Page 25

24

Fane

After

Cali flew out of her parking spot like she was fleeing a goddamn crime scene.

“Fuck,” I muttered, getting back into my truck and slamming the door. It took two seconds to catch up with her.

I should’ve known better than to think her stubbornness would have dulled in any capacity in our time apart. It hadn’t stayed the same, though. It was sharper now, more desperate in the way she clung to it.

Calista was always the perfect blend of being independent and handling shit on her own, but also self-aware enough to step back and ask for help when she needed it. I knew she thought that needing to ask for help made her incapable in some way, but I’d always been in awe of her ability to do it. To know her limit.

The thing was, even after all the days that had separated me from her, I knew her better than I knew myself.

And the things I didn’t know? Well, I’d always been an exceptionally fast learner when it came to anything to do with that woman.

The fact that something was going on frustrated me like nothing else because it felt like it was right under my fucking nose, and I couldn’t pick it.

I pulled into her driveway seconds after she did, slamming the gearshift into park. Before she’d even gotten the door unlocked, I was right behind her.

“Calista, for fuck’s sake,” I bit out, the frustration I was feeling clear in every word I spoke as I followed her inside. I swiped my hands down my face in an effort to compose myself even a tiny fucking bit. To not wrap my hand around her throat and glide my other one up the soft skin of the inside of her thigh, to coax it out of her, so I could just fucking fix it.

I thought she was going straight for the bedroom, but instead she’d obviously stopped right in the middle of the living room, where there was a clear view of the kitchen, and I ran straight into her.

My arm wrapped around her on instinct in an effort to steady myself and not take her down while I found my balance again. It meant I ended up pulling her flush to me in an almost exact replica of what had happened this morning.

“Whoa—”

“What in the fuck ”—Cali’s hand gripped my arm, nails digging in to the point that I cringed—“is that? ” She whirled out of my hold and flung an arm behind her, waving it in a way that just screamed internal panic .

“Can you be more specific?” I gave her a crooked grin because I knew what she was referring to. She was talking about her—

“Cabinets, Fane.” Her hand was still panic waving in the direction of the kitchen.

I crossed my arms. “Yes, okay. I see them.”

“You see them?” When Cali got flustered, she talked with her hands in a big way. This meant she literally used her fingers to widen her eyes, and I only just managed to cover my laugh with a cough.

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, do you see how they’re now at…at regular person height?”

I made a show of flicking my eyes behind her, then back. “I do.”

“That’s not where I installed them.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You…you moved my cabinets?” She literally mimed opening cabinet doors and taking something out of them.

“Yep.”

“Why would you do that, Fane ?” She put extra emphasis on my name, and despite it not being the time for it, coupling her voice, my name, and the fact that she’d just been pressed against me for the second time in one day, it shot straight to my dick.

“Because, Calista, you had to stand on your kitchen counter to get a mug. Let’s not also forget that you literally fell off it this morning, and I had to catch you.”

“I wouldn’t have fallen if you hadn’t snuck up on me.” She took a step closer and jabbed me in the chest with one accusatory finger.

I grabbed her wrist and held it between us. “So you’re saying you’ve never fallen off the counter before?”

“Whatever you’re doing here that’s making you feel like you need to, I don’t know, help …it’s not needed. I don’t need you to do any of this.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“No, Fane. I haven’t fallen off the damn counter.”

“Have you fallen off anything in your attempt to do everything yourself?”

“I have… not. ” Her eyes flickered away for a split second.

“You liar. ” I wrapped another hand around her waist. “You’re so fucking stubborn, do you know that?”

“And you clearly still have no concept of personal space,” she breathed back, her nose brushing mine.

“You didn’t seem to mind this morning,” I taunted her, grinning at that peachy blush that crept onto her face. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“You’re insufferable.” Her hand that was caught between us pushed on my chest, but it was half-hearted, like it was something she thought she should do, not something she actually wanted to do.

“Let me kiss you.”

The words were out of my mouth before I realized I’d even spoken them. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips, how they parted in surprise. Her sharp intake of breath. That was definitely a thought that should have stayed inside my head, but I’d always been all in where Calista Grey was concerned.

My tongue dragged along my bottom lip as I tried to remember—really remember—what it felt like to kiss her. To have her kiss me back the way she used to.

Like I was hers.

I was seconds from crossing a line, I knew that, but my grip around her waist tightened. That milk-and-honey scent of hers was everywhere, pulling me in deeper.

“No one’s here to see it,” she murmured.

Her eyes were on my mouth, and I saw a flicker of those walls around her shudder in the rapid rise and fall of her chest and the twitch of her fingers that were splayed on my chest. In my head, I was charging at those walls. Clawing at them, roaring at them in fury. Roaring at her to let me in.

“Doesn’t matter,” I rasped. So insanely desperate for her I didn’t care how clearly she could see it.

