“She’s not dead?” she asked, looking at me like I’d just invented the fucking moon.
I reached up and put my hands on both sides of her face. I knew it was fucked up, but I loved the way she was looking at me. Like I’d give her anything. I was sure I was going to hell, and the whole situation was total shit, but I was soaking up the fact that she needed me. Shit, no one had ever needed me like she did right then—and I knew it wouldn’t last long, but for just a few more minutes she was completely mine. I put my face close and ran my nose up the side of hers, wanting to kiss her but knowing it sure as fuck wasn’t the right time.
“No, baby. She’s waiting for you.”
Chapter 11
Callie
The ride to Gram’s house was a blur of anticipation and apprehension that I had a hard time remembering. After Asa grabbed a clean shirt from his saddle bags and slipped it on, we left my house behind. I didn’t realize it would be the last time I’d ever step foot in the house I’d grown up in, but even had I known that I wouldn’t have looked back. Any good memories I had there couldn’t overpower the almost twenty-four hours of horror I had gone through.
Being out in the open on the back of a bike was the very last thing I wanted to do, but Asa said he’d protect me, and for some reason I believed him. I clutched his waist with my arms, my nails digging into his hard abdomen the entire way, but he didn’t make any complaints or ask me to loosen my grip. Every once in a while he’d rest one of his hands on mine, rubbing it softly before putting it back up on his handlebars. I timed the ride by the motion of his hands, waiting patiently for him to do it again and again until we got to Gram’s.
When we pulled up to the house, I felt the blood drain out of my face as I noticed a large black SUV sitting in the carport behind Gram’s little Mazda. Asa’s hand went back to mine as we rolled to a stop, watching as Gram and four scary looking men walked out her front door to stand on the little porch. It took me just seconds to realize that they were wearing the same leather vest as Asa, but that didn’t calm my anxiety at all when I saw the way they were standing around my grandmother.
Asa lifted his chin to the men as he turned off the bike and the two men with us climbed off of theirs. He sat patiently, waiting for me to climb down so he could follow me, but I didn’t move except to push my face into the leather on his back. I didn’t think I could face any more, I’d reached my limit hours before and I was barely hanging on to any semblance of sanity.
I didn’t see Gram take a step toward me, or the man with the long silver beard put his hand on her arm to stop her. I didn’t see him lean down to whisper something in her ear, and I didn’t see her glare at him but stay where she was. The only thing I was aware of, the only thing I could focus on, was the man in front of me gently petting my hand and talking in a low voice before he tried to climb off the bike.
He pried my fingers from his shirt and swung off the bike before I could grab a hold of him again. I wasn’t prepared to lose the connection, and I made a desperate noise deep in my throat as he moved away. I reached for him, scrambling for purchase as I scratched the leather of his vest, but it was only seconds before he turned and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me toward him. In my haste to get to him, I pushed off on the bike, almost tipping it over before his dark haired friend caught it. I was oblivious to the chaos I was causing in my rush.
By the time I was wrapped securely around him, my heart had stopped beating in my ears like a drum, and I felt like I could breathe again. I hated myself for being so afraid, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was so overpowering that I couldn’t feel anything else. I wanted Gram so badly. I wanted her to rock me and tell me that everything was okay, but the thought of going anywhere near those men surrounding her made me feel like I might lose control of my bladder again.
Thankfully, Asa must have known that going any closer would completely unhinge me, so he stayed standing by the bike, rubbing my back and speaking softly in my ear.
“I know you’re scared, baby, but those are my guys. Nobody here is gonna hurt you. They’re here to protect you. Understand, Sugar? You’re safe. Safer than you’ve ever been,” he soothed me, never moving except to nuzzle his nose against my ear. “You wanna go inside, sweetheart?”
I tightened my legs around his waist in reply, and he used one hand to boost me higher on his chest before speaking again.
“I won’t put you down. But you gotta tell me what you need. Can’t stand here all night, sweetheart.” He paused, waiting for a reply. “What d’you wanna do, Callie?”
“I want my Gram,” I whimpered, understanding what he was telling me but still unable to let go of him and go to her myself.
“Okay, baby. You just hold on to me. I’ll bring you to your Gram,” he assured me, squeezing once before starting toward the front door.
“Poet!” he called out above my head. “You’re scaring the fuck outta her. Take a step back so I can get her in the house, would ya?”
I felt him moving, but refused to open my eyes as he carried me into the house. His chin bumped into my head as he nodded at someone, and before I knew what was happening, he had unwound my legs from his waist and flopped down hard on the couch so I was straddling him. When the couch shifted, telling me that someone had sat down beside us, I lifted my head and met the eyes of my grandmother just inches from mine.
I fucking lost it.
I was off Asa and between the two of them in an instant, my head buried in my Gram’s chest and my arms wrapped around her waist, sobbing like a child. I was so filled with relief that I was finally with her that I couldn’t even catch my breath. I knew then that everything would be okay. She was the comfort I needed when my entire world was falling apart, and as much as I was thankful to Asa, he could never give me what I gained in one second with her. I was her baby and she loved me without reservation, giving me the strength to finally all at once snap out of the fog I’d been in.
