Page 52 of His Good Girl

The softness in his voice pulled the desire out of the dark place where I had tried to keep it and wrapped it in tenderness, which made it much harder to dismiss as simple lust. I wanted him, yes and that was bad enough, but I also wanted him to keep talking. I wanted every memory he had. I wanted the version of my parents he carried inside him. I wanted his steadiness, his attention, and how he could make me feel less alone without crowding me.

And then, because my body was an idiot, I also wanted to crawl into his lap and find out whether all that restraint would break if I gave him a reason.

I took another bite of tart and nearly hated myself. He was my godfather. He was my new boss. He was the man who had been kind to me when I asked for help.

Those facts should have stacked into a wall. Instead, they made a door I kept trying not to open.

“Do you ever think about him?” I asked. The question came out quieter than I meant it to. “Dad, I mean. Just randomly.”

Callum looked at me for a long moment. “Yes.”

“When?”

“When something goes wrong on a project and I know he would have had a terrible joke at the ready. When I see someone wearing those old canvas boat shoes he refused to throw away.” His thumb moved once along the base of his wineglass. “When I worry about you.”

My breath caught and he seemed to realize the weight of that last sentence after it was already said. His gaze moved briefly away, toward the restaurant window, then back.

“I mean that in the way I always have,” he clarified.

A line, gently drawn, but still drawn between us.

I should have been grateful. Part of me was, but the rest of me felt a stupid, irrational sting, as if I had been caught wanting to be seen differently and then reminded of my assigned seat at the children’s table.

“Right,” I agreed. “Of course.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but with attention. “Avery.”

I looked at my plate. “It’s fine.”

“That usually means it isn’t.”

“You’re not the only one committed to accuracy.”

There was a pause. When he spoke again, his voice was low enough that it slid under the noise of the restaurant and reached only me.

“You are not a little girl to me.”

My fork stilled over my plate.

“I need you to understand that,” he intoned with seriousness.

The room seemed to pull inward around us as I lifted my eyes to his.

“I have known you since you were born,” he explained. “That matters. I won’t pretend it doesn’t. I won’t insult either of us by acting as though this is simple. But I also know you are an adult woman sitting across from me. I can see that. I can see that clearly.”

There were sentences that entered the body through the ears and went no further. There were others that slid between the ribs and took up residence.

This was the second kind.

Heat bloomed under my skin. My pulse beat hard in my throat, exactly where I had imagined his fingers. My core fluttered again, helpless and greedy, because it seemed even reassurance could become erotic if delivered by Callum Rowe in a dark restaurant while his eyes refused to let me hide.

I wanted to ask what else he saw.

If he had looked at my mouth as many times as I had looked at his.

Whether his restraint felt as physical as mine, whether it sat in his hands and jaw and shoulders, and if he had to keep choosing it. Or whether, maybe, men like him were simply born able to lock doors inside themselves.

Instead, I said, “That makes it harder.”