Chapter 6: Don’t Let Yourself Be Hurt
1843 Words
Avery ended the call, washed her hands, and reapplied a thin layer of lipstick with steadier fingers than she felt.
When she stepped out into the hallway, the first thing she smelled was alcohol.
Sharp. Heavy. Expensive vodka and cologne.
Then a hand struck the wall beside her head.
Avery jerked back.
Jason Blake stood in front of her, face flushed, eyes bright with drink. His hair was disheveled, his shirt half untucked under a dark jacket. He looked handsome in the careless way he always did after too much trouble, and for once, the sight of it made Avery tired instead of weak.
“Jason,” she said. “Move.”
He leaned closer. “You came to dinner with him?”
Avery’s shoulders hit the wall. “Step back.”
“Callum Rhodes?” Jason laughed once, but it came out wrong. “You block me and then eat with him?”
“I said step back.”
His hands braced on either side of her, caging her in without touching her. The heat of his body and the smell of alcohol pressed into the narrow space between them.
“You really want to make me jealous that badly?”
Avery stared at him. “You’re drunk.”
“Not that drunk.”
“Drunk enough to embarrass yourself.”
His jaw tightened. “You think you’re so calm. You think you can just say we’re done and walk away like none of it mattered.”
“It mattered,” Avery said. “That’s why I’m done.”
His eyes flashed.
For a moment, she saw the boy he used to be beneath the anger. The boy who had once stood in front of her when no one else did. The boy she had built a future out of because she was too young to know a memory was not a promise.
Then Jason spoke, and the boy disappeared.
“You said you didn’t want to be my fiancée in name only.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Is that what this is about? You wanted me to touch you more? You could’ve said that.”
Avery’s stomach turned.
“No.”
“You always acted so proper. Like I had to keep my hands clean around you.” He leaned closer. “If you wanted something else, Avery, all you had to do was ask.”
Her palm hit his chest.
He barely moved.
“That is not what I meant.”
“You don’t even know what you mean.” His voice lowered, soft and ugly. “You’re hurt, so you’re punishing me. You’ve loved me since we were kids. You don’t know how to stop.”
The worst part was that a piece of her almost believed him.
Not the man in front of her.
Never him.
But the echo.
Seven-year-old Jason with scraped knees and bright eyes, telling the world she belonged under his protection.
Avery swallowed against the sudden ache.
“I did love you,” she said. “For a long time.”
Jason’s expression shifted.
Triumph. Hope. Possession.
Avery saw it and felt something inside her harden.
“But I don’t want this anymore.”
His hand moved from the wall to her chin.
She caught his wrist before he could hold her face.
“Jason.”
“Stop pretending,” he said. “You’ll come back.”
“No.”
“You always do.”
“Not this time.”
He bent toward her.
Avery turned her face away, her breath catching in her chest.
Jason never reached her.
A force pulled him back so sharply that he stumbled across the hallway and hit the opposite wall with a grunt.
Avery looked up.
Callum stood between them.
His face was perfectly still.
That was what made him terrifying.
No raised voice. No dramatic anger. Only a coldness so complete that the hallway itself seemed to drop in temperature.
Jason pushed himself upright, blinking. “Callum—”
“Don’t.”
One word.
Jason stopped.
Two security guards rushed over from the end of the corridor, alarmed by the sound. One opened his mouth, likely prepared to reprimand whoever had caused the disturbance.
Then he saw Callum.
“Mr. Rhodes.” The guard straightened instantly. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” Callum said.
The guard’s face changed. “What would you like us to do?”
Callum’s gaze did not leave Jason. “Escort Mr. Blake somewhere he can sober up. If he resists, call the police.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
Callum finally looked at him fully.
“I’m not.”
Jason’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
The guards moved in. Jason tried to shrug them off once, then seemed to realize the entire restaurant was watching through cracked doors and lowered voices.
“Avery,” he said.
Avery stood very still.
She did not answer.
Jason’s face tightened as the guards led him away.
Only after he disappeared around the corner did Avery realize her hands were shaking.
Callum turned toward her.
The coldness in his face receded by a fraction.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.” Her voice sounded too thin. She cleared her throat. “No.”
Callum’s gaze dropped to her wrists, her shoulders, her face. He did not touch her.
“Come with me.”
Avery followed him to the private elevator.
Inside, the doors closed with a soft metallic hush. Classical piano played somewhere overhead, delicate and absurdly calm.
