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“Oh yeah?” I raised my eyebrows and looked around. “I look pretty damn domesticated right now, don’t I?” My guitar was in the corner of his bedroom. My clothes were in his closet. I sleptin his bed every night. Soon, we would live inourhouse, the one we’d both paid for equally, but still–from where I was sitting, I’d leapt right into commitment.
“That’s different.” Callum pulled me onto his lap. “We don’t have a contract. You could leave anytime.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and lowered my mouth to his for a long, lingering kiss. “The hell I could,” I murmured against his lips. What Callum and I had bound me up tighter than any contract I could sign. I hated spending the day away from him. The thought of ever leaving him was about as appealing as peeling my own skin off. And leaving Noah was equally unthinkable. The two of them were my life… and what Callum didn’t know was that there was a newlife coming. One that would tie us irrevocably together.
I smiled against his lips. I hadn’t figured out how to tell him yet. Lyrics were tickling the back of my brain, but they hadn’t coalesced into a hook or a verse or anything discernable. I hugged the secret tightly to myself as I kissed him and let it percolate. When the time was right, the song would come, and I would know how to tell him.
The next day, I met Renee, Mia, and Joanne at Jimmy’s, and it took all of three minutes for us to agree that the band was back together.
“Make it official!” Jimmy ordered. He went back to the office and came back with a blank piece of printer paper and a pen. He slapped it on the bar, and we all signed our names. I sent a picture to Callum.Who has commitment issues now?I wrotebeneath it. Later, he would laugh and call it the least official-looking contract he’d ever seen in his life. I knew, though. It was a commitment to my friends that I’d never break. Whether our band hit it big and the whole heap of us–Callum and Noah included–went on tour, or if we never left the stage that Jimmy built for us eight years ago, we would be together.
Over the next few weeks, life became better than I could have ever imagined. Callum, Noah, and I moved into our new house. We’d compromised on the amount of security Callum was allowed to install. The standard model was fine–motion detectors that crisscrossed the rooms on the main floor with narrow red beams were not. Instead, we adopted a dog to add another layer of security, and that did it for Noah. The last of his reservations about moving away from the only home he’d ever known evaporated when our new German shepherd–who Callum named Brinks, after the security system–showed up.
I loved being back in Belmont Springs with Renee right down the road, and Mia and Joanne within a ten-minute walk. We set up our practice area in the basement–Callum had it soundproofed when he did the other renovations–and three nights a week, without fail, we met there. It was like all of our high school dreams had come true in a way we hadn’t expected. It wasn’t about the end result for us anymore. We didn’t know whereThe Belleswould go, and it didn’t matter. What did matter was that we were all together and making the music.
And sometimes, late at night after they were gone and Callum was asleep–I slipped down there alone and let the lyrics come to me. A song of rebirth and new life. It didn’t come right out and say, “hey, you’re going to be a dad!”But the message was in there if you listened closely, which Callum always did. Sonically, it didn’t fit in with any song I’d ever written before. It was almostfolkish, sweet and whimsical and hopeful. That was okay though. This song wasn’t meant for an album. It was meant for us.
I held it close to my heart, waiting for the right time to play it for Callum. He was working so hard at his new practice. I didn’t want to play it when he was half asleep at the end of the night. Finally, one Saturday morning, we woke up before Noah, and I knew it was time.
“Hey,” I whispered, grabbing my phone off the nightstand and rolling into him. “I want you to listen to a song I wrote.”
He had been yawning and knuckling sleep out of his eyes, but now he focused on me. He’d heard something in my voice that told him this wasn’t just any song I’d written withThe Belles. I kept the phone between us on low volume and found the MP3 file. Watching Callum’s face closely, I began to play it.
Callum always listened to my new songs seriously, like he might be called on to testify about what he’d heard. He smiled when he heard the light beats and the way my voice poured out, sweeter than it was smokey for once. “It sounds like a lullaby,” he murmured between verses.
“Keep listening.”
When the song reached the bridge, Callum’s green eyes focused on mine, a question forming in them. When the song ended, he gestured for me to play it again. I did so, a small grin forming on my lips. He’d heard it, but like any good lawyer, he was going back for more evidence.
After the song concluded for a second time, Callum pushed up on his forearm and looked down at me. “Quinn, does this song mean what I think it does?”
The grin I’d been trying to hold back spread across my face. “I don’t know, what do you think it means?”
His gaze dropped to my stomach, still flat beneath the soft Black Sabbath t-shirt that I slept in. I lifted the hem anyway and pressed his hand against my abdomen. Callum’s breathing had changed, shortened. Joy was coiled up, but he was waiting for confirmation before he let himself feel it.
“You’re going to be a dad again,” I whispered, unable to keep it in.
Callum’s whole face changed. I thought I knew all his expressions, but I didn’t know this one. His eyes became a whole new shade of green as he stared at my stomach. His smile almost broke his handsome face. “You’re pregnant,” he whispered.
“About two months along, I think.” I skimmed my hand over his face. I’d already been happy to find out I was pregnant, but his reaction made it even sweeter. Once I’d feared the idea–what it would do to my career, how Jason would react. Now, it was everything to me. Another link between Callum and me. A sibling for the boy I loved like my own. A new Belle.
When he kissed me, I felt his fierce joy and pride pour into me. “You know what this means?” he murmured against my lips.
“That there’s going to be a baby?”
He snorted. “Yes. And a wedding. I want to marry you, Quinn Collins, and I’m not takingnot yetfor an answer anymore.”
Callum had mentioned marriage before, and I’d always put him off. But with the release of Jason from my life and the addition of this new life, I felt the old reservations slough away. “Okay,” I whispered. I braced for that locked chest fear that hadaccompanied other binding agreements in my life, but this was as easy as agreeing to be in a band with my best friends. Better, because I was agreeing to be with the love of my life for the rest of my life. It was as natural as breathing.
Callum shifted me beneath him, but I put my fingers to his lips before he could kiss me again. “On one condition.”
His green eyes sparked with exasperation, but he waited patiently.
“I want to build a treehouse for our kids.” I could picture it now in one of the trees at the edge of our property. As safe as Callum could build it, but free enough that they could dream in it the way I had been able to.
I could tell Callum wanted to tell me hell no, I’d have to settle for a playhouse on level ground with a little security system of its own. His lips parted beneath my fingers, then clamped shut again as he considered it. He’d gotten so much better about letting Noah be a kid in the last few months, but was this too much for him? Would it trigger all his fears and worries, the way commitments had once triggered mine? I held my breath, waiting to find out.
“You want a treehouse instead of a ring?” he said finally, and I could hear acquiescence in his rueful tone.
“Oh no, I want both,” I assured him. “I want it all.”
“You’ve got it,” he whispered, and when he kissed me this time, I knew that all my dreams had come true.
