Chapter 20
I couldn’t recall a time over the last three years when none of us went to The Sandbar on a Saturday night. Sure, there were times here and there when one of us had to skip out because something came up. But all of us? It never happened.
Not until tonight.
Gabe called me an hour ago, just after I got out of the shower, asking me to come to his place because he needed to talk to me about something.
Lucas and Wes were already there when I arrived, and the atmosphere was morose at best. It only got worse when Gabe explained everything he and Wes uncovered, and my distress and confusion over hearing it added to the already sullen mood.
When I left Callie’s house that morning, I was slightly hungover from the wine, and my stomach still hurt from all the laughing we had done the night before during our girls’ night. She was happy. Things were good.
Then Lucas went to talk to her.
From what he said, dropping the bombshell on her went as well as it did when Wes dropped it on him and went exactly how he thought it would—terribly. Now, she wasn’t responding to anyone’s attempts to reach her; calls went unanswered, texts went unread.
Callie always had a knack for burying emotions she didn’t want to face or deal with; she’d been doing it since we were kids.
She’d bottle up as much as she could until she couldn’t stuff anymore in there, and it all became too much, and she had no choice but to face it.
She was doing it now with the death of her mom, still not allowing herself to fully grieve that loss even eight months later.
I knew this was going to be the thing she couldn’t fit inside the bottle, and everything she’d been trying to suppress was going to come pouring out.
I was worried about her. I didn’t want her to be alone, but I also knew I needed to give her a little space to try and process it on her own. So I’d give her tonight. If she still wasn’t answering me by tomorrow, I was going to her house whether she wanted me there or not.
The silence in the room between the four of us sitting there was unsettling.
Lucas looked like pure hell. I mean, how else are you supposed to look when you find out your parents helped cover up the role one played in the death of the father of the woman you love?
But something told me the unease radiating off him in waves had nothing to do with his own circumstances but sheer concern for Callie and what this meant for them going forward.
I’d heard Wes talk about his dad before, and it was obvious they were close, and he seemed to hold him in high regard. I had no doubt this situation left him feeling betrayed and probably questioning everything he thought he knew about his dad.
As for Gabe and I, we sat in our quiet concern for the others. I couldn’t begin to imagine what any of them were going through.
When my phone broke through the unsettling silence in the room, everyone snapped their gazes in my direction, and I knew they were all filled with the same hope I was.
I quickly grabbed it from my purse, but instead of Callie’s name on the screen, I saw Brody’s, and my shoulders slumped.
“It’s just my brother.” I ignored the call; he’d leave a message if it was important.
Lucas got up from his spot on the couch and walked towards Gabe’s back door, sliding it open and disappearing onto the porch. I sighed. “He’s a mess.”
Gabe nodded in agreement. “Yeah. And it’s not like there’s much for us to say to make the situation better.”
Wes shook his head with a tick of his jaw. “This whole fucking thing is a goddamn mess.”
“How did your mom and Haley take it?” Gabe asked.
“I don’t know.” Wes sighed. “I think they’re both still trying to wrap their heads around it—which is fair because what the actual fuck. But that’s nothing compared to what Luke and Callie are dealing with.”
Wes and I had no issue admitting that we weren’t friends, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t empathetic to what he was dealing with despite his best efforts to hide it.
He was focused on his concern for Lucas and Callie, which was genuine, but seemed to be trying to hide his own inner turmoil over the role his dad played in all of this.
It obviously affected him, but he didn’t seem to think it mattered.
After talking to Lucas on the balcony to try and give him some words of comfort about Callie, I walked back inside and looked at Gabe and Wes as I grabbed my purse. “I’m gonna take off.”
Wes, who was zoned out and staring at a spot on the floor, barely nodded.
Gabe stood and walked me to the door. “Let us know if you hear from Callie.”
“I will.”
I was tempted to go to Callie’s house to check on her, but I wanted to give her a chance to try and work through things on her own, so I forced myself to drive back to my apartment building.
I’d just changed into a pair of oversized sweatpants and a tank top when a knock echoed down the hall. I walked from my room, arching on my tiptoes to peer through the peephole. My brow furrowed as I stepped back and opened the door.
Wes was standing on the other side.
“What are—”
I was cut off by his lips crushing against mine as he stepped over the threshold. His hands gripped my hips as he kicked the door shut and started walking me further into my apartment and toward the hall that led to my bedroom.
“Wes—”
“Shut up, Princess,” he murmured against my lips before kissing me again, hard and rough, as he continued to guide me down the hall. And it wasn’t spoken with underlying mischief like usual.
The kiss was desperate, but not in the way it typically was between us, with sheer lust and nothing more than the need for release fueling it. There were no teasing smirks, no arrogant remarks.
It was desperate in a way that said he was hurting…aching for a temporary distraction so he could momentarily forget the deception and duplicity of the man he’d looked up to his whole life.
When we made it into my room, he guided us back onto my bed, his body settling above mine. His hands were rough as they started to push up the hem of my tank top, but I pressed my hand against his hard jaw, gently pushing him back to break the kiss as I let out a breath. “Wes…”
As he stared down at me and searched my eyes, I could see the pain hidden in the depths of his. And he knew it.
“Please,” he whispered. My brow creased, and I started to shake my head as my lips parted to speak. “Please,” he repeated, cutting me off. He bowed his head, pressing his forehead against my chest. “Please…” The plea came out strained and fraught.
And at that moment…my heart actually hurt for him. No, what he experienced may not have been the same blow it was to Lucas or Callie, but it didn’t diminish the way his dad’s involvement broke him.
Without even thinking, my hand gently curled around the back of his neck. He slumped against the side of my body, sliding his arm around my waist as his head rested on my chest.
And we just…laid there.
Wes didn’t need sex right now.
He needed someone to just be with him, to exist with him in the silence.
And I happened to be there to be that someone.
So, we lay in the quiet, my fingers softly combing through the hair at the nape of his neck while my eyes alternated between the ceiling and him. I watched his brow knit and heard him sigh every now and then as he sifted through the myriad of thoughts in his head.
If I was being honest, it was a bit awkward, not because of the long stretch of silence that followed but because it was him…
and me…us. But I pushed that aside because no matter how awkward it was or how much we may have disliked each other, I knew he wouldn’t be doing this, especially with me, if he didn’t need someone at that moment.
And I wasn’t a complete monster with no heart.
After forty-five minutes of silence, he finally spoke. “Your chest is comfy…”
My eyes slid down to him as my brow arched. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. His head tilted back so he could look at me, and I saw a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he nuzzled his cheek against my boob. “Emotional support tiddy pillows.”
I scoffed through a laugh. “You are such an ass.”
He was shaking against me with silent laughter as I shoved him away from me and grabbed a pillow, smacking him in the face with it.
He was obviously feeling a little better.
I got up from the bed and walked out of my room, and he trailed behind me. “It’s pretty late,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I should go.” I nodded and walked to the door, opening it for him.
It might have seemed odd to anyone else to sit in silence with someone you know is hurting one moment and for both of you to act like it never happened the next. But it didn’t strike me as strange at all.
I’d expect nothing less from either one of us and whatever this fucked up dynamic between us was.
“See ya around.” Wes walked out, and I had just started to close the door when he called out to me. “Hey, Morgan…” I paused, peering around the door into the hallway. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at me with what I could have sworn was a foreign hint of self-consciousness. “…Thank you.”
I hadn’t been expecting that.
I held his stare transiently, and for that brief moment, it was almost as if we were…friends.
“You’re welcome.”