by Ella Fields
“You really are fine,” I murmured, standing and collecting my bag. “If you need to have the last say in things. Good night, Callum. I wish you a speedy recovery.”
I tugged the door handle when he asked, “You won’t come back tomorrow?”
My eyes shut, my hand pushing the door handle down as they reopened. “No.”
I stepped out of the room before he could say anything else.
Guilt outweighed any other feeling I had the next morning as I slept in and ate a late breakfast. Pippa was already at the pound she volunteered at every Saturday morning.
My fingers were traitors that kept pressing my phone, insisting I look at the time.
I couldn’t and wouldn’t go back. He didn’t need me, and he wasn’t allowed to need me.
Then who else does he have?
Ugh. I got up and took my bowl to the sink, making sure I rinsed it before placing it in the dishwasher. Pippa liked things to be kept a certain way, which was fine. I wasn’t a slob, but it did take a little getting used to. That and I wanted to make sure this transition went as smoothly as possible by not stepping on her toes and pissing her off.
She seemed fine, though, and only slept at the apartment maybe three nights a week. And when she did, Toby usually accompanied her. I didn’t mind him. In fact, I found his honesty and shifting demeanors fascinating. What I wasn’t a fan of was listening to people have sex.
That kind of kink just didn’t do it for me.
They tried to keep it down but usually failed, resulting in me hitting play on the little phone dock to listen to music that I’d had tucked away in storage. Or the radio. Anything else.
My parents had lifted the limit on my checking account but hadn’t yet agreed to reinstate access to my credit card. I’d deal, seeing as there was more than enough money in my account to pay rent, buy food and clothes, and survive comfortably for at least five years.
Ten past ten.
I groaned, then stomped to my room, throwing open the sliding mirror doors and revealing the overflowing contents inside. There was hardly enough space, but I’d make do. After all, it was a huge improvement from the ramshackle half of a wardrobe I’d had in the dorm.
Pippa had helped me after I’d moved my stuff in, packaging up clothing and items I no longer needed from storage, then came with me to drop it off to Goodwill.
I grabbed my cream ballet flats from the tower of precariously stacked shoes on the floor, closing the doors as I slipped my feet inside and grabbed my keys.
I wouldn’t overthink what I was doing.
Especially when I had no idea what I was even doing.
When I arrived, Callum was sitting up, watching the news on the small TV attached to the wall and eating a sandwich.
I closed the door and his hand lowered, his jaw pausing mid chew as he watched me stride to the chair I’d sat in most of last night and take a seat.
“Hi,” he said, swallowing his mouthful, then smiling. “You came back.”
“Just to get you home,” I told him sternly, inspecting the cherry-colored paint on my nails to keep from looking at him.
“I’ll take it.”
I sat rigid in the chair, listening to the newscaster talk about a bank robbery as Callum finished eating. When the silence he was goading me with became too much, I asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” he said instantly. “I mean, it sucks that I won’t be able to play.” I looked at him then, watching him stare down at his arm, which was resting over his stomach. “Not to mention the rehab I’ll probably need to do when this thing comes off. But I’ll survive.”
My shock was a palpable thing, morphing my face into something that made him chuckle when he looked over at me. I’d expected anger and frustration, and rightfully so. Football was his dream. His goal. And having that tampered with, even if it was merely an interruption and not a dead end, should’ve granted a much different response.
Then I remembered he’d been as high as a kite yesterday, and I raised a brow. “You still on morphine?”
He nodded. “Low dosage now, though. Doc said the pain will be manageable with some strong painkillers at home.”
“Doc,” I laughed out, not being able to stop it.
Callum tilted his right shoulder. “He’s all right, and he said I could go home.” He looked over at the papers on the small table next to his bed.
“Oh,” I said, feeling wretched that for a little while, he hadn’t known how he’d do that exactly. That I hadn’t been here.
“I was going to call one of the guys, but you showed up right after he left, so …” He chewed his lip. “Ready when you are, Mouse.”
Shaking my head, I told him I’d be back soon and went to go speak with one of the nurses at the desk outside. If I was taking him home, I wanted to know exactly what it was he needed, so I wouldn’t feel this itching guilt over him being by himself.
The same nurse I met yesterday told me that everything I needed to know was on the paperwork back inside his room.
Feeling my cheeks burn a little, I gave her a crisp thank you and went to collect the patient.
“Now, she said not to take this one during the day.” I picked the packet up off the coffee table. “And I’d listen, no matter how much pain you’re in. You don’t want your final statistic exam to be riddled with drug-induced musings.”
“Noted,” Callum said, flicking through TV channels as he settled on the couch.
I walked back into the kitchen, putting away the nighttime medication and ignoring the way my stomach tightened as my feet tapped over the familiar floors. I’d never really gotten the opportunity to get comfortable in this place, and nostalgia for what could have been tugged at my heart.
I didn’t linger, grabbing my bag that I’d dumped by the door and slinging it over my shoulder.
“Whoa, wait,” Callum said.
My hand reached inside my bag for my keys, then I realized I’d left them on the kitchen counter. “What’s wrong?” I asked distractedly, trying to find my lip balm inside my bag as I snatched my keys.
