Page 24 of Shadows Relived
She smirked and walked past him, whispering. “Besides, they look better on them.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He just followed her to the bedroom hallway and stopped at the crackeddoor.
Callen watched through the opening as Meaghan went through the bedtime routine like she’d been doing it all her life.
Lucas needed help to brush his teeth and a reminder not to punch his pillow into submission. Sophie required two stories and three different nightlights because strange things stared at her in the dark, and Willie whispered that he missed his grandma. Meaghan just pulled him onto her lap and rocked him until he drifted off.
She was something else.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, not even trying to hide the way he watched her.
The woman who used to storm out of family dinners. Who challenged every teacher that said she “talked too much” and who once decked a boy in sixth grade for teasing another girl about hand-me-down shoes. She hadn’t changed.
But she’d grown sharper. Stronger. Softer in ways that scared the hell out of him.
And she would have made a damn good mother.
That thought hit him harder than expected.
He hadn’t thought about kids in years. Never let himself. But watching her with these three broken, frightened little souls… it made something inside him ache.
Eventually, the house was silent again.
Callen stood by the fireplace, absently stoking the coals, when she came back out. Her hair was loose, her skin glowing from firelight and motherhood, and her smile just barely there.
“Well, you survived another day,” she said.
He scoffed. “Barely.”
“I think Lucas likes you.”
“He handed me back my whiskey. Apparently, his father likes to have a drink out on the porch.”
“When he’s ever around,” she said with a sigh.
Callen didn’t know what to say to that.
Meaghan stared at him for a moment, her expression softening, and then she walked over to him, reaching out to take his hand. “Come on.”
“To where?”
“Someplace quiet.”
He took a deep breath. “Um, Meaghan, I didn’t bring?—”
She placed a finger to his lips, hushing him. “Don’t worry. I’m protected.” She tugged his hand. “Now come with me.”
He followed, unable to keep his gaze from traveling down her body to watch her ass sway.
She led him into her room. Into the dark and into her arms. She smiled up at him as she raked her fingers through his hair. “I’ve missed you.” And then she leaned in to kiss him, soft, tender, her lips warm against his.
This time, there were no words. No jokes. Just lips and hands and breath. The careful unbuttoning of clothes. The slow slide beneath the covers as he slid his fingers into her hair. Her name on his mouth.
They tried to be quiet.
God, they really did.
But the old mattress groaned beneath their shifting weight, and her breath hitched the momenthis mouth found the hollow of her throat. He pressed his palm against her lower back, guiding her beneath him with a touch that wasn’t rushed, never rushed, like he was rediscovering something sacred he thought he’d never hold again.
