Page 123 of Your Place or Mine

Just wrapped around each other in her apartment with the blinds shut and the air thick with heat and heartache and want.

When it was over, we collapsed against the couch in a mess of limbs and flushed skin. The silence was filled with ragged breath and the rapid beat of two hearts that had stopped pretending they didn’t belong to each other.

I held her tight and kissed her temple, her hair stuck to my cheek, and her fingers tangled in mine.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

And for the first time in a long time, neither was I.

“You make me feel alive again,” I murmured into her hair, the words shocking even me.

She stilled.

Then whispered, “Youarealive, Callum.”

And I believed her.

For once, I let myself believe it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lydia

I heard the door close softly, like a secret trying not to wake me.

I didn’t move.

Not right away.

I lay in bed, tangled in my sheet, my cheek still pressed to the warm pillow where his head had rested hours earlier. For a moment, I imagined I’d dreamed it all, how his hands had trembled just a little when they slid along my waist, how he kissed like he hadn’t in years and hated how much he needed to.

But the ache low in my body, the faint scent of cedar and whiskey on my skin—that was real.

He was real.

And now he was gone.

I rolled onto my back, staring at the slightly cracked ceiling like it might offer answers. I didn’t expect him to stay. That wasn’t the kind of man Callum Benedict was. He was the kind of man who left before the sun rose, probably feeling like he’d already overstayed.

And honestly, I didn’t blame him.

What we’d shared… It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t convenient. It was too raw to fit inside the neat little box I’d tried to build around him. Too vulnerable. Too open.

It was more than I’d ever expected to find in a quiet town with a man who scowled more than he spoke.

I sat up slowly, pulled the sheet around my shoulders, and stared at the space where he’d been. I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel—giddy? Gutted? Hopeful?

Instead, I felt stunned.

It was as if the tectonic plates of my life had shifted overnight, and now everything looked the same, but nothingwas.

I padded across the floor, bare feet against cold wood, and grabbed a pair of leggings and a worn T-shirt. My body was still humming, the ghost of his touch pressed into my skin, but I forced myself into motion. Because if I stood still too long, I’d think too hard. Feel too much.

And right now, I just needed to move.

I entered the bathroom and turned on the shower, waiting until the steam fogged the mirror before stepping under the spray. The hot water hit my shoulders like a reset button, loosening muscles I hadn’t realized were clenched.

As I rinsed shampoo from my hair, I thought about the way Callum had whispered to me. Not sweet nothings, but real things. Honest things. Broken, messy truths he didn’t want to say out loud, but did anyway because we were in the dark, and the dark had a way of peeling layers off people.

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