It’s all Callum. My husband. My partner. The man I’ve loved since I was eighteen. The one Istilllove but am too afraid to tell.
Later, Chloe, I say in my head.Your husband is waiting for you. Deal with it later.I smooth down my hair the best I can and squirt a bit of toothpaste on my finger for a quick brush before padding back out to the bedroom. Callum’s sitting up in bed, looking sinfully hot with the sheet draped over his lower half.
“What?” he asks with a grin when I stand and stare for far too long.
“Nothing.” I shake my head, forcing myself to move and crawl into the bed and under the sheet beside him. “Just looking at you.”
“Like what you see?”
I nod, resting my head against his chest, loving how he wraps his arm around me instantly. “Very much.”
I play with the ring around his neck, and he rubs my back softly, lulling me to sleep. My eyes are nearly closed when something catches my attention from the corner of my eye. I sit up, looking down and squinting at the ink dotting Callum’s chest.
“What?” he asks, but I ignore him.
I need a closer look, a better one. I reach over and turn on the lamp on my side of the bed, then turn back to him. This time when I look, it’s perfectly clear. There, above his heart, sits a new tattoo. It’s small and, among the mass of other designs, hard to notice, but I know that shape. Iamthat shape.
I look up at him to find he’s already staring down at me as I roll my tongue over my lips. “You got a clover.”
He pauses, almost like he’s waiting to see if I’ll say anything else. When I don’t, he exhales slowly, then nods.
“I got a clover.” A gulp. “Actually, I got three clovers.”
I pull my brows in. “Three?”
“One for each year you were gone.” He points to a small one I hadn’t noticed on the inside of his bicep. It’s brighter than other tattoos around it. “I got that over Christmas break because I knew you weren’t coming back.” He gives me a rueful smile. “I guess I was wrong about that one.”
A small part of me wants to tease him for being wrong, but an even bigger part of me wants to kiss him for being so damn sweet.
That part wins. I launch myself at him, not caring that I’m still naked or that he is too. I kiss him because I have to, and I can’t wait another moment to do it.
I pull away, nuzzling my nose against his, his fingers tangled in my already messy hair. “You got a clover.”
He laughs lightly. “Three of them.”
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“I can’t believe you came back to me.” His words are soft, almost whispered. He sighs. “I love you, Chloe.”
I freeze. It’s the first time I’m hearing him say it since I left for London that second time. It was hard then, and it’s hard now. And just like then, I don’t know what to say or do.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he says, “but I wanted you to know. I love you. I never stopped loving you, and dammit, Clover, I never plan to either.”
He kisses me slowly and sweetly until my lips are numb, and it’s far too early in the morning. We finally part, and Callum takes his turn in the bathroom before climbing back in bed beside me. He wraps himself around me and tugs me close, fitting his body around mine like a second blanket.
“Good night,” he says, pressing his lips to my bare shoulder.
“I love you, too,” I go to say, but instead it comes out, “Good night.”
He never asks me to say it back, and I never do, but it’s still somehow the best night of sleep I’ve had in years.
CHAPTER 16
KELLER
Last night was heaven, but waking up this morning feels like I’m in hell, and that’s solely because I’m so damn hot I can hardly breathe. I peel my eyes open and am unsurprised to find Percy curled up in the crook of my neck. Next to the bed in the spare bedroom and my pillow, it’s his favorite place to sleep.
What I wasn’t expecting was to have Chloe wrapped around me on the other side. For as long as I can remember, we’d always fall asleep with her head on my chest, but sometime during the night we would roll away from one another and not touch again until we were both awake.
