Craving Redemption

  “Grease, sit your ass down,” Poet called with no inflection in his voice, and it was scary, because Asa immediately sat.

  “Girl, none of this was your doing. If anything, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Why did people keep saying that to me? “We had business with Jose—the man who had you at the house. When Grease went to take care of that business, Jose decided to be a dick. You with me so far, darlin’?”

  I nodded slowly as I waited to hear the rest of the story. I needed to know.

  “When Grease took you outta that house after—well, let’s just say they put more importance on you than they should have.” I flinched at his words, and that little movement had Asa on his feet again.

  “What the fuck, Poet?” he roared. “Watch what the fuck you say!”

  Cody reached down and grabbed my hand as we watched the men across the table stare each other down. The tension was so thick that even the guys in the living room had turned toward us and were watching with wide eyes. A few of them were shaking their heads.

  “Grease, I’m telling it like it is. No disrespect to your woman—” he stopped and turned his head to the living room as a couple of the guys made noises of astonishment. “Like I said, I wasn’t being disrespectful. Now, sit the fuck down and show me some goddamn respect before I fuckin’ drop you.”

  He was calm. He never raised his voice or gave any inflection to the words he was using.

  It made his little speech infinitely more terrifying.

  “Like I said, Calliope, they thought you were important to Grease, so they were using you to get to him,” he finished with a nod.

  I tried to act calm even though my insides were quivering. There was more to the story that I didn’t understand, but I’d honestly heard enough. I was trying to sort through the memories of that night and the new information I was just given, but Asa’s voice pulled me out of my reverie.

  “Fuck, Callie. I’m so sorry, Sugar—I thought you knew. If I thought that you were blaming yourself I woulda set you straight right away. It was my bad, darlin’, I fucked up when I took you outta that house.” He sounded weary as he confessed to me, and he wasn’t even looking at my face, but at the table in front of me.

  I squeezed Cody’s hand once in apology before pulling away and standing up. Gram had stopped all movement at the stove and was watching me out of the corner of her eye as I walked toward Asa. When I stood behind his chair, I ran my fingernails through the hair at the side of his skull and tilted his head back like he’d done to me just minutes before.

  “So you fucked up by saving me from being raped?” I asked him gently, playing absently with a piece of hair that had fallen out of the messy ponytail at the back of his head.

  He reached his long arms behind him, wrapping his hands around the backs of my knees and squeezing them gently before he replied. “No, baby. I’d do that again. I’d do that a thousand times. But I should’ve known; I should’ve seen that shit a mile away and known to stay with you until it blew over.”

  “I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I was grounded. I shouldn’t have even been out at all,” I told him flatly, trying to ease the guilt I saw in his eyes.

  “You’re sixteen, Callie. I know my life hasn’t been the most normal, but even I know that sixteen-year-old girls go to parties without their parents’ permission. You did nothing wrong, Sugar.” He squeezed the backs of my legs in emphasis.

  The look in his eyes was sincere, and I knew that he believed what he was saying, but I couldn’t let it go.

  “I shouldn’t have been there, Asa,” I whispered while curling my body down and around his—forgetting for a moment that there were others in the room with us. My eyes filled with tears, and one slowly ran off my cheek and onto his lips. “If I would have just stayed home—”

  He cut me off by letting go of my legs and standing from his chair. As soon as he was facing me, his hand came to my cheek, but before he actually touched me he must have remembered the people watching us because he grabbed my hand and turned to Gram.

  “We need a minute, Rose.” His comment was both a question and a warning.

  “Go on into my room,” she told us with a small nod of her head.

  As we made our way out of the kitchen, I heard Cody tell Gram, “This is bullshit,” and Gram replied that he wasn’t too old for her to wash his mouth out with soap. Normally, I would’ve laughed at the exchange, but my chest was tight with an emotion I couldn’t name as I followed Asa into the bedroom and watched him close the door.