“Gram—” I moaned into her chest.
“It’s all going to be okay, darlin’. Everything’s gonna be just fine now. I’ve got you, sweet girl. I’ve got you,” she told me as she rocked, tears streaming down her face.
When I’d finally calmed and was resting quietly in Gram’s arms, I let my mind wander to where I hadn’t let it go all day. I’m not sure how I’d kept myself from rolling it over and over in my head, but I think, maybe, the human brain can only take so much before it just stops. It’s a defense mechanism that when available, can stop a person right at the edge of sanity, keeping them from falling off the edge. Once I’d selfishly given Gram some of my grief, there was finally room for me to think of it. There was finally enough courage for me to wonder and ask for answers.
“Gram,” I called, my body bracing as if preparing for a blow, “is Cody okay?”
Chapter 12
Callie
Once Gram had calmed my immediate fears about Cody, I was able to pull myself together a little and sit up. I hadn’t consciously realized that Asa had pulled my legs onto his lap as I was cuddling Gram, but when I pulled away to set my feet on the floor, I was instantly aware of the absence of his hands rubbing my calves.
He’d been rubbing my legs the entire time, and I felt a little off kilter that I hadn’t noticed his touch until it was gone. It was bizarre. I’d seen my parents do it, little touches on the back or leg that the other didn’t even seem to notice, but I’d never reached that point with any of my boyfriends. I’d always felt their touch keenly, as if I was waiting to jump out of my skin at the lightest brush of their fingers. I knew him so little, yet it was almost like I expected his touch, feeling out of sorts when we weren’t connected. I told myself it was the situation we were in and tried to ignore the panic and guilt that flared in my belly.
I needed to get my shit together, but still felt like I was seeing and hearing things in a fog when Gram stood up and pulled me to the kitchen table. She was so much more comfortable in the kitchen that I didn’t p
rotest when she sat me down and started puttering around. As she pulled ingredients for whatever she planned on cooking out of the fridge, she explained how she’d talked to Cody’s school that morning on the phone and was waiting for them to call her back with his flight information. My brother was coming home for the first time in months, and the thought of him walking into the mess I was in made me feel like ants were crawling all over my skin.
She was still talking to me in her no-nonsense voice, getting things done even though it felt as if the world was crashing down around us, when the men in the living room started migrating to the kitchen table. Exactly where I was sitting. My body froze, the hand scratching the invisible ants pausing with my nails still embedded in my skin until I felt a familiar hand at the back of my neck.
“Stop scratching, Sugar,” he whispered into my hair as he reached down to pull my hand away from my arm. He leaned down until his lips were close to my ear, and I closed my eyes as I felt his breath. “You’re gonna make your arm bleed. Nothin’s crawling on you, nothin’s itching. Keep those hands off your arms.”
I felt him stand up straight behind me, so I opened my eyes and stared at the table, trying desperately to keep my hands from scratching.
“Rose, I know you got a lot of shit—excuse my language—a lot of stuff going on right now, but we gotta figure out how we’re gonna keep Callie safe,” Asa rumbled behind me, sliding his hand across my neck as he sat down in the chair to my right. “She’s not safe here.”
“Well, you boys are here now, right? Your friend Poet here said we were fine as long as you were here,” Gram replied, turning from the biscuit dough she had on the counter to face Asa.
As they spoke, the men sat around the table, filling up three of Gram’s six white chairs until only the one closest to Gram was empty. The other three leaned up against the walls, watching the scene unfold with little expression on their faces.
“That is true,” the man across from me answered Gram, his accent startling me into looking up. When my gaze landed on his face, he was watching Asa and me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. “But we’re not from around here. Can’t stay here forever.”
“Asa—” I asked in a panic, swiveling my head to look at him.
The man across the table choked on his coffee at my outburst, his eyes shifting between Asa and me.
Both Asa and Gram started to reply, but the man waved his hand in the air as if to cut them off, and surprisingly, even Gram stopped speaking. I wasn’t sure what about him garnered such respect, but I could tell that he was the leader of the group. He had to be a little older than my dad, judging by the white beard that hung down his chest, but he definitely wasn’t as old as my Gram. There was something about him, though; something about the way he held himself, or the look in his eyes that told me he’d seen a lot of the world and very little of it was pretty.
“Before you start bitchin’, give me a chance to introduce myself,” he told the room before moving his eyes back to me. “I’m Poet. Sorry to meet ya under these circumstances, but not sorry to meet ya,” he said gently, and his face transformed into something so tender that I felt a lump form in my throat and had a hard time keeping my tears at bay.
“Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to leave you to the wolves here, darlin’. I can see that you and Grease have something going on and I doubt he’d leave ya even if I told him to. But he can’t stay here and neither can you.”
His words were like a bomb dropped in the middle of the room, and for a minute everyone was silent. I was trying to grasp the implications of his words, but I just couldn’t figure out what he meant. I couldn’t stay there? In Gram’s house? In San Diego? What was he trying to tell me?
Gram eventually found her voice, and when she spoke, it was harder than I’d ever heard from her before. “What do you mean she can’t stay here? She’s sixteen years old! Where else would she go?”
