Page 6 of The Deviation
“Yeah, but then eventually I would have been in front of you.” Taking a chance, I step over the bench and sit opposite him. “Right here. Once you noticed me, you would have done one of two things.”
“Only two?” He pulls a face. “How uncreative of me. Please, inform me of my options.”
Taking a deep breath, I play my hand. “You would have paused your conversation long enough to tell me to get lost or…” I clasp my hands together under the table to try to stop them from shaking. “You would have made your excuses so you could hang up and talk to me.” I glance at his phone before meeting his eyes once more. “Kind of like you did then.” My mouth is dry and I can feel the thumping beat of my own heart, but my gaze is steady as I wait for his response.
He gives a noncommittal shrug. “She hung up on me, actually.”
My smile freezes. All my hopes nosedive into the well-trampled grass at my feet. “Oh.” Maybe this was a mistake after all. “Girlfriend?” I ask, because apparently self-torture is my new favourite pastime.
The teasing glint is back in his eyes. “Sister.”
A laugh falls out of me as my chin drops to my chest. “Right. Siblings. I’ve heard of those.”
“You don’t have any of your own?”
I shake my head. “Only child. It took my parents multiple rounds of fertility treatments to get me here. They opted out of further misery.” Why am I telling him this? He doesn’t care about my parents’ reproductive issues. “You’re sitting with a genuine miracle child,” I add, as if some false levity will make the information more interesting.Shut the fuck up, you twat.
His eyebrows lift, along with one corner of his mouth. “I’m impressed. I’ve never met a miracle before.”
I appreciate his attempt to save me from my own awkwardness, but it does nothing to dampen the inferno erupting on my cheeks. Clearing my throat, I try again. “How about you? Do you have brothers, more sisters?”
“It’s just me and Hannah versus the world.” Every word is warm with affection and I can’t stop staring. The love inside him, the loyalty he wears so openly—they attract parts of me his good looks and the charm of his smile could never reach.
“I get the feeling knowing your sister’s name before I know yours tells me a lot about you.”
He laughs out loud, his eyes crinkling at the corners exactly as I thought they would. “Very astute.” He holds his hand out over the scarred surface of the table. “Calum Ellis.”
We shake, our fingers wrapped tight and our palms pressed together. A jolt of awareness shocks me, all the way from my fingertips down to my dick, and my lips part on a soundless gasp. “Johnny,” I rasp, embarrassed by my overreaction to a simple handshake. “Johnny Durant.”
Releasing my hand, he gives me a wary look. “I need to ask you something, Johnny.”
Uh-oh. This could be bad, considering my recent actions, but there’s no avoiding it. “Shoot.”
Calum takes a deep breath, as if bracing himself for the answer. “Are you a musician?”
The yes jumps to the tip of my tongue, despite feeling like a misnomer. I am performing tomorrow. Not in some tiny beer garden in the back of a pub, but at a real, live music festival. After growing up in a household wheremusicianwas a dirty word, I’m finally in a place where music is celebrated. I want to shout my accomplishment from the rooftops while I have the chance. But now, seeing the look on Calum’s face, I get the impression he’s hoping for ano.
“Why? Do you have a problem with musicians? Because if you do,” I glance around us before continuing in a whisper, “you’re in the wrong place.”
Smirking, Calum runs a hand over his face. “It’s quite the opposite. I’m a music manager, at least I’m training to be one. Mixing business and stalkers is a big no-no in my workplace.”
His phrasing hits, and my mouth falls open. “I was not stalking you, I was—”
“Lurking in the shadows and waiting for your chance to hit on me.”
Damn that sounds shady, but the gleam in Calum’s eye implies he doesn’t mind. “All right, yes,” I admit, throwing my arms wide. “That is exactly what I was doing.” I attempt a contrite expression. “Is it working?”
With a laugh, Calum rakes his gaze over me. “That depends on your answer to my question.”
If I say yes, it will be the end of… whatever this is. Calum is the first man—the firstperson—I’ve responded to in over a year. Even if nothing more happens between us than talking and flirting, I don’t want it to stop. Not yet.
“I know my way around a guitar.” Not a lie. “But I’m a pharmacist by trade.” Also not a lie. Come Tuesday morning, this fantasy I’m living will have run its course and I’ll be back behind a counter, dressed in my pristine white coat and dispensing cold and flu tablets to the snot-nosed masses.
Each conveniently chosen truth broadens the smile on Calum’s face until he releases a pent-up breath. “That’s good news.”
Guilt twinges in my gut, but I push it aside. We’re only talking. He can’t get into trouble for talking to me.
“I never would have pegged you as a pharmacist,” he says.