Page 150 of Your Place or Mine

Not anymore.

Callum had fallen back asleep. His arm was slung across my stomach again, his breath slow and steady against the back of my neck. His stubble tickled my skin, and I didn’t even care.

I smiled into the pillow.

Who was I?

A few months ago, I was crying from my mom’s passing in my tiny room in Seattle while being hit with a breakup and a job that made me feel like a cog in someone else’s machine. Now I was in a mountain town, lying in the bed of the most broody, stubborn, maddeningly sexy man I’d ever met, trying to remember a time when Ididn’twant him to hold me this close.

And the wildest part?

I didn’t want to run.

Not even a little.

That realization bloomed in my chest so suddenly, I actually had to close my eyes and steady my breath. Because I’d known infatuation. I’d known comfort. I’d known the kind of relationships that were convenient or distracting or rooted in obligation.

But this?

This was something entirely different.

Callum was rough around the edges, yes.

Emotionally constipated, a thousand percent.

And yeah….I meant constipated.

But when he let me in, even in tiny pieces, it felt like watching the sun rise after a month of rain.

And it wasn’t just the sex last night, thoughGod help me,that had been... phenomenal. It was the way he looked at me afterward, like he couldn’t believe I was real. It was the way he pulled me close and whisperedI love youinto my hair like it had been fighting to get out of him for weeks.

I believed him.

And I wanted this. All of it.

His scars, his temper, his damn bar.

Oh, the bar.

I smiled wickedly into the pillow.

If I was really going to be in this—if this wasforever,or even had thepotentialto be forever—I had to know just how deep his crusty old roots went. How much of his bark was just noise?

And what better way to test that... than with a little fun?

I carefully peeled myself away from his warmth and padded to the kitchen, stealing one of his oversized plaid shirts from the hook by the door. It hit me mid-thigh and smelled like pine and bourbon and a thousand late nights.

I put on a pot of coffee, tiptoed through his ridiculously tidy living room, and found a pencil and notepad on the edge of the counter. I perched at the table and started doodling.

Five minutes later, Callum wandered in, rubbing sleep from his eyes, shirtless, hair sticking up in every direction.

I was momentarily distracted by the sheer number of muscles this man had apparently been hiding under flannel, but I recovered quickly.

“Mornin’,” he grunted, crossing to the coffeepot.

“Sleep okay?” I asked innocently, tapping the pencil against my chin.

He poured a cup and shot me a wary look. “What are you doing?”

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