“Stay.”
Every part of me stopped moving, breath sailing out of my lungs in a wheeze at hearing the plea in that one word. He’d barely said anything to me on the short drive home, just stared out the window at the blurring, dry winter scenery, and waited in the car as I ran into the drug store to grab his pain medication.
I cleared my throat, not wanting my voice to betray me as I asked, “Why?”
He looked down at his sweatpants, which he’d changed into in the hospital before leaving. One of the guys had brought his gym bag from the stadium to the hospital. “I might need your help.”
I shoved my keys into my bag, letting it flop at my side, smacking me in the leg. “You don’t—”
“I do.” His head rose, dark hair sprinkling onto his forehead as he shoved his hand through it. “I need to shower, and I don’t know how I’m going to get a plastic bag over this … thing.” He lifted his casted arm, wincing a little. “And trying to get dressed one-handed is not as easy as I thought it’d be.”
“Callum.”
With a low laugh, he stood, teetering a bit. I moved instinctively, but he merely smiled and walked over to me, his bare feet doing weird things to me.
Feet, really?
Poking the inside of my cheek with my tongue, I stood my ground as he approached and stopped right in front of me, grasping my chin. “I know I don’t deserve it, but we both know I’m a selfish prick who wants what he wants regardless.” Brown eyes held mine captive, searching them for a way in. “Stay with me. Please.”
A stuttered breath trembled past my lips. “For how long?”
“I’d like to say forever, but I’ll settle for this week.”
“No,” I said, stepping out of his hold and righting my bag.
His brows knitted, shoulders drooping.
“But maybe,” I started, internally kicking myself, “I can check on you for a few days?” Whe
n his lips began to lift, displaying those dangerous white teeth, I raised a hand. “Just to help you, then I’m gone.”
He nodded. “Whatever you want, Mouse.”
“Stupid, self-absorbed, manipulating dick.” I slammed the hair dryer down on the vanity, jumping when Pippa and Toby appeared behind me in the doorway.
“Yeah, baby. Tell us how you really feel.”
Pippa kicked Toby, who laughed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to kiss her cheek before disappearing out of view.
The apartment door closed a second later. “I didn’t realize you guys were home.”
“That might be because you’ve been in the kind of mood that doesn’t allow for outside interference since arriving home yesterday.”
Sighing, I ran the brush through my half-dried hair, giving up and putting the hair dryer away beneath the sink. “I have to go back over there.”
“Have to?” Pippa asked, following me into my bedroom.
I scowled at her as I picked up my outfit from the bed, wondering why I even cared what I wore. That answer was simple enough. I’d always cared, no matter who I was seeing or where I was going.
“Okay, so, you have to,” she said, humor twisting her voice. “Why’s that?”
Unfazed that Pippa was watching, I stripped out of my robe, tugged on a bra, then the champagne colored tunic and gray tights.
“He needs help with things. Like showering and dressing.”
She didn’t care about my clipped response. “That actually makes sense. How’s he handling it, the whole not being able to play for a while thing?”
I tugged my hair from beneath the collar of the dress, moving to the mirrored closet doors to check my mascara before adding a light berry colored gloss to my lips. “Fine,” I said with a snort. “Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but whatever. Not my problem.” I smacked my lips together, depositing the gloss back inside my makeup bag on the dresser.
Pippa laughed.
“What?” I groaned, then rushed to mutter, “Sorry, he’s just … ugh, frustrating.”
“He gets to you even after all this time. No need to apologize.” She straightened from the doorjamb. “Have fun.”
Those two words haunted me from our apartment to the one next door. My skin felt as though it was irritated by the cotton covering it as I rode up to the penthouse suite. Callum had buzzed me in without waiting to see who it was that was requesting entry.
Smug asshole.
The doors opened, followed by the doors to the apartment, showcasing Callum in all his glory as he stood before me in nothing but sweatpants that sat salivatingly low on his defined hips.
“Now,” he drawled. “I know it’s going to be hard, but I wouldn’t come near me until I’ve scrubbed this masterpiece clean. I fucking stink.”
A laugh spewed out of me and interrupted the staring contest I was having with the packed abs of his stomach. “I’ll try my best.”
“Atta girl, I have full faith in you,” he said, not moving so that my arm brushed his as I walked inside.
“Let’s do this then.” I dumped my bag then rummaged through a drawer in the kitchen for a plastic bag.
“Already got it prepped,” he said.
I closed the drawer, straightening to find sticky tape and two plastic bags on the counter.
He stood breathlessly still as I wrapped his arm, then chuckled as I wrapped it again, double checking it to make sure no water would touch his cast. “Maybe you should try to keep it out of the shower, just in case.”
“Or maybe,” he said, mint flavoring my lips from his breath as he lowered his head and whispered, “you should join me and scrub every inch of me clean, just in case.”
With a pat on his stomach, I then pushed him back a step, wiping my hand on my dress as though the feeling of his smooth, hard skin had scalded it. “Less talking, more walking.”
