Page 41 of Down, Boy

"Told you I had a list."

"Where does this rank?"

"I’ll need more data."

She laughs—the real one, the one that cracks something open in my chest every single time—and shoves me back onto the pillow, and then, finally, fatally, she looks past me at the clock on the nightstand.

"What time is it?"

I reach for my phone on the nightstand. "Seven-thirty."

She bolts upright. "What?"

"Seven-thirty?"

"I have appointments starting at eight." She's already out of bed, grabbing clothes from her dresser. "Why didn't you set an alarm?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to be your alarm clock. And you have appointments on a Sunday morning?"

"Yes. Special circumstances. You distracted me from my entire evening routine, Mercer. The least you could do is—" She stops, holding a bra in one hand and yesterday's jeans in the other, and looks at me. Really looks at me, still sprawled in her bed, blanket pooled around my waist, probably grinning like an idiot.

Her expression softens. "Hi."

"You already said hi."

"I'm saying it again."

"Hi, Doc."

She throws the jeans at me. "Get dressed. I'm making coffee and then you're leaving so I can function like a normal human being."

"I'm very distracting, huh?"

"Shut up."

But she's smiling when she disappears into the bathroom, and I count that as a win.

I find my jeans—somehow ended up on the floor near the closet—and pull on yesterday's henley. It smells like her now, which is doing things to my brain I'm not prepared to analyze. I briefly consider stealing one of her sweatshirts just to see what she'd do.

The bathroom door opens and she emerges in fresh clothes, hair pulled back, looking like she didn't just roll out of bed with me.

"How do you do that?" I ask.

"Do what?"

"Go from sleepy disaster to fully functional veterinarian in under ten minutes."

"Practice. Also, I keep emergency provisions in my bathroom for exactly this scenario."

"You have a lot of men sleeping over who make you late for work?"

She shoots me a look that could strip paint. "You're the first overnight guest Biscuit's had to judge in over a year, so don't get cocky."

"Too late. Already cocky."

"I noticed."

The coffee maker gurgles to life, and Callie leans against the counter, watching me with an expression I can't quite read. Not regret. Not uncertainty. Something softer than that.