‘It’s too soon to joke about this, Moss. She’d brought this sweet little old lady with her.’
‘Dot?’
Callum nods with a wry smile. ‘Not nearly as sweet as she looked. She was coming on to me the most.’
‘Oh my God, I wish I’d been a fly on the wall.’
‘I pretended to be asleep for a full ten hours,’ he adds.
‘Well, I had a really good chat with Jennifer. She was actually super wise and helped me to see a few see things clearly,’ I say, casting my mind back to her thoughts on the importance of chemistry. Callum’s thumb is still swirling circles in my palm, and I take a deep, steadying breath.
‘Did she tell you about her “penultimate husband”, Mattieu?’
‘The one she thought she hated? Yeah.’ I nod. ‘She said that one day, she realized she’d wasted a lot of energy hating him when they could have been banging instead.’
Callum swallows, watching me closely.
‘I can relate,’ he murmurs.
‘Cal, you’ve no idea how much I want to—’
‘I think I do,’ he rumbles, voice low. ‘But, Moss?’
Don’t let there be a but.
‘Yes?’
Callum gestures between the two of us. ‘I just want to say that this has become so much more than just a physical attraction, for me at least. I’m hungry for you in so many ways. I want to learn everything about you. I want to be there with you if,when, you step off this plane and into the future. I want there to be an us that doesn’t just revolve around endless Mondays, but if endless Mondays are all that’s on offer, then, Jesus, I want to spend them with you. I would happily spend my days watching how your laugh lights up your eyes. Counting the freckles across your nose. Trying to make you smile when you’re being prickly with me.’
‘I’m not prickly!’ I begin to protest, which we all know is a giant lie.
‘Like a conker,’ he says fondly. ‘A few spikes to deal with, quite a tough shell to crack, but on the inside, a beautiful, shining red nut.’
My loop-addled mind decides this sounds deeply sexual and I just hope I’m not panting.
‘Also very argumentative,’ he adds.
‘I am not.’
Callum gives me a look like his point has been proved.
I huff. ‘Say more things.’
‘I’m here for all of you, if you’ll have me.’
The smile that spreads across my face is so wide my cheeks ache.
‘When did you know?’ I ask.
‘That you were looping? Pretty early on.’
This wasn’t what I meant, but now I’m intrigued. ‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’
‘I wanted to be sure,’ Callum says. ‘The repeated pushing me into the path of the luggage buggy was my first clue.’
I grimace. ‘I am very sorry about that. I kept telling myself that I needed to reset and start the day over.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Callum says, trying to sound cross though he’slooking at me tenderly. ‘I was pretty certain by Monday Three. At first I’d thought the loop thing was a blip, and then when I woke up for the third Monday in a row I realized that this was a pattern.’
