It was clean, but old and small and completely unlike what I was used to. The house I’d grown up in wasn’t a mansion by any means, but my dad had kept the appliances updated, and my mom had taken pride in the way our house was decorated. Needless to say, the avocado green sink, toilet and bathtub set in my new bathroom and the fridge in my new kitchen that made a loud humming noise whenever it kicked on, were a far cry from my old home. But I didn’t say a word.
What was there to say?
I wasn’t about to bitch about the apartment not being up to my snobby standards—it would make him feel like shit. Asa was paying for an apartment that he wouldn’t even be living in, and I had no room to complain, not really. All the appliances appeared to work, there was a lock on the door, and most importantly, it was clean. And if, when I saw my new home the first time, I had to pretend to use the bathroom so I could lock the door and let a few tears escape—well, I’d never admit to it.
The first night we were there, we had to drive to Wal-Mart for blankets and toilet paper, but we were too tired to shop for anything else and ended up sleeping curled up on the floor of the bedroom wrapped in my new blue and yellow comforter set.
Sleeping was a very loose term for what I’d done that night.
The arrival in my new apartment had not only marked the beginning of a new life, but also the start of nightmares that would plague me on and off for the next few years. It was also the first time Asa wrapped me in his arms and calmed me down afterward, but it wasn’t the last.
Our first week was spent outfitting the new apartment with anything and everything I could need, from shampoo to barstools for the kitchen counter. I tried to be as frugal as possible, knowing that even if my parents had some life insurance policy no one knew about, I still wouldn’t be able to pay Asa back any time soon. Asa, however, insisted on buying anything he could get his hands on while I tried to bite my tongue and sneak odds and ends back onto the shelves without him noticing. He didn’t let me get away with it, though, and we ended up backtracking, more often than not, for the items that I’d placed haphazardly around the stores.
I finally snapped in one of the kitchen aisles at the local IKEA.
“We don’t need a freaking orange peeler! Who uses an orange peeler? It’s ridiculous!” I was griping at him, waving the offending peeler in the air while he watched me in amusement. “People have been peeling oranges for hundreds of years, and they’ve never needed one of these stupid things!”
“Not sure why a ninety-nine cent peeler has got your panties in a twist, Sugar,” he mumbled at me quietly.
“Because it’s a waste! Ninety-nice cents here, two ninety-nine there—it freaking adds up, Asa! I’m never going to be able to pay you back for all of this!” I hissed in frustration as I willed tears of embarrassment to stop forming at the back of my eyes.
“I didn’t ask you to pay me back,” he told me, his jaw tight and his eyes angry. “Never once did I tell you that you were paying me back for a goddamn thing.”
“I know that,” I replied, “but you just keep buying things that I don’t really need and it’s making me crazy! I don’t need a coffee table. God, I don’t even need a couch! I can just sit on my bed when I’m home…”
His voice was still slightly pissed off as he reached up and grabbed my chin, lifting my face so he could look directly into my eyes as he spoke, “We need a couch because I wanna sit on the fuckin’ couch when I come home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home. I might not be living there full time, but me and you? We’re making a fuckin’ home. With a comfortable couch, that we will not be buying here because these couches are too fuckin’ small, and a big-ass TV that I can watch Westerns on. And we’re gonna buy anything you need to cook and organize shit the way you like it. Because, baby? I’m gonna be gone a lot, and I want to know that when I’m gone, you’re going home to a fuckin’ comfortable house where you can relax and feel safe.”
I stared at him for a moment, sifting through everything he’d just said and trying to find an appropriate response, but the only thing I could think of was, “Westerns?”
“Really? That’s all you got?”
“Are you sixty-five?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Do we need to get one of those denture containers for you to put your teeth in at night?”
“Callie…”
“I think we need to go a few aisles back for something like that…wait, do we need to call AARP and make sure they’ve got your change of address?”
I squeaked as he moved toward me, trying to scoot around the cart so I could use it as a barrier, but I couldn’t escape him. He was too quick, and soon I was in his arms and he was tickling my neck with his beard.
“You think you’re so funny,” he grumbled into my throat, his chin digging into my shoulder.
“Westerns!” I hooted, pushing at his shoulder and gaining the attention of the shoppers around us.
My hoot made him redouble his efforts and we knocked into shelves as we scrambled into a position that left little room between our bodies. One of my arms had pushed up his chest and over his shoulder while the other wrapped around his trim waist, my fingers clenched into the back of his belt. I was breathing heavily, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pull up on his jeans and give him a wedgie, like I would’ve done if he was Cody, or take the safer route of dragging the gray beanie from his head in an attempt to annoy him.
It was all giggling and growling until he opened his mouth against my neck and bit down playfully.
My breath caught in my throat and I froze mid-wiggle. I was suddenly hyperaware of every place our bodies touched, the scrape of his beard on my collarbone, and the heat of his breath on the side of my neck. I no longer thought anything was funny, and by the way his growl turned into a deep moan and he bit down harder and start to suck, he didn’t either.
Then I wasn’t thinking of anything.
