DEENA
Got your emails. Did you miss me that much, or are you just mad I blocked you?
As soon as I hit “send,” all the breath rushed out of me. I turned my phone face down and leaned against the vanity, squeezing my eyes shut. That was dumb. I shouldn’t have done that.
Then my phone buzzed. It was in my hand without me remembering picking it up.
CALLUM
Knew you’d crack eventually, sweetheart.
DEENA
Dodging the question, huh.
Three little dots appeared, and my heart began to gallop. A knock on the powder room door made me jump, and I stuffed my phone in my pocket before I could read his second reply. “Almost done!” I called out.
“You ran away,” my mother complained. “Don’t make this moment about you, Deena.”
I wrenched open the door and fought to find patience inside me. She was baiting me, and I wouldn’t bite. “I needed to pee, Mom.”
My mother clicked her tongue, not believing me. “Come help me clean up in the kitchen.”
I trudged behind her, my phone burning a hole in my back pocket. All the dishes had been brought in from the dining room, where my brother and father chatted.
Stacey was at the sink, and she smiled when I came in. “Feeling okay? It’s good to see you, Deena.”
“I’m great. What about you? Get away from there,” I said, shooing her away from the dishes. “You’re pregnant. You should have your feet up.”
“When I was pregnant with you, I never got a break,” my mother put in.
Stacey and I exchanged a glance, and my sister-in-law bit back a smile. “I’ll get the boys some fresh drinks,” she said, the perfect housewife that my mother had always wished I was.
I put some plates in the dishwasher while my mother put plastic wrap over the leftovers. But I couldn’t resist temptation for long, and I pulled my phone out of my back pocket to stare at the screen.
CALLUM
You know I missed you, Deena.
I could almost hear the dark velvet of his voice through the text message. Below it, he’d written again:
And I am furious with you.
Heat snaked through my belly, settling in the space below my navel where I was hollow and achy. I bit my bottom lip, not quite able to regret my decision to send that message.
I’d missed how every part of me seemed to come alive whenever we had the least bit of contact. It could be as little as the brush of his gaze over my skin, or two simple text messages. And I couldn’t quite resist the urge to keep going. Everything else was bleak and fraught. Messaging Cal, by comparison, felt electrifying.
DEENA
How furious, exactly?
My heart thumped as soon as the message sent. I stared at the screen until the little check marks turned blue, and I knew Callum was reading my reply.
Then I just about jumped out of my skin when my mother asked, “Who’s Callum Frost, and why is he mad at you?”
I spun around, my butt crashing with the lower cabinets, my phone clutched to my breast. “No one,” I blurted.
She planted her hands on her hips and stared at me. Staredthrough me, seeing all my dirty little secrets. “Are you seeing him?”
