Page 60 of The Reaper
I swallowed hard, the remnants of adrenaline still thick in my blood. “You’re not responsible for me, Caleb.”
“No,” he said again, slower this time. “But I want to be.”
That cracked something open in my chest.
“I’m not used to people wanting that,” I said. “Not without strings. Or agendas.”
He shifted, propping himself up on one elbow to look at me directly. His eyes were clear, focused, burning.
“I don’t have an agenda,” he said. “I came into your restaurant because I was curious. I stayed because of you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
He smiled faintly. “That’s not true. I know how you taste. I know how you breathe when you’re focused. I know you work yourself half to death because there’s something you’re still trying to prove.”
My throat tightened.
“And,” he added, brushing a strand of hair back from my face, “I know you’re scared to want anything for yourself because the last time you did, it hurt.”
The words landed too close to the truth. I looked away.
He didn’t push.
“I see you,” he said quietly. “Even when you don’t want to be seen.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Outside, the harbor shifted in its endless rhythm, the world still turning.
“I don’t expect you to feel the same,” he said. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re making promises you might not be able to keep.”
“I’ve kept harder ones.”
There it was again—that steel in his voice. Not arrogance. Certainty.
I let myself lean into him, pressing my forehead to his chest. “If I let you in, you have to understand something.”
“What?”
“This life—Promenade, my work—it’s all I’ve got. It’s the thing that kept me breathing when nothing else did. I can’t let someone tear it down, even by accident.”
“I’d never do that.”
“I’m not just talking about the notes.”
He nodded, like he understood more than I was saying. Maybe he did.
“I don’t want to be a distraction,” he said. “I want to protect you. It would be my honor, Meg.”
The word hit differently.Meg.Finn called me that sometimes, the way only he could—like it belonged to the version of me that still believed in people, the version that hadn’t hardened all the way through. And now Caleb was saying it, too, his voice low and steady, as if he knew the weight it carried. Maybe there was something in the universe about only good men calling me that, the rare few who saw past the armor.
I laughed under my breath, the sound brittle. “You say that like it’s easy.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But it’s simple.”
We fell into silence again. But it wasn’t heavy now. It was something else—charged, vulnerable, laced with something new.