His arms tightened around me as I felt my eyes falling to half-mast, barely registering a couple starting down the aisle only to quickly move the other way. He pushed his foot in between mine, never letting up on the suction at my neck as he positioned us so that I was just barely straddling his thigh. I was trying to find my balance in our new position, holding back whimpers in my throat and trying to remember why we shouldn’t be doing what we were doing in a very public store when he used the hand at my hips to rock me against him and the one on my back to catch my hair and tilt my head back.
I won the fight against whimpering and stayed silent—but I couldn’t stop my hand from sliding away from his neck and into his beanie, gripping his hair tightly in my fist as I took over the rocking motion with my hips.
I’m not sure what would have happened if an employee hadn’t interrupted us, asking us to cease and desist or she was going to call security. I stumbled back slightly in embarrassment, my face burning as I gaped at Asa’s smug face.
“No need to call security, ma’am. I think she’s learned her lesson,” he told the employee dismissively, grabbing a hold of our cart and sauntering away.
He freaking sauntered away.
I didn’t saunter. I shuffled … with my proverbial tail between my legs.
We were quiet as Asa grabbed the last few things he wanted from the store. I was still completely mortified, scanning the area around us for the employee who’d verbally bitch-slapped me from my Asa fog. God, I never wanted to see her again. How humiliating.
It wasn’t until we were emptying our kitchen utensils onto the check-out belt, and I turned to Asa with a glare, holding not one, but two orange peelers, that he finally spoke.
“Westerns are American history brought to life. Those fuckers were badasses, Callie,” he told me with a smirk. “Plus, John Wayne’s the fuckin' shit.”
I shook my head at his smirk and continued emptying the cart, “I’ll take your word for it as long as you don’t make me watch them.”
“Fuck that. You’re sitting t
hrough every single one…”
“I’ll just read or something,” I told him distractedly as I watched the numbers on the register move higher and higher while biting the inside of my cheek.
I wasn’t prepared for him to move in behind me and settle his hand low on my belly.
“I’m pretty sure you’re gonna watch them, Callie,” he whispered in my ear, pushing his hips lightly against my ass.
“Oh yeah?” I replied, trying to sound dismissive but ending up breathy like Marilyn Monroe.
He didn’t answer back right away because he was busy swiping his credit card and gathering his receipt from the clerk, so I moved slightly away from him, thinking the conversation was over. I was surprised when, instead of grabbing our bags, he moved to me and slid a hand into my hair at the base of my neck, tilting up my face for a quick peck on the lips.
“Yeah, baby. You’ve got a hickey the size of Texas on your neck that tells me you’re not gonna be tellin’ me no.”
He chuckled once and let me go, slapping me on the ass before picking up our purchases and walking toward the exit.
I should’ve been annoyed but I wasn’t. His words had flipped a trigger, and my mind grasped on to one simple fact.
Almost every minute I was conscious, my mind was consumed with grief and guilt. It was burying me slowly in a depression that I had no idea how to deal with. It just kept beating at me, never letting a smile cross my face or a feeling of gratefulness sink in before I felt like shit for enjoying anything when my parents were dead.
But when Asa was touching me, I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Not one single thing.
It was a heady feeling—knowing I’d found my oblivion.
Chapter 23
Callie
Once I realized that Asa was expecting to share the house when he could, it was easier for me to pick out the things I thought we’d need, like an electric slow cooker. Sure, a slow cooker wasn’t a huge purchase—or even really important in the greater scheme of things—but my mom had taught me how to use one. I had a ton of recipes that I knew were really good, and I wanted to make them for Asa. So for the first time, without his prodding, I’d bought something. A freaking electric slow cooker.
I had no idea where Asa was getting the money for our huge shopping spree, but he seemed to be unconcerned with the grand totals as we made our way through different stores.
I thought the big TV he wanted would be our largest expense, but it was nothing compared to the cost of all the small things we had to buy. It was daunting, trying to remember everything we needed. At one point, I had to try to remember a pad of paper and a pen just so I could write a list of all the other things we’d forgotten as we made our way through store after store.
We drove the moving truck around town as we picked up our supplies, and we must have looked like idiots putting seven bags of groceries into the empty cargo area. Asa refused to return the truck until we’d found the bed and couch we wanted. And by we, I mean him. The couch and bed he wanted. If it had been up to me, we would’ve bought the least expensive ones we could find, no matter what they looked or felt like. However, Asa was adamant that we get furniture that were both comfortable and appealing, so he eventually stopped asking my opinion after I told him a lime-green couch with bright orange flowers looked nice. In my opinion, the nicest thing about the couch had been the bright red clearance tag hanging off its arm.
By the second week in the new apartment, we’d completely settled in. I hadn’t been sure about, well, anything to do with Asa, but the longer we spent time together, the more comfortable I became with him. It didn’t help my anxiousness, however, when we set up the new furniture, or the thoughts racing through my mind the entire time I got ready for bed.
We hadn’t discussed what the sleeping arrangement would be.
