Chapter 20
Grease
I wanted Callie with me. I wanted to come home to her at night, in an apartment away from the clubhouse where I’d had a room for the last three years. I wanted a f*cking place of my own where I didn’t have to listen to bitches squealing and brothers fighting at all hours of the night. I wanted a goddamn living room that I could sit in with a beer in front of a big-ass TV.
I wanted a home, for Christ’s sake.
I’d been sacking away money since I started getting paid, so I wasn’t hurting for cash, but there was no way I’d be moving from the clubhouse anytime soon if I was paying for an apartment for Callie. I wasn’t making that much money.
Taking care of Callie would set me back in a big way, but I couldn’t see any other option. She needed me. She needed to be out of San Diego, and I saw the guilt on her face when her brother was trying to bluff his way through giving up that fancy-ass school he went to. He didn’t want to give it up but he was willing to. I respected the f*ck out of him for that. But if he gave it up, that would be one more thing she felt responsible for, and the guilt was already so heavy on her shoulders…
F*ck it. I’d handle it. She was only a couple years away from being eighteen, and then she could take care of her own shit. I was hoping by then she wouldn’t want to; that she’d be so wrapped up in me that she wouldn’t want to be living eight hours away. At least that was what I was counting on.
I felt like a selfish a*shole when they’d looked at me like I was crazy—like I was so f*cking selfless because I wanted to pay her way.
Didn’t they see that I wanted her to owe me? I wanted her f*cking dependent on me, and I’d do anything to make that happen. I couldn’t figure out what the f*ck was wrong with me—I just knew that the minute she didn’t look at me like I was saving her, it would gut me.
I didn’t know how f*cked up it would make our relationship. It would be years before I saw how resentment builds from one person being totally dependent on the other and how the beginning of our relationship started a cycle of guilt and blame that would fester and flame out of control.