of pain.”
She watched him for a time. It seemed to drag on for eternity, before she said the last thing he expected. “That’s quite a god complex you’ve got there.”
“Leah—”
“No, you listen to me. First thing, you lost my number. Shit happens. You can’t beat yourself up about an accident. Second thing, what if you had called me, and we’d dated for a bit, or whatever. Then we parted ways, didn’t stay together, didn’t get married. Whatever.” She paused. “Don’t get me wrong, I would love to erase my first marriage from my life. But what if by doing so, it changed this moment. In this sliding doors scenario of yours, where am I? Because I’ll tell you this, Callum John Sinclair. Are you listening?”
He nodded.
“For a very long time, I could not possibly have imagined this moment with you. I never could have imagined this much happiness.” She paused, swallowed. “There is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. No one else I would rather be with than you. If that means that you lost my number and that I married a fuckhead, so be it.”
Callum’s heart contracted painfully. God, he loved her. But he didn’t deserve her.
“Now what are you thinking about?”
“That I don’t deserve you.”
“Well, that’s awkward, coz you’re stuck with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He reached up and with his hand on the back of her head, pulled her towards him and kissed her. She shifted forward, leaning into the kiss, her hand on his shoulder for balance. When he pulled back, she opened her eyes, giving him a dreamy look.
“I want to know something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Why were you so weird when you went fishing with your dad on New Year’s Day?”
That answer came easily enough. “Because I realized I was in love with you and it freaked me out a little. I just needed some space to clear my head.”
“Oh.”
“I asked you to come over so I could tell you.”
“Oh,” she said again.