  He sat on the bed and pulled me with him until I was standing in between his spread knees, looking down at him. He was so tall that his face wasn’t far from mine, and I watched him closely as he swallowed, and then swallowed again.

  “Had to get outta there—they were watching us like fuckin’ bugs under a microscope,” he told me, rubbing his hands up and down the outside of my legs. I hadn’t had that impression at all, but now I was alone with him and I wasn’t going to argue.

  “Okay,” I mumbled back, waiting to see why he’d brought me in there.

  “I don’t want you thinking it’s your fault, Callie. Okay? I don’t wanna hear that shit come outta your mouth ever again.” His voice had taken on a stern quality, his fingers digging into the skin of my hips. “It was my fuck up. I should’ve stayed where I could protect you. I should’ve seen that shit coming. This is on me, not you,” he told me harshly, giving me a small jerk.

  He was sitting there taking the blame on his shoulders, but I knew it was both of our faults, or maybe no one’s fault at all. I’d gone to what I thought would be a party like I’d been to a hundred times before, and ended up in way over my head. Grease had been there to do whatever sort of business he did, and ended up saving a girl with braces on her teeth from being raped by a guy twice her age. Neither of us had planned how things went down. Neither of us could’ve anticipated the events.

  I felt so much for him right then, my chest was burning with it. I wasn’t sure what it was—not love, it couldn’t be love—but something so close and consuming that it made my heart race.

  “You saved me,” I whispered as I put my hands on his head and pulled the rubber band out of his hair. When I started to run my fingers through the strands, he groaned low in his throat.

  “Callie, you gonna start crying again, Sugar?” he asked, scooting himself back on the bed and pulling at my knees so I was straddling his lap.

  “No,” I answered him, wondering at the question as I wrapped his hair around my fingers and softly outlined one of his ears.

  “Good, ‘cause I’m gonna kiss the fuck outta you.

  Chapter 16

  Grease

  I knew that all the shit that had happened to Callie was on me. It was my call to pull her out of that house, and my call to leave her helpless when I’d finished my business. They were both bad decisions, but there was only one that I would’ve changed.

  There was no way I could have left her passed out and alone on the floor of that house. The longer I knew her, and the more time I spent with her glued to my side, the more I knew that the decision to keep her safe had been the right one.

  It was the decision to walk away that hadn’t been right.

  At some point, Callie was going to realize that her fucked up life was entirely my fault. She was going to blame me and hate me and wish she’d never met me.

  But at that moment, in her Gram’s bedroom, she wasn’t doing any of those things. Instead, she was standing in front of me, pulling the rubber band out of my hair far more gently than I ever had, and running her fingers through my hair.

  I wasn’t a fucking saint.

  I asked her if she was planning on crying again, mostly because I wasn’t sure where her head was at, and when she told me no, that was it.

  I pulled her onto my lap, on her grandmother’s fucking bed, and I kissed the shit out of her.

  I was so distracted by the taste of her that I didn’t notice her w
himper at first. It wasn’t until the taste of blood filled my mouth that I ripped my head back to see what the fuck was going on. She had blood pooling in the corner of her lip, and for a second, I was afraid I’d fucking bitten her or something.

  She wiped at the blood, swallowing thickly as her face turned beet red.

  “I’m sorry! My mouth’s just—well, my braces…” she stuttered, looking at me apologetically.

  “Holy fuck! Did I just do that to you?” Shit, I kissed her and drew blood. My thoughts were completely self-centered until she started trying to pull herself off my lap.

  “No. Um, yesterday my mouth was really dry—and I wasn’t being careful.” She tried to lift her leg over me to crawl off the bed, but I grabbed both of her thighs and pulled her tight against me, effectively ending her squirming as her breath caught. “My braces cut a bunch of little sores on the inside of my cheeks. Totally not your fault.”

  “Ah, sweetheart, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked her quietly, finally understanding what was going on. I’d never been with a chick with braces, and I couldn’t remember any of the kids at the club having them growing up, either. But it wasn’t hard to see how having metal fucking brackets in your mouth could fuck your shit up.