I moved closer to her, my mouth watering at the idea of tasting her. Of how it would feel to take that full bottom lip of hers between my teeth. The sound I knew she’d make the moment I did.

“That’s not the rule.”

“Rose—”

“I—you need to let me go, Fane.”

Her voice was weak, and I knew if I pushed a little harder, she would relent.

I closed my eyes and released the breath I’d been holding. Letting her go was something I tried to do many times over.

I uncurled my arm from her and stepped away because I didn’t want her to relent . I didn’t want her to give in, like it was crossing a line she had drawn in the ground for herself. I wanted her to choose me. To pick me because she wanted to, not because I pushed her.

So, I forced a smirk, pulling on the mask we’d both been wearing since I got here. This place of trading jabs and barbed words felt safer than the raw, open wounds underneath.

“I also fixed all the sagging eaves around the house and cleared out your gutters. You had a lot of shit in your gutters.”

“Hey!”

She was not happy at that one.

“Whoever does them doesn’t do a good job.” I crossed my arms, knowing the dig would hit because I had a pretty good idea of who did them.

“I do a perfectly fine job.” She scowled at me, and I’d take that look any day over the broken one that had taken over her face when she told me to let her go.

“Well, your ‘perfectly fine’ job sucks.” I was being a dick, and I’d expected her to push back, but I hadn’t expected what actually came out of her mouth.

“You try falling off a ladder from way up there, and then try to get back up.” Her mouth snapped shut, her teeth making an audible click from the ferocity of it. It could have been heard from space.

“You…” I sucked in a deep breath to collect myself. It didn’t fucking work. “You fell off a fucking ladder?”

“No.” Her answer came too quick, not to mention she’d literally just it.

“Calista, you—are you—what?” My brain short-circuited, filling with image after image of her crumpled on the ground, hurt and alone, because she was too damn stubborn to ask for help. My stomach churned, the guilt a heavy, nauseating weight, because I knew.

I was the reason she’d been alone in the first place. Despite every decision I made being so that she wasn’t. So that she didn’t have to worry about shit like this. She was supposed to be home with her parents, with her sister.

Not here. Not like this.

“Were you hurt?” The question came out rough and heavy, my voice betraying every ounce of the fear crawling up my throat. I couldn’t look her in the eye because I knew— I knew —the answer was going to rip me apart.

She was silent for too long before she answered my question. “I—”

“Stop lying to me.” My hands balled into fists at my sides, and I didn’t care that my words were abrupt. Didn’t care that it might send us five steps back in whatever tolerance she was forming for me.

“I fractured two ribs and got a mild concussion,” she admitted, her voice so quiet.

The sound I made was almost inhuman. A broken growl, a groan, something that clawed its way out of my chest. I hated myself more in that moment than I had in every other moment of my life combined.

I dragged a hand down my face and tried not to fucking fall apart. “Look, I know you don’t need my help. That you don’t want it, that you want me to leave. I get it, Calista. But I am here. Let me help. Please. ”

“Fane—”

“ Please.”

She had no reason to. I knew she didn’t trust me, knew what she thought of me. I asked anyway. Begged.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “While you’re here, if I need help, I’ll ask.”

We stayed quiet, standing across from one another for as long as it took for my pulse to slow down. I was at a loss of what to do, what to say. Just being around her now felt stupid. Fucking pointless. Utterly undeserved. My eyes didn’t shift from the spot on the floor I’d zoned in on, as if it would be able to give me a way to go back and fix what I’d done, until I heard her move away.

“You’re kidding me.”

I looked up and found her standing just inside her bedroom, hip cocked and arms crossed. When I didn’t say anything, she pointed to the floorboards beneath her feet and made a show of dramatically stomping on one.

“ Where is the creak?”

“I fixed it.”

“You went under the house?” She sounded genuinely appalled, and the look on her face tugged at the corner of my mouth. I ran my hand over my face to try to stop it, but I was too late.

“Are you laughing at me, Fane Mackenzie?”

I knew what she was doing. Even though she wanted me gone, she was still doing what she’d always done—fixing the parts of me that she didn’t even break, and she did it without blinking. Without breaking a sweat. Without even fucking realizing it half the time, and if I hadn’t been so fucking in love with her from the moment I saw her, I’d have fallen right then and there.

“No, ma’am.”

She threw her hands out dramatically, like what I said and what I did were lining up, and it wasn’t what she expected. “What are you doing?” she whined, the question seemingly more for herself than for me.

“I’m fixing your shit box,” I deadpanned.

Her gasp was comical. So was the way she clutched at imaginary pearls. “Houses have feelings!”

I rolled my eyes. “So you’ve said.”

Cali used to yell, “Hello!” into our empty apartment when we were gone all day because she knew the house had been lonely .

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.” She hadn’t even been looking at me when I did it.