“I mean that it’s not going to be safe for her in San Diego. These boys don’t mess around, and they’re just enough of a pain in the ass that we have to keep an eye on them,” Poet replied calmly, not diffusing the tense situation at all.
“She’s mine,” Asa finally spoke up, his hand tightening on the back of my neck. “They won’t touch her if I claim her. Not if we make sure they know she’s off limits.”
The faces around the room showed shock as what he said sunk in, but I didn’t understand the weight of his words. It seemed as if I was the only one waiting for a punch line, or an explanation, because even Gram had an understanding look on her face as she watched Asa closely.
“Boyo, you sure you wanna go there? You need to think this through,” Poet warned in a low voice, further confusing me. “Even if she’s yours, accidents fuckin’ happen. She’d still need to go north, if not to the compound then at least to Sac where we’ve got boys.”
“I’m fuckin’ sure,” he answered, his words almost echoing in the silence of the room. It was then that I understood that something big was happening, even if I wasn’t sure yet what it was. Asa had used a swear word without once apologizing to my Gram.
He didn’t sound like my Asa.
He sounded like the man they called Grease.
Chapter 13
Grease
Callie was practically falling asleep at the table after dinner, but refused to go to bed no matter how much Rose bitched at her. It was kind of cute how she squeezed her lips into a stubborn line and refused to leave my side, but her eyes were so swollen and red from crying all day that it looked painful to blink. I was trying to figure out how I could get her to go to bed when Poet cleared his throat from across the table and motioned with his head for me to follow him outside. Problem solved. I thought maybe if I wasn’t sitting right next to her, she’d at least get some pajamas on. Shit, did I even pack her pajamas? I stood up from the table, putting my hand on Callie’s shoulder when she tried to follow me.
“You stay here, sweetheart,” I told her as I shook my head. Shit, she was looking at me like I’d kicked her. I wasn’t sure how to keep her from freaking out—she looked like she was ready to climb me like a tree again—so I pulled her chair out and crouched down in front of her. Her hands were folded in her lap, and looking down I could see that her knuckles had turned white from how tight she was gripping them. Poor baby. It was going to take a long fucking time before she felt secure, if she ever did again.
“Gotta talk to Poet for a minute—you go get ready for bed and I’ll be back in a couple minutes, yeah?” I told her softly, rubbing her cheek with my thumb. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and for the first time I saw that she had a few little zits on her chin. For some reason that little imperfection, a sign of her age, made her even sexier. “Go get ready for bed, baby,” I repeated, watching her face until she gave a little nod.
Outside with Poet, I pulled a pack of smokes from my pocket and lit one up. I loved the first scent, that first deep inhale of a freshly lit cigarette. There wasn’t anything better. Poet was standing at the end of the trailer, leaning against the metal siding while he smoked his own cigarette, and I braced myself as I walked toward him. He wasn’t pissed, I could tell that much, but he also wasn’t happy with what was going down. Before I even reached him, he started speaking.
“That little girl is beautiful, I’ll give you that,” he told me with a nod, not even looking in my direction.
“It’s not about that. But yeah, she is.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with the conversation, but I didn’t want him to think my decision was about ass. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to take care of her, but it went far beyond trying to get in her pants.
“You’re young, boy. You got your whole life ahead of ya, and so does that girl in there,” he rumbled, and by the tone of his voice I knew to keep my mouth shut because he was just getting started. “Girl’s not even seventeen years old. I know she’s got some sort of savior complex going on, and I get it. It’s not uncommon; I’ve had to deal with that shit a few ti
mes in my life. But changing your life for her, claiming her when shit’s out of control the way it is—it’s not gonna end well. She’s gonna get over this. She’s gonna move on with her life, and where’s that gonna leave you?”
“I don’t know,” I replied quietly, his words something I’d thought of already.
“You’re an adult. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, I just want you to think with something other than your dick for two seconds and tell me where you think this is going.”
“Can’t explain it, Poet. There’s something about her. I know she’s young, and shit is insane for her right now—”
“She’s not the only one who’s young, boyo.”
“I know that, too. But whatever the fuck this is, it’s strong. She’s mine. She’s been mine since she crawled across the floor and grabbed a hold of me at that party. It just is.” I had a hard time explaining what was going through my head because I couldn’t even figure that shit out. I wanted to take care of her, and as fucked up as it was, I wanted her to need me.
“Brenna’s mom wasn’t much older than Callie when we hooked up,” he mumbled, looking up at the sky. “I knew she was too young for me, but fuck, when she looked at me I felt like a fuckin’ superhero. So I took her, in more ways than one. I soaked that shit up, reveled in it. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but fuck, the way she looked at me?” he shook his head. “It was like nothing I’d ever had before. So I get it. What you’re doing. Just be careful, yeah? Woman like that’s got the power to fuck up your life.”
“Not sure how careful I can be,” I admitted, putting out my smoke on the bottom of my boot.
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment before casually putting out his cigarette with his fingertips. Fucking crazy bastard. “How the hell did you get into her house? I figured cops would be swarming the place.”