Chapter 75
Callie
It was almost a year after I’d told Asa that I couldn’t be with him anymore, and I was finally ready to speak with him again.
My time in therapy had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I’d probably never be able to go without it. I’d had a lot of guilt hanging over me from my parents’ deaths, and though it wasn’t going away, with Dr. Howell’s help, it was getting easier to understand and manage.
Dr. Howell was an old, grizzled war veteran, and I’d liked him instantly when we’d met. He not only told dirty jokes when he knew I needed to take a step back for a few minutes, but he also knew how guilt and blame could royally f*ck up someone’s life—he’d lived through it when he came back from Vietnam.
I learned to let things out, and we worked on facing my demons head-on in a way that I’d never let myself do before. He’d told me something, and I’m sure he’d stolen it from someone else because he was always quoting self-help calendars and coffee mugs, “Demons come out in the dark because they’re afraid of the light. We need to smash those motherf*ckers to smithereens with light.” Okay, I’m pretty sure he paraphrased, but the result was the same.
We brought everything out into the open.
I was ashamed that I’d blamed Asa and the club for a lot of things that they couldn’t have changed, but I finally understood that my jumbled emotions had been totally normal.
My life had been a series of unfortunate events for a long time, starting with my decision to sneak out of my house to go to a party and ending when I’d kicked Asa out of my life completely. Looking back, I don’t know that I would have been able to get my shit together, knowing that he was there to protect me. It would’ve been too easy for me to slide back into old habits.
I’d wondered for a long time if my relationship with Asa had been a fluke. That maybe I’d felt so deeply for him because he’d saved me and for no other reason. It had become an almost unbearable fear—that our love wasn’t real—and I hadn’t been able to get it out of my mind until I’d worked on it for weeks with Dr. Howell.
I learned something during those weeks when we did exercise after exercise helping me discover and understand my feelings.
I loved Asa. Loved him. It had nothing to do with how he could protect me, or some sense of indebtedness.
Take everything else away, until there was just Asa and Callie, and I still loved him with an intensity that bordered on madness.
A few months after Cody had been shot, I found myself with just enough cash to drive to Oregon and I used it. I was pissed at my brother for refusing to come to California to see me, and worried that he wasn’t taking care of himself. I needed to get him away from the Aces, back to the school he’d ditched, and away from a life that would get him shot.
I was also irrationally pissed that Asa hadn’t come for me yet. I’d asked him for time, but he’d seemed content to give it to me, and as time passed, I worried that he wasn’t coming back. I was livid that he wasn’t fighting for me, angry that he’d given up so easily. Dr. Howell would’ve had a field day with that information, but we hadn’t yet touched on the difficulties I had controlling my anger.
I got there and made my way inside with few problems, but within minutes of my arrival, the love of my life was walking out the front doors shouting at me.
And after a spectacular fight with Asa in front of close to thirty bikers and their old ladies, he threw me over his shoulder and stalked past everyone into his room.
He dropped me onto the bed and took a weary step back. “Where’s Will?”
“I left him with Gram,” I answered softly with a shake of my head. “I didn’t think it would be a good situation to bring him into.”
“What the hell were you thinking, Callie?” he asked dejectedly as he ran his hand through his hair.
I stared at him, up close for the first time in months, and I couldn’t stop the words that came pouring out of my mouth. “I love you!” I shouted. “You don’t call me baby. Why were you calling me baby? You call me Sugar.”
His body went completely still. “What did you just say to me?”
“You don’t call me baby. You call me Sugar.”
“Before that, Calliope,” he rumbled, his hands dropping to fists at his sides.
“I love you. I know that now.”
“Oh, you know that now, huh?” he asked gently.
I nodded quickly, pulling myself up on my knees.
“Well, I knew it before,” he replied, shaking his head as he ran his hand down his beard. “I can’t do this with you, Sugar.”
“I love you. I love you and I want to be a family.” I reached toward him in frustration, but fell back and started to cry at the anguish on his face. He was backing away. He didn’t want me. All of my anger left me in an instant, replaced by fear and desperation. “I’m better! I promise! I’ll do better! I miss you so much.”
“I know you’re doing better,” he told me softly, coming back to reach his hand out and wipe the tears off my face. “You’re doing so good, Calliope. But I can’t be the reason that you slide back into that shit.”
“You won’t!” I pleaded. “It didn’t have anything to do with you!”
“Bullshit, Callie,” he shot back, walking toward the door. “You couldn’t even f*ckin’ look at me.”
He was almost out the door when I desperately shouted the one thing I’d promised I’d never reveal to him.
“I blamed you!” I yelled, watching his back snap straight. “I blamed you, and that’s what made everything worse.”
“All this time?” He turned to me. “All this time I’ve been trying to build a life with you, wrestling with my own shit over what went down with your parents, knowing that there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could change…All this time you’ve been blaming me and never said a goddamn word?”
His voice was shallow, and the pain in his eyes made me feel like I was going to vomit.
“I didn’t think about it,” I sniffled, and he turned to walk out the door.
“I didn’t think about it, because if I thought about how I blamed you, I couldn’t ignore how I blamed me,” I whispered, scratching at one of my arms with my short fingernails.
It was silent in the room for long moments as I wondered how I’d managed to f*ck up so badly. I’d used a Taser to make my way into a gated compound, shouted like a maniac for my brother who ended up not even being there, and convinced the love of my life that I blamed him for my parents’ deaths.
