“You getting payback?”
“Payback?” I laughed a little. “You mean am I going to take care of it? Yeah.”
“Take me with you,” he demanded earnestly. “That’s my sister. Those were my parents. Take me with you.”
I stared at him for a moment and realized that the kid I remembered—all big feet and arms that were too long for his body—had turned into something entirely different. He was a man. When the hell had that happened?
He looked like a backroom brawler, cleaned up in Ivy League clothes.
“Your sister would kill me,” I mumbled, aware of Gram’s eyes on the back of my head.
“My sister isn’t even talking to you,” he replied bluntly, making me want to punch him in the fucking mouth.
“You okay with this?” I asked Gram, turning my back on Cody.
“He’s an adult,” she murmured, looking up at Cody and then back at the bread she was wrapping. “He can make his own choices. Don’t put me in the middle of it.”
How the fuck I ended up riding to Eugene with Cody following behind me in a piece of shit rental, I will never understand.
And once we were there, he made himself known. He joked with Slider and Poet like they were his best friends, and in doing so, bought himself the respect of every member in the clubhouse that night. It was insane, but I was too wrapped up in my own shit to give a fuck.
Missing Callie was like missing a limb. It still felt like she was there, and at times I’d reach for her as I slept, or pick up the phone to call her, and in a rush of clarity realize I couldn’t. I’d spent so much time waiting on her and working toward our life together, that I didn’t know what to fucking do with myself once she was gone.
The boys and I headed down to San Diego that week, using Cody as a sneak to find out what was going down with the Jimenez brothers. He had contacts all over the fucking place, and I had no clue how, because he’d been going to school out of state for the past ten years. However he found them, I couldn’t argue that the guy wasn’t effective. He knew shit before the rest of us did, and he could move in and out of places like no one I’d ever seen.
He just seemed to blend into the crowd, wherever we were, and fucking disappear. You could be looking right at him and still not see him. It was weird as hell.
We used his contacts to find out where the big dogs were having their weekly meeting, and sure as shit, we found them in a warehouse so far south that it may as well have been in Mexico. They didn’t expect us, and not even one of them had the time to rise from his seat around the poker table before he was dead.
“Don’t fuck with my family,” Slider mumbled, leading us back out of the warehouse and onto our bikes. “Good work, kid.”
Cody lifted his chin in reply, but I could tell by the wild look in his eyes that he was about to lose his shit.
“Lock it down, little brother,” I warned him, grabbing the back of his neck and giving it a squeeze. “All over now. Callie’s safe and you got what you came for.”
He nodded a few times, climbed on the bike he’d bought from one of the brothers, and slid on his helmet. The little shit was going to keep his cool. Thank fuck.
“Hey,” Poet called as he climbed on his bike and motioned toward Cody with his chin. “Name’s Casper. Kid moves like a fuckin’ ghost.”
We headed home that night, not stopping longer than it took to refuel. I was surprised when Cody didn’t take the exit when we rolled through Sacramento, but it wasn’t like I could ask him about it. I’d wanted to stop and see Will on the way through, but I was afraid that it hadn’t been long enough between visits, and I didn’t want to upset Callie by stopping in when I wasn’t expected.
The doctors had told Gram that they thought Callie had PTSD. They weren’t sure what the cause was, she’d refused to talk to them about it, but the rest of us knew exactly when it had started. Thankfully, she’d found a doctor that week before I left that she liked enough to start telling her story. I only hoped that the guy would be able to help her, because time kept passing and I didn’t know how long I would be able to live the way we were without losing my mind.
I spent the next months the way I had years before, working as much as I could and taking any time I had to drive to Sacramento. But those days, I was seeing my son. He was growing fast, and every time I saw him, he’d know more words that he’d recite to me like a little dictionary. It was cute as shit, and I wished that I could joke with Callie about it.
I hadn’t seen her in months because anytime I went to spend time with Will, he was at Gram’s when I got there, and Callie was locked firmly in her apartment until I was gone.
I’d promised to give her space, but that didn’t mean I liked it, and one of the hardest days came almost nine months later. Poet’s daughter Brenna had come home one day out of nowhere, and she’d brought a kid with her that looked exactly like Dragon. I tried to stay out of their shit—it wasn’t any of my business how they chose to deal with things—but fuck if they didn’t keep pulling me back in.
One afternoon, I stopped by the house and found Cody sitting outside while the house was quiet. He hadn’t felt comfortable enough to check on Brenna that entire morning, but the silence had finally made him anxious enough to unlock the front door and step inside.
I was right behind him when we’d found her, and the swelling on her cheek took me instantly back to a different time and place, filling me with rage. She’d calmed me down as best she could, and proceeded to tell her pop, Vera, and me the entire story. I’d understood it. I’d understood how it could have happened the way she said it had, but I hadn’t been able to clear the red haze from my vision. Dragon had hit a woman I’d thought of as a little sister, and I’d wanted to fucking kill him.
But the time I’d wanted to hold Callie the worst, the time I’d had to give my bike keys to Tommy so I wouldn’t be tempted to climb on and drive to her, was the day we’d found Brenna beaten bloody by her ex-husband and Cody shot in the shoulder, lying in the doorway of her house. He’d been trying to protect her.
