Page 93 of Your Place or Mine

She nodded, expression somber. “You don’t know about Lucy?”

“No. Who’s—” I cut myself off, dread blooming like ink in water. “Wait. You mean a girlfriend?”

“Wife,” Riley said quietly. “Technically. Though they were never legally married. Lived together for years. Practically married in everyone’s eyes. They opened the bar together.”

“Oh,” I breathed.

“She was sick. Cancer. Came on fast. She didn’t tell many people at first, but Callum knew. He took care of her. Never left her side.”

I couldn’t speak.

“They were young. Too young. And he stayed until the very end, but when she passed…” Riley’s voice caught a little, and I realized this wasn’t just gossip for her. She’dlivedthis too. “He changed. Went from light-hearted and wild to… well. The man you met. His dad also passed and...” She didn’t finish

I stared at the floor, stunned.

The weight in Callum’s eyes.

The guarded way he held himself back, like one wrong move would shatter the whole world again.

It made sense now.

More than I wanted it to.

“That’s why he’s like this,” I whispered. “Why he lashes out. Why he doesn’t let anyone in.”

Riley nodded. “He doesn’t believe he can survive another heartbreak.”

“And yet he—” I stopped. “He kissed me. He asked me to dinner.”

“Because even his most broken parts still want to be whole.”

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting when I came here tonight. Comfort, maybe. A space to vent. Some tea and sarcastic commentary. I hadn’t expected a bombshell that rewired every interaction I’d ever had with him.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” I admitted, throat thick.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Riley said gently. “But if you’re going to keep spending time with him, you deserve to understand why he acts the way he does.”

I blinked hard, the image of his face across the table still vivid in my mind. The way he’d saidI’m trying. The way his eyes had flicked down to my mouth, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss me again or apologize for the last one.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked.

“Because Callum wouldn’t want you to know,” she said simply. “And this town, underneath all its gossip and small-town chaos, still protects the people it loves.”

That was the part that really undid me.

Because now I knew.

Now I saw him not as the difficult, stubborn bar owner trying to keep me from changing things, but as a man who’d lost more than I could imagine and still got up every day to run the thing built out of a love he no longer had.

No wonder he was always angry. Always guarded.

No wonder he looked at me like I was dangerous.

Because I was.

I represented change. Possibility. Risk.

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