“Eh. Like I got ran over by a truck. My mouth is dry like the freaking Sahara.”
“Yeah, well getting drugged by some piece of trash will do that,” she told me with a glare, sitting down beside me on the edge of the bed. “I know you were just having fun, Callie, but crap like that has a way of getting out of hand. I took care of things for you last night, but something like this happens again and I’m calling your dad myself. You put me in a hell of a position.”
I felt like shit when she was through talking, but had to hide my smile at her subtle guilt trip. Sneaky old lady. I forced my achy body into a sitting position and wrapped my arms around her waist, cuddling up to her as I apologized. “I’m sorry, Gram. I won’t ever do something like that again. I don’t want to get you in trouble with Dad.”
She wrapped her arms around me and rubbed my back for a minute while I relaxed into her, knowing I was forgiven. It was amazing what one simple hug could do to soothe us both. Before I could grow too comfortable or fall back asleep, she pulled back, jarring my throbbing head that was resting on her shoulder.
“Callie, I love you, baby, and we’re fine … but your breath smells like shit. Go brush your teeth,” she grumbled with a wrinkled nose and a smile.
I loved my Gram.
I pulled myself out of bed and went to brush my teeth, sliding by Gram at the kitchen counter and rubbing her back lightly as I went. She was making sure her “billfold” and keys were in her purse, just like she’d done every single time we’d left the house for as long as I could remember. She always checked and re-checked her purse for everything she needed and it had been like a treasure trove of goodies when I was younger. There was always a little notebook and pen if I was bored at the grocery store, a hair tie if she needed to pull back my hair, or a Band-Aid if I scraped my knee. Gram’s purse could solve any problem, no matter where we were.
As soon as she made sure she had everything she could possibly need, we climbed in the car and took off for my house. We didn’t usually chatter much in the car, but that ride was significantly quieter as I thought about the night before. I was so relieved that my little ordeal was over. I was lucky—I was going home safe and sound, when I could’ve been dead. The thought of that man touching me, or the way the gunshots sounded in the entryway of that house had me shuddering in fear, and I quickly turned my mind to my parents and what I’d be facing when I got home.
I wasn’t sure what Gram told my parents, but whatever it was had calmed them down enough that they weren’t calling my phone over and over like I’d been expecting. I was glad for the reprieve, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. I’d been missing for hours between the time when they would’ve been home for dinner and when Gram called them at 3 am. They were going to be livid—especially my dad.
Gram was my dad’s mom. She’d raised three boys with a drunk for a husband, and she’d pretty much seen it all. Unfortunately for my brother and me, my dad knew every trick in the book because he’d used them, which meant we rarely got away with anything. All of Gram’s sons were hellions while growing up, but somehow my dad had pulled himself off the road they’d been on and was living on the straight and narrow. My uncles hadn’t been so lucky.
I remembered my uncles as fun and a little crazy, but I’d only seen them once a week for the family dinners that Gram had established to keep us all connected. They would tease me constantly by pulling my braid and calling me ‘little senorita’, and I’d loved the attention even though my mom’s mouth would tighten every time they did it. I hadn’t understood until a few years later that my parents saw it as a dig at my dad for marrying a Mexican woman. I didn’t know if I agreed with my parents’ assessment, but soon it hadn’t mattered anyway.
I’d viewed them with a sort of hero worship, never understanding why we saw them only at my grandmother’s and only for a couple of hours at a time. My parents had kept me out of the day to day drama, but when I was ten they’d been unable to shield me and my brother Cody any longer when both uncles were killed in a bar fight in Los Angeles.
I’d been too young to understand the implications of their deaths; I just knew that I’d lost two people who I thought had hung the moon especially for me. My parents, however, saw all too clearly that my dad’s brothers had died the way they lived—with a blatant disregard for the law and a recklessness that they’d wanted no part of. I’m not sure what happened—my mother must have said or done something during those few weeks after Gram lost her boys—because we never again went to family dinners and my mother and Gram never spoke again.
When we pulled up to my house, I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned toward Gram whose hands were tense at ten and two on the steering wheel. She didn’t put the car in park, just sat there with her foot on the brake, waiting for me to hop out. It didn’t surprise me, though, I knew she’d never step foot in our house if she could help it—not even if I needed her to run interference.
“Thanks, Gram!” I told her with a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you this week—I have Thursday and Friday off from school so maybe I can come spend the night.”
“Sounds good, baby girl,” she replied with a tight smile. She was anxious to leave, nervous that she’d have to interact with my mom if she came out of the house.
I pushed open my door and climbed out, leaning back in to give her one more smile. I hated leaving her even though I knew I’d see her again soon.
“Love you!”
“Love you, too. Get on inside,” she ordered with a nod as I shut the door behind me.
I knew Gram wouldn’t pull away from the curb until I’d walked in the front door, so I jogged to the front of our two-story house and let myself inside. It was quiet, almost eerily so. I slid my shoes off and dropped them into a basket by the front door and walked further into the house, finding my parents sitting in the living room waiting for me. My mom was on the couch facing the wide doorway, and when I met her eyes, she stood up and started toward me.