I’d thought they were dead when we’d found them. For a guilty second, I’d thanked God that it wasn’t Callie—that she’d survived and was somewhere in Sacramento living her life—even if that life didn’t include me.
I’d felt so guilty for bringing Cody into the mess he was in, that it took me three tries to get up the nerve to call Rose that night, letting her know what was happening. She’d taken the news well, like I hadn’t just told her that her grandson had been shot, and I was amazed all over again at the strength of that woman. But even as I spoke to her, worried about her reaction, I was still fucked up enough to be disappointed when I didn’t hear Callie’s voice in the background as Rose thanked me for telling her and hung up the phone.
I’d wanted Callie so bad that night. I’d wanted her to come to me and run her fingers through my hair so I knew that she was okay. I’d needed to know that she was safe.
But I forced myself not to contact her—because if she was getting better, and she needed time away from me, I was going to give her that.
Chapter 75
Callie
It was almost a year after I’d told Asa that I couldn’t be with him anymore, and I was finally ready to speak with him again.
My time in therapy had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I’d probably never be able to go without it. I’d had a lot of guilt hanging over me from my parents’ deaths, and though it wasn’t going away, with Dr. Howell’s help, it was getting easier to understand and manage.
Dr. Howell was an old, grizzled war veteran, and I’d liked him instantly when we’d met. He not only told dirty jokes when he knew I needed to take a step back for a few minutes, but he also knew how guilt and blame could royally fuck up someone’s life—he’d lived through it when he came back from Vietnam.
I learned to let things out, and we worked on facing my demons head-on in a way that I’d never let myself do before. He’d told me something, and
I’m sure he’d stolen it from someone else because he was always quoting self-help calendars and coffee mugs, “Demons come out in the dark because they’re afraid of the light. We need to smash those motherfuckers to smithereens with light.” Okay, I’m pretty sure he paraphrased, but the result was the same.
We brought everything out into the open.
I was ashamed that I’d blamed Asa and the club for a lot of things that they couldn’t have changed, but I finally understood that my jumbled emotions had been totally normal.
My life had been a series of unfortunate events for a long time, starting with my decision to sneak out of my house to go to a party and ending when I’d kicked Asa out of my life completely. Looking back, I don’t know that I would have been able to get my shit together, knowing that he was there to protect me. It would’ve been too easy for me to slide back into old habits.
I’d wondered for a long time if my relationship with Asa had been a fluke. That maybe I’d felt so deeply for him because he’d saved me and for no other reason. It had become an almost unbearable fear—that our love wasn’t real—and I hadn’t been able to get it out of my mind until I’d worked on it for weeks with Dr. Howell.
I learned something during those weeks when we did exercise after exercise helping me discover and understand my feelings.
I loved Asa. Loved him. It had nothing to do with how he could protect me, or some sense of indebtedness.
Take everything else away, until there was just Asa and Callie, and I still loved him with an intensity that bordered on madness.
A few months after Cody had been shot, I found myself with just enough cash to drive to Oregon and I used it. I was pissed at my brother for refusing to come to California to see me, and worried that he wasn’t taking care of himself. I needed to get him away from the Aces, back to the school he’d ditched, and away from a life that would get him shot.
I was also irrationally pissed that Asa hadn’t come for me yet. I’d asked him for time, but he’d seemed content to give it to me, and as time passed, I worried that he wasn’t coming back. I was livid that he wasn’t fighting for me, angry that he’d given up so easily. Dr. Howell would’ve had a field day with that information, but we hadn’t yet touched on the difficulties I had controlling my anger.
I got there and made my way inside with few problems, but within minutes of my arrival, the love of my life was walking out the front doors shouting at me.
And after a spectacular fight with Asa in front of close to thirty bikers and their old ladies, he threw me over his shoulder and stalked past everyone into his room.
He dropped me onto the bed and took a weary step back. “Where’s Will?”
“I left him with Gram,” I answered softly with a shake of my head. “I didn’t think it would be a good situation to bring him into.”
“What the hell were you thinking, Callie?” he asked dejectedly as he ran his hand through his hair.
I stared at him, up close for the first time in months, and I couldn’t stop the words that came pouring out of my mouth. “I love you!” I shouted. “You don’t call me baby. Why were you calling me baby? You call me Sugar.”
His body went completely still. “What did you just say to me?”
“You don’t call me baby. You call me Sugar.”
“Before that, Calliope,” he rumbled, his hands dropping to fists at his sides.
“I love you. I know that now.”
“Oh, you know that now, huh?” he asked gently.
I nodded quickly, pulling myself up on my knees.
“Well, I knew it before,” he replied, shaking his head as he ran his hand down his beard. “I can’t do this with you, Sugar.”
“I love you. I love you and I want to be a family.” I reached toward him in frustration, but fell back and started to cry at the anguish on his face. He was backing away. He didn’t want me. All of my anger left me in an instant, replaced by fear and desperation. “I’m better! I promise! I’ll do better! I miss you so much.”