“Sorry, Mom.” I trailed behind her into the kitchen.

She snorted. “You’ve been spending too much time around Ashton.”

“I’m going to tell him you called him by his real name.”

She waved me off. “Antonio will never believe it.”

Cali reached up to the cupboard to grab herself a glass–easily, might I add.

I knew she felt my eyes on her while she took her time filling it with water and drinking it down slowly.

She turned to face me, her eyes already narrowed, but the honey in their hazel depths stood out more. Sparkling. They were fucking twinkling when she raised her hand up between us, middle finger already extended.

“Every time you do that, you know it just turns me on.”

She rolled her eyes. “Consider it fodder for your spank bank the next time you decide to touch yourself.”

“Rest assured, whenever I touch myself, you’re the only thing I think about.”

“Fane!” Her hair twirled behind her when she spun back toward me. “You—that’s not—you aren’t allowed to say that sort of stuff out loud.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” I pushed off the counter and walked toward her.

She crossed her arms and arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. “What would all your girlfriends think?”

That took me so off guard that my head flew back without permission from the force of my laughing scoff. “Please, Calista.”

“You said you had girlfriends. Plural.” She backed up a step.

“Are you jealous?” I tilted my head to the side and reveled in the way her throat worked, trying to swallow. Once, twice, before her finger reached up and slid up her nose.

“I heard you say ‘girlfriends.’” She ignored me completely. Crossing her arms, the pillowy tops of her tits pushing up, even more visible. I didn’t bother hiding the way my eyes lingered on them.

“Eyes are up here, buddy.” She gestured to her face with the same panicked, flappy hand from before.

“You heard wrong.” I took another step forward, then another, until she was backed up against the sink, and I had one hand on either side of her.

“I have to be honest, I’m having a lot of fun with all of these verbal sparring matches we’re having, but that mouth of yours might need to be filled with something else to put an end to all those snarky quips you seem to have become so fond of.”

“Fane, this isn’t a game.” She pushed at my chest, but I didn’t budge. Instead, I grabbed her and pulled her to me. Being around her and not being able to touch her was a very specific brand of torture. The way her breath caught in her throat when I reached down, letting a hand slide along the back of her leg until I got to her knee and hoisted it up to sit at my hip.

Cali’s hands gripped tight onto two fistfuls of my shirt.

“Fane, what—”

“Tell me to stop right now and I will.” Her mouth stayed open, but the words promptly stopped flowing. I could feel the way she wavered between pushing me away and pulling me closer with the grip she had on my shirt.

I could feel the molten heat of her pussy through the barrier of my jeans between us, and one hard grind of my painfully hard cock against her sent her eyes fluttering. It would be so easy to unbutton my jeans and sink right into her. Right here, right now. I could fucking imagine it—the way her nails would dig into me, how her breathing would turn shallow, how her pussy would grip onto me. Pull me in until the only thing I knew was her.

The image in my head almost sent my eyes rolling back in their sockets.

“I know you don’t trust a thing that comes out of my mouth, but believe me when I tell you that you were the last woman I touched and the only woman I will ever touch for the rest of my life. There’s been no one but you. There will never be anyone but you.”

Cali let out a little whimper that sent a zap down my spine, and my grip on her tightened.

What I wanted was to drop to my knees right in front of her. To make my way under the hem of what was yet another one of her pretty little sundresses that were getting too flimsy for the colder weather that was rolling in and spread her wide. To drag my tongue along the seam of her perfect cunt that I knew was soaking wet for me. Feel her hand in my hair and the way she would grind herself against my mouth. The way she’d say my name, begging me to let her come.

Instead, I dropped her leg and stepped back. Watching the way her eyes dropped to the bulge in my jeans and the very noticeable wet spot she left behind, just like I knew there would be.

“I’m going to put a lasagna in the oven.”

She started nodding. “Yep. I’ll…I’ll…” She cleared her throat. “Turn on that home improvement show.”

“Great.” I leaned down to press a kiss to her cheek, and that snapped her out of her trance. Her face went from golden, sun-kissed skin to bright cherry red in a matter of seconds.

“Ew,” she said, wiping at her cheek and pushing me away from her. “Just for that, I’ve decided to put you up for managing a booth at the Autumn Fair next weekend.”

“Perfect.” I sent her a wink just before pulling the frozen dish out of the freezer.

“And you’ll have to meet everyone from town and be nice to them and serve them beer.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“And you’ll have to face everyone as the person who’s going to ruin their town.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Oh, and you’re a liar too, so you should probably be upfront about that.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” I put the lasagna in the oven, closed the door, and turned to face Cali, who still had her attention on my still very hard cock.

Her eyes flicked up to mine, and she let out an honest to God growl. Like a little lion cub. “You make me—”

“Sick,” I finished for her with a grin. “I know.”