Chapter 5
Five
If a t-rex can survive millions of years with those tiny little arms, you can make it through this.
—Jasper to Calliope
JASPER
“What’s your plan, Stan?”
I looked over at Webber and asked, “Tonight? Or this week?”
“Tonight,” Webber answered. “Are you going to the club Christmas party?”
“Hadn’t planned on it,” I admitted absently as I worked on loosening a nut from a bolt.
Because my sister was supposed to come down, I didn’t respond to the invite that went out several weeks ago about who was coming, what they were bringing, and who their ‘gift person’ would be.
My club family liked to call it the “misfit Christmas” because it was the week before Christmas, and we got together with anyone that hadn’t gone to visit family yet, and exchanged gifts.
I hadn’t responded to go this year, nor bought any presents, because I hadn’t planned on being available.
Now that I was, I couldn’t just invite myself.
“Why not?” he asked. “Your sister didn’t come down.”
I paused. “She didn’t, no. But I didn’t respond as going, and you know how the old ladies get when you just show up and don’t bring anything. Which, I might add, I have nothing to bring. I’m not going to be one of the club brothers they consider rude.”
I already had enough to worry about with the club brothers thinking that I was still a rat.
I wouldn’t add to that.
“I think it’ll be f…” his cell rang, and he picked it up. “Yeah?” He paused. “Where? Okay. I can have Jasper come. He’s gonna run the tow truck for me tonight.”
Webber had one tow truck. He only used it for people that were current clients that needed a ride. He did this as a courtesy to his people, and I was guessing that one of his people was broken down and needed help.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket and said, “Care to go pick someone up?”
I sighed. “Guess it was good that I didn’t tell them I was going.”
“You’re still going,” he said. “You’re just going to pick Calliope up first.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, knowing that I was going to get grease on my face when I did. But I couldn’t stop myself. “What happened now?”
“Her truck ran out of gas.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Doesn’t she know what a gas gauge is?”
“One would think.” Webber grinned. “But you know how she is.”
Unfortunately, I did.
I was the one who picked her up the last two times that she’d done this.
“She swears that there’s something wrong with her truck,” Webber explained. “Like swears it. You’ll have to let her explain, though, because Searcy sounded frantic on the phone and I couldn’t hear everything she was saying.”
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Corner of Millington and Main.”
I got into the tow truck, on the off chance—very off—that I was wrong and the truck actually had something wrong with it—and headed her way without a second thought.
When I got there it was to find her exactly where she said, holding a small gas can, and emptying the gas into her tank.
She looked up at me and frowned as I pulled to a stop behind her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when I got out and headed her way.
“Your sister called and told us you needed gas,” I said.
She looked at me, then at the tow truck, then shrugged. “I got some.”
I gritted my teeth and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for her to finish up with what she was doing.
“You’ll go straight to the gas station after this, won’t you?” I asked.
“Sure will,” she said as she twisted the top onto the can and put it in the back of her truck.
With another two empty cans.
Jesus Christ.
She got into her truck and started it up.
It sounded like it was going to turn over for a minute but then stalled.
I walked up to her truck window and she rolled the window down.
“I swear, and I swear to you with all that’s in me, that I had gas in this this morning,” she shared.
“I have had nothing but bad luck out of this vehicle. I’ve taken it in four separate times because I swear to you, I fill it up.
I’m not a complete dumbass. But it’s just… gone. I don’t drive anywhere, Jasper.”
I believed her, even though she was the biggest train wreck I’d ever encountered.
“Get out,” I said. “Go sit in the tow truck.”
She grumbled but got out, heading toward the tow truck where I knew that she’d be safe.
Once I was in it, I tried to start it myself and ended up with the same problem as her.
Instead of questioning it, I headed toward the tow truck and repositioned it so that I was in front of her vehicle. Then I hooked it up and pulled it onto the flatbed trailer.
Once everything was boomed down, I grabbed her purse, wallet and keys out of the center console. Then grabbed the three boxes of cookies that were sitting on her seat.
I headed to the passenger side of the tow truck and held everything up to her.
She took all of it, throwing it all into the back except for one of the boxes of cookies.
“Thanks,” she said as she opened the box and leaned down to take a whiff.
