The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow #1)

60. Ryan Fairview

Alexa, play: Atlantis - Seafret

Y a right. Like I was fucking staying back. I knew whatever Vox had seen on his phone had something to do with Cal. My heart was literally hammering in my chest as I followed Vox out of the house.

Sure enough, as soon as I stepped out the front door, relief rushed through me as I drank in the familiar sight of Cal.

My Cal.

I was so shocked and excited to see him that I didn’t notice when Vox stopped in his tracks on the porch.

Slamming into his back, I stumbled slightly before frowning up at him.

He was staring at Cal, who was looking right back with his mouth in a firm line.

“Cal!” I shouted over Vox’s shoulder, expecting to see his face light up at the sight of me.

But it didn’t; he didn’t even glance in my direction.

My whole body went cold.

“Cal?” His name was a question this time. Now that the initial shock and excitement were wearing off, I took the time to look at him more closely.

Something was fucking wrong.

He had dark circles under his eyes, and he looked like he’d lost weight. He hadn’t been gone long enough for him to look that much thinner, but sure enough, his cheekbones were sharper than they had been the last time I’d seen him.

“I’m assuming you have Naomi here?” Cal asked Vox, still refusing to look at me. His voice was rough and raw, like he had been screaming, and more anxiety coursed through me.

Vox nodded, and Cal slid his hands in his pockets.

“Go get her. Tell her it’s time to go home.”

I glanced back and forth between Vox and Cal, completely confused.

Vox gave him one slow head nod and went back into the house, leaving me out here alone with my clearly broken psycho.

“Cal… where have you been? Are you okay? Why don’t you come inside?” I asked, snapping out of my dazed state of shock and rushing toward him.

Finally, he looked at me, and his expression stopped me in my tracks. I was barely a foot away, but it felt like we were standing on different planets.

His eyes were empty, completely devoid of any of the humor I was used to seeing on his face.

He looked so broken I suddenly felt like I might cry.

Which was stupid.

What did I have to cry about?

He was the one who was clearly hurt. I couldn’t see any marks on him, but the stiff way he held himself made me suspect that he was in a great deal of pain.

“What happened to you?” I whispered. For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer me. He just stared at me with that scary, dead look on his face, and I quivered with anxiety.

This was not my Cal. What happened to my happy-go-lucky psychopath?

“We’re done, Ryan.”

What?

Was this some kind of fucking joke?

I let out a shaky laugh that I think was actually a choked sob.

“Ha ha. That’s funny,” I chirped, stepping closer to him. He just eyed me warily, his face more serious than I had ever seen it. “Since when do you call me Ryan?”

“That’s your name.”

“Yeah, but… usually you call me ginger snap.”

Or baby.

He just stared at me with that empty look on his face.

“Cal… I don’t know what happened, but why don’t you come inside so we can talk about it?” I tried again, but he shook his head.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not? Cal, what’s going on?” My voice was cracking. My heart felt like it was breaking in my chest.

What the fuck was happening right now?

“Go inside, Ryan.”

“No. Not without you. Did you get any of my messages? I’ve been so worried about you, Cal. Please just tell me what happened?— ”

“Are you fucking deaf?” he snapped, and I flinched. I literally flinched. He had never spoken to me like that before, and his dark eyes were burning with pain and anger. “I said we’re fucking done. Don’t text me again. Lose my number. This was a mistake. ”

“A… a mistake?” I whispered, feeling like my whole world was falling apart.

“Yes. A mistake. You were a mistake. I should have known better than to get involved with you.”

“Cal…” My eyes were literally filled with tears now. I had no idea when my feelings for him had changed from irritation to something that I might have considered close to love, but they had. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine my life going back to what it had been before him. I couldn’t lose him.

“Go inside, Ryan. I don’t want you anymore,” he said, and a strange roaring started up in my ears at his words.

For a moment, all I could feel was anguish and pure devastation. He might as well have fucking shot me in the chest. It would have hurt less.

I don’t want you…anymore.

It was the ‘ anymore’ that rang through my head like a warning bell, signaling that everything was not as it seemed.

I examined his face and forced down the overwhelming feelings of heartache and pain, doing my best to think critically about what was happening.

He didn’t want me ‘anymore.’ But he wanted me before. I know he did. He’d just been gone for a week, and Vox told me he had more or less been being tortured. I could tell that he’d been through something horrible just by looking at him. The way he was treating me was night and fucking day from the Cal I knew.

The only thing that had changed between the last time I saw him and now was the week he’d spent at the mercy of that horrible man.

One thing I knew about Cal was he always put the safety of the people he cared about before his own.

I remembered the way he kissed me before he’d disappeared. You couldn’t fake that. That wasn’t a fucking mistake.

Damian wanted him to leave me.

Cal was trying to protect me from him.

No.

Fucking unacceptable.

This wasn’t Cal.

This was a product of whatever Damian had done to him.

“I don’t believe you,” I snapped, stepping into him and sliding my hand around the nape of his neck. I let him see everything I was feeling… All the feelings that I’d tried so hard to deny but had somehow developed regardless. I let him see and opened myself to them fully for the first time.

