30. Answers
Chapter 30
Answers
COLE
“ N o. No, no, no.”
I didn’t expect her to be upset until after our conversation, not before it.
Slamming the door behind me, I hauled ass through the house to where Callie’s flustered cries came from.
And walked into a disaster zone.
Flour coated the long counter in Marco’s kitchen. Or maybe Callie had taken up doing blow in Scarface-ion quantities because dustings of white marked her clothes over her shoulder, thigh, and tit.
Measuring cups were stacked to one side, eggshells to another, and a mysterious goo was crusting the counter. Chocolate chips were strewn next to the three bowls she glared at.
“You good, goddess?”
Her head snapped back. Rather than anger at the name—a reaction I now understood—her surprise morphed to happiness at seeing me.
Pure fucking joy.
And then it twisted into embarrassment and dismay. “I was trying to surprise you.”
I didn’t stay back. I closed the distance between us and gripped her ass, tugging her against me while I bent to take her mouth. Because I could do that.
Because she was finally mine to do that to.
I tore myself away and glanced at the mess that was even worse up close. “Consider me surprised.”
Moving from my hold, she swatted my chest with the hand towel she held. “No, I wanted it to be a good surprise. For you and Marco.” Her brows lowered. “Daddy Marco? I don’t know how to handle two Daddies.”
I took the hand she hit me with and pressed it to my growing hard-on. “Trust me, baby, you’re doing just fine.”
Her eyes went unfocused as she licked her bottom lip before pulling it between her teeth. She gave her head a subtle shake. “Where is he?”
After doing a bug sweep on the SUV, I’d left him and Ash at Star to update Maximo and deal with a drunk asshole.
I omitted that last part so she wouldn’t ask how they were doing that. “He got pulled into some work. He’ll be home soon.”
She smiled, and Christ, it hit me in the chest, gut, and dick.
“What’s going on here, baby?”
“Oh. I was making cookies. Or trying to.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to Juliet and Mr. Black’s tomorrow, and it’s rude to show up empty-handed.”
“Baby, Freddy’s been planning a multicourse Thanksgiving feast for six months.”
“Yeah, that’s Freddy. I wanted to bring something. Cookies seemed like the easiest option. But Freddy likes crispy ones. He said Marco likes those super cakey ones, and Mr. Black only likes the chewy kind.”
“Call him Maximo.”
“No. Never. Anyway, I figured I would make the three doughs so they could all chill, but then I mixed up which bowl was which, and I’m pretty sure they’re all ruined now.”
“It’s a chocolate chip cookie. They’re impossible to fuck up.”
She waved an arm out to the mess in front of us.
She’s right. She might’ve pulled off the impossible.
I didn’t say that. “Why didn’t you wait for Freddy?”
Her lip pushed out. “I was supposed to, then I got bored. And excited. And hungry for cookies.”
Which brought me to my next, more urgent question. “Since Marco doesn’t keep anything in his house that isn’t loaded with protein, where’d you get the ingredients? Did you leave?”
The look on her face said she wasn’t dumb, but she thought I was for even asking. “Freddy went before work this morning. I was going to place a delivery order for everything, but he was outraged at my choices. Apparently, imitation vanilla is not the same thing as real vanilla. And the real stuff is worth the substantial price increase.” She scrunched her face. “Which means I’ve wasted food and money.”
“We don’t know these are garbage yet. Gimme a second to figure it out.”
I had no clue what I was looking at. They all looked like dough to me. Since that was no help, I did the smart thing.
I covered the bowls with cling wrap and put them in the fridge for Freddy to deal with.
Callie sighed. “It’s not the miraculous solution that would result in three different types of cookies, but it’s probably the right thing to do.” She started wiping up the mess. “What’s your favorite type of cookie?”
I snagged her by the waist and lifted to set her ass on a clean portion of the counter.
One of the few that remained.
“Any cookie is a good cookie,” I answered, forcing her legs open so I could push myself against her. “What about you?”
“I’ve only had the prepackaged kind, and those all taste pretty much the same. Well, and ones this lady, Flower, used to make at the place I lived before ES. They were kind of chocolate chip, but she used applesauce, arrowroot powder, ground flaxseed, and carob chips.” She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and laughed. “That was the same horrified face Freddy made about just the prepackaged ones. I’m pretty sure he put a culinary curse on Flower when I told him her ingredient list.”
I would bet she was correct. Food was Freddy’s gospel, and that shit sounded like a cardinal sin.
Pressing a kiss to her smile, I stepped back and started cleaning the disaster zone around us. Callie tried to scoot down to help, but I stopped her with a hand on the thigh. It was almost enough to distract both of us, but our impending conversation had turned into two.
I started with the one that didn’t involve Marco.
And that would upset her least.
Hopefully.
I wasn’t sure how to phrase it, so I went with blunt. “Have you ever heard of ADHD?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Have you ever looked into it?”
She shook her head.
“I think it would be worth talking to Pierce about at your appointment next week.”
“Isn’t that the one little kids get when they have too much red dye and TV?”
“No, baby. Lots of people have it, and it’s not like they show on TV.”
“Nothing ever is,” she said with a sigh.
I set down the towel and pulled my cell from my pocket to bring up the list of symptoms before handing it to her.
She sat quietly for a minute, scanning it. “Son of a bitch.”
