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29

Calista

After

I walked out of the bathroom Monday morning, still scrunching the ends of my hair with a towel, and rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“Hey, do you—” Fane turned, words freezing mid-sentence. His mouth opened and closed like he was malfunctioning. Those violet eyes of his—brighter than usual—didn’t leave my face, locked onto me.

“What?” My face felt like it was on fire. Actual fire. I dragged a finger up my nose, pushing my glasses back up out of habit.

“You…you’re wearing your glasses,” he said, his frown pulling a giggle out of me. At the sound, his lips curved into an easy smile, his hand tugged at his hair in a way that felt far too casual for how hard my heart was beating.

“Yeah, it’s been a while.” I shrugged, trying to play it off, even though these glasses hadn’t seen daylight since the day I moved back to Darling—desperate to come to terms with the fact that the person I had been was no longer the person I was.

I wanted something physical, something real to show how I’d irrevocably changed.

The glasses were the first thing that came to mind.

“You look…” he murmured, finding his words. “I think you look beautiful either way.” The words settled in my chest like a warm blanket on a cold night. Like a fine thread and needle, slowly but surely closing me up.

For the first time in a long time, it felt like there were no walls between us. No rules or ribbons of tension strung so tight they threatened to snap. It was like taking that first clean breath after the smoke cleared.

Even during my weekly visit with Dad, where we sat hand in hand, staring out at the mountains that framed Darling, a part of me itched to get home. Back to Fane.

The conversation we both knew we needed to have hung between us like a storm cloud, but neither of us made much effort to break it open. It was a team effort, really. We took turns steering clear.

Whenever Fane tried to broach it, I suddenly had to let Jerry out to do his business. When I made the mistake of nudging toward it, he’d miraculously get the world’s most important phone call.

I knew we were treading lightly in the in-between that we’d found ourselves in, but it was never more apparent that it couldn’t be where we stayed forever. Not when we sat in the quiet of his truck before getting out, our eyes locking, and all I wanted was for him to reach out and touch me.

Or I walked by the bathroom just as he was getting out with nothing but a towel draped around his hips. I hadn’t been able to tear my eyes off the water that still clung to his skin, or how he gripped his towel, knuckles going white. I’d been seconds away from ripping it out of his grasp and sinking to my knees in front of him.

And definitely not when he was cooking dinner for us again, and I planted myself on the counter just to talk to him. Just doing that felt so fucking easy. The way we could fill the air with everything and nothing. How the silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable. It was peaceful.

I’d missed it. Been completely oblivious to the extent which I’d craved it.

We talked about everything except what we needed to talk about. Pretending like I didn’t want to touch him. Like I didn’t want him to touch me. Like this was enough and I was going to be okay no matter what his ‘why’ turned out to be.

Conveniently forgetting the entire reason he was here in the first place.

It didn’t escape me that he’d come to Darling for a reason that wasn’t me, and what was happening now was just a result of the lie I’d roped him into. The thing was, it didn’t feel like that.

I felt like I’d gotten my best friend back. It was hard not to feel the way my heart started to reach out to him too, and how hard it was to pull it back.

Not yet. I had to tell myself over and over. Not yet.

Dinner at my parents’ place had been hilarious, especially because Ashton had shown up for the second week in a row, charming my mom and antagonizing my dad with charm in equal measure. By the time Fane and I left, I felt light.

I felt alive , and I didn’t know what to do with that. It felt fragile.

“Have a good one, lovebirds,” Ashton called out to us before he got back into his car, and Fane and I both flipped him off. The grin he gave me was panty-melting, and I was suddenly, painfully aware of his hand in mine. The roughness of his skin against my palm. The way those hands had felt gliding up my inner thighs, spreading me open before his mouth—

“Home!” I yelled the word so loud that Fane jumped. “Let’s go home.” I trudged ahead of him. When I heard his husky laughter behind me, because I knew he knew what was going on in my head, I just lifted my middle finger over my shoulder.

“I told you, baby,” Fane called out, his voice dripping with heat. “That just turns me on.”

By the time I slammed the car door shut, the ghost of a smile had already broken through my forced scowl. He slid into the driver’s seat, gave me one of his signature winks, and I rolled my eyes, praying he couldn’t see the way my thighs pressed together.

I woke up early Friday morning, restless in a way that left my skin tight and my heart racing. My dreams had been vivid, filled with wandering hands and breathless cries, of being so impossibly full that I couldn’t remember how to breathe. They’d been of Fane.

