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 and 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.
“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.
When I crossed the threshold, I couldn’t see anything at first. Gram’s house stayed shaded inside during the day in an attempt to beat the heat, so walking into the waning sunlight had me raising my hand in front of my
face to shield my eyes. When I’d acclimated to the change, my hand dropped limply to my side as I registered what I was seeing.
There were Hispanic guys all over my Gram’s driveway and two silver SUVs with spinning chrome rims blocking our vehicles in. For some reason, I couldn’t look away from the rims of those SUVs. I’d never understood why people chose them for their cars, and the way they kept moving, even though everything else was still, felt like an omen.
“Javier,” Poet rumbled from a few steps ahead of me. “What brings you out for a visit?”
“Eh, you know, just taking a little survey in the neighborhood. It seems your neighbors don’t like having bikers clogging up their parking spaces,” one of the Hispanic men answered, causing my eyes to shift toward the group on the ground.
Our guys were standing in a semi-circle around the front of Gram’s trailer, their bodies tensed and ready, but the Hispanic men weren’t in any sort of formation. They were standing around the driveway, some leaning on the vehicles, looking like they were out for a casual stroll. There were so many of them, though, that their appearance was deceiving. Even if they didn’t look like they were ready for anything, their sheer numbers were enough to cause a tightening in my stomach.
Wait, when had I started to think of those bikers as ‘ours’?
“Well, you took your survey, now it’s time to leave. I’m feeling… mellow, today. And I doubt Rose’d like my boys using up a fuck-load of water cleaning blood off her driveway,” Poet growled back, making the hair at the base of my neck stand up.
“Your boys killed three of my men. It’s not something that can go unpunished. You know this,” the man answered back almost gently.
Poet scoffed, “Three? I thought it was four? Well, fuck me. Looks like you left one breathing,” he said, barely turning his head in Grease’s direction.
“Cabrón! I’ll have blood for this. Hand over the girl and we’re even.” The man spit on the ground, and for the first time, looked at me, causing me to sink back.
“Not gonna happen, you little Mexican piece of shit,” Grease growled, stepping sideways so I could no longer see what was happening. “Get the fuck out of here.”
The man started spouting off in Spanish, and I wished for one minute that I didn’t understand the language of my mother. His words cut off when Gram stepped out from behind me, almost shoving Grease aside as she started using Spanish words of her own. I was so surprised that she was fluent, that it took me a minute to register what she was actually saying. It wasn’t until she started using English that everything became clear… or at least, less confusing.
“I’ve got contacts of my own, you little cocksucker. If my boys were alive, you’d already be dead for what you’ve done to my family,” she hissed, yanking me fully behind her as she raged. “You leave my granddaughter alone or I’ll see you in hell!”
“Rosa,” he looked surprised, but spoke respectfully, “who does she belong to?”
“She belongs to me! That’s all you need to know.”
“Ah, senora, that’s not the way this works. You know this. She belongs to Tommy or Chuck, well, that’s one thing. If she belongs to Daniel, that’s an entirely different matter.”
Watching him over my grandmother’s shoulder hadn’t prepared me for his words, and I gasped as he said my uncles’ names… and then my father’s. His eyes flickered to me for a moment, but were drawn back to Gram as she straightened her slightly curved back, making her almost as tall as I was.
“She belongs to me,” she told him again, slapping her chest in emphasis.
“Well, now, I know that’s not true. Imagine my surprise when I heard that she lived at the address of an old friend. It was jarring, really, to hear that name again.”
He looked as if he was remembering something for a moment, but quickly snapped back to the subject at hand when Gram tried to speak again. He cut her off with a wave of his arm and spoke.
“Due to our history, and my history with your sons, I’ll give you two some time together,” he told her kindly, his voice like that of someone talking to a child. “But she’ll be mine, one way or another.”
He gave a nod to his men and started toward the vehicles when Grease’s incredulous voice boomed out from beside me. “You forgetting something?”
“No, I’m not.” The man shook his head, “I’m not concerned with the Aces. You may be here now, but you won’t be here for long.” He waved his hands dramatically as his face broke out in a smile. “Once you ride back to that rainy hellhole you call home, well, I’ll be here… fucking your girl, and then killing her.”
Poet grabbed Grease as he lunged, and both of them almost tumbled down the porch stairs as the Hispanic man laughed and closed the SUV’s door.
