Chapter 62
Callie
Monday came and went with no word from Poet or Asa.
So did Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Thursday, I threw up twice from nerves, and still no word.
I finally got a call on Friday.
“Asa!” I answered the phone excitedly, feeling like I was taking a deep breath for the first time in a week. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sugar,” he answered quietly.
“I missed you! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. How are things with you and baby?”
His voice sounded off, and my stomach churned.
“We’re both fine. The doctor said everything on the ultrasound looks great!” I answered with false cheer.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it, sweetheart. I really wanted to f*ckin’ be there.”
“I know, baby,” I told him quietly. “I wished you were there, too. You want to know what we’re having, or do you want to wait until I see you?”
“Better tell me on the phone, Callie. Not sure when I’ll be able to make the trip down there.” He paused for almost a full minute. “I can’t leave the state.”
“Well, I’ll just come to you, then!” I promised, still hanging on to my false cheer. “I can leave now and be there by tonight!”
“That’s not gonna work, Calliope,” he answered vaguely, and as I listened to him, my legs started to tingle as if they were falling asleep.
“What? Why? I can be right there. I’ll even take Gram with me, if that’s what you’re worried about. Or Cody! I can bring Cody!” I was racing through the words frantically, trying to convince him that it was a good idea.
“I love you. I love you so much,” he told me seriously, and I fell against the wall as I heard his breath hitch, my legs giving way until I’d slid completely down to my ass.
“I love you, too,” I whispered back. “I want to be with you.”
“Sugar, things are worse than we thought. I wish I could explain it all to you, but the lawyer said not to talk about it on the phone, so you’re just gonna have to trust me.”
“Trust you with what? What’s going on, Asa?”
“They think they found something on my bike that I wasn’t supposed to have,” he mumbled, pausing to sigh deeply, “I was coming from the clubhouse, and your friend’s dad said to bring her his love.”
Confusion set in and I sat silently for a few moments before I realized he was speaking in some sort of code.
“When I got pulled over, they took me in. Judge let me out on bail, but it’s only a matter of time before they arrest me again. The lawyer thinks they’re gonna make an example outta me,” he told me quietly. “I don’t want you driving all the way up here before the court date.”
I inhaled on a sob, scared as hell. “I’ll just come up and see you and then leave again. I won’t be there long!” I pleaded.
“Not good for you to sit that long in a car, Sugar,” he answered gently. “Round trip, that’s almost twenty hours. You gotta take care of you and the baby.”
“But I miss you,” I whimpered, not willing to give up.
“F*ck, I miss you, too. But I don’t want you driving all the way up here,” he told me firmly. “I gotta go, Sugar. I’m sitting in the f*ckin’ parking lot of the jail, but I wanted to give you a call first thing. I’ll call you back as soon as I get home, okay?”
“We’re having a son,” I replied quickly, in an anxious bid to keep him on the phone.
“A son?” he whispered.
“Yeah.” I smiled, tears rolling down my face. “They even took a picture to prove it.”
“They took a picture of our son’s dick?” he asked, his voice rose at the end in disbelief.
“Chill out!” I giggled. “It’s a grainy black and white photo. It’s not porn!”
“A son,” he muttered again quietly. “Thank you.”
“I’m pretty sure you determine that, but you’re welcome.”
“I gotta go, Callie. I’ll call you back,” he muttered abruptly, shattering the moment we’d been having.
“As soon as you get there?”
“Yeah, Calliope, I’ll call you the minute I park,” he assured me. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I murmured and then listened to the click as he hung up.
Cody found me bawling on the kitchen floor only a few minutes later.
“What the hell, Callie?” he panicked, lifting me to my feet with his hands under my arms.
“Asa called,” I told him dully as I grabbed a glass and filled it with water. “He’s out.”
“Then why the hell were you crying on the floor?”
“He said it’s bad, Cody,” I whispered, looking directly into his eyes. “He said they’re going to arrest him again.”
“What? Why?” he asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know! He said that they’d caught him with something, and then said something about Slider sending his love to Farrah! He wasn’t making sense!” I barked, running a frustrated hand through my hair.
“Wait, what does Farrah have to do with it?” he asked protectively, pushing out his chest and crossing his arms over it.
“I have no idea. I think he was trying to tell me something without really saying it.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“That he came from the clubhouse and my friend’s dad asked him to bring his love to her.”
“Holy f*cking shit,” he mumbled, looking at the floor and rubbing the back of his neck. “He was carrying something for Slider.”
“What?” I screeched.
“It makes sense. Think about it—they found something on him, right? And he said Slider sent his love to Farrah, but that would be a pretty f*cking weird thing for him to do,” he told me intently, his eyes boring into mine. “Slider sent something with him.”
“You think he was making a drop for Slider when he was supposed to be coming down for our doctor’s appointment?” I asked incredulously. “That would be so f*cked up!”
“That’s what it sounds like,” he confirmed.
“No way,” I mumbled, pushing past him. “Tell Gram I’ll be over later. I need to take a shower.”
I strode into the bathroom, effectively ending our conversation. I needed to think.
Asa wouldn’t have made a drop when he was coming down for something so important. I knew him. I knew he wouldn’t taint our day with club shit. He knew how I felt about the club even though I’d never voiced it.
My mind ran a thousand miles a minute as I took a shower, and I tried desperately to find something else hidden in his words.
When I climbed out and dried off, I noticed a missed call from Asa, but I didn’t call him back. I needed to get my head together before I talked to him and didn’t want to accuse him of something that wasn’t true. I was afraid that if I called, I’d demand he tell me that Cody was wrong—that he hadn’t made his trip to see me into some sordid club errand.
I was not only afraid it was true, I was also afraid that if I asked him directly and someone was listening in, I’d get him into even more trouble. There were certain things that I knew he kept from me—things about what he did for the Aces. I wasn’t sure if he couldn’t tell me, or just chose to keep them a secret in some misguided attempt to shelter me, and honestly I’d never cared before. I’d deliberately chosen to ignore that part of his life that didn’t pertain to me directly, as I did with most everything else in my life.
Was it self-centered? Probably, but I couldn’t stop it. I’d been protecting myself for so long at that point that it was second nature for me to take things at face value and refuse to question them. I should’ve learned with Farrah that I needed to be more aware of the things happening in my peripheral, but I hadn’t. And now, once again, the fact that I’d turned a blind eye was coming back to haunt me.
I got dressed and headed to Gram’s slowly, loathe to answer the questions I knew she and Farrah would have. They were curious and worried, just like I was, and I knew I’d have to give a full accounting of what Asa’d said. I was still trying to convince myself that Cody had been wrong, and something else was going on, when I walked in Gram’s front door.
“Hey, chickie!” Farrah called from the kitchen as I strolled in. She was helping Gram make dinner, and it gave me a warm feeling when I thought about how close they’d become. Farrah had basically grown up without any parents, taking care of herself from a young age, and it was beautiful to see how she soaked up Gram’s presence.
Gram had stepped in, with little fanfare, and treated Farrah the same way she did Cody and me—loving with a touch of guilt when needed.
“Hey,” I answered back, watching Farrah closely. “I talked to Asa.”
“Yeah, Cody told us,” she answered tentatively, turning from the stove to look at me.
“He said Slider told him to bring you his love.”
“Yeah, right!” she scoffed, turning away again.
For some reason, those words confirmed to me what I had refused to believe, and a small flame of resentment started deep in my chest.
Slider had asked Asa to bring something entirely different to California.