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“Even if it hurt everyone else?”

I think of Mom packing boxes. Again. Of another new school waiting at the end of another long drive.

“You already know what I’d say to that.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No. It’s just not a simple one.” I look at the grass instead of him. “It cost people. It cost my mom more than she’ll ever say out loud. And I still don’t think it made him a bad man.

“So, no,” I say. “I don’t think taking the deal makes you a bad person. I think you were eighteen and someone opened the exact door you’d spent your whole life trying to find.”

Cal studies me.

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make me feel less fucked up without lying to me about the fucked-up part.”

I smile slightly. “It’s a gift.”

He laughs, then he stands, holds out a hand, pulls me up off the bench, doesn’t let go of the hand, and we walk.

“Where are we going?” I ask after a few minutes.

Cal shrugs.

“Nowhere. I’m just enjoying walking, holding hands with the prettiest girl at UMS.”

My heart flutters and I chastise myself for being so easily won over by him. I try to remind myself he’s a musician. This is what he does, and this is temporary. But I can feel him slowly chiseling his way into my heart. I have to admit since seeing him perform on stage, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the other night.

“We could...” I begin, nervous.

He looks at me.

“…go to your place?”

He grins and lifts me into the air. I squeal, and he howls, and I laugh at the absurdity of it.

He puts me down and whispers in my ear, “Beatrix Walker, are you suggesting what I think you might be?” His voice sends shivers down my spine, and my mouth goes dry.

“Mr. Fox, I believe it’s time to cash in my favor from saving your ass in September. I’d like to challenge your record of giving the most female orgasms.”

His eyes widen, and I swear they twinkle with mischief.

And that is how, 45 minutes later, I end up naked on Callum Fox’s bed, with his head between my thighs.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Bea

Iam supposed to be reading a chapter on the renal system.

I am, instead, sitting at my desk staring at a sentence about the loop of Henle that I have now read four times, and the reason I have read it four times is that every time I get to the word exchange my brain stops working and presents me, instead, with a slideshow of Callum Fox in his kitchen at seven thirty this morning making a coffee in sweatpants and nothing else.

This is the problem with dating Callum Fox: Everything is turning me on.

The word exchange. The word pressure. A diagram of a kidney, God help me.