Chapter 27 #2
The silence that followed was heavy, filled with all the things Calista spent years trying to bury, but now, in bed with Reid, moonlight painting the room in shades of silver and shadow, everything she worked hard to release came rushing back.
Calista’s gaze drifted to the window, where the moon hung like a cosmic night-light. “You know who I can’t stop thinking about?”
“Who’s that?”
“Gavin.”
“My Gavin?” Reid’s body tensed, but maybe she was just cutting off the blood supply to his arms.
She moved, rolling from his embrace. “Weird, huh? I guess it’s because he’ll be here for the tournament. In my memories, he’s like this background character in a video game. You know, the ones that make you go, ‘Wait, why is this dude even here?’ ”
Reid’s voice sounded strained. “Really?”
“I remember how my dad would react whenever Gavin’s name came up. It was like watching a human embodiment of a Wikipedia page edited in real time. All fury and . . . I don’t know, unease? Like Gavin’s mere existence was a glitch in my dad’s matrix or something.”
He reached out to squeeze her hand. “Cal . . .”
She let out a small, humorless chuckle. “God, I wish I could understand it all, you know? It’s like I’m trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube, but half the stickers are missing, and someone’s replaced them with emoji faces.”
“Calico?”
“Yeah?” She glanced over and caught a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.
“There’s something I really do need to tell you.”
“No, wait, let me finish. I need to get this all out.”
Reid looked as if he was about to say something else but then bit his bottom lip. “Go on, but then we really need to talk.”
She was so wrapped up in expressing her thoughts, Calista glossed right over that.
“I guess that’s why being here with you feels so .
. . I don’t know, grounding? Like, you’re this weird time traveler in my life.
A link to my past, but as well”—she smiled, feeling ridiculous—“a bridge to whatever comes next. You were there for so much of it—the Hunger Games: Golf Edition, my dad’s ‘Impossible Standards R Us’ routine.
But you also saw the real me. Does that make any sense? ”
He took a deep breath like he was about to dive into the emotional equivalent of the Mariana Trench. “It makes sense, but Calista, there’s something I must tell you. I should have told you before, but—”
The sound of the front door opening cut him off midsentence. Startled, they stared at each other doing their best impression of deer caught in headlights.
“Are you expecting someone?” she asked.
“No. You?”
She gasped. “Someone’s breaking in!”
What followed was the least graceful scramble in human history as they tried to wrap themselves in sheets, like two mummies attempting synchronized swimming, but with more panicked whispers and accidental elbow jabs. Just as they covered themselves, the bedroom door swung open.
And there, looking like he’d stepped out of Calista’s fragmented memories and into this bizarre reality show called her life, stood Gavin Gonzales.
The man loomed in the doorway. His salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, emphasizing the sharp angles of his face that time had stressed.
Deep laugh lines framed dark brown eyes the same shade as Calista’s.
He wore a golf shirt and khakis as if he’d just stepped off the eighteenth green despite the late hour.
His startled gaze flicked between Reid and Calista.
“Gavin!” Reid clutched the top sheet against his chest.
“Calista?” Gavin’s eyes widened in surprise with a twist of something Calista couldn’t quite place.
She jerked her gaze to Reid, searching for answers. “Reid?”
For a moment, they all stood frozen, like the world’s most awkward game of statues. The air in the room thickened with unspoken words, leaving Calista feeling like she’d shown up to a test she didn’t know she had to take, and oh yeah, she was nearly naked.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
Then Reid, bless his heart and curse his timing, decided to go for gold in the Worst Moment to Drop a Truth Bomb. He gestured weakly at Gavin and blurted, “This is what I was trying to tell you. Cal, meet your biological father.”
Cal, meet your biological father.
Reid’s words hung in the air, sharp as broken glass, and yet his statement made absolutely no sense. Blinking rapidly, Calista swiveled her head from Gavin to Reid and back again . . . twice.
When she snagged Gavin’s gaze for the second time she saw in his face the stark truth. Gavin Gonzales was her father. His dark-chocolate brown eyes, the same color as her own, filled with such tenderness and regret that his desperate longing tore her right in two.
Benjamin Dempsey was not her father.
All the air left her lungs in one audible whoosh, half sob, half grunt. Her world tilted, cottage walls blurred, and Gavin—a family friend turned sudden father—swam before her eyes.
This simply couldn’t be happening. Her whole life was a lie?
Everything she believed, everything she knew about herself, was built on a foundation of deceit. What was left? Who was she now?
Calista teetered on the verge of collapse. Her vision blurred. Her legs wobbled beneath her as the weight of the truth bore down on her. This couldn’t be happening. How was this happening? But the expression on the two men’s faces told her it was true, and there was no escape.
“Calista!” Gavin and Reid exclaimed in the same breath and surged toward her.
She crossed her arms in front of her face, forming an X, blocking them off. The bedsheet she’d wrapped around her like a toga stayed in place miraculously. “Don’t touch me! Either of you!”
“Cal,” Reid said, his voice beseeching. “I know you’re—”
“No! You know nothing. Get out! Both of you.” She pointed to the door, so shaken she didn’t trust herself to stay standing. “Please, leave me alone!”
Gavin and Reid exchanged glances, nodded at each other, and filed out the door, shutting it softly behind them.
Calista crumpled onto the bare mattress. She curled into a fetal position, making herself small, the way she had as a child when she hid in a closet or under a bed to escape her father’s tirades.
How could she have been so stupid? The signs had been there, hadn’t they? The way Gavin had always been on the periphery, the way Reid had held back, not telling her the truth. She let herself believe in a fantasy, in a life that was never real.