“I know you’re doing better,” he told me softly, coming back to reach his hand out and wipe the tears off my face. “You’re doing so good, Calliope. But I can’t be the reason that you slide back into that shit.”
“You won’t!” I pleaded. “It didn’t have anything to do with you!”
“Bullshit, Callie,” he shot back, walking toward the door. “You couldn’t even fuckin’ look at me.”
He was almost out the door when I desperately shouted the one thing I’d promised I’d never reveal to him.
“I blamed you!” I yelled, watching his back snap straight. “I blamed you, and that’s what made everything worse.”
“All this time?” He turned to me. “All this time I’ve been trying to build a life with you, wrestling with my own shit over what went down with your parents, knowing that there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could change…All this time you’ve been blaming me and never said a goddamn word?”
His voice was shallow, and the pain in his eyes made me feel like I was going to vomit.
“I didn’t think about it,” I sniffled, and he turned to walk out the door.
“I didn’t think about it, because if I thought about how I blamed you, I could ignore how I blamed me,” I whispered, scratching at one of my arms with my short fingernails.
It was silent in the room for long moments as I wondered how I’d managed to fuck up so badly. I’d used a taser to make my way into a gated compound, shouted like a maniac for my brother who ended up not even being there, and convinced the love of my life that I blamed him for my parents’ deaths.
I was scratching faster, tears blurring my eyes, when I felt a warm hand cover mine.
“Stop scratching, Sugar,” he murmured soothingly. “Gonna break the skin, you keep doing that.”
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I know it wasn’t your fault. I know that now. I know it wasn’t your fault. I was a mess, but I always loved you. I never lied about that. That was always true.”
“I know, baby, I know,” he murmured, sitting down and pulling me into his lap.
“Don’t call me baby!” I wailed, making him chuckle a little. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“Not laughing at you,” he commented, pulling my face up to his. “I’ve called you baby before, you crazy broad. Just call you Sugar more. You don’t want me to call you sweetheart, yeah?”
“No,” I said forcefully, the memory of Deke still making my skin crawl.
“Okay, then you get Sugar or baby when I’m loving on you. Callie when I need to say your name and Calliope when I need to make sure you’re paying attention,” he told me with a smile, leaning down to run his nose along mine.
“Okay,” I whispered into his mouth. “I love you. I’m sorry.”
“We’ve both been blaming ourselves for shit that has no blame,” he told me seriously. “No more telling me you’re sorry, Calliope.”
“I’m paying attention.”
“I know you are. No more telling me you’re sorry. No more saying sorry, period. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He leaned down a fraction of an inch to run his tongue lightly over my bottom lip. “We’re moving on from here.”
“Just like that?”
“I’ve been waiting for a year for you to come back to me. Not wasting any more time.”
“I’ve been waiting a year to come back to you, too.”
He groaned deep in his throat and kissed me hard, his tongue thrusting into my mouth.
“No more running, no more hiding,” he ordered as he pulled back and lifted my shirt over my head. “We’ll deal with shit as it comes—and you’re gonna find a shrink up here.”
“Okay,” I whimpered as he pulled off my bra. “I promise.”
He stood from the bed and ripped his cut and t-shirt off, throwing them across the room as he undid his belt buckle. “And you’re growing your hair back out,” he insisted, pointing his finger at me. “Your hair is goddamn shorter than mine.”
I laughed a little, feeling lighter than I could ever remember. “Farrah wanted to try something new.” I gasped as he pulled my pants and underwear down my legs, cursing when he couldn’t get them past my boots.
“Next time, tell Farrah to fuck off,” he mumbled as he tore at my boots, finally pulling them off my feet along with my pants.
“Fuck me, Calliope,” he swore and paused with his hands at the front of his pants, staring down at me. “It’s been so damn long.”
“Over three years,” I murmured back, scooting myself up the bed with a sultry smile on my face. “What are you waiting for?”
He was out of his pants and on top of me before I could stop giggling at the shock on his face.
“Your body’s so fuckin’ soft,” he murmured against my breast before pulling my nipple into his mouth. “Your tits are bigger.”
“Yeah, that and a few other things,” I moaned as his hand ran down between my legs.
“Oh yeah, what else?” he asked seriously, his hand stopping right above where I needed him.
“My ass, my thighs, my waist,” I answered in annoyance, moving my hips against his hand.
He leaned back on his heels between my legs, and I almost screamed in frustration at the break in contact.
“Don’t look any different here,” he murmured, running his fingers over my belly, “Except for these little marks that prove you carried my son.”
He scooted back even further as I watched his face go soft.
“These too?” he asked, wrapping his hands around my thighs. He glanced up at me, and at my nod, gave them a squeeze. “Can still almost wrap my hands around them, Sugar. And they’re unbelievable, because they point to my favorite place. You know where that is, yeah?”
I nodded again, my eyes blurry with tears as he catalogued my body with gentle hands and softer words. His hand ran up the inside of my thigh until his fingers were rubbing gently over my clit. “Favorite place,” he murmured again. “Where were we? Right, your ass.”
He pulled my leg over his lap and flipped me over before running his hands over my ass.