Page 8

7

Calista

After

Fane stood across from me in the small entry room.

The cottage was way too small to have an entry room, but it had one.

So, we stood in the world’s most useless room. This weirdly passive-aggressive stare-off between me and…

What was I supposed to refer to him as now? My new-old-fake-ex-boyfriend?

Whatever he was, he was now in my house, and whatever I did to deserve this, I was very, very sorry.

Fane just stood there, tattooed arms crossed and scowl in place. His chestnut-colored hair was styled differently than I thought it was before. Longer on the top and back and a bit shorter on the sides. Messy and unruly like it had always been, the longer pieces tucked behind his ears.

“I won’t let you ruin this town.” I crossed my arms across my chest, mimicking his position and doing what I thought was one heck of a job making my five foot six inches look somewhat respectable against his admittedly imposing six foot five.

“I know.” His jaw was so stiff it didn’t even look like it moved despite having heard his words clear as a bell.

“I don’t want you here,” I tacked on for good measure.

“Shocker.” His eyes stayed on me. They didn’t drift for even a second. They’d always been intense in every sense of the word. I don’t think there was a way for his violet eyes not to be intense. No matter what he was feeling, they were clear tells to the extent of his emotions.

Joy, sadness, excitement, nervousness.

Want.

“You could have had any town.” I threw my arms out to either side of me. “Do you know how many small towns there are in this country? Probably a billion, and you picked mine ”—I ignored the way my voice broke—“to come and ruin. Like you haven’t done enough.”

My chest was heaving. I was on the verge of imploding, and he stood there, stoic. Giving me nothing.

“You really don’t have anything to say?”

“What do you want me to say?” The timbre of his voice made the room too full. Every moment in his presence made it harder and harder to breathe.

“I want you to say you’ll pack up and leave.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.” His controlled and calm stance used to be something I relied on. It was the very thing that pulled me back from whatever panicked edge I was standing on time and time again. Now, it just made me want to pull him up on the ledge with me and shove him off.

“You don’t know anything about Darling.”

“So you keep saying.” His broad shoulders lifted on a big inhale before they dropped back down, drawing my attention to the tattoos on his neck that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him. They spanned up the sides and wrapped around to the back, disappearing under the waves of his hair.

I refused to let myself fall back into the habit of taking stock of every piece of art that covered his body. I didn’t care how he decorated it anymore or the reasons why.

“—around?” His voice trickled into my head like I was coming out of water.

“Around what?” Crap.

“Darling?” He lifted one full eyebrow at me, and when I stayed silent, his eyes took on that mischievous shine I remembered when he was particularly entertained…or turned on.

God. What was I doing? No. No. I hadn’t entertained any thoughts of him in the last two years, and I wasn’t going to start now. I knew where that led, and I knew how it ended.

“I said,” he went on, taking obvious pleasure in having to repeat himself for me, “Are you going to show me around?”

I didn’t want to. I didn’t actually want to spend any time with Fane. I didn’t want to see him in a crowd, and I definitely didn’t want to see him one on one.

So, when I opened my mouth to release the screaming “ Nope!” that was floating around my brain, I physically jolted when I said, “Yep.”

Even when my brain was still screaming, “ No, you dumbass! You meant to say NO!” nothing else came out. Not a freaking peep .

He nodded like it was no big deal. Like none of this was a big deal. “When?”

“After work.” The words were delivered with the sort of calm that didn’t align with the alarm I was feeling at volunteering some of the only time I had to myself. “And weekends,” I added on because, apparently, I needed to torture myself further . “Not both, obviously. Or maybe, I don’t know I—”

“Need to make a list?” Fane pressed his lips together like he was trying not to laugh.

“Are you laughing at me? Again? ” I was having déjà vu. This wasn’t my life. At least it hadn’t been my life this morning. It wasn’t even my life this afternoon.

“No ma’am.” He just shook his head, that glint in his eyes telling me he absolutely was.