  “Let me see, Sugar.” I hoped that the damage wasn’t bad enough that she’d need stitches or something. Fuck. That was all we needed.

  She pulled her lips out on the sides and turned them a little inside out so I could see the little red sores in her poor mouth. The things must have burned like hellfire, but she hadn’t said a word about them until I’d fucking attacked her.

  “You got something you can use to fix it?”

  “I’ve got wax in my purse I think. I forgot it here at Gram’s the other night.” She gave me a small smile. “It won’t help the cuts, but it’ll keep the little fuckers from making them worse.”

  The bravado in her eyes from dropping an f-bomb mixed with the little goddamn dimple in her cheek had me smiling back at her. I couldn’t even help myself. It was so fucking…cute. I knew at any minute she was going to remember—she was going to get lost again in grief and guilt, and those few minutes where it was just her and I would be over.

  Instead of talking to her, rubbing her back, or getting up so she could go find some of that fucking wax she needed for her braces, I lifted my hand and wrapped it around the back of her neck so I could bring her mouth to mine again.

  I was careful, but I still tasted blood when I licked her lower lip.

  “Ugh. Gross. I’m sorry. My mouth’s still bleeding,” she told me quietly, but her hands were still threaded through my goddamn hair. Christ, that was hot.

  “Don’t fuckin’ care,” I mumbled before pushing my tongue between her lips.

  No one could ever accuse me of being a good guy.

  Chapter 17

  Callie

  For a few moments, I was just a normal sixteen-year-old girl again.

  He kissed me over and over, careful of the braces, but completely unconcerned with the way my mouth still tasted vaguely of blood. He tasted like tobacco and the gum that was tucked into his cheek, and I practically inhaled him as he tried to keep the kiss light. It wasn’t until we’d reached the breaking point and I was beginning to rock against the thickness in his pants that he finally pulled away.

  “Pretty sure this isn’t what your grandma expected us to be doing in her bed,” he told me gruffly, using his hands on my hips to push me back until I was standing by the side of the bed.

  “Ha! I’m surprised you care what my Gram thinks we’re doing,” I answered ruefully, still a little dazed as I ran my fingers through my tangled and greasy hair. Yuck, I needed a shower.

  His head snapped up at my joke and his jaw was clenched as he stood up from the bed, putting his own hair back into a ponytail.

  “Baby, we’re in her house. She’s cooking for us, letting us crash here, and she’s your grandmother. Woman deserves respect,” he chastised, making me feel like a jackass.

  I nodded once and then dropped my head to the side, pretending to look at something on Gram’s dresser so I didn’t have to make eye contact. He made me feel like a child. Getting away with something was a common game among my friends, with each of us detailing to each other how we’d snuck around. It had been exciting, doing the forbidden. Now, though, it just seemed immature and stupid.

  I was trying to look anywhere but at him, but he wouldn’t let me hide for long. His smile was tender as he wrapped his hand gently around my throat to tilt my face toward his.

  “Calliope, we’re under your grandmother’s roof. Not gonna disrespect her and I’m too old to be sneaking around and keeping quiet when I’m with my woman,” he told me, leaning down to give me a deep, wet kiss. “We weren’t here? You’d already be naked and making so much fuckin’ noise you’d be waking up the neighbors.”

  He winked at me before turning and opening the door, waving me through.

  Whatever universe I’d been in, or part of my mind I’d shut off when I’d realized that he was feeling guilty and I’d needed to comfort him, rushed back with the speed of a freight train when I walked back out into the living room.

  Gram and the men were talking quietly at the kitchen table, crowded around almost uncomfortably in the small space, and I didn’t have to wonder why.

  My baby brother was sitting on the couch, bent over with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  He was crying. Quietly. Privately.

  I glanced up at Asa, who nodded, and then went to Cody. Sitting down next to his hunched back, I draped myself over him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and laid my head on his shoulder.