Since the day we’d left San Diego, Asa hadn’t done anything beyond stealing a kiss or two and leaving the massive hickey on my neck—even though we’d been sleeping together on the floor every night. It was cozy and comforting sleeping wrapped in Asa’s arms, and the thought of waking up after a nightmare alone didn’t appeal to me—but sleeping in the bed seemed so much more intimate than camping out on the floor. It was a situation that I had no idea how to handle, but once again, I didn’t actually have to handle anything. Asa just stepped in with little fanfare and made the decision for me by stripping down to his boxers and climbing into my bed before I’d finished brushing my teeth.
I felt my hands grow clammy as I took in his broad shoulders and inked skin against my pale blue sheets. Since the hickey incident at IKEA and the subsequent light bulb that went off in my head, I’d been trying to get the courage to start, at the very least, a heavy make out session. Many nights, I was falling asleep with a splitting headache from controlling my emotions all day. I was a mess. It wasn’t helping my nightmares because every time my headaches were at their worst, I was waking up in a cold sweat halfway through the night.
“You coming to bed, Calliope?” he called from the bed, breaking me out of my thoughts but never looking away from the phone in his hands.
I drug my feet across the ugly-as-shit brown shag carpet as I made my way to the bed while I tried to psych myself up. We were just sleeping like we had for the past eight days, right? It was nothing to get all bent out of shape about. Just me and Asa, camping out… but this time with a pillow top mattress and five hundred thread count sheets.
Fuck.
I wasn’t a virgin, and I wasn’t worried about that aspect of our relationship. I also wasn’t freaked out because we were sleeping together—we’d been doing that for over a week. It was the mixture of sleeping together in an actual bed, surrounded by household goods that we’d bought together, and the knowledge that we’d never have to be careful or sneaky about what we were doing. For the first time, I was completely without guidance or rules—and for some reason that made me anxious. Beyond anxious.
“We’re not having sex,” I blurted out as soon as I’d climbed into what I guessed was now “my side” of the bed. Fuck, it was getting weirder by the minute!
“Uh, did I ask for sex?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“No. I mean, well, you seem like you want to and everything, but, no, not tonight. You haven’t said anything tonight,” I was babbling, trying to get my point across, and I was doing what my dad would call a “piss poor” job.
He scooted down in bed and set his phone on the floor, mumbling about how we needed bedside tables, before rolling back toward me and gesturing with his hand.
“Come here, Sugar.”
“Why don’t I just stay here?” I asked, my spine straight as a ruler against the headboard.
“Calliope, it wasn’t a question,” he rumbled back, his voice coming out deeper than it had before.
With a huff that I made sure he heard, I hopped out of bed and shut off the light, then crawled in next to him. As soon as I was within reach, he rolled me to my side and spooned his body against the back of mine.
“We’re not having sex anytime soon, Callie,” he told me gently, and then squeezed his arm around me as I tried to bolt.
“Baby, I’ve got blue balls like you would not believe.” He moved his hips against my ass, grinding for a second until I could feel him, and I held my breath as I waited for what he’d say next, hoping he would keep moving. “You’ve had a ton of shit happen in very little time, Calliope. We’re not gonna add fuckin’ each other’s brains out to that long list of shit.”
He couldn’t see me as I opened my mouth to argue, but he must have felt my head move, because he cut me off before I could say a word.
“Let me finish. I want you like hell on fire—I see you bending over to put shit in cupboards and my dick gets so hard I can’t fuckin’ think straight. But, baby, I don’t wanna fuck you up worse than you’ve already been fucked. Shit is crazy for you right now, and you’re sixteen years old. Sixteen. I’ve known sixteen-year-olds that live with their man and they’re h
appy as hell with that life—but those girls came from shit lives that they were trying to get away from and they were more grown up than most middle-aged men. That’s not you. Less than two weeks ago you were fuckin’ grounded for staying out past your curfew. You had parents that loved you and coddled you.”
By the time he finished speaking, I was pissed. I rolled over and got in his face to bitch at him for making me seem like an immature brat—but I hadn’t counted on the smell of his minty and smoke flavored breath or how close our faces would become. Instead of pitching a fit like I’d intended, I found myself diving toward his mouth as if to prove him wrong.
I licked into his mouth and was instantly wrapped in his arms and rolled so I was on top of him. I thought he was only rolling me off the arm that had become trapped underneath me, so he could use both arms to push me away, but the minute I was on top of him I moved my knees up his sides until I was straddling and grinding into his hips.
I felt the moment he gave up the fight.
It was the same moment that I gained the euphoric feeling of oblivion from everything else.
He growled down my throat as his hands began to move over the curves of my body. One hand slipped inside the t-shirt I was wearing to wrap around my breast and the other slid to the bottom of the shorts I wore to bed. My hands were braced above his shoulders, holding my weight, and I groaned, my elbows almost buckling when his fingers found my nipple and pinched it lightly.
I was a frenzy of movement the more turned on I got, and I arched my hips even harder into his, trying to get the friction I needed—then he made a sound in his throat like I’d punched him. His hands slid out of my shirt, causing me to whimper and push even harder, but he suddenly grabbed my hips and practically shoved me back, ripping his face from mine.
“Jesus Christ, Callie! You’re gonna push my balls into my throat!” he winced, gasping for air.