Page 26 of What Hurts Us

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“She said you had moved to town recently.” Suzanne craned her head, peering at the mound of luggage and boxes Cal brought in. “Didn’t say anything about you dating, much less moving in with the most elusive bachelor in town.”

Cal chuckled. “You ladies know I prefer keeping to myself.”

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.His thumb never stopped rubbing idle circles on my hip.

“Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but I just can’t believe your Gran or Sepideh kept news like this quiet!” Marilyn chimed in. “Moving in together—things must be serious.” She punctuated the assumption with a gleeful wink.

Suzanne’s eyes flitted to my belly and back up, trying to decide if I had a baby bump hiding beneath the bulk of my hoodie.

“Like I said,” Cal said, more authoritatively this time. “We were keeping quiet about our—” he looked down at me “—relationship. Waiting until things were steady until we let all y’all know.”

I stifled an eye roll.

“Layla’s apartment complex was being renovated, and she had to move out, so we figured it was the universe telling us to take the next step.” He smiled.

I fought off the urge to coughbullshit.I didn’t know my future fake fiancé that well. Still, having spent a grand total of forty conscious minutes with the man, I could definitively say he was not one to look for “signs from the universe.”

But he had Marilyn and Suzanne eating his bullshit pie right out of his hand and begging for seconds.

“Well,” Suzanne said. “We’ll get out of y’all’s hair and let you two lovebirds get settled. Are you throwing a housewarming party? I’ll bring a pie over.”

Cal—my saving grace—shook his head. “No, ma’am. A party isn’t really our style, and we’d like to have some time together that’s …uninterrupted.” He dropped his voice to a secretive whisper. “So, if you two lovely ladies could keep this to yourselves, Layla and I would appreciate it.” He winked, the flit of his eyelid nearly making them melt on the spot.

Suzanne and Marilyn hurried back down to the sidewalk, already pulling out the phones their grandkids had probably set up for them so that they could add fuel to the rumor mill.

Callum released his hold on my waist, pulled the door shut, and locked the knob and the deadbolt for good measure.

“You know they’re not going to keep any of that to themselves,” I pointed out as I gathered my things from where Cal had set them on the staircase.

He grabbed the rest of it and led me up to the second floor. “Exactly.”

I met him on the landing. “You’re maniacal. You know that? Did you really just manipulate two innocent little old ladies?”

He turned and walked down a narrow hallway, his broad shoulders filling the space. “We all have our talents,peaches.And they’re anything but innocent.”

I rolled my eyes.

Callum flipped a light switch and stepped away from the doorway. “This is the guest room—your room.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m across the hall.”

The room was tidy. A queen bed sat in the middle, covered by a handmade quilt and two pillows stacked neatly against the wooden headboard. A bedside table with antique claw feet housed a lamp and a digital clock. Two windows were on the side of the room that faced the street. White shades had been drawn back to let the afternoon sunlight stream in.

“There are some coat hangers in the closet,” Cal said, pointing to the double doors. “But I can give you some of mine or get more if you need them.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a folded-up sheet of paper. “Wrote the Wi-Fi password down for you.”

I unfolded it and bit back a laugh. In near-chicken scratch, he had scrawled,Network: FBI Surveillance Van. Password: LeaveMeAlone1.

“Most of the neighbors aren’t tech-savvy enough to know that they can change their network name to be whatever they want.” He chuckled. “Keeps the street pretty quiet.”

I surveyed the room once more. It was a little musty from being closed up, but it was clean, furnished, and not next door to a meth lab. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. In the grand scheme of things, I was coming out on top of this deal.

“Bathroom’s right here,” Cal said, walking back into the hall and turning on another light. “We’ll have to share, but there’s a half-bath downstairs, too.”

This was really happening. The realization hit me like a Mack truck when my phone rang again.Maman joonflashed on the screen.

My stomach sank.

It was one thing to pretend to be … whatever we were right now … in front of Creekers. But my family?

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