  “Hey, brother,” I whispered, giving him a squeeze.

  “Hey,” he sniffed once, rubbing his hand underneath his nose. “This fucking sucks, Callie. What are we gonna do? Gram just got off the phone with the funeral parlor and she’s making all of these arrangements and shit,” he swallowed loudly, using his thumb and fingers to dig into his eyes. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Let’s go talk to Gram and see what the plan is, okay?” I pulled him from the couch and dragged him into the kitchen, stopping directly in front of Gram.

  “What do you need help with? Anything we can do?” I asked her forcefully. It may have come out a little more abrasive than I hoped because Poet huffed at the end of the table in amusement. I glared at him, causing his eyebrows to raise in response, and then turned to Gram again. “We don’t want you to have to do all of this by yourself, so tell us what the plan is.”

  Gram smiled up at Cody and me then stood and wrapped her arms around us. “How’d I get grandkids like you? Huh? Best of the bunch, I tell ya.”

  “Gram,” Cody replied, his voice muffled by her shoulder, “I’m reasonably sure that we’re your only grandchildren.”

  “Reasonably?”

  “Well, Uncle Tommy and Uncle Charles got around…” he told her with a laugh, jumping away before she could swat him with a towel.

  “That’s okay! Run away now… I’ll remember this far longer than you will, my dear,” she told him with a twinkle in her eye.

  I was grinning at them both, my head whipping from side to side, when Poet spoke up from his place at the table, effectively ending our lighthearted moment. God, I was smiling and laughing. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Rose, I know that the funeral is important to you guys, but we’re gonna have to figure out what Callie’s doing. Time’s running short—I got shit to do in Oregon and my boys can’t stay here babysitting.”

  “Callie, sit down, darlin’. Time to talk,” Gram told me grimly. “You too, Cody.”

  The men sitting around the table backed off, a couple going into the living room and the others heading toward the front door, pulling cigarettes out of their chest pockets. Only Gram, Cody, Asa, Poet, and I were left in the kitchen when Gram sat down heavily.

&nbs
p; “Baby girl, you’re gonna have to move,” she told me wearily, running her fingers over her bottom lip in a nervous gesture I’d seen a million times. “It’s not safe for you here.”

  I watched in silence as she seemed to think over her next words carefully, and for a moment it looked like she wasn’t going to say anything else. When I was about to speak up, she started explaining what was going to happen.

  “Grease is gonna take you up to Eugene. That’s where they live and they can keep an eye on what’s happening. As soon as I get all of your parents’ legal stuff and Cody’s school stuff taken care of, I’ll follow you up there.”

  I felt my eyes start to water as I thought about moving all by myself, but swallowed hard and kept it together. Moving to Oregon was the least of my worries. It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but the idea of being so far away from the only family I had left was a daunting prospect.

  “Okay,” I answered her, my voice breaking a little.

  “Gram…” Cody looked between us, his skin pale and his eyes worried. “What about me?”

  “Well, you’ll go to school. It’ll be the same as it was before, except you’ll fly to Oregon to be with us on your breaks,” she reassured him.

  She turned back to me and opened her mouth to give me more details when Cody’s voice broke through the quiet again.

  “I can’t!” he told us, looking back and forth at our faces as if gauging our reactions. “My scholarship—the one that pays for school? It’s for exceptional students in San Diego County. They won’t pay for school if we live somewhere else.”

  Gram and I both burst out with words of denial, but halted mid-sentence when Asa’s dark haired friend, Dragon, opened the front door and leaned inside.

  “Poet! Grease! We’ve got a situation.”

  Chapter 18

  Callie

  Poet and Asa hopped up from the table like it was on fire and moved toward the front door after Dragon slammed it shut—both reaching for guns I hadn’t noticed in the waistbands of their jeans. I’m not sure if it was the thought of cowering like I’d done before, or the thought that Asa could be in danger, but when Gram grabbed my arm I shrugged her off and followed them outside.