sakura
At eight p.m. sharp, I pulled up Callan’s driveway. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since lunch today. Before I could even get out of my car, Callan appeared at the side door, dressed in a casual pair of jeans and the same sweater from school today.
“Didn’t think you’d show up.”
I stepped out of the car and grabbed my backpack. “Were you waiting for me?”
Instead of answering me, he hummed and followed me through the house to the kitchen and attached living room. “I’m just finishing grading papers,” he said, looking down at the mess on the island counter.
“Oh good,” I said, hopping up onto a stool. “I can finish my work then.”
He paused. “Sure.”
While I was determined to spend time with him and not have sex with him for once, fifteen minutes later, I was getting too antsy. So, I excused myself to use the bathroom and then wandered through his large house afterward to calm myself.
Since the last time Callan had invited me over, he—or maybe his wife—had removed most of her stuff. Maybe they were in the middle of a divorce? Maybe they separated and she was in the middle of moving out? Was that why he didn’t mind me coming over?
When I spotted a single picture hanging in a side hallway of Callan and Georgina when they were younger, I froze and stared up at it. She was so pretty with long strawberry-blonde hair, full lips, bright green eyes. I wished that were me in the picture with him.
After stepping closer, I craned my head up to look at it more closely. I should’ve been heading back to the kitchen, where Callan was grading papers and I should be doing my homework, but I wanted to torture myself with this a bit longer.
Maybe I have a masochistic kink or something. Who knows?
“I thought you were just using the bathroom?” Callan asked from down the hall.
My eyes widened, and I jumped back. “Oh, um … yeah! I was just … looking around.”
He glanced at the picture on the wall, then clenched his jaw and walked over. Before I could say anything about it, he tore it off the wall and tossed it into a spare room that I didn’t dare go in.
“I don’t come down this hallway often, or that would’ve been gone already.”
“Oh,” I said. “It’s okay.”
No, it freaking isn’t. He’s mine.
“Come,” he said, taking my hand and bringing me back down the stairs to the kitchen. “I know it’s late, but I haven’t eaten yet. I have a Wagyu steak in the fridge downstairs. Let me make it for you.”
Stomach fluttering, I gripped his hand tighter and followed him to the kitchen. Callan Avery was holding my hand. More like tugging me along so I’d get out of that hallway with the picture of him and his wife.
But still, holding my hand.
When we reached the kitchen, he pulled a steak and veggies out of the fridge, then a skillet from one of the cupboards.
I walked over to his side and peered up at him. “How can I help you?” I asked.
He widened eyes. “You want to help?”
“Of course!”
He tried to hold back a smile, as if nobody had asked to help him with anything around the house, but then he shook his head. “I want to cook for you,” he said. “You can go sit down and finish your work.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said after a slight pause. “Go sit down.”
Twenty minutes later, Callan set a plate of hot food in front of me. He sat across from me and cut into his steak. With a five-o’clock shadow under the kitchen light, everything about him seemed so much more real.
He wasn’t just my teacher or the guy I was fucking.
Last time I had been over, he hadn’t looked comfortable in his own house at all. But now, everything about him seemed so light and airy, like he was relaxed for the first time in a long time.
I bit into my steak and swallowed a piece. “This is delicious, Callan.”
“You like it?” he asked, smiling when I nodded. “I love cooking, but I usually don’t get a chance to anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, taking another bite. “School?”
He stayed quiet for another few moments and gazed down emptily at his food. “School. A wife who loves to criticize everything I do. The steak is either not done enough, too well done, has too much fat on it or not enough. You know, the usual.”
My lips turned down into a frown.
The way he had said it …
The sudden drop of happiness from his face …
It was the first time he was actually really talking about his wife without me asking. If someone made me dinner every night—or even just once in a blue moon—I wouldn’t complain about it, especially if the cooking was this good.
How ungrateful could someone be?
“Sorry,” he said, looking down at his food. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I reached across the counter and grabbed his hand. “No, I’m sorry,” I whispered, chest tightening at the thought of how long Callan had stopped doing the things he loved because the woman he was married to didn’t love him. “Nobody should have to go through that.”
Instead of refuting everything and telling me that nothing was wrong, like any other toxic boy would, Callan stared at me in silence for the longest time. He continued to eat, and I thought he wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of dinner.
But he peered down at his food again, then looked back up at me. “I want to leave her,” he whispered. “I’m not happy with her. I haven’t been happy with anyone for over a decade now. Not until …”
He paused.
“Until what?” I whispered, heart racing.
“Not until you.”