“Stop calling me ma’am,” I huffed, doing my best to scowl at him and not just flip him off again. After the second time I did it, I realized it was actually very therapeutic.

“I have some rules.” I crossed my arms tighter and popped my hip out further.

“Okay.” He nodded, brow furrowed and arms crossed.

I held up my hand and unfurled one finger. “I am the guide. You’re the guidee.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Next rule, I’m right, all the time.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Next rule, you’re not allowed to interrupt me.”

“I didn’t.” His shock was almost convincing.

“Next rule,”—I was trying very hard not to yell—“you’re not allowed to speak. At all.” I watched him, my chest rising and falling like I was on the verge of running away or maybe charging right at him. I hadn’t decided yet.

The decision was made for me when Fane raised his hand in the air, and the smile on his face finally cracked through the glare he’d had fitted like a tailored suit.

It was my turn to take a big breath, releasing it slowly through my nose. “Yes?”

“What if I have a question?”

“Then…then you can raise your hand.”

“Like I’m at school?”

“Well, you are acting like an overgrown toddler, so if the shoe fits.”

“Okay.” He dropped his hand but didn’t drop the smile, and the fact he didn’t bite at my dig made me infinitely madder at him.

“Can I call you Rosie?”

“No.”

“Baby?”

“ No,” I gritted out through clenched teeth.

“Late for dinner?” His smile spoke volumes on how funny he thought he was.

Charge at him. I definitely wanted to charge at him.

The tension between us was so thick it felt seconds away from becoming a tangible thing. Heat flushed my cheeks, like I’d been sitting under the summer sun for way too long.

He hadn’t lifted his gaze from me once. The weight of it made me shift. Made me aware of the sound of my own breath moving in and out of my mouth, of the dampness growing between my legs for reasons so far beyond my own comprehension. The heaviness that had settled just below my belly button.

I needed water. I needed something to hold onto.

Get a fucking grip, Calista. You’re a grown-ass woman who has control over her body.

The moment his eyes left mine, I was released from whatever hold he had on me. It gave me enough mental clarity to notice how rigid he’d become. How tightly coiled he’d become.

So much of Fane was corded muscle. He’d always been solid, with rigid lines and valleys that created the map of his body.

Look, I don’t have anything positive to say about the way all that driving, flaming heat consuming me settled into a heavy, thrumming pulse that radiated through my entire body. It spread through me until I was painfully aware of every sensation—the drag of my clothes against my skin, the way it was almost too much to bear. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to bury myself in every sweater I owned or rip off every piece of clothing I had on.

It had been so long since I’d remotely felt an inkling of need for any other human that it slammed into me the way you might walk directly into a sliding glass door.

My day had been bizarre, and I gave myself full permission to blame it on that.

No, not just bizarre, but soul drainingly exhausting.

I could feel myself starting to droop under the weight of the last two years, never more crushing than here, in the small, useless room that held a single ottoman I never used and the one person I hated most in the world.

“I don’t have a guest room.” I kept as much space between us as I could, walking around Fane and into the living room. “You can take the couch.”

“No.” His voice came from so close behind me that I swear I felt his breath on the back of my neck. The hairs on every part of my body stood up.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” I asked the question while still looking away from him, wondering if this might be the moment that the slipping grip I had on my sanity finally gave way.

“I’m not sleeping on the couch,” he said again, enunciating each and every word as clear as day.

I gave myself three seconds to take a deep breath before I turned to face him. He was so close to me that I could feel the heat radiating off his body.

The step I took back was more of a reflex from having someone so far into my personal space bubble it should have been classified as a felony.

“Where do you plan on sleeping then?” The question was supposed to be rhetorical. It was supposed to point out that there were no other options for him besides the couch or the floor.

Fane obviously didn’t gather that because he pointed at the only closed door in the house that clearly led to my bedroom. “There.”

“Ha!” The sound just burst out of me, shocking Jerry awake from where he’d situated himself back on his own couch. “No.” I shook my head with vigor. “You’re not sleeping in my bed.”

