69. Ryan Fairview
I listened to Cal’s breathing level out, and his heartbeat slowed down as he fell back asleep. There was no way I would be sleeping tonight. Not with the insane amount of rage that was coursing through my veins.
I’d done my best to keep my cool while Cal opened up to me about some of the trauma that ass fuck had inflicted on him as a child, but I needed to fucking hit something.
The ghost of the woman Cal had told me about was lingering in the doorway to my room. She couldn’t come much closer due to Cal’s charm, which currently rested on the end table.
The top of her skull was missing from where Damian had shot her, but from the nose down, her head was intact.
I appreciated that she had felt the need to tell Callum that she didn’t blame him for what happened despite how gruesome her demise had been.
‘He really tried to say no,’ she whispered as I gently untangled myself from Cal’s sleeping form.
“I know.” I sighed.
‘The others… they’re not as forgiving. He was older then and stopped resisting Damian after a while.’
A low growl built in my chest as I slipped past the ghost and into the hallway.
“He was brainwashed. It still wasn’t his fault. Damian was threatening to kill his sisters if he didn’t comply,” I snapped at the phantom as I jogged down the stairs. She nodded the half of her head that was still attached to her neck and floated after me.
‘I know. But that woman… She has them convinced that he’s evil. She calls him the devil.’
“Yeah well. She can get fucked. She’s the evil one, and if she wasn’t already dead, I would kill her myself for what she did to him.”
That was the second time that night I had threatened to kill someone. I’d never made a threat like that in my life. At least not seriously. But as the words left my mouth, I knew they were true.
I felt possessive and protective of Cal in a way I never had before. Not even for my own family. Seeing him on his hands and knees, being sick from how much trauma he’d been put through, made me see fucking red.
I needed to learn how to protect him. I promised him I wouldn’t let Damian hurt him again, and until I knew how to properly handle a weapon, that promise was an empty one.
I was stalking toward the basement, thinking about how I was going to learn how to shoot a gun while we were all on lockdown in Fairview when I noticed Vox was still up as well. He was sitting on the couch in the living room with his laptop open on the coffee table in front of him.
The blue-white light from the screen lit up his angular face and ice-white hair in the otherwise dimly lit room. He glanced up at me as I approached, raising a dark eyebrow as if to ask, ‘What are you doing up?’
The more time I spent with him, the easier it was to read him, and we were able to communicate somehow without him saying a word.
“Couldn’t sleep. Cal had a night terror.” I grunted, not bothering to hide how pissed off I was.
Vox’s lips pursed in understanding, and he nodded knowingly. He gave me a questioning ‘thumbs up,’ which I intuitively knew was his way of asking if he was okay.
I sighed. “He’s asleep now. But no. He’s not okay.” I gestured to my throat, which still hurt from the way he had tried to strangle me when I woke him up.
“I woke him up, and he had a PTSD response. He tried to kill me.” The statement came out flat and emotionless. I didn’t tell Vox how close he had come to succeeding. There was a moment there when I truly thought I was going to die. However, the strange thing was, I hadn’t been worried about what would happen to me if he didn’t let go.
I had been worried about what accidentally killing me would do to Cal’s already frazzled mind. He would have never forgiven himself, and for some reason, I cared about that more than my own safety.
Vox frowned and tapped his cheek under his eye, then pointed to me. He was asking me what happened to my face.
Frowning, I glanced at my reflection on the TV and nearly jumped when I saw that a blood vessel had popped in my eye. It was all red and looked pretty gruesome.
“Fuck. He got me good,” I muttered, pulling down the skin on my cheek to get a better look. Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about scaring guests at services.
I’d needed to temporarily shut down Fairview until we figured out what we were going to do about Damian. Vox suspected that Damian was going to make a move against us, and he didn’t feel like it was a good idea to let strangers into the house until we were able to neutralize him as a threat.
As anxious as it made me to shut down my father’s business, it was worth it to protect Cal. I was quickly realizing there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for my goofy psycho. I wasn’t sure when the change had happened, but he was mine, and all the worries I had before about my sexuality now felt silly and shallow.
This was life or fucking death, and the man that I was slowly falling for was at risk. I wouldn’t fucking stand for it.
I turned to Vox.
“I need you to keep teaching me how to shoot.”
He raised an eyebrow, and his mouth cocked up at the side.
I’d impressed him. He liked that.
“Is there a way you can teach me without us leaving Fairview?”
Vox nodded and reached behind him, pulling his handgun out from his waistband before unloading it on the coffee table in front of him. I watched him expertly disarm the weapon before snapping all the pieces back into place and handing it to me.
“You want me to practice without any bullets? What good does that do?” I wondered out loud, and Vox held up a finger before typing on his laptop. He turned the screen to face me, and I glanced down to see what he was showing me.
He’d pulled up an article titled: Why Dry Fire Practice is Important.
Dry firing apparently was learning to use a gun without ammo and helped you improve things like trigger control and sight alignment.
“Great.” I grinned, glancing at Vox, who was smirking at me like the sly fox he was. “You wanna come help me practice for a bit? I’m too wound up to sleep.”
He nodded and stood up, hiking up his black jeans as he moved.
“Let’s practice in the gym,” I said, leading him toward the basement. “Maybe we can spar a bit too.”
Vox let out a silent puff of air that I now knew was his version of a chuckle.
I grinned over my shoulder at him.
“I know, I know. You guys have corrupted me.”
Vox was full-blown grinning now, but beneath the warm amusement that swam in his silver eyes, there was an undercurrent of respect there, too.
He was glad I was taking these measures into my own hands, and something about winning the approval of Cal’s best friend felt precious and special.
I made a promise right then and there to myself that I would never do anything to fuck up the trust I had earned from either of them.
I was in this now, and there was no going back.