Page 38 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He presses his palm against his chest in mock offense. “My face is innocent.”

“Your face is—”

I stop myself before I use one of the first three things that come to mind.

Beautiful. Hot. My favorite.

He does laugh then, and Bart takes that as an invitation to jump around his legs like that laugh was for him, which makes Cal scratch behind his ears again.

Cal is crouched on the sidewalk, one knee bent, coffee set carefully beside him, Bart’s leash looped around his wrist while he rubs his chest and says something too low for me to hear. The golden red of Bart’s tail sweeps across the fallen leaves, scattering them around Cal’s shoes. The morning light hits the side of Cal’s face and catches in his hair, in the dark scruff along his jaw, and the golden-green of his eyes when he glances up at me.

My chest tightens.

This is how it should have been.This is how it would have been.

Not Patrick’s apartment and heels I hated and highlights in my hair. Not watching my phone for the right response or wrong tone or waiting to see what version of that boyfriend I would get. Not making myself smaller and smaller until I could fit inside his expectations and pretend it was love.

This.

A beautiful Saturday morning. My coffee. Bart. Cal’s laugh. Weekend coffee dates and soft arguments about work with a man who knows I’m already awake at seven in the morning. Because he sees me.

Because he always did.

I think of that version of me at twenty-two, sitting across from him in the library with highlighters scattered between us and the coffee he brought me by my elbow. I think of snow as he walked me home and his shoulder brushing mine. His thumb across my cheek at graduation. The blue and gold pen I never got to open. The life I was choosing whenthiswas right in front of me, waiting.

Cal stands, brushing a hand over his jeans. “You okay?”

I blink.

“Yeah.”

He studies me and walks back over, Bart now proudly between us like he arranged this.

“You sure?”

I take a sip of coffee and study his face. He looks worried, but he smiles andGod,I groan inwardly because all I want is that smile to kiss me and erase the last seven years.

I think about lying.

I don’t.

“I was just thinking.”

“About?”

He reaches out and holds the tips of my fingers with his, rubbing small circles into the cold skin there.

There are a hundred things I could say.

That I was thinking I don’t know how to do this. That I’m scared at how easy this feels. That some part of me is waiting for the second shoe to drop; for the catch because good things don’t usually show up on my porch on a random Saturday morning looking at me the way he is right now.

“I don’t think I have to fall for you.”

I refuse to overthink and let the words tumble free.

He stills.

My heart pounds, slow and fast at the same time, and I talk without thinking.