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A nice one though and I throw no shade at it. Oliver had a setup like this when I first met him. He was living in a Ritz-Carlton residence and had a concierge who legit used to bring me real movie theater popcorn and candy from the theater around the corner. For a fourteen-year-old kid who hadn’t been spoiled a day in her life, it was a dream come true.
I remember wishing every night for Amelia to marry Oliver.
He adored her and she deserved to be treated like a queen. I remember wishing for all her worries—worries I know I was a huge part of—to disappear into the void of money and love. And they did. She had the fairy tale. Callan’s stress and worries aren’t lost on me. I just got too absorbed in myself to remember them.
Now it’s time I play the role of his fairy godmother and grant him his wishes.
I change into a hoodie and a pair of heavenly soft joggers and then weave my way upstairs.
Callan jogs up the steps, Katy on his hip and the bowl of buttered popcorn in his other hand. My ovaries simultaneously explode and laugh mockingly at me. This is why I haven’t been here. Every time I see him, my pussy goes from intentionally dormant to unintentionally active in a nanosecond.
It’s biological.
A gorgeous, muscular man who knows all the best ways to fuck you and is also an amazing father figure to his orphaned niece is potent. It’s female porn. Especially when his forearms are on full display and his biceps are making his soft cotton shirt their bitch. Plus, he’s angry with me, and while that shouldn’t be an aphrodisiac, it is.
What can I say?
The human psyche doesn’t always make a ton of sense or act in our best interest.
He sets Katy down and she scurries over to her favorite spot, grabbing theFrozenblanket he keeps up here for her, and burrowing beneath it.
Callan picks his seat and I pick mine, and he puts on the movie and it’s all so… tense. Especially because motherfucking Eric fromThe Little Mermaidlooks like Callan. I never noticed it before, but yeah, he totally does, and now I have a new Disney movie crush, so thanks for that.
Katy is between us, the massive bowl of popcorn on her lap that all of us are digging into.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks, leaning over Katy to whisper in my ear. He extends his arm along the upper edge of the sofa until his hand hovers on the leather near the shoulder farthest from him.
“What?” My head whips in his direction. I hadn’t so much as cast him a second glance because hello, I have him in cartoon form on the screen, which somehow feels safer than the live-action version. But now the man himself is demanding my full focus. “N-no. You know I don’t.”
“A lover then?”
He’s too cool. Too casual. And I’m too flustered.
“No.”
He smirks and his finger snatches up a lock of my hair, twirling it around. “Good. So I don’t have to worry about you breaking our agreement when you’re out?”
Damn, jealous him is turning me on. Doesn’t he understand straddling him is off the table? “No. I told you I wouldn’t do that. This may be fake, but I stick to my word.”
He releases my hair and his hand swoops around us and taps the ring I placed on my finger. I don’t even know why I did it. Mrs. Bible is gone.
“If I could, I’d glue this diamond to your hand.”
His hand swoops back around us, latching onto the back of the hoodie I stole from him. We’ve been playing a game with it. I leave it on the bed and when I come home, it magically smells like him again. Clearly, he puts it on, wears it for a bit to imprint his scent on it, and then takes it off again and leaves it for me. I knew he had recently worn it and I couldn’t resist. I thought he’d find it cheeky. Now I’m reconsidering that line of thinking.
His eyes meet mine in the darkness of the room. Fierce. Intoxicating.
“Do you know why I want to glue that diamond to your hand and why I make sure that sweatshirt smells like me?”
I shake my head and gulp at the same time.
“Not because I dare to imagine that you’re mine to possess, and not because I don’t trust your word. But because I like that you smell like me. I like that you want to be surrounded by the way I smell. I like that if that rock is on your hand, it means you’re off-limits. It’s the only thing making me sane right now because I know exactly what every man who saw you tonight was thinking, and it pisses me off almost as much as you ghosting me all week has. I know I shouldn’t tell you that. I know we’re keeping it fake and casual—but I’m having a hellacious time feeling casual right now, Layla.”
It ends there and he forces me to watch a cartoon version of himself. All the smiles. All the dimples. All the longer-on-top dark hair brushed back from his forehead. All the moments where he gets his act together and risks it all for Ariel.
The movie ends and then both of us glance down to find Katy asleep, the empty bowl listing in her lap. Callan takes it and places it on the coffee table and then lifts her into his arms. I quickly stand, following them and grabbing her discarded mermaid, and tucking it against her chest.
Callan carries her downstairs and right into her bedroom. “We didn’t brush her teeth,” he muses.