For several floors, neither spoke.
Avery stared at their reflections in the polished elevator doors. Callum stood beside her, tall and composed, one hand at his side. His sleeve brushed close to her shoulder but never touched.
The restraint was more devastating than comfort would have been.
“Something like that won’t happen again,” Callum said.
Avery looked at his reflection.
He sounded so much like someone’s guardian, someone accustomed to making decisions and having the world obey, that a faint, helpless laugh escaped before she could stop it.
Callum’s eyes shifted to her reflection. “What’s funny?”
Avery immediately regretted it. “Nothing.”
“Miss Collins.”
The way he said her name made lying difficult.
She sighed. “You sounded more like Jason’s father than his father does.”
Callum’s mouth flattened.
“I don’t have a son that old.”
The laugh died in Avery’s throat.
“Sorry,” she said quickly.
The elevator continued downward.
Then Callum asked, “Will you get back together with him?”
Avery blinked.
The question was so direct that for a moment, she had no defense against it.
“No,” she said.
Callum looked at her.
Avery held his gaze in the reflection. “I won’t.”
The elevator doors opened.
Callum stepped out first, then paused just beyond the threshold.
“Then don’t put me in the same category as his father’s friends,” he said. “I don’t need that kind of distance from you.”
Avery stared after him.
Her heartbeat, already unsteady, missed a step.
By the time she followed, he was speaking to the host with the same cool authority as before, arranging for the bill and the envelope to be brought to the car. Nothing in his expression suggested he had said anything unusual.
Avery wished she could say the same for herself.
Noah brought the car around.
The drive back to the Shaw house was quiet.
Avery opened her work messages because she needed something normal to hold. Nina’s mother had replied to confirm the next home visit. Avery typed a professional response, adjusted the time, and read the message twice before sending it.
If Callum noticed, he did not comment.
That might have been one of the things that unsettled her most.
Jason always filled silence. With excuses, jokes, complaints, noise. He made himself the center of every room because emptiness seemed to offend him.
Callum let silence exist.
It made Avery aware of herself in ways she was not prepared for.
When the car stopped outside the Shaw house, she reached for the door handle.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said. “And for what happened at the restaurant.”
Callum inclined his head. “You don’t need to thank me for that.”
“I do.”
His eyes moved to the house beyond her. The lights were low; Helen must have gone upstairs. The front garden was wet from earlier rain, the leaves shining under the lamps.
Avery opened the door.
“Wait.”
She turned.
Callum took the envelope from the small table beside him.
The settlement.
Avery’s fingers tightened on the door handle. “Mr. Rhodes—”
“Callum,” he said.
The correction was quiet.
It landed harder than if he had insisted.
Avery’s lips parted.
He held out the envelope.
She reached for it.
His fingers shifted at the same moment, guiding it into her hand. For one brief second, his palm closed lightly around her wrist—not enough to restrain, only enough to steady the exchange.
His skin was warm.
His fingertips were rougher than she expected, faint calluses against the inside of her wrist. The sensation was small. Barely anything.
Avery felt it everywhere.
Then he let go.
“It’s yours,” Callum said. “Not charity. Not pity. What you’re owed.”
Avery looked down at the envelope.
Her throat worked once.
“No one who matters will think less of you for taking back what should have been yours,” he said.
She lifted her eyes.
In the dim interior of the car, Callum’s face was partly in shadow. His gaze was not soft, exactly. Callum Rhodes did not seem like a man who did soft easily.
But it was steady.
And for Avery, after years of being asked to understand, forgive, tolerate, and wait, steady felt dangerously close to tenderness.
“Don’t let yourself be hurt,” he said. “Not for the sake of being polite. Not for the sake of someone else’s pride. Not again.”
Avery held the envelope until the edge pressed into her palm.
Outside, the night air drifted in through the open door.
She should have said something composed.
Something appropriate.
Instead, all she managed was, “Thank you, Callum.”
His eyes changed slightly at the sound of his name.
Avery stepped out before she could think too hard about it.
The car door closed behind her.
She walked up the path with the envelope in her hand and Callum’s words following her all the way to the front door.
Don’t let yourself be hurt.
Avery entered the house quietly.
Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and pressed the envelope against her chest.
Jason had once taught her what it felt like to be protected.
Callum had just reminded her what it felt like to be respected.
And Avery was afraid that difference might ruin her for everything she used to accept.
- Writer