I couldn’t tell what she was thinking—her face was completely blank—so I stood there stupidly as she got closer, and I didn’t even flinch when she raised her arm. I wasn’t prepared for her to slap me across the face before my dad, who’d jumped out of his recliner, could stop her. She was screaming in Spanish about what a horrible daughter I was, and all I could do was stand there in shock while she berated me. I could feel myself crying, tears were rolling off my chin and my cheek was on fire, but I was too stunned to do anything.
She’d never hit me before.
Finally, my dad pulled her away from me and took her place, speaking in a low but furious voice.
“We got a call from one of your friends this morning. I’m pretty sure I told you to stay away from Mallory, but according to her, you two went to a party together last night,” he hissed, clenching his jaw. “She was worried when she tried to leave and couldn’t find you. She said she called your phone over and over, and when you didn’t answer she decided to try and call us. Funny thing about that, I thought you’d been at your grandma’s last night.”
“Dad—” I tried to explain but he cut me off with an angry movement of his arm that had me jerking away from him.
“Don’t even try it, Callie! Obviously, you can’t be trusted and neither can my mother. I’ll call her when I’m done with you,” he stated menacingly, causing guilt to rush through me at what I imagined my Gram would go through. “You’re grounded. I’ll let you keep your phone on the off chance that Cody calls from school, but I’ll be monitoring when you use it. Don’t use it,” he told me, his voice icy.
I stood, frozen, not sure what I should be doing after I got caught in the biggest lie of my life. I’d never been in so much trouble, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how angry they were. The night before had been a huge mistake, but I didn’t know how to tell them that I’d learned my lesson without getting into the details I knew would only piss them off more.
My mom stood behind my dad with her arms wrapped tight around herself as sh
e shook, and both of them were staring at me like they didn’t even know who I was. I shifted my eyes between them, trying to figure out what to say, until my mom snapped, and with the veins in her neck bulging and her face turning red, she screamed at me to get in my room.
I bolted.
I spent the rest of the day cleaning my room and finishing up the homework that was due on Monday, quietly listening to music in my earbuds. My mind raced back and forth from the night before to the scene I’d walked in on earlier in the day; I had a hard time concentrating on anything else. One little decision and I’d completely screwed myself.
At around seven o’clock, I was lying in my bed reading when my mom came into my room carrying a plate full of food and a soda. I sat up quickly as she placed the soda on my nightstand and sat on the side of my bed. When she handed me the food, she started speaking, and my stomach tied in knots when I heard the tremble in her voice.
“You scared me, mija. I called and called when we got home last night and no answer. So I call your friends, none know where you are. Your father had the phonebook out to call the hospitals when your grandmother calls and says you’re with her,” she told me in a calm voice, sniffing as she spoke. “We knew something was not right, but I knew if she said you were with her, then you were safe and we could deal with it when you got home today.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I apologized quietly, and it had never been so true.
“Well, you are home safe now,” she commented with a shrug, as if that was all that mattered. “I brought you dinner, so you can eat in your room. Your father, he’s not so ready to see you yet. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
When she finished speaking, I lurched into her arms, anxious for forgiveness. She wrapped her arms around me tightly, and as she kissed my head over and over, I knew how much I’d scared her. When she finally relaxed her arms, I held on to her, loathe to let her go—but she didn’t make me. She smelled so good, like a mix of fried food and Paris Hilton perfume that she’d received as a Secret Santa gift the year before and had worn every day since. For the first time in almost a year, I wasn’t secretly embarrassed that she was wearing a perfume made for teenage girls. She smelled like home, and she didn’t let go of me until I was ready.
After she was gone, I ate dinner and got ready for bed. I was a little afraid of what my dad would be like the next day, but he was usually gone before I got up for school, so I knew he’d have an entire day to cool down before I saw him again. He never stayed mad for very long, so I was confident that by the time he was home from work, we’d be back to normal.
If I’d known what would happen, I would’ve acted differently. I wouldn’t have relaxed in the shower. I wouldn’t have taken the time to shave my legs or paint my toenails. I wouldn’t have let him stay mad or let things go unsaid between us.
I would have marched downstairs and made things right with him, and then I would’ve curled up next to him on the couch like I had as a little girl—content to watch boring television just so I could spend time with him.
But I didn’t—and I had to live with that.
Chapter 7
Grease
I met up with the boys and headed out of town before we had to deal with any more problems. The open road calmed me like it always had, and by the time we hit Sacramento I’d finally stopped thinking of her. She was just another girl in a long line of girls I’d wanted to fuck—nothing more and nothing less. I convinced myself that there wasn’t anything special about her.
We were a few hours from the Oregon border when I signaled the boys to follow me off the freeway. My phone had been blowing up in my chest pocket for the better part of an hour, and while I felt justified ignoring one or two calls when I was riding, something felt off. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing straighter with each call, and by the time I shut off my bike, I was ready to strangle whoever had messed up my Zen.