“You get those for the party?” I asked.
“What party?” She frowned.
My brows rose. “The Christmas party tonight with the club.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I wasn’t invited to the Christmas party.”
“I’m sure you were,” I said. “From what I understand, the rest of your family is going to be there.”
She shrugged. “My invitations get lost in the mail a lot.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
But I was sure it wasn’t because she wasn’t invited.
Her sister and her siblings loved her. Even if it’d taken them a few years to get warmed back up to her.
When I met Calliope, she’d been a hormonal teen with a huge chip on her shoulder. That chip included everyone. Her sister. Her other siblings. And especially her mother.
Needless to say, she wasn’t always the most fun person to be around when I’d first met her.
That’d changed over time, and eventually she’d become someone that people liked to be around once they’d gotten rid of her mother’s influence. Oh, and made it to where they didn’t have to scrape by to fulfill just their most basic of needs.
Hell, when I’d met Calli, she’d had a job that she’d been working her every available moment she wasn’t in school. She’d added cash to the household fund without anyone even knowing it.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure Searcy knew that she’d been helping out.
The only reason that I’d known was because she’d been bitching about it to someone on the phone when I’d come up behind her after first meeting her.
She’d been telling whomever it was that she’d needed more hours, and she’d take what she could get, because her little brother needed a new instrument.
“You can hang out with me at the shop then and we’ll take a look at your truck,” I said. “And you can share those extra boxes of cookies you were planning on hoarding.”
She grimaced. “It’s just…they’re special.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, then admitted who she’d met today.
“No shit?” I asked. “My sister orders his cookies every Valentine’s Day. I swear that all I hear is ‘how awesome’ they are. She dreams about them, she says.”
“Well, maybe I’ll get you an in with him next time I deliver one of his packages,” she offered.
I smiled. Or tried to, seeing as only half my face cooperated. “She’d probably maul you with love and affection.”
Calli grimaced. “That sounds awful.”
“Tell me about it,” I closed her door and rounded the hood. I had to wait for several cars to pass before I got into the tow truck, but when I did, Calli was already pointing at the gas station. “I will definitely share, but you have to go in there and buy us some milk.”
I did just that, going in and buying her a milk, but also buying her a coffee, since I knew that it got cold in the shop during this time of year.
I was a little less affected by the cold now.
When I’d gotten burned, I’d experienced a lot of damage to my nerve endings.
A lot of things didn’t quite feel like it used to.
I couldn’t feel cold the same way—it had to really be freezing out for me to even put on a jacket. The heat was much the same, and the only way that I could feel heat on my affected burned side was if it was intense. And by that point, I was already damaging my skin.
Sensation on my burned skin also didn’t quite feel the same.
It was like my body was just too damaged to feel anything the same way that it used to.
“Thanks,” she returned. “Who’s that for?”
“You,” I answered. “It’s cold as fuck right now.”
“You’re not wearing a jacket, though,” she pointed out.
I hesitated, not wanting to share anything about myself. I just hated bringing attention to my flaws, and this was one of the ones that bothered me the most.
But I ended up telling her anyway. “I don’t feel heat or cold like I used to. It has to be fairly extreme. And even then, I’ve probably already fucked myself up.”
“What about on the skin that wasn’t injured by the fire?” she asked bluntly.
That was my Calliope.
Never one to beat around the bush.
“It’s the same as the damaged skin areas,” I admitted. “Something changed when the fire fucked me up. Nothing feels the same.”
She looked over at me with a curious glance, and I wondered if her mind had gone to the biggest question all women want to know.
Did my dick still work the same.
But she didn’t ask, which I was thankful for.
During the fire, having multiple layers of clothing on, as well as the fire retardant clothing that the police department recommended we wear, had saved me somewhat below the belt.
Or maybe it was the way that I was positioned when the blast went off.
I don’t know. Whatever it was, my dick was fully intact, as were my testicles.
The skin around my thighs, however, was fucked.
My entire left side from hairline to ankle was covered in burn scars.
The same went for most of my back, and half of my ass.
The authorities thought that I’d tried to protect Bayne Green when the explosion happened, and I’d covered him with my body.
However, I hadn’t protected him well enough.