I knew bringing it up was a risk. That she could take my concern as criticism. But I hadn’t expected her face to flush so red as she vibrated with fury.
“Calliope, I don’t mind any of this. None of us do. We think you’re perfect?—”
“I’m not perfect. Not at all. Do you know how long I’ve struggled? I barely graduated from high school, Daddy. My bad sleep. My dependency on routines. My messiness.” She turned the phone, then flipped it back before I could see what she was trying to show me. “Even the way I can’t function when I know I have plans. Every time I tried to talk to my parents about it, they said I needed more fresh air. To stop stressing. That schedules and time were a human-made construct, and I needed to live in the moment. But it can all be explained by something other than my stupidity.”
“Of course you’re not stupid.”
Tears brimmed her pretty brown eyes. “I didn’t know that.”
I’m gonna fucking kill her parents.
I cupped her jaw and tilted her head so she’d meet my gaze. “We’ll get it figured out, okay?”
She nodded. “Is there lab work or something? Should we do it soon so he has the results next week?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s just talking and going over that symptom list.”
“That’ll be easy. Basically all of them are a check.” She dropped her face to continue reading through the website, and I gave her time. After a short while, she let out an exhale. “Better late than never, I guess.”
If I were her, I would be pissed. Hell, I wasn’t her, and I was still pissed. She’d been fortunate enough that her blood work in the hospital hadn’t shown some long-term physical effects of never having medical care. But being forced to struggle mentally her whole life was still fucked. She should’ve had parents who cared enough to pay attention. Rather than throwing shit like I would’ve, she shrugged it off and rolled with it.
Christ, how is she so sweet?
I was trying to decide whether to delve into the next conversation or wait for Marco when she took the choice from me.
“We need to talk.”
Unease hit my gut. “About?”
“Last night.”
As far as I was concerned, that topic had been settled when she’d climbed into Freddy’s bed. It’d been confirmed when she’d let the three of us back into hers.
I would’ve happily made it crystal fucking clear with my mouth or dick that morning, but she hadn’t stirred through two alarms or Marco and me kissing her goodbye.
If she was having more doubts, I would reassure her, but that was it. There was no going back. No changing her mind.
She’d chosen us in the night.
She was stuck with us in the light of day.
That unease I had prickled into dread when she said, “Um, so what you told me…”
“Which part?” I pushed.
“About your job description.”
For a second, I thought she was going to ask us to quit the violent portion of our jobs.
And I hoped like fuck she wouldn’t. I loved what I did. All of what I did. It was rewarding. It made a difference.
It’d only been a day since she’d become ours, but if she asked, I wasn’t sure what my answer would be. Pathetic, yeah, but still the truth.
I couldn’t speak for Marco, but I bet he would give it some deliberation, too.
She grabbed a wooden spoon and twisted it in her hold. “Are you careful?”
“Very.”
“So you guys aren’t going to get caught?”
“No, baby. Not gonna happen.”
“Do I have to know about it?” I opened my mouth, but she put her fingers to my lips. “I know what you do. And I am okay with it. I was okay with it as soon as Marco told me about the kind of people you go after. But do I have to know the details? For example, when you come home and I ask about your days, would you guys be okay to, um, leave out those specifics? Or would that feel like I wasn’t accepting…”
Her words trailed off when I licked across her skin, tasting sugar and my sweet Callie.
Our sweet Callie.
I liked a lot about what she’d said.
That she was good with what we did.
Her easy inclusion of it being all of us.
Her wanting to be supportive.
But most of all, the casual way she mentioned us coming home to her.
“Telling you was so there were no secrets between us,” I explained. “Especially one that big. But it’s nothing we need to talk about again. We want to protect you from it, not lay it at your feet.”
She started to deflate before tension infused her body again. “Do you think Daddy Marco feels the same way?”
A door closed, and if I didn’t know better, I would think he’d been standing outside, waiting for his opening. I knew that wasn’t the case, though, because he wouldn’t wait to get to Callie.
He couldn’t even wait for me to move from between her legs. He stormed over and took her mouth in a brutal kiss.
It was fucking weird how not weird it was. How normal it felt.
How right.
Pulling away, he scanned her before the rest of his kitchen. She blinked off the haze he’d left her in enough to panic.
“I can explain,” she rushed out, but it was unnecessary. She could’ve torched his house, and he wouldn’t have cared.
“Looks like you had a good time, baby girl.” He looked at me, then down to where I was still positioned between her legs. “You talk to her or just make those fuckable lips swollen?”
He didn’t know the conversation about ADHD got expedited, so I shook my head.
“What’s going on now?” she asked.
“Get that you don’t like talking about this, but you need to tell us about Abraham,” I told her.
“There’s not much to tell,” she evaded.
It wasn’t a lie, but it bordered on one.
Marco clocked it, too. “What did we say about lying?”
“I’m not. There’s nothing to say. I didn’t really know him.”
That didn’t border on it.
It was an outright lie.
Marco’s dark eyes went to mine. Beyond the stoic disapproval, anticipation bubbled beneath the surface. Control wasn’t new to him, but the Daddy part was. He was checking that he was doing the right thing.
I gave him a barely perceptible chin lift.
We’d warned her about breaking the rules. We wouldn’t be good Daddies if we didn’t follow through.