Page 89 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He looks at the host who is still standing at attention beside the table.

He orders for both of us in Italian, stopping mid-sentence to look at me and ask, “Mushrooms?”

I nod and he finishes. He asks me if I want wine and I say yes, so he orders something I don’t recognize that turns out to be absolutely divine.

I watch the restaurant as I sip my wine. I watch people notice Cal.

Not staring—nothing that obvious—but this odd quality of awareness that a room gets when it contains someone it knows to be significant.

The waiter refills my water glass before it’s even half-empty. Another older man who must be the owner appears briefly to greet Cal.

Cal stands to shake his hand, they exchange pleasantries. The man glances at me with something that could be curiosity, or could be simply registering that Cal brought someone. He leaves without saying a word to me but offers me a kind smile and nod of his head.

“Does it bother you?” Cal asks as he studies my face intently from across the table.

I look back at him. The small votive candle between us throws shadows and flickering light across his sharp features, making him look menacing if you didn’t know better. But I do. His hair is curly, faded on the sides into the beard I love to run my fingers across in a way that screams he just got a haircut a few days ago.

Adrenaline shoots through me knowing I get to go home with this man… get in bed with this man.

I raise my eyebrows, not understanding his question.

“The way people—I don’t know—calibrate around me.” He turns his wine glass once. “The way they act. I know it’s a lot.”

I think about it honestly. It’s not something we experienced in Boston while we went to school. And obviously not in Abbott. No one knew him there as anything other than Callan Reed.

“It’s strange,” I respond with a nod. “I won’t pretend it isn’t. People respond to you like—” I search for the word. “Like gravity. Like you changed the atmosphere by walking in.”

He looks at me without reacting, drinking every word in.

“But I think I understand it a little better now,” I sip my wine and return his gaze. “It’s just so different to how it was in Boston.”

His eyebrows rise and he scoffs, looking down, but not before I catch the hurt in his eyes.

“No, no,” I say quickly, worry lacing my words as I set my wine down and reach for his fingers, warm and strong, lacing them with mine. “Not like that. It’s not bad different. Just different. The way people walk up to you, and talk to you, you have this air of…”

My voice trails off and I swallow.

Because how do I explain he is the same as he always was just… more. He always had this ultimate confidence that he exuded, but no one ever responded in kind. And here? He’s known. Probably not in a light that is all too great, but, nonetheless, known.

“You’re the Cal I’ve always known, but it’s like everyone else also notices you here. And if this is your world—” I gesture, a small movement that means the restaurant and the waiter and the city and all of it. “I want to live in it.”

Something crosses his face. The open expression, the underneath one.

“You don’t have to want that.” His words are short.

“I know.” I pick up my wine and smile back. “That’s why I do.”

He looks at me for a long moment and I hold it. Let him look. Because I know the doubt that’s going through his mind. He’s expressed the concern for me staying here, being around him and this world.

And I don’t care.

Because he’s what I want.

“She says things like that and expects me to sit through dinner and keep my hands to myself,” he mutters, mostly to himself, quiet.

“Shedoes,” I confirm with a smile.

The pasta is the kind that makes me close my eyes after the first bite.