Gavin Gonzales was her father, not Benjamin Dempsey.
The pieces fell into place, clicking like tumblers in a lock, and everything made sense.
No going back. Calista couldn’t return to the life she had known, couldn’t undo the lies that had shaped her.
History was gone, stripped away like the bed linens, leaving her exposed and vulnerable in the harsh light of this new reality.
The reason Benjamin had been especially cruel to her?
She was the biological daughter of his greatest rival.
Demetra had an affair with Gavin, and Calista was their love child.
Was that why Benjamin divorced Demetra and took Calista and Athena away from their mother?
To get even with her for stepping out on him?
She had questions for Gavin, a mountain of them, but she couldn’t face him right now. This revelation was too much to absorb, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. She would have to face the man and confront the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
Right now, though, she needed time and her older sister’s perspective. Athena would know what to do, which would help her make sense of this chaos.
Get dressed. Get out of here.
There was no other choice. She couldn’t stay here. She must act. She uncurled herself, body aching, got to her feet, and looked around for her clothes, but she could find only her bra and panties.
Ack! She and Reid had undressed each other before entering the bedroom hours earlier.
Their tryst seemed exceptionally long ago, eons even, instead of just a few moments from cuddling with Reid to Gavin walking into the bedroom to the crashing of her entire world.
She hooked her bra in the back, then bent to scoop up her underwear and shimmied into them. When she raised her head, she caught sight of herself in the dresser mirror.
A stranger peered back at her. Staring at herself, she traced the line of her jaw, the curve of her cheekbone, the shape of her lips and twirled a strand of dark curly hair around an index finger. Gavin’s features, hidden in plain sight all these years. How had she never seen it before?
Unbidden memories surfaced.
Gavin, at the edge of the eighteenth green, watching as Calista lined up her final putt.
His sharp intake of breath echoing her own as the ball rolled true.
“That’s my—” he started to shout, then swallowed the rest, his eyes locked on her.
After her loss at regionals, he found her crying behind the clubhouse and offered a quiet “You’ll show them next time, kid” that soothed the sting of Benjamin’s caustic criticism.
Dozens of insignificant memories. The too-formal “Sincerely, Gavin” on her graduation card, the way he lingered at gatherings, nursed drinks in hand, his gaze following her.
Go. Get out of here.
She cracked open the door and peered out. Someone (Reid?) had folded and stacked her clothes in the hall. She snatched her shorts and T-shirt and tucked them under her arm, but before she could shut the door, the indistinct murmur of male voices reached her.
“. . . should have told her sooner . . .” That was Reid.
“. . . wasn’t our decision to make, Demetra was adamant . . .”
“. . . how do we fix this?”
Fix this.
As if her life were a broken toy, something they could mend with superglue. A harsh laugh bubbled up in her. If she started laughing now, she wasn’t sure she could stop. Reid and Gavin were discussing her as if she were a problem to be solved rather than a person whose world had just imploded.
Calista backed into the room, shut the door, and pressed her hands to her ears, blocking out their conversation. How long had Reid known Gavin was her biological father? Weeks? Months? Years?
She shoved her feet into her shoes and opened the door again. In the dim hallway, Reid’s and Gavin’s somber voices drifted from the kitchen, still discussing her. She tiptoed as fast as she could toward the front door.
Her heart was a sledgehammer in her chest, slamming, slamming, each step throbbing to the beat of her distress. She needed to be far away from here, from this cottage, from a life ripped apart at the seams.
She reached the door, her hand on the knob. Sweet escape. Footsteps behind her. Her pulse quickened.
“Calista, are you running away from me?” Reid’s voice held a mountain of hurt.
Well, join the club, buddy. She was in a ripe lot of pain herself. She opened the door without looking back at him and stepped out into the moonlight. The evening air hit her, carrying the scent of deep summer and ugly truths.
“Cal, please, just talk to me.” He followed her into the honeysuckle darkness.
She turned. The boy she’d loved, the man she’d trusted, was now the keeper of a secret that changed everything.
“Talk?” The word tasted like dirt. “What’s left to say, Reid? You’ve been carrying this truth, letting it fester between us. You kept this from me. How am I supposed to trust you now?”
He reached out as if to touch her, but she backed away, and he let his hand fall to his side. “Gavin asked me not to tell you. I wanted to honor his wishes, and I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that you did.”
“I thought I was protecting you—”
“Protecting me?” Her laugh rang out bitter in the quiet night. “You think keeping the truth from me was protecting me? All you did was shatter my trust in you. I can’t—I can’t do this, Reid.”
She saw Reid’s heart splinter in his eyes the moment her words landed. For a second, Calista wavered, but the chasm of unspoken truths yawned between them, too wide to bridge.
“We can work through this. Tonight, we shared something special, and you know it. Yes, this is a lot, but we can figure it out together—”
“No, Reid. It’s over. We’re over.”
“Cal, please—”
“We can’t. It’s too late. I can’t be with someone who hides things from me, who doesn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
He stared at her, pain etched across his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“I am too.” She glanced away, defeated.
Silence stretched between them, thick with all the things left unsaid. Calista experienced the finality of it. The weight of the decision pressing in on her.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I need to go.”
Turning, she walked to the golf car and slid into the driver’s seat, the key left in the ignition.
Reid stood motionless, watching her. The moonlight cast him as a dream figure, unreal and ghostly. But this was no dream. This new development was stark reality.
“Calico,” he called after her one last time, his voice threaded with hurt, but she refused to look back.
Cutting people out of her life was her superpower, after all.