Page 100 of What Hurts Us

I tipped my head back, resting it against his chest. “Like what?”

“Carefree.” He kissed my temple. “I like seeing you live your life on your terms. Not haunted by someone too busy pining after someone else that he didn’t see how beautiful you are. How incredible you are. Not being the woman your family expects you to be. Not faking it with me to scare off some harpy.” His hands skated up and down the sides of the corset. “I like seeingyou.”

I twisted my arm, threading my hand through the side of his hair to pull him down for a kiss. “I like seeing you, too.”

“So, have I done it?”

“Done what, baby?”

“Changed your mind about dating a cop again.” He grinned against the top of my head, and I could feel his thickness pressing against my ass. It was the leather pants that made him that way. Then again, Callum was nevernothard.

“I think you’ve made a pretty good case for yourself, Officer Fletcher.” The band switched to a slow anthem of undying love. I turned and draped my arms around his neck.

Cal wrapped his hand around my throat, holding me steady as he tipped his head and kissed me the way a man should kiss a woman. He kissed me like he was fucking my mouth with his. Like there wasn’t an inch of my body and my heart that didn’t belong to him. “You’ve moved a lot. Moved around a lot.” His thumb stroked up and down my throat, occasionally dipping to circle the notch in my clavicle. “Do you, uh … think you could be happy in a place like Falls Creek?”

“Don’t do that, Cal,” I chided with a lazy smile. “If you have something you want to know, just ask me. Don’t skirt around it.”

The pad of his thumb pressed against my lips. “Do you think you’d be happy in Falls Creek? With me?”

The noise of the concert faded. The bodies packed in around us turned to distant figures. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

Callum grinned, white teeth flashing in the midst of his grizzly bear façade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his hands on my hips, turning me back to face the stage. His cheek scraped against my temple. “I already proposed, honey.”

“You faked it,” I said with a laugh, leaning back into him. “I don’t want to sound like a diva, but I want a real proposal. One that we didn’t practice in your living room.”

His hand clapped down on my left butt cheek. I squeaked, but the rest of the crowd was too busy forming a mosh pit to care.

“Ourliving room,” I corrected with a laugh.

He squeezed my ass. “That’s better.”

The show came to a close. Cal and I weaved through the crowd and darted for the bike before there was a traffic jam of concert-goers trying to leave at once.

“I may have faked it, but every word was true,” he said as he slid his hand under my jacket and rested it on the small of my back.

I tried to remember what he had said when he proposed under the gazebo in the middle of town, but I couldn’t recall. I racked my brain during the ride back toward Falls Creek. Instead of turning into the little downtown to head home, he kept driving.

The parkway was pitch-black. I hugged his back to steal his warmth as we whipped around curve after curve. Cal slowed, pulling to a stop at the gravel shoulder where we had …christenedhis bike.

“Babe,” I said with a laugh and planted my feet on the ground. “I’m just warning you, these pants are tight, and the corset snaps at my crotch like a onesie. Getting out of it isn’t going to be as sexy as you just seeing me in it.”

His smile flashed like lightning. “Don’t worry, I’m not taking your clothes off. Too cold for that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “But it wasn’t the other night?”

Callum chuckled and shrugged sheepishly. “I was horny.”

Fair.

He unsnapped the saddle bag and pulled out a small blanket. “There’s a meteor shower tonight.”

“Callum Anthony Fletcher,” I said with a giggle. “Who knew that the grumpy, tattooed cop of Falls Creek was a softie who liked looking at the stars?”

He glared at me. “First of all, who told you my middle name? Second, I’m not grumpy. But if you had to wrangle farm animals who are smarter than half our population, then get told you have to take an insufferable woman out on a date because it’s for a good cause, you’d be a little irritable, too. And third—” he pecked my lips and guided me down onto the blanket, using the side of the Harley as a backrest “—I will only stay up, sit in the cold, and look at exploding rocks in the sky because I like seeing the wonder on your face.”

I sat between his spread thighs and laid against his chest. “You wanna know something?”

“What’s that, honey?”

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