Page 3 of The Wrong Play

There was the silence that followed, the emptiness where something warm used to be.

There was the quiet, brutal way someone could make you feel like you were never enough.

My silence must have been all the answer he needed, because Callum exhaled through his nose, a slow, controlled breath. His eyes darkened, his fingers flexing at his sides.

“He’s a fool,” he said.

The words made my stomach twist.

Because…it almost sounded like he meant them.

But that was probably me imagining it. Wishful thinking of the highest order.

He took another step toward me, closing the space between us until I could feel the warmth of his body.

The feel of his closeness was steady…something to anchor myself to.

And I had been drifting for so, so long.

“He didn’t deserve you,” he continued, his voice smooth and coaxing.

His fingers skimmed my hand, a whisper of touch—barely there, yet somehow devastating.

A shiver rolled through me.

It wasn’t supposed to feel good. Alarms were blaring loudly in my head, in fact.

But it did.

Callum’s hand moved higher, his fingers tracing over my pulse, slow and deliberate, like he was memorizing the shape of my veins. “You need someone who can take care of you,” he murmured, his voice dangerous in the way a blade glinted just before it struck.

My breath hitched as his grip tightened, just barely. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to make me hyperaware of how easily he could.

“Someone who knows what you need.” His tone was rich, laced with something dark, something final, as if he were the only one who truly understood. The only one who ever could.

I swallowed hard, my head spinning.

This wasn’t wrong.

It wasn’t.

He was just comforting me.

He was just here.

And Callum had always known how to say the right thing, how to make people believe in him.

His fingers slid up my forearm, his touch deceptively gentle. “I can take care of you, Riley,” he whispered, his voice slipping through my ribs like smoke, curling into something cold and inescapable.

My breath hitched.

Because no one else ever had.

His fingers skated up my jaw, tilting my chin up. His touch was light. Too light. Like he was giving me a choice. Like he was waiting for me to close the space between us.

“You don’t have to keep pretending,” he whispered.

My throat tightened.

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