He turned and walked back into the building as I gaped at his retreating back.
“Don’t forget that his daughter was there, too. Don’t matter how well he knows her, that’s still his blood, yeah?” Poet warned me quietly, patting me on the back as he passed.
It didn’t take ten minutes to leave—it took seven—and by the time we rode out, I’d talked to Cody and found out that brothers from the Sacramento Chapter had already showed up. I heard sirens in the background as he hung up, and I hoped that no one did anything stupid.
I was so scared out of my mind, wondering what shape Callie’d be in when we got there, that I couldn’t focus on anything but that and ended up making the drive on autopilot.
It reminded me so much of another time I’d raced south to get her that it felt like déjà vu.
I just prayed to whoever would hear me, that when I got to her, she wasn’t the girl I’d found hiding in a crawlspace.
Chapter 54
Callie
I walked into the living room to find Cody, Asa, and Slider talking quietly. Asa’s back was to me, so I didn’t say anything as I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. He spun around at my touch and immediately brought both hands to the sides of my head.
“You okay?” he asked fiercely, searching my face.
“Yeah,” I answered seriously, comforted just from having him beneath my hands. “Farrah’s a mess, though. She’s practically comatose.”
“That what the shower was about?”
“She pulled me in there and refused to get in without me,” I told him with a shrug. “We had blood everywhere.”
“Gotta say, that’s always been a fantasy, but that shit was not what I thought it’d be,” he said with a small shake of his head, causing me to choke out a small laugh.
“Yeah, nothing sexy about cleaning blood off,” I told him, my mouth trembling for the first time that night.
“Christ, Callie,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss me softly. “You scared the shit outta me.”
“It scared the shit out of me, too,” I answered as he lifted me and then sat down on the couch, setting me in his lap.
“How’s Farrah?” Slider asked from his perch on the floor. He was sitting against the wall with his elbows resting on bent knees. His eyes were weary as he stared at me, and it was the first time I’d seen any emotion there.
“She’s a wreck.” I told him honestly. “I don’t think seeing you will help.”
“I know,” he answered, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked down at the floor. “Couldn’t stay in Eugene—even if she doesn’t want to see me.”
“I don’t think she’s thinking about you at all,” I told him.
“That’s enough, Callie,” Asa growled behind me.
I nodded and shut my mouth. He was right. Slider was trying to do the right thing, as misguided as it was.
“What happens now?” I asked Asa quietly as I pressed my forehead into the side of his neck.
“Aces have an in with the local police, so it shouldn’t be long before they release Echo’s body,” he rumbled, rubbing my back. “So we’ll be able to have a funeral.”
“What about his family?”
“Didn’t have one, far as I know.”
“I didn’t even know is real name,” I cried softly as I snuggled in closer.
“William.”
“Oh,” I sighed softly. “That’s a good name.”
“Yeah, Sugar, it is,” he confirmed, kissing the side of my face.
“What about the guys who did this?”
“Think we know who it was, not sure yet.”
“They called him Ace,” I told him, pulling my face back to meet his eyes. “Did they think he was you?”
“No. No, Sugar. Is that what you’ve been thinking?” he asked gently.
I nodded, my chin trembling. It had been running through my head the entire night, even though I’d tried to ignore it.
“Baby, we’re Aces. That’s the name of the club. You know that.” He ran a hand down my face. “Echo was on his bike, which meant he was wearing his cut. They knew who he belonged to.”
“Oh,” I sighed in relief and then felt horrible for doing so. “So you joined a club that has almost the same name as you? That’s a weird coincidence.”
Slider barked out a quiet laugh behind me, and I watched Asa’s cheekbones flush.
“Uh. My dad was an Ace, too,” he grumbled. “Wasn’t with my mom for long, so when I was born, she named me Asa.”
“In honor of your dad. That’s kind of cool,” I told him tiredly, laying my head back down.
“Ha. No. More like a reminder,” he snorted, dropping the subject completely as he started talking to the guys.
I lay there silently, feeling his pulse against my forehead as the men spoke around me. A part of me was horrified that Cody had seen so much, but the other part of me thanked God that he’d been there. I didn’t know what I would’ve done without his help, how Farrah and I would have handled the situation ourselves.
I grew more and more weary as I listened to Asa’s voice, and soon I was drifting off to him whispering, “Sleep, Calliope. I’ve got you.”
Chapter 55
Callie
They buried Echo in a cemetery near my neighborhood.
The funeral of an Ace was a thing of beauty. There was no other way to describe it.
Well over a hundred motorcycles escorted the hearse and a limo carrying Farrah, Cody, Gram, and me from the funeral home to the cemetery. Aces from all over the West Coast had showed up to pay their respects, and the roar of Harley pipes was heard from blocks away, rattling window panes and bringing entire families outside their houses to watch us go by.
Farrah had come out of her trance the day after Echo was shot, and I watched her intently for days, waiting for her to crack.
She didn’t.
She was in mourning—there was no doubt of that—but she hadn’t completely lost her shit the way she had a year before. It seemed as if that year with Echo had made her infinitely stronger, because once she was facing a life without him, she seemed to just… accept it.
