"Delete that," he said.
"Absolutely not. This is going in a frame."
"Willow—"
"In a frame, on a shelf, in my apartment. Assuming my apartment still exists. Which reminds me—" I set down my taco. "I should call Mr. Henley about the repair timeline."
The mention of my apartment introduced a current I hadn't intended. My apartment. The one I'd be returning to. The one that existed in a separate geography from the bed I'd been sharing with Callum for the past three nights.
He registered it too. I saw the shift—a tightening around his eyes, a calibration happening behind his composed exterior.
"There's no rush," he said. Carefully. "To go back."
"The repairs are supposed to be done this week."
"I know. But there's no rush."
I looked at him. He looked at his bibimbap. We were both aware of what he was saying without saying it—stay, keep staying, don't leave—and we were both aware that saying it plainly would turn a three-day sleepover into a decision with real architecture behind it.
"Let's not talk about it today," I said. "Today is a no-serious convo zone."
He nodded, accepting that declaration.
I finished my tacos. He finished his bibimbap. And we didn't talk about the apartment, or the expiration of our arrangement, or the fact that I'd stopped being able to picture my mornings without his arm around my waist and his French press coffee and his devastating, half-asleep shoulder kisses.
We didn't talk about it. But it was there. The elephant in the room at an outdoor flea market, which was an impressive feat even for an elephant.
After the market, I drove us across town to a neighborhood I'd discovered during a wrong turn last summer—a stretch of residential blocks where the houses were old, weird, and wonderful.
Victorian painted ladies with turrets and wraparound porches. A mid-century modern box thatlooked as though it'd been airlifted from Palm Springs. A craftsman bungalow with a garden so overgrown it resembled a benevolent jungle. An art deco apartment building with curved balconies and decorative flourishes that had survived eighty years of weather and neglect.
I parked. Killed the engine.
"Why are we in a residential neighborhood?" Callum asked.
"I want you to show me."
"Show you what?"
"How you see buildings." I unbuckled my seatbelt, turned to face him. "You've been an architect for twenty years. You look at structures every day and see things the rest of us don't. I want to know what you see."
He was quiet. I watched the idea land—the realization that I was asking him to share the part of himself he'd poured his life into. Not the business side. Not the client-facing, contract-winning, Richard Ashford side. The real part. The passion that had cost him a marriage and nearly cost him his daughter.
"You want an architectural walking tour," he said. "Of a random neighborhood."
"I want you to be excited about a thing you love while I watch. Is that weird? That might be weird."
"It's not weird." His voice had gone rough, the wayit did when I caught him off guard with a sincerity he hadn't prepared for. "It's?—"
"Don't get sappy. Just show me the buildings."
We walked. And Callum Hayes—controlled, restrained, emotionally buttoned-up Callum Hayes—transformed.
He pointed at the Victorian on the corner and explained how the turret wasn't just decorative but served as a thermal chimney, drawing hot air up and out. He ran his hand along the craftsman's porch railing and talked about mortise-and-tenon joinery with the reverence a priest gives a sacrament. He stopped in front of the art deco apartment building and described the way the curved balconies interacted with prevailing winds, creating microclimates that made each unit feel different depending on its orientation.
His hands moved when he talked about buildings. That was the revelation. In every other context—the office, the galas, the coffee shop—Callum kept his hands disciplined. Controlled. But here, pointing out a cornice detail or tracing the line of a roofbeam, his hands came alive. Sweeping, emphatic, sculpting the air into shapes that mirrored what he saw.
He was beautiful.
