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“Or what?” I lower my voice.

She sets the glass down on the counter. In the silence of the empty house, the small click of glass on tile is enormous.

“You could stay,” she whispers.

Fuck yes.

I stop directly in front of her.

“Just so we’re clear,” I say, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, “I’m not staying because I’m worried about the dishes.”

Her breathing changes.

“I assumed not.”

“Good.”

My thumb lingers beneath her jaw.

“Where do you want me, Doc?”

Her eyes drop to my mouth.

“Upstairs.”

* * *

Somehow, upstairs becomes the two of us sitting fully dressed against her headboard while she scrolls through photographs on my phone.

Her thigh rests against mine beneath the comforter.

“That’s where I grew up.” I show her the two-story house with perfect hedges and white columns. “Two miles from campus. I’m a Mountain Springs boy through and through.”

“It looks beautiful.”

“It is.”

She looks at me rather than the screen.

I give her the easier version first. “As you know, my father’s a surgeon. And my mother’s a qualified accountant, even though she hasn’t practiced in years. They like qualifications, titles and impressive accomplishments.

“They aren’t bad people,” I continue. “They just never understood why I’d choose something unstable when they’d designed such a respectable life for me. Every success in music was treated like a temporary distraction from the moment I’d come home and become sensible.”

“And now you have.”

“Come home?”

“No. Become sensible.” Her eyes glimmer.

“Watch it, Doc. I have a reputation to uphold as bad boy lead singer.”

“So it was rebellion.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t choose it at all—music. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at, and if somebody took it from me tomorrow, I don’t know what I’d be.”

“You’d be Cal.”

“And who is that good for?” I grin, but she doesn’t smile back. “Anyway, yeah, I just haven’t really understood my family.”