Above me. Behind me. Inside me.

I was pretty sure I had been grinding myself on his leg, and instead of having to explain that to him in a way that wouldn’t end with me needing to hop back into the shower, throwing whatever mediocre attempt I made at being quiet to the wind, I got up and creeped out of the bedroom.

Since Declan walked out of Mags’, there’d been no more notes on my car. No more prickling sensation on my runs. It was as if he’d vanished—not just his stalkerish tendencies, but from Darling entirely.

He hadn’t shown up to work. I overheard Ashton talking to Fane about it on Tuesday when he was in his usual spot in the back corner of the café. Ash came in looking tense and drawn, his shoulders tight. Though their conversation was low and clipped, I caught enough to know Declan’s absence was noted—and not in a good way.

Fane had dropped me off on Wednesday as usual before he spent that day doing something for Mackenzie Co. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I’d also not really asked any questions. I was still working on the assumption I was getting through to him on the ‘against’ side of developing Darling.

We had the Autumn Fair coming up on the weekend, and then I had one last ace up my sleeve. A final push to convince him. But with Declan gone, I felt more than fine heading into town on my own.

I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone this long without driving my car, and since Ashton had driven it back for me the morning after Delilah and I tore up the dance floor at Mags’, it just sat in the driveway.

I settled into the driver’s seat, mumbling a little apology and hoping the car didn’t feel like I’d moved on and forgotten her when I pulled my buzzing phone from my pocket to a message from Delilah.

The other thing that had shifted in my life was reconnecting with Delilah. We’d spoken every day since them, trading the messes of our lives as if no time had passed at all. Once that dam broke, our friendship flowed on like there hadn’t been a two-year hiatus.

I flicked off my reply and drove into work with a smile on my face, feeling like my life had substance for the first time in a long time—even though my car was definitely throwing a hissy fit at a few different stop signs.

See, I told you they had feelings.

When Fane showed up an hour later, hair still damp from his shower, and flopped into his usual seat in the back corner, I couldn’t help but add a little extra sway to my hips as I carried over his cappuccino. His first sip was cautious—like he was bracing himself for another chai latte prank—but his raised brow and satisfied hum filtered through the café after I’d already started heading back behind the counter, the sound mixed seamlessly with my stifled laughter.

He’d ducked outside just as I was closing. When I spotted him loitering outside talking to Ash, I felt immature amounts of giddiness when I snapped the lock on the door and slipped out the back, taking a small, wicked pleasure in evading him all day. Both for the sanity of my hormones but also, because playing with him like this was fucking fun. It was easy and natural and exciting.

Words that I wouldn’t have described my life as if you’d asked me weeks ago.

The look on his face when I pulled out of the alley and onto the street was worth every second of my effort.

His eyes flared wide in surprise before his head whipped to the closed door of the café and then back to me. The biggest, brightest, shit-eating grin on my face was just for him, with my arm hanging out the window, flipping him the bird.

His laughter lit up my whole world at that moment. I felt it everywhere and not that I thought it was possible, but my smile stretched wider. So big that I was scared I wouldn’t be able to see past the way my eyes crinkled at the delight of it all.

“This isn’t over!” he called after me, delighted amusement all over his own face. I should’ve guessed my luck at being a step ahead of him all day had run dry when my drive-by fell flat on its face because one of the town’s three traffic lights, conveniently located right outside my café, had just turned yellow.

I pulled my hand in and went to press on the brakes to slow down, sure that Fane would meander over the moment I was stopped and make some quick guess about me being a getaway driver in another life, but…nothing happened.

I frowned and pressed on the brake pedal again, but the car wasn’t slowing down. There was no resistance, the pedal just smacked against the floor of the car, and when I looked up, all I could see was a silver truck picking up speed, Declan behind the wheel, and coming straight for me.

I feel like it’s pretty common for people to say that in the moments when they think they’re about to die, everything slows down. That time passes by so slowly that you have time to zone in on the details around you, like dust particles and the different layers of sound that surround you.

That didn’t happen to me.

I had one second. That’s what it felt like.

Declan was in stunning clarity, the way he was staring at me, picking up speed like he knew I couldn’t slow down. Like he knew I couldn’t stop.

I used my second to whip my head to the side, finding those brilliant violet eyes on me. Wide with fear, Fane’s name ripped from my throat while I yanked the steering wheel as far as it would go to the right, and then there was nothing.