Chapter 52 FIFTY-TWO
Lennox didn't hear him come in. She was too focused on the screen, on the photos of herself, on the sick feeling in her stomach that wouldn't go away.
"Can't sleep?"
She jumped, slammed the laptop shut. Spun around to find Callum standing in the doorway in pajama pants and nothing else, hair messy, looking concerned.
"Jesus. You scared me."
"Sorry." He walked in, glanced at her closed laptop. "It's four thirty in the morning. What are you doing?"
"Just work stuff. Couldn't sleep so I figured I'd get some things done."
"What kind of work stuff?"
"Boring computer things. You wouldn't be interested." She tried to smile but it felt fake. "What are you doing up?"
"Heard you moving around. Wanted to check if you were okay."
"I'm fine."
He looked at her for a long moment, clearly not buying it. Then he sat down next to her on the couch, close enough that their thighs touched. "You're a terrible liar."
"I'm a great liar actually."
"Not to me." He bumped her shoulder with his. "What's really going on?"
She should tell him to go back to bed. Should push him away before this got any worse. But she was tired and scared and the photos were still burned into her brain and she just wanted someone to tell her it would be okay even if it was a lie.
"I really can't sleep," she said. "My brain won't shut off."
"About what?"
Everything. The investigation. The photos. The fact that someone had destroyed her life on purpose. That she was lying to him while falling for him. That this whole thing was so messed up she didn't know how to fix it.
"Just stuff," she said instead. "Life stuff."
They sat there in the dark living room, city lights coming through the windows, both of them tired and confused and not saying what they really meant.
"I get it," Callum said after a while. "The not sleeping thing. I do it too."
"I know. I hear you pacing sometimes."
"Yeah?" He looked at her. "I thought I was being quiet."
"You are. But the penthouse is too quiet."
More silence. Comfortable somehow despite everything.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. "Whatever keeps you up?"
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn't answer. Then he sighed, leaned back against the couch. "The will. The company. All of it."
"The marriage requirement."
"Yeah. That. And everything else my father left behind." He ran his hand through his hair, that nervous tell he had. "He built this empire from nothing. Spent his whole life making Westbrook Industries into what it is. And now it's on me and Cole to keep it going, to not fuck it up, to be worthy of what he left us."
"That's a lot of pressure."
"It's crushing sometimes. Everyone's watching to see if we can actually do this. The board, the investors, the employees. Thousands of people depending on us to not screw up." He laughed but it wasn't happy. "And I'm terrified I'm going to fail. That I'm going to make the wrong call and destroy everything he built."
Lennox looked at him, really looked at him. She'd been so focused on the investigation, on seeing him as part of the company she was investigating, that she'd forgotten he was just a person. A person carrying weight that would break most people.
"You're not going to fail," she said.
"You don't know that."
"I do actually. I've watched you work. Seen how you think through problems. You're smart and careful and you actually care about doing the right thing." She bumped his shoulder back. "Your dad wouldn't have left you the company if he didn't think you could handle it."
"Maybe. Or maybe he just didn't have another choice."
"Stop that. You're good at this. Better than you think."
He looked at her with those dark eyes that always saw too much. "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Make me feel like maybe I'm not completely messing everything up."
Her chest hurt. "I'm not doing anything. I'm just telling you the truth."
They sat there looking at each other and the air between them felt heavy with things neither of them would say.
"What about you?" he asked. "What keeps you up at night?"
Besides the investigation and the lies and the photos of myself being stalked? "I don't know. Lots of things."
"Like what?"
She should deflect. Change the subject. But something about the dark and the late hour and the exhaustion made her honest. "I grew up in foster care. Bounced around a lot. Never really had stability or a place that felt permanent."
He went still. "I didn't know that."
"Not exactly first date conversation material."
"We never had a first date."
"No. We didn't." She pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them. "I was in six different homes between ages eight and eighteen. Some were okay. Some were bad. None of them felt like home."
"Lennox..."
"It's fine. It was a long time ago. But I guess it messes with your head, you know? Never having anything that lasts. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop." She looked at him. "This marriage feels like just another temporary thing."
Callum didn't answer. Just looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite read.
The silence stretched. She should take it back, laugh it off, say something to break the tension.
Instead she just sat there waiting for him to say something, anything, but he didn't speak. Just kept looking at her like he was trying to figure something out.
Then he moved. Leaned in and kissed her.
Soft this time. Not desperate or hungry or angry. Just soft and slow and gentle in a way that made her chest ache worse than any of the other kisses had.
She kissed him back, hands coming up to his face, and it felt different than all the times before. Less like they were trying to prove something and more like they were just being honest for once.
When he pulled back he rested his forehead against hers. "Come on."
"Where?"
"Bed. You need sleep."
He stood up, held out his hand. She took it and let him pull her up. He led her down the hall to his room because apparently that's where they were going now, where they always seemed to end up.
They got into bed and he pulled her against him, her back to his chest, his arm around her waist. The position they'd fallen into that felt too comfortable, too right.
"Callum?" she said into the dark.
"Yeah?"
She wanted to ask what this meant. If the kiss was different because it felt different or if she was imagining it. If this was still just physical or if they'd crossed into something else without meaning to.
But she was scared of the answer.
"Nothing. Never mind."
His arm tightened around her slightly. "Get some sleep."
She closed her eyes. Felt his heartbeat against her back. Listened to his breathing even out as he fell asleep.
And laid there awake, photos of herself still burned into her brain, knowing that someone had put her here on purpose and she still didn't know why.