“You know I don’t have any pictures of myself from before I was sixteen,” he said quietly.
I froze. I knew he was a runaway, but I hadn’t thought about the artifacts he left behind.
“I left in the middle of the night,” Cal continued, his hazel eyes distant. “I didn’t grab anything. I just ran. So that whole part of my life? It’s just gone. I have photos with the Donovans, and I cherish those. They’re my family. But this…”
He gestured between us.
“This is the family I chose. This is the family I’m building. And I’m not going to miss a single second of it. I want the evidence, Silas. I want to be able to look at my phone and know exactly where I belong.”
I stepped to him, wrapping my arms around his waist and burying my face in his shoulder. “Okay,” I whispered into his shirt. “Keep the lock screen. Take the pictures.”
“Good,” he murmured.
He pulled back a fraction, a wicked glint suddenly replacing the solemnity in his eyes. He tapped the screen of his phone, lighting up the sweet morning photo again.
“Besides,” Cal smirked, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s a good decoy. Keeps people from asking to see the Home Screen.”
I frowned, confused. “What’s on the Home Screen?”
Cal didn’t answer. He just unlocked the phone and turned the screen toward me.
My jaw dropped.
Itwas the photo from last night. I was straddling his lap, facing away from him, bent forward in a deep arch. The black hoodie was hiked up to the small of my back, the wordsNO ONE LIKE USstretched clearly across my shoulders. Below the hem, the red thong cut deep into my skin, framing everything I was offering him. And right there, resting heavy and possessive on one of my ass cheeks, was Cal’s large hand, claiming me.
“Cal!” I shrieked, snatching the phone from his hand. “You cannot have that as your background! What if you open your phone in public?!”
Cal laughed, snatching the phone back easily. “Nobody sees my unlocked phone but me, and I like looking at it. Reminds me what’s waiting for me when I get back to the hotel.”
“You are insane,” I groaned, covering my face with my hands, though I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “You are actually insane.”
“Insane about you,” he corrected, dropping the phone back into his pocket with a smug grin.
He leaned in, pecking my burning cheek.
“Now come on,” he said, turning back to his suitcase. “Let’s keep packing before you try to delete my art.”
“It’s not art, it’s porn!” I argued, grabbing my own toiletry bag.
“It’s a masterpiece,” he countered, zipping his luggage shut with a decisive snap.
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling as I double checked the drawers.
“I texted my sisters last night, by the way,” Cal said casually, tossing his hoodie onto the bed.
“Oh?” I asked, confused. Cal talked to his sisters all the time; I wasn’t quite understanding what the big revelation here was.
“Heather said she could swing by my place sometime and pack a few things to send down here for me, if that’s still alright?” he said, a rare note of shyness coloring his tone.
I stopped what I was doing, placing my hands on his waist and looking into his eyes. Cal was never shy. In all the years I’d known him, hesitation wasn’t something he expressed often, but seeing it on him when he asked about solidifying his place in my life was one of the cutest things I’d ever seen.
“She can send everything of yours down here if she wants,” I said, leaning in to kiss him, feeling him smile against my lips.
“I thought we agreed on slowly moving down here?” he reminded me, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
I pulled back, rolling my eyes. “Since when have we ever done what we said we would?”
Cal glared at me playfully and nudged me away. “Go finish packing so we can get out of here on time, please.”