I was scratching faster, tears blurring my eyes, when I felt a warm hand cover mine.
“Stop scratching, Sugar,” he murmured soothingly. “Gonna break the skin, you keep doing that.”
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I know it wasn’t your fault. I know that now. I know it wasn’t your fault. I was a mess, but I always loved you. I never lied about that. That was always true.”
“I know, baby, I know,” he murmured, sitting down and pulling me into his lap.
“Don’t call me baby!” I wailed, making him chuckle a little. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“Not laughing at you,” he commented, pulling my face up to his. “I’ve called you baby before, you crazy broad. Just call you Sugar more. You don’t want me to call you sweetheart, yeah?”
“No,” I said forcefully, the memory of Deke still making my skin crawl.
“Okay, then you get Sugar or baby when I’m loving on you. Callie when I need to say your name and Calliope when I need to make sure you’re paying attention,” he told me with a smile, leaning down to run his nose along mine.
“Okay,” I whispered into his mouth. “I love you. I’m sorry.”
“We’ve both been blaming ourselves for shit that has no blame,” he told me seriously. “No more telling me you’re sorry, Calliope.”
“I’m paying attention.”
“I know you are. No more telling me you’re sorry. No more saying sorry, period. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He leaned down a fraction of an inch to run his tongue lightly over my bottom lip. “We’re moving on from here.”
“Just like that?”
“I’ve been waiting for a year for you to come back to me. Not wasting any more time.”
“I’ve been waiting a year to come back to you, too.”
He groaned deep in his throat and kissed me hard, his tongue thrusting into my mouth.
“No more running, no more hiding,” he ordered as he pulled back and lifted my shirt over my head. “We’ll deal with shit as it comes—and you’re gonna find a shrink up here.”
“Okay,” I whimpered as he pulled off my bra. “I promise.”
He stood from the bed and ripped his cut and t-shirt off, throwing them across the room as he undid his belt buckle. “And you’re growing your hair back out,” he insisted, pointing his finger at me. “Your hair is goddamn shorter than mine.”
I laughed a little, feeling lighter than I could ever remember. “Farrah wanted to try something new.” I gasped as he pulled my pants and underwear down my legs, cursing when he couldn’t get them past my boots.
“Next time, tell Farrah to f*ck off,” he mumbled as he tore at my boots, finally pulling them off my feet along with my pants.
“F*ck me, Calliope,” he swore and paused with his hands at the front of his pants, staring down at me. “It’s been so damn long.”
“Over three years,” I murmured back, scooting myself up the bed with a sultry smile on my face. “What are you waiting for?”
He was out of his pants and on top of me before I could stop giggling at the shock on his face.
“Your body’s so f*ckin’ soft,” he murmured against my breast before pulling my nipple into his mouth. “Your tits are bigger.”
“Yeah, that and a few other things,” I moaned as his hand ran down between my legs.
“Oh yeah, what else?” he asked seriously, his hand stopping right above where I needed him.
“My ass, my thighs, my waist,” I answered in annoyance, moving my hips against his hand.
He leaned back on his heels between my legs, and I almost screamed in frustration at the break in contact.
“Don’t look any different here,” he murmured, running his fingers over my belly, “Except for these little marks that prove you carried my son.”
He scooted back even further as I watched his face go soft.
“These too?” he asked, wrapping his hands around my thighs. He glanced up at me, and at my nod, gave them a squeeze. “Can still almost wrap my hands around them, Sugar. And they’re unbelievable, because they point to my favorite place. You know where that is, yeah?”
I nodded again, my eyes blurry with tears as he catalogued my body with gentle hands and softer words. His hand ran up the inside of my thigh until his fingers were rubbing gently over my *. “Favorite place,” he murmured again. “Where were we? Right, your ass.”
He pulled my leg over his lap and flipped me over before running his hands over my ass.
“Nah. You could never be too fat there,” he told me with a chuckle.
I pushed up on my hands, ready for battle, but paused when he pulled me up so my ass was resting against his hips. “Look at how much cushion I have there, Sugar. Big enough to fit my hands, soft enough that I can grab you like this—” he placed his hands on both cheeks, “and pull you apart if I need to.”
I moaned and dropped my head into his pillows, inhaling deeply as I smelled him there.
“You’re so f*ckin’ sexy, Calliope.”
“I’m paying attention,” I muttered, pushing my hips against him.
“Yeah, baby, you are,” he groaned, running his fingers through the wetness between my thighs. “Wanna see your face, though.”
He turned me again, letting me bounce against the bed for a minute before coming back down until he was covering me completely.
“Wrap your legs around me, Callie.”
I did as he ordered, but the moment he started to push inside me, I stopped him.
“I need to know that you’ll put Will and me first,” I told him quietly. “I need to know that I can count on you to do what’s best for our family.”
He growled deep in his throat and plunged inside me, making me arch off the bed as his teeth clamped down on the side of my throat, and he began sucking hard. He pulled out slowly and slammed back in over and over, until both our bodies were covered in sweat and I had three different hickeys peppering my torso and neck, and then suddenly, he stopped.
“Nothing’s more important than you, Calliope. Don’t you see that yet?”
I looked into his eyes, but I already knew what I’d find.
“Yeah, baby. I see it.”
And there in his bed, with my fingers in his hair and his mouth at my neck, no guilt or blame between us, he loved me and redeemed us both.