I wasn’t running from this anymore, and I wasn’t about to let him fucking run from this either.

“I’m in this, Cal. I don’t know what fucking happened to you, but I refuse to let it break us before we even had a chance to get started.”

He glared at me and tried to pull away, but I tightened my hold on his neck.

“You made me swear that I would be yours, remember? You literally held me down in that field and made me fucking promise.”

His eyes flashed, and his lips pursed, but I knew he was listening.

“Well, that goes both ways. You’re mine too, and it’s too late for you to run away now.”

Without waiting for him to respond, I slammed my mouth into his, and his eyebrows shot up in shock.

Instant.

Fucking.

Fireworks.

The second our lips touched, it was like the earth stopped spinning. My entire body reacted to his touch like it always did, and lightning exploded through my veins.

I pressed up against him, desperate to get closer.

Even with my body zipped against his, I didn’t feel like we were close enough. I felt like I might never be close enough to him. I wanted to literally crawl inside him and set up camp or let him crawl inside of me. I wasn’t picky. As long as we were together, I didn’t fucking care who was inside of who.

I just needed him. And I knew he needed me, too.

For a split second, he softened, letting out the tiniest whimper that broke my already shattered heart. The way he reacted to the kiss—no matter how hard he was clearly fighting it—confirmed what I already knew.

He didn’t actually want to end this.

He didn’t think I was a mistake.

He was scared and hurt and trying to keep me safe in the only way he knew how.

For one shining moment, he let me kiss him. He quivered so slightly, and his hands twitched at his sides. I knew he wanted to wrap his arms around me and kiss me back.

Instead, he shoved me away roughly and growled in frustration, though there was a little bit of something in his gaze now. Those dead eyes softened just a bit.

He was still in there.

“Please… don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Ryan.” His voice was a guttural rasp. Like he was pleading with me to let him go.

“Yeah. Fuck that ,” I hissed, stepping into him again. He backed away from me, almost cringing in a way that was so inherently not Cal that it made me sick. I frowned, realizing it seemed as if he were favoring the left side of his body.

He looked so unlike himself. So tired and sad and broken… like a scared, injured animal. I forced myself to back off and give him space. I didn’t want to be the reason he felt stressed or cornered.

Making the conscious decision to give him some room to breathe, I did everything I could to calm my own panic at the sight of him nearly cowering before me.

I swallowed, ignoring how tight my throat felt. I needed to keep it together.

For him.

“Do what you need to do for now, Callum, but I’m not giving up on you. I’ll be right fucking here, waiting for you to come back to me when you’re ready,” I promised.

“You’ll be waiting a long time, then.” He sighed, taking another step back toward his car.

“I’ll wait for you forever if I have to, angel.”

His mouth parted, and his eyes turned glassy.

“Angel?” he whispered just as Naomi’s voice rang out behind me.

“Cal! You’re back! Are you okay?” She cried, rushing down to meet us on the sidewalk. Cal pulled his dark gaze away from me, and he pinned his sister with the same dead look he had given me.

“Get in the car, Naomi.”

She froze at his tone, glancing back and forth between Cal and me, much the same way I had with Vox earlier.

“Umm… okay…” she squeaked, frowning. She looked at me, and I gave her a nod, squeezing her shoulder.

“Go with him and make sure he’s alright. I’ll text you later,” I whispered in her ear, and her frown deepened, but she nodded, climbing into the passenger seat.

Vox came up to stand beside me. Thankfully, he hadn’t seemed to notify Cassandra that her brother was back. I had a feeling if she came out here, things would have been even more of a disaster.

Cal looked at Vox, his mouth forming a firm line.

“You and I are no longer partners. I’ve been reassigned, and you’ve been excommunicated from Apex. If you come back, Damian will kill you.”

His delivery was flat, and Vox scowled, but Cal just turned on his heel and got into the driver’s seat of the Aston Martin.

“I’ll come by with your stuff later, Naomi!” I called, but my words were drowned out by the car’s engine.

I waited for the usual screech and groan of Cal’s robot music, but nothing was playing on the speakers as he pulled out, and I frowned.

Cal always had music playing in the car…

Naomi waved to me as Cal drove away, and I tried to give her a reassuring look, but I wasn’t feeling super optimistic myself.

I turned to Vox to demand he give me some clue as to what the fuck was going on, but he was already jogging toward the G-Wagon.

“Hey! Wait! Where are you going?” I chased after Vox, but he leapt into the car and locked the doors, preventing me from entering the vehicle. I pulled at the handle frantically. If he was going after Cal, I wanted to go too.

But Vox cut me an angry glare and pointed back at the house.

Fuck, I wished this dude would just fucking talk to me.

He pointed at the house again and gave me a look that said please fucking listen to me for once.

As much as it killed me to do it, I sighed and stepped back, remembering how easily he had disarmed me earlier.

“Bring him back,” I ordered through the crack in the window. Vox nodded as if to say, ‘That’s the fucking plan.’

And he peeled out of the driveway, heading in the same direction Cal had gone.