Page 134 of Boiling Point
Gabrielle
“Imiss you, Cal. I need you here like yesterday.” I wanted to reach through the phone and yank him home by the sleeve.
“Twenty-four hours, love,” he replied. “I fly out in the morning, and, trust me, it’s not soon enough.”
“How are you holding up?”
“As you’d expect. Just glad it’s all over.” Silence crackled on the line before he continued, “James wasted no time in shutting me out. The funeral had barely ended before he said, in no uncertain terms, that I’m never to darken his door again.” Cal scoffed. “He literally kicked me out, so I’m staying in a London hotel tonight. But I suppose I should thank him. Better room service and less chance of me missing my flight in the morning.”
“Was he mad about the money and properties your father left you?”
“Livid. But Father sorted all that before he died, so there’s nothing James can do.” He drew a sharp breath. “I don’t particularly care about the assets. It wasn’t even that much. James still got the lion’s share. But watching him boil over made it all worth it.”
I surveyed Cal’s once-pristine living room, now lined with boxes of my belongings. A Houston Astros tumbler full of sweet tea sweated onto a coaster on the coffee table. My favorite hoodie slouched over the arm of the black leather sofa. I’d tried to make myself at home, but it felt more like a child’s fort in a stranger’s parlor.
“This place feels weird without you,” I admitted.
Cal’s smile was audible through the transatlantic static. “You’re my fiancée. It’s your house too, love.”
Fiancée. The word had its own gravity—bending the whole room around it. I had never been anybody’s anything in such a permanent way.
I let the words settle. “Yeah, I know. It just…doesn’t feel real yet.” My phone beeped with another call. “Hang on, let me see who this is.” I checked the screen. Aunt Suzy. “Ugh, she’s relentless.” I sent the call to voicemail.
“Your aunt again?”
“Yeah. She’s been blowing up my phone the past couple of days. I can’t—” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to unknot the pressure in my chest. “I still can’t talk to her. I know she means well, but if it weren’t for her?—”
“It’s all right, Gabrielle. You don’t have to explain.” His voice was a balm to my frazzled nerves, a pressure bandage over the bruise. “Talk to her when you’re ready. Not before.”
I propped my feet on a box labeled “WINTER CLOTHES” and picked at a loose thread on my leggings. “Maybe I won’t ever talk to her again,” I said, though we both knew it was a lie.
He didn’t call me on it.
The doorbell reverberated through the house. I nearly dropped my phone.
“Who’s there?” Cal asked.
“Not sure,” I answered, peering down the hall toward the front door. A vague figure loomed behind the frosted glass. “Probably a delivery.”
“What have you ordered now?”
“A few more books.”
He groaned. “More? And where do you plan to put them?”
I nudged a knee-high box with my heel—brimming with paperbacks, a few crammed spine-down into the gaps I’d packed too fast and carelessly. “I have a system.”
“You have a problem.”
“I’m curating a collection,” I said, feigning haughtiness. “Besides, you’ll appreciate my spicy new titles when you’re jet-lagged and desperate for…entertainment.”
He sighed, low and theatrical. “If I return home to find you in bed with a paperback…”
“Yes…”
“Let’s just say I’ll be forced to remind you of the superiority of hands-on research.” His voice, even disembodied, was enough to send a sweet shiver down my back.
“That’s bold talk coming from a theoretical physicist.”
