[Odette’s POV]
The coffee is on a coaster. Callum has never used a coaster for my mug, and the small cork circle sits between us like a checkpoint neither of us applied for.
"Morning, mate." He doesn't look up from the glass he's drying. Mate—in three weeks he has called me love, darling, and Odette, but never mate, because mate is what you call the plumber.
"Are we going to talk about last night?" I set the mug down because holding it requires a steadiness I no longer possess. His cloth circles the glass rim without breaking stride.
"Nothing to talk about, you had a visitor, I came home." He holds the glass to the light, inspecting a smudge that doesn't exist.
"It didn't sound like nothing when you were cracking drumsticks at midnight." His hand stops on the glass, and the harbour light catches the rim between us.
"Liam kissed me and I kissed him back." I say it to the bar top because his face is too much right now. "Then he stopped—Celine—that’s my adopted older sister; the baby—her baby with Liam, conceived on my wedding day; his moral code—and he left."
The fridge hums behind the counter. Callum doesn't move—hand, cloth, glass, frozen—and I press half-moons into my palms under the bar. "I'm telling you because you deserve the truth, the ugly parts especially."
His eyes come up, slow, measuring. "Did you want him to go through with it?"
The honest answer is a grenade and the kind answer is a lie, and I'm so tired of both. "I don't know."
"That's not a no." Quiet, gentle—infinitely worse than volume. My throat works around the admission.
"No, it isn't." Something crosses his face—a retreat behind walls I didn't know he built. He nods once, picks up the cloth, turns toward the kitchen.
The lunch shift is surgical separation—plates passed without touching, pints poured without speaking. After closing, music fills the dark pub, something slow and acoustic. Callum stands by the speaker with one hand extended, palm up.
"I thought you weren't talking to me." I grip the cloth because my hands need an excuse not to take his.
"I'm not talking—I'm dancing." His hand stays out while the song fills the space between it and my indecision. The cloth hits the table and his fingers close around mine.
He pulls me in—one hand on my waist, my forehead against his jaw, stubble catching my skin. His thumb traces slow circles on my hip, and six hours of distance collapses.
I pull back and his eyes are too close, carrying something I promised myself I wouldn't be responsible for. "I'm sorry, Callum."
"Don't be sorry—be honest." His thumb stops its circle, and the weight of his gaze pins me where I stand.
"I'm trying." It comes out cracked at the seam, barely holding its vowels together. He shifts a fraction closer.
"Try harder." Low, rough, delivered into the half-inch between our mouths. I close it, and the kiss isn't gentle—my hands fist in his shirt and his grip tightens, lifting me until my back meets the wall.
His mouth opens hot against mine, tongue sliding past my lips, and my legs wrap around his hips as his body pins me to the plaster. His teeth graze my lower lip and I bite back, catching his bottom lip between mine before releasing. The groan that tears out of him vibrates through my chest.
His hips roll forward and the friction through denim sends a jolt straight through my centre, and my head drops back against the wall. He carries me behind the bar, my mouth open against his neck, tongue tracing the tendon that tightens under my lips.
My back meets the cold floor and he drags my shirt over my head. His mouth finds the swell of my breast above cotton, tongue tracing the edge of my bra, breath hot and damp against my skin.
He unclasps and takes my nipple into his mouth—tongue circling, flattening, flicking the peak until my spine lifts off the floor. A sound I'll deny in daylight tears out of my throat while his hand finds the other breast, rolling the nipple in slow pulls timed to his tongue.
His free hand pins both wrists above my head—firm, absolute. The loss of control makes my hips buck against him, and he holds me down while his mouth drags lower, tongue leaving a wet trail down my stomach.
He unbuttons my jeans with one hand, strips them off with my underwear in a single pull. Cold air against wet skin—then his mouth, hot and open, his tongue sliding flat against me in one long stroke.
My thighs clench around his head. His hands grip my hips, holding me still while his tongue works in devastating strokes—broad and flat, then pointed, circling where every nerve converges. My fingers find his hair and pull him closer.
He pushes two fingers inside, curling, finding the spot that whites my vision. His tongue keeps its rhythm against my clit while his fingers drive deeper, and my back arches so hard my shoulders leave the floor.
He adds a third finger and increases the pressure of his tongue, and the orgasm builds so fast my thighs shake. I come against his mouth with his name breaking in half against my teeth, my body clenching tight around his hand.
He doesn't let me recover. His shirt is gone, belt unbuckling while I'm still trembling. I wrap my hand around him—stroking base to tip—and his head drops back, throat exposed, a groan pulled from somewhere deep and raw.
He pushes my hand away, grips my thigh hard enough to leave something behind, and slides into me in one thrust. My mouth opens soundless, fingers clawing the floorboards, the fullness and the angle almost too much.
His rhythm is harder tonight, deeper, each stroke driven by something underneath that neither of us names. He pins my knee against my chest and I cry out, nails raking his back, and he hisses through his teeth and drives harder.
"Look at me." His voice is wrecked, barely a command, and my eyes open to his—dark, burning, possessive. I hold his gaze while he moves inside me, and the intimacy is worse than the pleasure, my chest cracking under the weight of being seen by a man I'm lying to.
His thumb finds my clit, circling in time with his thrusts. The second orgasm builds faster, my legs shaking around his waist, and I come so hard his name tears out of me ragged and desperate.
He follows three strokes later—body tensing, a sound between a groan and my name buried in my throat, hips stuttering, weight dropping as his arms give out. Then stillness.
"Is he coming back?" His voice vibrates against my collarbone, arm tightening across my waist.
"I don't know." My thumb traces the ridges my nails left on his shoulder, each one a small red record.
"If he does, I need to know first." He lifts his head. "Not by watching him leave my building at ten PM."
"Okay." My fingers trace his jaw. Neither of us moves—because moving means standing, and standing means tomorrow, and tomorrow I have to decide which man's body I'm still shaking from.
My hand drifts to my stomach below his arm. The baby doesn't know about tonight, or last night, or any of the damage still coming.