I looked around the sparse cabin.
It was one large room with an exposed bathroom, shower, and kitchen all at one side of the room, and a desk and a chair at the other.
“Very open concept,” I teased as I walked toward the chair and took a seat. “Do you need me to help with anything?”
He shook his head as he walked to the desk beside me, opened up a large checkbook, and started to write out checks. “No. Just need to pay everyone really quick and drop them in the box so they can pick up when they want. Then we have somewhere else to go.”
I waited patiently, playing on my phone and cruising through my 38383 emails.
Like, no joke.
That’s how many I currently had.
I needed to delete them all, but it was overwhelming. I mean… wasn’t there just a ‘delete all’ button?
“That is downright disturbing,” Callum said, surprising me.
I looked over at him. “What?”
“The fact that you have notifications on every single app you own. I mean, it says you have thirteen texts, 999+ emails, and tons of other little green icons indicating you have something to look at. How do you deal with that?” he asked.
I shrugged, not bothering to hide my phone. “I don’t like answering notifications. It’s frustrating.”
He chuckled. “So call you, don’t text you, because you won’t text back?”
I looked at him and shrugged. “I guess it would depend on whether I had you programmed into my phone or not.”
He grinned, snatched my phone out of my hand, and deftly entered his phone number before handing it back to me.
I smirked as he finished writing his checks out, then went to put them outside his office in what looked like the old-fashioned clock-in/clock-out station right outside the door.
When he was done, he jerked his head toward where he’d parked his bike. “Ready?”
I jumped up, because was I ready to be wrapped around him again? Heck yes, I was.
I didn’t ask where our next destination was, and maybe I should have.
Then, I wouldn’t be surprised when he drove us to the lake, and I saw a whole bunch of people that looked familiar, sitting around a barbeque pit outside of a cabin.
All of them were familiar, that was, except for four adults, one almost adult, and three kids.
“Do you have a favorite ex?” I asked carefully as the bike came to a standstill next to a line of other bikes.
There was a long pause and then, “No.”
Lies.
Everyone had a favorite ex.
Even I did.
“Do your parents have a favorite ex?” I wondered.
He chuckled as he got up off the bike.
When he was standing beside it, he hooked his hands underneath my armpits and bodily lifted me from the motorcycle.
When I was standing in front of him, he said, “Her name was Sadie. We dated when we were in high school. My parents loved her. I didn’t because she didn’t put out.”
I choked on a laugh.
“I haven’t thought about her since I was in bootcamp,” he joked. “My parents will love you.”
I sure hoped they did.
This was moving kind of fast.
I mean… yesterday, I wasn’t even sure he’d want to see me, and today, I was meeting his parents!
This was unreal!
“Come on.” He touched the tip of my nose with his knuckle. “It’ll be okay.”
I sure hoped so.
How could this go wrong?
When we went into Callum’s parents’ house, I fell in love.
With Derringer and Reedy. Will and Cannel. Ashleigh and Petra—Will’s nieces.
With his brothers.
With Clem and Sophia.
I just loved them all.
All of them, that was, except for Dorcas.
After knowing that she and Bram weren’t happily married, I was able to look underneath the surface a bit.
And I saw how underhandedly petty Dorcas was.
How she wouldn’t eat if she wasn’t handed a plate of food by Bram.
How, when nobody talked to her, she had the biggest resting bitch face.
How, when she was being spoken to, she always had this sense of superiority about her.
I had a feeling that she’d always been like this—an outsider in their family.
But I realized rather quick that that’s how she wanted it.
She purposefully stayed on the fringes, not interacting too much.
Meanwhile, I threw myself into the middle of them all.
My stomach gurgled, and despite me telling it to behave, no amount of pleading with it to control itself would get it to stop.
I winced when I whispered quietly to Reedy that I had to use the facilities.
After directing me on where to go, I went and did my business, feeling an exuberant amount of pressure to finish fast so no one—Callum in particular—knew what I was doing in here.
Because, just because I was comfortable around him, didn’t mean that I was ready for him to realize that I did, in fact, have to poop every once in a while.
I wanted him to think I was this perfect, beautiful girl that didn’t do that kind of stuff like normal people.
For all that he was concerned, I was a poopless, fartless, burpless person.
Only… the worst possible thing in the history of worst possible things happened.
I clogged the toilet at his mother’s house.
Honest to God, I was a wiper.
I wiped a lot, and liked to make sure I was really clean, because I was a sensitive bitch. Hell, I was so sensitive that even sometimes the wrong brand of toilet paper messed with me.
Which was why I was happy to see that they had Charmin brand.
But…
After not being able to go earlier with Callum—because who the hell wants to do number two when you’re in front of the man you want to fall in love with you?—I’d held it.
And obviously paid the consequences.
I looked at the toilet, then looked around the toilet in dismay.
There was no plunger.
Even worse, this was the bathroom that I’d seen no less than four people come out of in the time that I’d been there for half an hour.
I made a keening sound in my throat, my entire body coiled in shock and desperately made one more search through every available part of the bathroom before admitting defeat.
“Son of a bitch,” I whined as I quickly washed my hands. “Only me.”
Seriously.
Only. Me.
How did shit like this happen to me? Literally.
How did I always manage to do this? Experience the most embarrassing things that a person could experience.
Carefully, I opened the door and looked around the hallway.
The coast was clear.
After closing the door, I hurried to where I’d last seen the man that would never fall in love with me after this.
I found him near the grill, drinking a beer, talking to his brother, Haggard.
Only, he kept glancing around the party looking for me.
As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I was the only person missing from the party, meaning that there was never any doubt in his mind what I’d been doing all that time I’d been gone.
I marched across the yard with a purpose to where he was sitting in a lawn chair next to the grill.
Haggard was standing next to him, moving meat around on the grill.
When I arrived, it was at the back of Callum’s chair.