What are you running from?
The answer is a stick in a bin and a dress in a skip and a headline with his name in it. The answer is everything, Callum. I am running from everything.
So I kiss him instead. It’s easier to redirect him than answer, and it would be easier to just straight up not answer or ask him about his childhood.
But I’m tired, stressed out, and sick of overthinking everything.
His mouth is warm and tastes like the beer he was drinking earlier, and for one full second he goes still, not pulling away, not leaning in, just stopped, deciding.
He pulls back an inch. His eyes are dark in the last of the light, the orange bleeding across the water turning half his face to amber and leaving the other half in shadow. "You sure about this?"
"I'm not sure about anything." My fingers tighten on the collar of his jacket, and the wind lifts my hair off my neck and I do not flinch.
"That's not a no." His thumb traces the edge of my jaw. The callus drags against my skin and my pulse kicks hard behind my ears, twice, three times.
"Not exactly a ringing endorsement either, love." There’s no sarcasm in his voice, and despite knowing that it’s a figure of speech, my heart skips a beat from the gentleness.
"Callum." I say his name low and deliberate and whatever he reads in it is enough, because his hand slides into my hair and his mouth finds mine and the horizon tilts and does not come back.
He lays his jacket on the sand behind me without breaking the kiss. My back hits the denim and the cold bites through my shirt and I arch into his chest because he is warm and solid and I need something solid.
His mouth moves to my jaw, then lower, open and slow against my throat, and my head drops back and my fingers curl into the sand. His teeth graze my collarbone and my hips lift off the jacket before I can stop them.
"You're shaking," he says into the hollow below my ear, his breath hot against the wet trail his mouth left, and every nerve in my body pulls taut.
"I'm cold." I am not cold. My skin is running a current, but admitting that requires a vocabulary I have retired for the evening.
"Terrible liar." His grin is against my throat and I can feel every edge of it. His hand slides under my shirt, his palm spreads flat against my ribs, and my spine bows off the ground.
His hand is rough and warm and moves up slowly, the heel of his palm dragging across my skin. My breath comes out short and ragged, so I pull him closer by the back of his neck because the alternative is thinking.
He pushes my shirt up. His mouth follows his hand, lips against my stomach, my ribs, the underside of my bra, and I make a sound I did not authorise, high and broken, and he pauses just long enough for me to feel his smile against my skin.
"Off," I say, and it is not a request. His henley is over his head before I finish the syllable. His chest is broad, ink along one rib, a scar below his collarbone that catches the last light, and I put my mouth on it without deciding to.
His breath hitches. His hand tightens in my hair and he pulls me back up. His mouth is on mine again, harder now, his tongue against my lower lip. I bite down gently and his groan vibrates through my teeth.
We shed the rest in pieces, his hands on my waistband, mine on his, sand getting into everything, neither of us caring. The cold air hits my bare skin. I gasp and he covers me with his body.
His hips press against mine and the friction steals the breath I just took, and I dig my fingers into his shoulders and pull him closer.
When he pushes into me my nails dig into his shoulders, my back arches hard and he holds still for one impossible second, his forehead against mine, his breath ragged against my lips.
"Okay?" His voice is wrecked, barely a word, and his arms are trembling with the effort of not moving. The restraint in him is its own kind of devastation.
"Move." It comes out like a command and he obeys, and the rhythm he sets is slow and deep, and every stroke unravels something I have been holding clenched since the bridal suite.
I wrap my legs around him, changing the angle, and the sound that comes out of me is something I will deny in daylight. His hand grips my hip, his mouth is open against my shoulder, and I can feel his pulse hammering everywhere our skin touches.
The tide creeps closer, foam hissing silver against the sand. I do not care. My body belongs to the rhythm and his hands and the heat building low in my belly, winding tighter with every roll of his hips.
His pace breaks. My name in his mouth, rough, half a groan. My vision whites at the edges while my thighs shake and the release pulls me under, and I bury my face in his neck and come apart against him.
He follows moments later, his hips stuttering, a low sound in his chest that I feel in my ribs. Then stillness. Just breathing.
After catching our breath and dressing in silence, we sit side by side on the ruined jacket. The stars are out, and the wind has teeth. "I have sand in places that may require medical attention," he says to the sky, perfectly serious.
The laugh that comes out of me is startled and raw and the first since London that has not been a performance. I wait for the regret. It does not show. Just a quiet calm, like the first ten minutes after a fever breaks.
"You're not the one who was on the ground." I brush sand from my hair and refuse to think about what I look like right now.
"I was periodically on the ground. Credit where due." He stands and offers his hand with absurd formality. "The least I can do after you have literally thrown yourself at me—"
"I did not—" My voice comes out sharper than I intend, and his grin widens, which is its own kind of violence against my composure.
"—is buy you some kind of obscenely fancy non-alcoholic drink." He pulls me up without effort. "Three items on the menu. Two of them are orange juice."
We walk back toward the pub in easy silence, his hands in his pockets, mine tucked into sleeves. He does not reach for my hand. The distance between us asks nothing.
"Thank you for not asking again," I say at the pub door, and my voice comes out quieter than I planned.
"Ask what?" The kindness of a man pretending to forget the question so I do not have to pretend to answer it, and my chest does something I will not think about during sleepless nights. Absolutely.
He holds the pub door open, and the light from inside falls warm across the threshold. I step through, and as I take my stool, I catch my reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. Sand in my hair. Colour in my cheeks.
For one disorienting second, I do not recognise the woman looking back, because she looks, absurdly and without permission, like someone who might be okay. Then my hand drifts to my stomach, and the woman in the mirror watches me do it, and we both know better.