Page 40 of Dreadful

“Bullshit,” I chastise.

A lock of hair falls across his forehead as he lifts his head once more. “Do you honestly think there’s anywhere else I’d rather be than here, with you, right now?”

The sincerity in his voice catches me off-guard. I shake off my hesitation, and nod empathetically. “Yes. You’ve been trapped in a house with your entire family⁠—”

“Not the entire family. We have a couple cousins out there,” he interrupts.

I tilt my head to the side. “Your mother, all of your brothers, and me, your”—I wave my hand around, sending droplets of water scattering over his broad shoulders—“whatever I am.”

It takes effort to keep the wince off of my face. Still, I feel heat in my cheeks.

Gage looks at me, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. “Are you… fishing, Bell?”

I skim the surface, splashing him. “No.” I go to push off of him, embarrassment nipping at my heels like I’m some teenager.

“Uh-uh-uh.” He tsks, hands flying to my waist before I can get any distance, spinning me back around to face him. The grin he’s wearing is unhelpful. Criminally so. “Not so fast, sweetheart.”

The nickname snags, my brow inching up despite myself. There’s another Calloway who calls me that.

“Sweetheart?”

“Just trying it out.” He tilts his head, eyes dragging over my face with easy possession. “No good?”

Amusement floats through me, and I let him swim me back to the far edge of the pool. “Maybe something else?”

“Baby?”

My eyes find Rafe without my permission.

Gage catches it immediately. The sound he makes is quiet—amused, but with something slightly compressed underneath it. His hands slide up the backs of my thighs and hook them back around his waist, closing the distance between us until the water has nowhere left to go.

“Right.” Something in his voice has shifted, gone a register lower. “How could I forget my brother got there first.”

Not a question.

“Baby girl?” The words are more breath than sound against my bottom lip.

I shake my head slowly, letting my mouth skim across his as I do. “Cruz,” I whisper.

He exhales through his nose—a short, low sound, somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “Okay.” A pause where I can tell he’s genuinely workshopping. “Honey?”

The grimace hits his face before the word even fully lands, like his own mouth betrayed him.

A laugh escapes before I can catch it. “Coco calls everyone honey.”

“Absolutely not.” He gives a full-body shudder, small but committed, his hands resuming their slow drag up and down my ribs. “You’re not a princess, either.”

“Definitely not,” I murmur, threading my fingers into the damp hair curling at the back of his neck.

He’s quiet for a moment, and I can see him actually thinking about it, which is somehow worse.

“Pookie.”

He says it with complete sincerity, and the grin pulling at the corner of his mouth is the only thing that gives him away.

The laugh that comes out of me is involuntary and a little undignified—punched loose by surprise. “That is genuinely not the one.”

“No?” he muses, grinning wide. “Pumpkin? Honey bun? Muffin? Peach?”