Page 62 of Auctioned To Be Mine

He smiled into his mug. “I did.”

“I’m ready if you are.”

He dumped the remnants of his coffee into the sink. I took a giant swig of mine and followed suit.

I jogged upstairs to grab my phone and sunglasses. Callum was waiting at the door for me when I returned.

We took an Uber to Central Park. And then we just walked. I didn’t know when it happened, but we were holding hands. And I couldn’t stop smiling.

Callum was quiet. We both were. I loved that we could do that. It was like we’d known each other for years. It was easy to be around him. We didn’t have to fill the silence. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable.

I did get the feeling there was something on his mind, but I didn’t press him. I’d let him decide if he wanted to tell me.

“Hot dog?” he asked, stopping at a cart near the path.

“Breakfast of champions.” I laughed.

He ordered two with everything and paid the vendor. We carried them to a spot on the grass and sat down. I stretched my legs out in front of me and looked around at the city.

“Been here before?” he asked.

I nodded. “Well, not this particular area, but I’ve been to a concert here.”

I took a bite. It was perfect in the way that only a hot dog could be. I wiped ketchup from the corner of my mouth.

“How are these so good?” I asked. “It’s a hot dog. It should not be this good.”

He laughed and took another bite. “New York baby.”

“Isn’t it Staten Island that has the killer hot dogs?”

“Same thing.”

We sat and did some people watching. Normal people doing normal things.

I looked at Callum from the corner of my eye. He wiped his hands and his mouth and looked very satisfied.

I thought about the first time I saw him. That initial flash of irritation before I even knew his name. I had built a whole person in my head based on a two-second collision. And when I figured out who he was, I had made up my mind he was an asshole not worth my time.

I had been so wrong.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have an edge. He did. He was a little cocky but he didn’t flaunt it. He was who he was. But that was the version of him the world saw. He didn’t go out of his way to hide his true self. He just didn’t have the time or opportunity to really show that side of him.

I was one of the few people in the world who got to see it, which made me feel privileged. He was a man who cooked dinner for one person. A man who thought of his aunt like a second mother and treated her with love. A man who brought me sushi without me asking him for anything.

Every man I’d dated in my old life had been so busy trying to prove who they were and what they were worth. It was all a show. It was so hard to know what was real and what was pretend. I’d learned the hard way that most of it was all bullshit. And that had made me jaded. I had made assumptions about Callum based on my past experiences.

That had been wrong.

Callum pulled out his phone to check the time. “Oh my God.”

My stomach dropped immediately. “What? What happened?”

He turned the phone toward me. It was Chantilly’s Instagram. The most recent post was a photo of her and Jack Montana. They were on a boat somewhere sun-drenched and gorgeous. Chantilly was in a white bikini, her hair perfectly tousled, her smile enormous. Jack had his arm around her and was looking at her like she’d hung the moon.

I stared at it. Then I looked up at Callum. “Is that an old photo?”

“Nope, posted today.”