I waited in the bedroom, sitting on my hands to keep from rummaging through his things as I listened to him curse and grumble in the bathroom. Dust layered the dresser and nightstands, and specks of things littered the carpet.
When a crash sounded, I leaped from the bed, tearing open the door to find him sitting on the bench seat in the shower, trying to squirt body wash onto his loofah.
He looked up when I opened the shower door, and I took the wash and the loofah from his hands, water spraying my arm as I quickly squirted a heaping dose onto it. “That should do it.”
I capped the body wash, leaving it on the bench seat and carefully stepping back out of the shower.
He was still sitting there, watching me with that annoying crooked smile on his face as I dried my hands and arm as best I could on a plush towel. “Do I need to monitor you?”
He bit his lip, glancing down at his growing manhood before smirking at me as he stood. “If you’d like.”
With a roll of my eyes, I placed the towel on the vanity for him and left the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught sight of the photo on his nightstand, my feet slowly coming unglued as I made them walk over to it.
It was a picture of us. The one from our wedding day where he was staring down at me with his forehead on mine. The same picture I’d left behind. On purpose.
Confliction swelled my throat, and I moved away from it, heading back out into the kitchen to check the pantry and fridge.
They were almost empty. I sighed, and the buzzer rang just as I heard Callum get out of the shower. He came down the hall, trying to wrap a towel around his waist.
“Here,” I said, gesturing for him to come to me so I could tuck the towel in. Beads of water cascaded down his chest, the fabric catching and absorbing them. “Um.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll get that, then I might grab some groceries.”
Callum nodded, turning back for the bedroom as I hit the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Delivery for a Mr. Callum Welsh?”
Puzzled, my finger slid off the button after pressing it to let them in. I opened the doors to the apartment to find a guy wheeling a stack of crates out of the elevator.
I didn’t know if he’d ordered food, or if I needed to sign, so I simply said, “How much do you need?”
The guy laughed, lifting the crates and taking them inside. He whistled as he caught sight of the floor-to-ceiling window, lifting bags out of the crates and placing them on the counter. “No need, lady. They’ve already been paid for.”
At a loss for what to do, I started putting the milk, juice, eggs, and bread away as the guy wheeled his cart back into the elevator.
On top of one of the bags was a note that said, “Hope the missus is taking good care of you, buddy. We’ll leave you be, but here’s a token of our love.”
Signed by Toby, Paul, Ed, Quinn, and Burrows.
“Wow,” Callum said, taking the note from me and laughing as he stuck it on the fridge beneath a magnet. “Those sweet fucks.”
“Sweet indeed.” I meant to say it sarcastically but couldn’t.
Callum tried to help put the stuff away, but I waved him off, and he retreated to the living room, falling into the couch and closing his eyes as if taking that shower had cost him a lot of energy.
After putting the last of the food away, I collected the bags, bundling them up to store away. Then I spied the dirty dishes in the sink and blurted, “Where’s the cleaner?”
“Huh?” Callum asked, opening his eyes and glancing at me as I walked out of the kitchen. “This place is kind of a mess,” I said while eyeing the stains on the coffee table that looked like dried milk and coffee.
“Oh, yeah. I fired her.”
I didn’t need to ask why, I already knew, and instead gathered some damp towels, wiping down the coffee table before starting on the dishes.
“Leave it,” Callum said.
When I ignored him, he came into the kitchen, shutting off the water and doing his best to dry my hands with one hand. “I didn’t ask you here for this.”
“Then why am I
here? You wanted help.”
A dark brow lifted as he patted my hand, then tugged me closer, dropping the towel to shift some hair away from my mouth. “You know that’s not why I want you here.”
A thousand thoughts tried to make themselves heard, but my lips refused to move as he held me enraptured with his eyes alone.
His phone rang, and I dragged my eyes away, finishing the dishes as he talked to who sounded like one of his teammates while scowling at me.
Once done, I moved into the bedroom, collecting his dirty clothes from the hamper and taking them to the laundry room that sat next to the main bathroom in the hall.
“I gotta go,” I heard him say. “Will do. Thanks, later.”
A hand tugged at my dress while I was bent over shoving his clothes into the front-loading machine. “Mouse, fuck. Stop it.”
He tugged me back, bending down to finish the task himself. When he struggled with the detergent, I snatched it from him, pouring it into the dispenser before knocking it closed with my hip and depositing the bottle on the shelf.
“Point made,” he huffed, traipsing after me down the hall as I went to hang up his wet towel in the en-suite bathroom.
“Seriously, quit it and come sit down with me.”
“That’s not a good idea,” I said, walking by him and coasting back down the hall.
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
He chuckled, and I spun around, glaring at him and stabbing a finger into his bare chest. “Stop it, and for crying out loud.” I dropped my hand. “Cover that shit up.”
“I need your help for that.”
“Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
He shrugged, and I growled, hearing him chuckle yet again as I moved into the bedroom and tugged open his drawers.
A box of condoms greeted me. I froze for a heart-sinking second before slamming the drawer shut and moving onto the next one, finding a shirt.
“Renee,” he said from behind me.
“No, I don’t want to.”