When the men drove away and all was quiet, my mind was once again reeling with the new information flooding in. What the fuck had just happened? And more importantly…
How in God’s name did my Gram know those men?
Chapter 19
Callie
For the next few hours, we discussed our plans, arguing and debating the merits of each idea over and over again. If an idea sounded good to me, Gram disagreed with it, and if we both thought something was a good idea, Poet or Asa shot it down. It was frustrating as hell trying to figure out how we were going to get me out of the mess I was in. The guilt ate at me as the sun dropped from the sky, and by the time Gram had dinner on the table, my stomach was so tied up in knots that I couldn’t even eat. I was also too anxious to ask about my uncles’ connection with the men that were after me—the questions I had just didn’t seem as important as getting far away from them as fast as I could.
Cody was willing to drop out of his expensive prep school in order to move with us to Oregon, but I could tell that the thought of leaving was causing him a lot of anxiety. He was adamant that the school wasn’t important, but I knew it was. He’d been away at private school for two years, and the thought of having to start over was scary for my introverted baby brother. He’d already had his parents and his home ripped from him because of my stupid decisions, I absolutely refused to take that from him, too.
The situation left Gram in the position of choosing between us.
If she moved with me to Oregon, Cody would have to leave school. If she stayed in San Diego, I had to move up North all alone.
There was no right answer.
So I didn’t let her choose.
I chose.
“I’ll move up North on my own,” I finally stated, my heart racing in my chest. “I’d be going to college soon anyway. It’s not like I can’t live by myself eighteen months earlier than planned.”
“Callie, you can’t move all the way to Oregon by yourself!” Gram replied sharply, looking at Poet for backup.
“Rose, not sure what you’d like me to say,” he answered her look, “not a whole lot of options open to ya.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “She’ll be all alone in a new town and she hasn’t even graduated from high school!”
“Gram, it’s fine. I can do it. Really. I’ll just get a little apartment and finish school out there. I’ll be fine.”
“Callie,” Gram sighed wearily, looking at me with an apology in her eyes, “baby, I can’t afford to get you an apartment. I’m barely living here, I can’t support two houses.”
Her cheeks tinged red at the confession and I felt like a complete asshole. Of course she couldn’t afford to pay for another house. While I’d been psyching myself up to convince her to let me move alone, I hadn’t even thought about the money situation. Gram was on a fixed income, and even with her social security benefits and my grandpa’s pension, there wasn’t a whole lot of extra cash left after she paid her bills.
Before I could reply, Asa spoke up from where he was sitting beside me with his hand on my knee.
“I’ll take care of her,” he told Gram before his eyes moved to me, “I’ll take care of you.”
***
I
opened my mouth to say something back, but I looked like a guppy as I closed it and opened it again. I had no clue what I was supposed to say in a situation like that. He’d take care of me? What the hell was he talking about? He’d been watching out for me physically and emotionally from the minute we met, but for some reason, paying my bills seemed like a much bigger deal. It was like the difference between letting a neighbor borrow a cup of sugar and buying them a car. One of those was a completely understandable sacrifice, the other just seemed crazy.
“Asa, you’re a sweet boy, but I can’t let you do that,” Gram stated kindly from across the table.
“I’m a man,” he rasped, looking between Poet and Gram. “I’m a man and I take care of what’s mine.” His voice was solid. Resolute.
I sat there dumbly as they argued. They were talking about me, and yet I couldn’t think of one thing to say.
“You’ve known her for less than a week. She’s not yours. She’s sixteen years old, goddammit!” Gram responded, slapping the table with her hand, frustrated with the entire situation. I think the way Asa looked at me had finally sunk in for her because she looked like she was beginning to worry as she glanced between us. There was a difference between how a teenage boy felt about his girl and a man felt about his woman.
A teenage boy may speak strongly in defense of his girl, full of piss and vinegar and grand dramatic vows of how he’ll protect her—but that only lasts until the boy meets with odds that are no longer on his side. But a man? He’ll make it clear that he stands between his woman and the world, no matter what the consequences are. And then he’ll prove it.
Asa wasn’t making grand promises, vowing to slay dragons or sweep me off my feet. He was making a very serious gesture of commitment, and it was freaking me the fuck out.
“I don’t want to go all the way to Oregon,” I blurted, breaking into Asa and Gram’s staring contest. “I don’t want to be so far away that Gram can’t drive up and visit me.”