I didn’t think I’d be able to do what she did. It would have completely broken me if I lost Asa.
The thought that he could be taken from me at any time ran through my mind on a constant loop. I started to hate the club he belonged to, resenting every minute he had to spend there. It was the reason Echo had been gunned down, the reason Asa and I were living apart, and the reason Farrah had been abused for years. It became such a demon in my mind that I couldn’t hear anything about it anymore without inwardly flinching.
I started having nightmares again for the first time in months. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, curled against Asa on the couch, and burrow into him, sometimes waking him up just so I could hear his voice. I no longer dreamed about my parents’ deaths—I dreamed of Asa’s. I barely slept.
A week after Echo’s funeral, I woke up slowly, having gotten only an hour’s worth of sleep the night before. The nightmares had plagued me every time I shut my eyes. They became so vivid that I hadn’t been sure if I was awake or asleep, and had laid on the couch, terrified, as I listened to Asa’s heartbeat.
“Callie Rose, get dressed!” Gram called from the stove. “Need to run a few errands this morning and you’re coming with me.”
I grumbled as I rolled off the couch and onto my hands and knees. “Gah! I feel like shit,” I griped as I dragged myself to my feet.
“Umhmmm,” Gram scoffed from the kitchen.
“Where’s Asa?” I rasped as I walked toward my room.
“Took Farrah to some sort of appointment,” she called back over her shoulder.
God, I was tired. It took me twice as long to get dressed as it usually did, and by the time I made my way back out, Gram was standing at the front door.
“I’m gonna brush my teeth and stuff—I’ll be right out,” I mumbled.
“No!” she snap
ped, and then smiled. “We’re just doing a couple errands. Let’s go.”
I complained in my head as she asked me to drive her to a pharmacy a few blocks away from the apartment, but followed her out of the car when she snapped her fingers at me. Snapped her fingers—like I was a dog. It wasn’t until we were in the tampon aisle that I started to get a little weirded out—she was way past the need for those.
“You need to pick a test,” she told me, pointing to a plethora of pregnancy tests ironically surrounded by condoms. “It’s been a long damn time since I’ve been pregnant, and we didn’t use these things.”
I gaped at her, shocked silent as she watched me through narrowed eyes.
“Well?”
“Um…” I looked back and forth between the tests and Gram, completely at a loss for words.
“I’m guessing you and Asa haven’t been very careful,” she commented, looking over her glasses at me. “I’m pretty sure you’re pregnant.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked, licking my suddenly dry lips.
“Because you’re tired all the time, you’re barely eating, and you look like you have four boobs under that shirt because your bra is too small,” she told me matter-of-factly as I looked down at my four breasts.
“Oh,” I sighed. “Yeah. Maybe we should grab one… since we’re already here.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for the ten minutes we’ve been standing here, Calliope,” she answered as she bent over and picked up a lime-green package of ribbed condoms. “Hmm, interesting.”
“Oh. My. God,” I mumbled, my face flushing as I reached out to grab the closest test. “This one will work!”
“Well, that one doesn’t detect pregnancy early like that one right there,” she argued, pointing at a test that cost twice as much. “You should probably get the early one.”
“Okay, I’ll get this one then.” I picked up a different test.
“No, that one next to it has two tests in one box—in case you drop the first one in the toilet or something.”
“Gram, do you just want to choose?” I asked her, frustrated.
“Oh, fine.” She grabbed the box she wanted off the shelf and turned her back on me, walking toward the front of the store as I scrambled to put all the discarded tests back in their proper places.
We made our way to the car in silence as my mind raced. Asa and I hadn’t been trying to get pregnant—but we hadn’t been not trying, either. The condom situation had been pretty hit or miss for the past year, but I’d never gotten pregnant, so I’d just assumed that I wouldn’t. Asa was only visiting once every six weeks or so, and I knew that the timing had to be just right for conception.
I couldn’t decide if I was really freaked out or really excited.
Gram didn’t have any more errands that day—she’d just wanted me to go with her to the drug store. The sneaky old broad. We drove straight back to the apartment while I held an almost transparent grocery bag in my hands with the pregnancy test’s bright pink lettering mocking me through the side of the bag.
I really hoped that no one was home when we got there—I wasn’t sure how I could hide it.
I breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled into my parking lot and Asa’s bike was still gone. I only had to worry about Cody, who I’d assumed had been out on his morning run when Gram and I had left. I didn’t know how he could stand to go running after sleeping on the floor all night.
My house was beginning to feel like a train station with all of the people staying in it—sleeping on every available surface.
When we walked into the apartment, my brother was sitting on the couch watching television, so I discreetly tucked the test into my armpit and called out a hello as I rushed to the bathroom.
“Where’d you guys go?” I heard him ask Gram, but I slammed the bathroom door before I heard her answer.
I had to pee so bad that I danced around the bathroom as I pulled the test out, not bothering to read the directions before plopping myself on the toilet. When I was done, I stayed where I was as I set the test on the rim of the bathtub and pulled out the directions.
