With the secrets.

With the weight of his affair with married Maeve.

And the guilt of keeping Kath’s death from me.

With our sins.

When I turn from the door to face Callum, I drop the charade.

“We need to talk.”

Present

Rory

I never get to tell Callum about what happened with Mal. As soon as we shut the door behind us, he gets a call he has to take and locks himself outside on the balcony. He uses his hushed, I’ll-make-meatballs-out-of-you, hedge-fund-analyst tone that makes my skin crawl.

The phone call lasts nearly two hours and reaches octaves better suited for the jungle. I feel sorry for him that he has to work on New Year’s Eve. But by the time he’s done, I’m getting ready to hop into the shower before the party.

When he walks back in, his face flushed and pouty, he glances at my half-naked figure and perks up, plastering a lazy smile where a scowl rested seconds ago.

“Me. You. Shower. Sex. Let’s go.”

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t reckon anything is more important than a quick shag, especially with your hipbones poking out Bella Hadid-style. Despair suits you.” He runs his tongue over his upper teeth. “Go on. You can’t tell me you haven’t been longing for my cock all this time.”

I sit on the edge of the bed, hunched and defeated, racking my brain for how to deliver the news—how to rip us open like a mummified body and dump all the internal organs.

I hate that Summer was right in her prediction.

The napkin didn’t mean nothing.

It meant everything.

Mal warned me years ago that he was going to break whatever I had going with someone else if we met again.

And he kept good on his promise.

Callum tugs at my sleeve, and there’s something in his expression that makes my heart rattle my ribs like they’re metal bars.

I burst out in tears, covering my face, feeling ashamed not only for what I did to him, to me, but also for being such a coward. For not coming clean like a grown-up. He stands there, the summer blush vanishing from his face, watching me.

“All right then, no shagging. I didn’t think the idea would upset you quite so much…” He scratches his head, trying to make light of things. “I did give my willy curls a good trim, if that’s the reason you’re distraught.”

I try to laugh to make him feel better, but the truth is, we don’t have time right now to have the conversation we obviously need to have. I slip into the shower and turn the water to sizzling hot, staring ahead at the powder blue tiles with their tiny cracks of old age, wondering when it all went so wrong.

I know exactly when. The minute I took this job.

Because being around Mal and not wanting him is impossible.

I can deny myself of a lot of things, but he’s never been one of them.

Mal makes me burn. Crackle. Melt. My love for him is thick and sturdy. Metallic and alive. A beating organ, co-existing with my heart.

I get out of the shower and face Callum, who is choosing cufflinks from a little velvet box he takes with him everywhere.

“When we get back, we really need to talk,” I mutter.

He answers without turning to look at me, his voice surprisingly dead.

“You’re the boss.”

Spin the bottle.

We are playing spin the bottle.

This party is a total shitshow.

And Alex Winslow never showed up.

“Winslow?” Richards puffed on a suspicious-looking cigarette and laughed when I asked him about it. “His idea of partying is curry night in front of the telly with the wifey. A total straightedge, that fucker,” he said with the worst impression of a cockney accent to ever be recorded on planet Earth.

Instead, the music is crappy (mostly Ashton’s stuff), the place is ninety-nine-percent semi-naked women in togas, and there’s a self-proclaimed tattoo artist taking spontaneous customers on Richards’ rotating bed while it’s rotating, which anyone with three brain cells can see is not the best idea of the century.

There are servants walking around the suite offering platters of grapes, cheese, crackers, champagne, and schnapps. New Year’s Eve balloons adorn the room in gold, silver, and black.

And as I mentioned, we are sitting in a circle, playing spin the bottle like the big, screwed-up, dysfunctional pile of random people we are.

“Rules.” An English chick with fake boobs and highlighted hair twirls like a fairy around the room, batting her eyelashes in every direction. “Since we have a proper couple here, we need to make sure they’re both all right with seeing other people snogging their significant other.”

She directs her big, hazel eyes at me and raises a daring eyebrow. I glance at Callum, fully expecting him to shut it down. That was one of the points I always brought up to Summer when I wanted to break up with him after we started seeing each other—his conservative, traditional streak that drives me nuts.

“I’m always up for a bit of fun.” He smiles, much to my amazement.

He slices his gaze toward me, narrow-eyed, like this is some kind of test.

I glance at Mal across from me, briefly, so as not to raise any suspicion. His face is stoic, his eyes zeroed in on the empty champagne bottle between us. Maybe he’s finally getting it. That it’s not only because of Callum that I refuse to entertain the idea of us.

It’s because he is Glen.

I’m starting to see that my father wasn’t the lovable, village-drunk martyr I’d imagined him to be. The secrets and lies swarming around Tolka have a root, and that root might be his grave.

Everyone is staring at me now, assessing my reaction. This could go south fast, and I’m too old to cave to peer pressure. On the other hand, I can’t pretend to be a prude. Not when Cal is game.

“Go on. You’re the one who always tells me to lighten up.” Callum elbows me with a chuckle.

There’s a threat laced in his voice for the first time since I’ve known him, and I don’t have time or the ability to crack it open and study its inside right now when I’m already tipsy.

I shrug in acceptance, and all the girls in the circle woo-hoo and meow like cats in heat. Callum is prime meat in this testosterone-deprived environment. Plus, Ashton looks too tanked and Mal too unattainable to promise any type of real action. The English chick goes as far as shimmying her boobs in Callum’s direction and winking. Very understated.

“Are you good with seeing Rory snog other lads?” she taunts.

“No one can kiss her the way I do, love.” He flashes her a predatory smirk.

Love. He calls everyone love. Mal is right. It’s not romantic. It’s kind of annoying.

“And what about other birds?” she pokes.

I choke on the beer I’m nursing, but say nothing,

“Especially birds.” Callum laughs.

“And what about you? Are you open to kissing a bloke?” She continues grilling Callum.

She is flirting up a storm with my boyfriend. It occurs to me that I should be mad, but all I can muster is irritated apathy, like when you see someone being a bigot online, but all you can manage is Liking the comment that argues with them, not actually entering the exchange.

Callum clears his throat. “Let’s keep it straight, yeah?”