“Why not?” His head tilted to the side, and for reasons completely out of my control, I took another step back.

“Because it’s my bed, Fane,” I seethed. “I don’t share beds with people I don’t know.”

He took another step toward me, then another. Making me retreat with every thump of his boots on the creaking hardwood floors.

He wasn’t just walking toward me; he was stalking me.

“Oh, I think you know me quite well, Calista.”

It was messed up the way my body shivered from head to toe after watching his mouth say my name. The way I watched every syllable roll off his tongue and imagined the way it would feel on other parts of my body.

I was too busy trying to figure out a way to speak that didn’t involve the use of my tongue, too busy trying to forget how familiar being surrounded by the smell of him was, that it didn’t register the way it should have that he was still taking those measured steps toward me.

My back hit something solid, and I decided to add my yelp of surprise to the list of things I didn’t have any super positive things to say about.

We could have stayed like that for hours, as far as I was concerned. Could have gone back in time, jumped dimensions, won the lottery.

Who the fuck knows.

It could have all happened, and I would have still been rooted to the spot I was currently in, looking into empty violet eyes, doing my best to block out every other memory I had of them except for the one that mattered.

Fane’s hand around the doorknob wasn’t what snapped me from whatever was happening to my brain.

A stroke, probably.

It was the fact that he let go of said handle. I stumbled back into the room, unable to get my footing until I landed right on the bed, right on my ass for the second time tonight.

I gave my head a little shake to clear the fog that wasn’t lifting half as fast as I needed it to, and by then, it was already too late.

“No!” I yelled at the spot where he’d been standing. My head whipped around to find him undoing the button of his jeans.

“Oh…oh my god. Have you lost your mind? What are you doing?!” My hand flew up to cover my eyes.

“Getting ready for bed.” His voice was low and rough. It had always been like that, like he never really used it much. It made my own throat ache.

“Why are you taking off your pants? ” I was still yelling.

“You’ve seen me in a lot less than this, Rose.” And that was the moment I knew he was enjoying this.

“You do not get to call me that.” I seethed. “And we’re not sharing a bed.”

“The couch is free.”

“ Fane ,” I seethed again, dropping my hand at the same time I got to my feet and turned to face him. “This is my bed.” It took everything in me not to stomp my foot like a child.

“I know.” He started to pull the covers back, and I wanted to scream. He was so fucking calm.

“Hey,” I said, trying to get his attention while he took his phone out of his pocket and set it next to the bed. He just ignored me, clearly done with whatever was going on between us. “ Hey !” I said again, louder this time. “That’s my side.”

Those empty eyes looked from the covers he held in a fist to my face, shadowed by the furrow of his brow that came out of nowhere.

Ah, this expression I knew.

He was confused. Not just regular confused but freaking perplexed.

His hand stayed curled around the duvet for a second longer before he released it one finger at a time and walked around to the other side of the bed. Strides stiff and body rigid and only in his black briefs and a shirt.

I threw my hands up, stomping out of the room and grinding my back teeth together. My heart was beating so fast, pumping what had to be gallons of desperately frustrated, fiery anger all over my body. He made me want to break all the plates in my kitchen, and I really loved my plates.

Instead, I grabbed a spare toothbrush from the cupboard in the hall and stomped back into my room, thrusting it at him without a word.

Bad hostess, my ass.

If he had to be here, that was fine.

I mean, it wasn’t, but whatever.

I would eventually make my peace with that. Maybe. After all, this was a hole I had dug for myself a long while ago. I had no one else to blame.

Sure, my level of forethought on all potential ways it could play out started and ended with telling everyone I knew he was on the other side of the world, like somehow my passionate will alone would make it happen.

Instead, he showed up like he hadn’t decimated my heart, saw the hole I’d dug, and just dove right in, taking me with him via a running tackle.

He was here, but that didn’t mean I had to acknowledge him.

I wouldn’t see him, speak to him, or notice him.

Within the walls of this house, Fane Mackenzie ceased to exist to me.