So I was sitting on the toilet, my pants around my ankles, and my un-brushed teeth making my mouth taste like shit when I found out I was going to become a mother.
Chapter 56
Callie
Gram was standing outside the bathroom door when I opened it, her eyes wide in question.
“We need to go to the grocery store for supplies.” I told her quietly, biting the inside of my cheek.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I murmured, holding out the test.
“Okay, let me get my billfold and we’ll go now,” she told me with a nod, reaching forward to kiss my head. “But brush your teeth first.”
I’d seen movies and read books where the main character would wait days, or even weeks, to tell her man that she was pregnant. She’d hem and haw about the right time, as if waiting would somehow lead her to a favorable reaction. I didn’t feel that way. Not at all.
I was bursting at the seams to tell Asa. I wasn’t worried about his reaction, or waiting until the perfect time to tell him. I just wanted him to know. I wanted to share it.
But there were a few things I had to do first.
There was a tradition in my family that had started with Gram. She was probably one of those women who prayed for a favorable reaction, and went out of her way to make sure the scene was set perfectly, before telling her husband she was pregnant. My grandfather had been an asshole. But when it came time for my mom to tell my dad about me, she’d followed in Gram’s footsteps and cooked him his favorite dinner, setting the table with her best dishes and lighting candles, even though she knew my dad would be over the moon with excitement.
Asa’s favorite dinner was my Gram’s homemade spaghetti recipe with a side of green beans cooked with little bits of bacon, and I was going to make it for him.
Our trip to the grocery store took longer than I expected because Gram had wanted to look at all of the new gadgets in the baby department. I would’ve thought she’d be pissed that I was barely nineteen and having a baby, but if she was she didn’t let on. She treated me like any other expectant mother, cooing at pacifiers shaped like butterflies and bitching about the price of diapers.
By the time we got home it was late afternoon, and I was worried about how I’d get everyone out of the house so Asa and I could have dinner alone. We hadn’t had any time to ourselves in so long that dinner together felt like a novelty, and I’d begun to wish that everyone would go home and leave us alone. I also didn’t want there to be an audience when I gave him the news. He deserved to be able to react however he needed to without having to worry about what everyone was thinking. Besides, the moment I told him the news should be just for us.
I’d just started unpacking the groceries when Farrah burst into the apartment with Asa following behind her. He looked tired and annoyed and I wondered what appointment had taken so long that they’d been gone most of the day.
“I got a tattoo,” she told me bluntly, pulling a banana off the bunch and peeling it quickly.
“A piercing, too, I see,” I commented, eyeballing the septum piercing that hadn’t been in her nose the night before.
“Yup!” she answered around the huge piece of banana she was practically inhaling. “Goes with the tattoo.”
I looked her over but couldn’t see the tattoo anywhere. When she caught my gaze, she tapped on the back of her neck.
“It’s on my neck. Hurt like a bitch, but it looks awesome. I’ll show it to you later after I take the bandage off.”
“Okay,” I replied slowly, watching her carefully. I hadn’t heard any mention of a tattoo before she went out and got it done, and I wondered what had led her to wake up that morning and permanently ink her body.
“Hey, Sugar,” Asa murmured as he strode into the kitchen, completely ignoring Farrah as he stepped past her. “You making dinner?”
“Yep,” I told him quietly, leaning up to kiss his lips.
“Callie, what are we having for dinner?” Cody called from the couch, making me clench my teeth.
“I’m making spaghetti and green beans,” I called flatly, turning toward the counter as Gram walked out of my bedroom.
“My favorite,” Asa mentioned with a smile, patting me on the ass.
“Cody and Farrah, we’re going out to eat, get your shoes on,” Gram ordered at the same time.
My brother, who had been leisurely strolling into the already crowded kitchen, stopped abruptly, his mouth dropping in surprise as his eyes narrowed. “Oh, hell no.”
“Not another word out of your mouth, Cody Daniel,” Gram snapped at him, stopping in front of him to push him toward the door with both hands on his belly. “We’re gonna give them some time alone.”
“I’m hungry as hell; I don’t care where we eat,” Farrah piped in, completely oblivious to the undertones in our conversation as she walked toward the front door. “Take your time, kids. I’ll take Gram to the bar after dinner!”
I was strung tight as a wire by the time the door closed behind them, and I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to keep my mouth shut until I had dinner at the counter. I really wished we had an actual kitchen table, but I was willing to improvise.
“Why don’t you take a shower, and by the time you’re done, I’ll have dinner in the oven,” I told him brightly as I poured noodles into water boiling on the stove.
“Don’t need a shower, took one before we left, and I’ve been sitting on my ass all day while Farrah fucked around at the tattoo parlor,” he grumbled, sitting down at the counter. “That girl is gonna lose it soon.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing huge, she just seems like she’s strung tight as hell, and she’s trying to find a way to let off some steam.” He shook his head. “You better watch out for that brother of yours.”
“Gross!” I snapped, pulling hamburger out of the fridge. “Cody wouldn’t do that. He knows Farrah’s having a hard time.”