My stomach does the flip. The familiar one, the one I've been doing since the first time I saw him. The one that means I want him, I can't have him, and I'm a massive idiot.
"Hey." I sound normal, which is a minor miracle. "Smells amazing in here."
"That's all me," Ava calls from behind the fridge door. "My chicken is going to be incredible, and you're both going to apologize for doubting me."
The kitchen is small and loud. Ava clatters around, water running, the oven humming. I slot myself into the space between the counter and the stove, the spot I always take at these dinners, and start unpacking the casserole. This is routine. Ava's apartment, Friday dinner, the three of us bumping around the kitchen like we've done a dozen times before.
Except I'm tracking Callum like my life depends on it.
He reaches past me for the olive oil, and his arm brushes my shoulder. A low hum runs through me, pleasant and steady. It's manageable. The background noise of my life—wanting him from three feet away while pretending I don't. I'm good at this part. I've had a lot of practice.
"Can you chop these?" He sets a cutting board with bell peppers in front of me. His fingers brush the counter near mine. Not touching. Almost. "Ava wants them for the salad."
"Ava wants uniform pieces!" she yells from across the kitchen, pointing a wooden spoon at me. "Last time you chopped them they were all different sizes and it ruined the aesthetic."
"Your salad has an aesthetic?"
"Everything I make has an aesthetic, Milo."
Callum catches my eye, and the corner of his mouth lifts. Not a full smile, just that dry half-lift that means she's ridiculous and we both know it. I press my lips together to keep from grinning. That shared look, that two-second glance over Ava's head, is the exact kind of thing I collect. I hoard these little moments like a pathetic squirrel storing nuts for a winter that's never going to end. Every smile, every sliver of connection that probably means nothing to him. I've got a whole stash, and it's getting me nowhere.
I start chopping the peppers. Focus on the knife. Focus on uniform pieces. Don't focus on Callum humming under his breath while he minces garlic, or the flex of his forearms when he works the knife, or the fact that he just pushed his hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist and left a streak of garlic on his temple. That's fine. That's a totally normal thing to find attractive about your best friend's brother. The garlic. On his temple. I'm losing my fucking mind.
I'm getting through this dinner. Then I'm leaving to meet Anonymous, and I'm going to let a stranger put his hands on me, and maybe I'll finally stop going to bed every night thinkingabout a man who says my name like it's something he's been holding in his mouth all day.
The knife slips.
It happens fast. A sharp sting across the pad of my index finger, and then blood welling up, quick and red, dripping onto the pepper. The pain comes a half-second late, a hot throb that pulses with my heartbeat. The cut is deeper than I want it to be—the edges of skin parted, the warm slide of blood pooling into the crease of my knuckle.
"Shit—I'm fine, it's nothing, sorry—"
I'm already apologizing. The word comes out before the second drop hits the cutting board, because that's what I do. I'm bleeding, and my first instinct is to say sorry for the inconvenience. I should probably bring that up with a therapist. If I had one.
But Callum is already moving. He doesn't ask. He doesn't hesitate. His hand closes around my wrist—firm, his thumb pressing against my pulse where my heart is going way too fast—and he's pulling me toward the hallway.
"Come on. Let me see it."
"It's really not—"
"Milo." His voice is low and doesn't leave room for argument. "Let me see."
"Band-aids under the bathroom sink!" Ava calls without even looking up from the stove. "And don't bleed on my towels, they're new!"
The bathroom door closes behind us, and the kitchen noise goes muffled. The space is tiny—just a sink, a toilet, barely enough room for two people who aren't standing this close. Callum positions me at the sink without letting go of my wrist, reaches past me to turn on the cold water, and guides my hand under the stream.
I hiss through my teeth. The water is sharp and cold, and the cut stings, a clean, biting pain that makes my whole finger throb. The edges of the wound go white under the stream before fresh blood wells up again. Callum's body is right behind mine, his chest close enough that the heat of him bleeds through my sweater. His arm brackets me against the sink. His face is near my ear, angled down to look at the cut, and his breath ghosts over the side of my neck.
"It's not deep," he says quietly. "Hold still."
I couldn't move if I wanted to, because my whole body is focused on the points of contact. His thumb on my pulse, his chest behind my shoulder, his breath on my skin. We've never been this close. All those dinners and barbecues and group outings, and there's always been a table between us, or a room full of people, or the comfortable distance of someone else's friend. Neither of us ever let it get smaller than that. I think we both knew, on some level, what would happen if we did. Never this. Never alone in a space this small with his body practically wrapped around mine.
He turns my hand over gently, examining the cut under the water. His touch is careful and practiced—the hands of someone who does this for a living, who bandages people up and holds them steady. His fingers are calloused and way too gentle for how big they are. I'm trying very hard to think about the cut and not about the fact that Callum Hayes is holding my hand in his sister's bathroom.
His scent hits me first.
Callum has always smelled good. I chalked it up to the crush. Of course he smells good to me—I've wanted him since the flour-on-his-cheek incident. Everything about him registers asmore. But right now, this close, in this tiny space with his skin inches from mine—no buffer of other people's scents, no table between us, just him and me and the adrenaline still buzzing throughmy blood from the cut—it's different. It's stronger. It's getting thicker in the air between us, like the walls are concentrating it.
Underneath the familiar comfort, there's something else pushing through. Something I've never smelled before.
