Page 92 of Protecting You
“You didn’t want to commit. You wanted to keep your options open. That’s what you do.”
Not true. He was great at committing. To work. To his career. To school.
But where Peri was concerned…
It shamed him to admit it, but Hannah wasn’t wrong.
Now wasn’t the time to figure his life out. He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped a text. “I’m going to let Mom know I’m here. Should we wait in the room, or?—?”
“I can’t sit in there anymore.” She moved past him toward the nurses station, and he fell into step beside her. “Mom hasn’t told me much. He’d been nauseated for a couple of days. Then this afternoon he had heartburn, more symptoms of what he thought was a stomach bug.” The hospital wasn’t very big, so their circuit took them down another hall, where they retraced their steps. “She said his color was off, and then he started complaining of shoulder and arm pain, and she realized what was going on. She got him in the car and brought him here. She didn’t call me until they’d confirmed it was a heart attack.”
Hannah seemed annoyed by that, but Callan figured she ought not to complain.
Mom hadn’t called him at all.
“They caught it early,” Hannah said, “but still…”
“A heart attack is a heart attack.”
“Yeah.”
Callan had asked his parents for too much. He’d known that, but he’d done it anyway.
Now, Dad was in the hospital, literally fighting for his life.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Alyssa pressed the button to summon the elevator at the Augusta hospital. Callan’s father hadn’t been hard to find, considering there was only one hospital with an emergency room.
Right after Callan left her at the bookstore, she’d gotten a call from Ghazi, who’d told them where and when she was to meet him with the zero-day exploit.
Of course, Callan didn’t plan for her to willingly surrender to the terrorist again. But sometimes things happened against a person’s will. If it came to that, she wouldn’t be returned to Brookline.
They’d made a plan, just in case she had no choice but to meet Ghazi again. Hopefully, she wouldn’t need to put it into play.
Now, she breathed deeply, shifting her focus from work to…this.
She wasn’t great at social situations, but friends showed up for friends, right?
That was all this was with Callan. Friendship.
Her attraction to him didn’t mean anything. Sure, he was kind and capable and protective in a way that made her heart go all wonky.
She liked him, more than she should, considering she knew her feelings weren’t reciprocated.
Though, when she’d been in his arms the night before, when they’d danced, when they’d kissed… It had felt real.
What if it couldbereal? What if Callan kept taking her hand because he was seeing beyond friendship? What if the emotion in his kisses was more than just physical desire?
She’d never considered sharing a life with any of the men she’d dated. Brooklynn once accused her of only dating unsuitable men, men who either became too controlling—she wouldn’t put up with that—or, as Brooklynn once said, “Twenty IQ points south of a century.”
Alyssa would never be happy with a guy she could run intellectual circles around.
Callan liked to be in control, but he wasn’t controlling. And he was sharp enough to keep her on her toes.
She had no idea what she was going to say when she saw him, how she’d react if he wasn’t happy to see her. Or if he was.
She’d just have to wing it.