I scrolled through my missed calls, seeing about fifty of them from both Slider, my club president, and Deke. My mind was racing with possibilities, but before I could call my prez back, Deke called again.
“Grease, man, Poet’s been calling my phone. Didn’t even realize it—want me to call him back?” Dragon called out to me from a few feet away. He was still sitting on his bike, but the relaxed posture of the last few hours had faded and his body was tight. He was feeling it, too—whatever it was.
It was bad.
I nodded my head at Dragon as I connected with Deke.
“Deke, what’s up, man?” I asked him cautiously. He was my brother and I loved him, but I would have preferred to talk to Slider first. If they were both calling non-stop, it was nothing good and I’d need my boys at my back. Deke might be family, but he was also a Jimenez.
“Grease. Boys down here weren’t real hot on how things went down with Jose,” he told me haltingly, pausing at the end and pissing me off that he wasn’t getting to the point.
“Yeah, brother. I figured. I’m fuckin’ hours away from there. Can’t do shit to me now, and once I’m home they can talk to Slider—”
“No,” he interrupted me, and the next words out of his mouth were like a punch to the chest. “They’re going for the girl.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” I roared into my phone, causing Tommy Gun’s head to snap toward me. I glanced to Dragon, wondering what the hell Poet had said, and the look on his face confirmed what I already knew.
I’d unknowingly left her to the wolves.
Deke starting scrambling, “It’s probably already over. I started calling you hours ago, man. Nothing you can do about it now. She was nothing—but they don’t know it. I didn’t tell them she wasn’t yours. So now it’s equal brother—” He was actually trying to explain how a fucking drug dealing gang could justify going after an innocent sixteen-year-old girl. I couldn’t deal with him. I flipped my phone closed and stood staring at Dragon as he got off the phone.
“It’s a warning. No need to call Slider back—Poet says they just wanted you to know what was going on.” He paused and ran his hand over his beard and then nodded once. “Said to tell you, next play’s up to you. We can head back to San Diego or get to Oregon and deal with it from there.”
I just stood there, my mind racing. I was goddamn hours away from her. There wasn’t anything I could do. I could feel every muscle in my body tensed in preparation of heading back to San Diego and killing those fuckers myself—but it wouldn’t do anything but get the three of us killed. We’d be in their territory, and without back up it would be a suicide mission. But, God, I wanted to go back and get her. I wanted to go back to twenty-four hours before and shoot to fucking wing Jose instead of hitting him with two in the chest. I wanted to tell Callie’s Gram to lay low for a while. I wanted to have never left her there without protection.
Goddamn it—I’d been so fucking concerned with getting away from her jailbait ass that I hadn’t considered the possibilities of leaving her. That was on me.
I reached my hand up and pulled the rubber band out of my hair, pulling it out of my face to give me a few more seconds before I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I had to fucking leave her down there, possibly alive and hurt, or lead my boys into a situation that none of us would come out of. It was a fuck of a decision—but I wasn’t going back.
I started to slide my phone back into my pocket, opening my mouth to let Tommy and Dragon know what was up, when my phone rang again. I didn’t know the number, but with all the shit going down, I answered it anyway. Thank fuck I did.
“Grease?” she whimpered in my ear, her voice so quiet I had to plug my other ear with my finger.
“Yeah?” I thought it was her, but she was so fucking quiet, I wasn’t sure. Fuck, could they be playing me? Trying to get me back to San Diego?
“Asa? I’m scared.” she sobbed quietly—and I knew it was her. No one called me Asa.
“Baby, you okay?” I asked her gently, climbing back on my bike and nodding to the boys whose faces had har
dened.
“I’m hiding,” she whispered.
The last twenty-four hours had turned into a long list of complications and bad decisions—and it looked like I was going to make one more.
Fuck the consequences.
“Stay where you are and keep quiet, sweetheart,” I ordered her as I strapped my helmet on. “I’m coming to get you.”
Chapter 8
Callie
I was startled awake in the middle of the night, and it took me a second to figure out that someone was banging on the front door. My heart started racing as I hopped out of bed, my feet tangling in my sheets when I reached for my phone that was charging on my nightstand. Any knocking in the middle of the night signaled bad news, and my mind sifted through scenarios of policemen telling us someone was hurt.
I scrambled to the door of my room, meeting my mom in the hallway as I saw the back of my dad as he walked down the stairs. His bare shoulders were straight and tense, like he was preparing himself for whatever was on the other side of the front door, but his hands were loose at his sides. It took a lot for my dad to lose his composure.
My mom reached out and grabbed my hand as we watched him, but neither of us moved to follow. She was in a robe that was tied at the waist, and the hand not holding mine clutched the lapel in what was both a nervous gesture and a way of keeping the fabric covering her breasts. I was a little grossed out that both of my parents had dressed in a hurry, but I didn’t focus on that because most of my attention was at the front door. I wasn’t ready to face whatever was happening, and naively believed, for just a moment, that if we stayed in the hallway time would stop and I’d never have to find out what was going on.
Time slowed as we waited for my dad to reach the door, and we stood quietly listening to the turn of the deadbolt and the snick of the latch.