Chapter 25 #2
“Did they top you?” I demanded, the question tearing out of my throat. “I’m sure you were probably more into them taking control, because they knew how to. Because they actually had done stuff with other guys and you didn’t have to guide them on what to do the entire time.”
“No,” Cal said sharply.
“Don’t lie to me!” I snapped, tears stinging my eyes. The jealousy twisted my gut into knots. I had no room to care. We were grown ass adults with pasts, and a huge part of that past was that I left. I made space for this to happen, for there to have been other people. “I’m sure—”
“Silas, look at me!” Cal cut me off, stepping into my space. He didn’t grab me aggressively; he caught my flailing hands and anchored them to his chest. “Stop. Breathe.”
I couldn’t breathe. I was hyperventilating. I was panicking. Jesus fuck, this shit was pathetic, and proving even more of my point.
“I hate it,” I choked out. “I hate thinking about it. I feel like… like I’m tainted because I only know you, and you have this whole… history that I wasn’t a part of because I did something fucking stupid that made us lose seven years together.”
Cal looked at me, seeing the spiral for what it was. It wasn’t anger; it was pure, agonizing insecurity.
He dragged me over to the bed and sat me down. He knelt on the floor between my knees, forcing me to look down at him. He held my hands tightly.
“Ask me the specific things that are eating you alive,” Cal commanded gently. “Get them out of your head so I can kill them. Don’t carry it alone, baby.”
I swallowed. My heart was pounding.
“Did they top you?” I whispered.
“No,” Cal answered instantly, holding my gaze with absolute conviction. “Never. Not once.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Why? You said you weren’t usually into it but—”
“Because I don’t surrender control, Si,” Cal said, his voice intense.
“Not to a stranger. Not to a hookup. I don’t let people have that kind of power over me.
That’s yours. That’s always been yours. You’re the only one who gets to see me vulnerable like that.
Even if you’re underneath me, you’re the only one I trust enough to let go with. ”
I searched his eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” Cal promised. “And I never kissed them. Not on the mouth. Kissing is intimate. That was for us.”
Relief washed over me, but the confusion remained.
“You think I had this life you created for me in your head,” Cal said, his voice dropping, raw with a pain I hadn’t realized he was carrying. “That I didn’t think of you, or feel anything after you left. I didn’t have a life, Silas. I had a waiting room.”
He squeezed my hands, his hazel eyes burning.
“You think I was out there moving on? Baby, every single person… I searched for you. I searched for you in people and I hated myself for it. I hated them for not being you. It didn’t matter how long it had been. I craved you, always.”
“Cal…” My breath hitched.
“No, listen,” he commanded, his voice shaking with the weight of seven years of silence. “There is no ‘them.’ There is no list. All there was were shadows. Shadows I used to try and keep myself warm while I froze to death waiting for a miracle that you’d come back.”
He reached out, cupping my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears I hadn’t realized were falling.
“You are the blueprint, Silas. You always have been. Every time I touched someone else, or even looked at someone else, I was just trying to find a piece of you to hold onto. But they were never you. They could never fucking be you. So don’t you dare sit here and be jealous and mentally compare yourself.
You’re the only living thing I ever loved.
Even when I was hell bent on hating you because it was a pipe dream to think you’d ever come back. ”
He rested his forehead against mine.
“Fuck, baby, look what happened when you did come back. I crumbled. I tried so hard to keep away, but I couldn’t. I never could. Because all I wanted was you.”
“I was scared if I ever touched another man I would feel absolutely nothing,” I blurted out, the confession tearing out of me.
“I was scared that it would confirm that I was ruined for anyone else. So I just didn’t look.
I couldn’t risk it. And when I tried, with Amanda, it still happened.
Because I still thought about you every day of my goddamn life. ”
Cal looked devastated. He finally realized my distance from men, from relationships, from any form of romantic contact, wasn’t about prudeness. It was about trauma. It was about loyalty to him, even in years of disconnect.
“Come here,” Cal whispered.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He stood up, pulling me to my feet. “I’m going to get you out of your head, okay?” he promised.
He laid me down on the mattress. He didn’t strip my clothes off frantically; he took them off like he was unwrapping a gift he had waited a lifetime to open.
When I was bare, Cal didn’t climb on top of me immediately. He knelt at the end of the bed, his eyes raking over me, worshipping the bruises on my ribs, the scars on my shoulder, the way my chest heaved.
He crawled up the mattress, positioning himself between my legs. He leaned down, pressing open mouthed kisses to the inside of my thighs, pushing my knees apart.
“Cal,” I gasped, my fingers tangling in the sheets.
He ignored me, taking my cock into his mouth. His tongue swirled, hot and wet, teasing me, tasting me. But then he shifted. His hands gripped my hips, lifting me lightly, and then sensation changed. He moved lower.
“Oh god,” I whimpered, my back arching off the mattress as I realized what he was doing.
He rimmed me slowly, destroying every insecurity I had with the sheer intent of his tongue.
He was claiming parts of me I didn’t even know belonged to him.
It was overwhelming, overstimulating, and it forced my brain to shut off completely.
There was no room for the past. There was no room for ghosts. There was only Callum.
After what felt like an eternity, he moved up, taking me back into his mouth. He worked me with a rhythm that was all instinct, listening to the broken sounds falling from my lips.
When I was right on the edge, he pulled back.
“Please,” I begged, reaching for him. “Cal, please.”
He stripped off his own clothes in record time and pulled me into the center of the bed.
“On your side,” he commanded softly.
I turned onto my side. Cal spooned me from behind, his chest hot against my back, pushing my front leg forward to touch the mattress to open me up.
He reached for the lube on the nightstand. I felt his fingers coating themselves, then touching me. He worked the slickness into me, one finger, then two, stretching me slowly while he pressed open mouthed kisses across my shoulder blades.
“You’re so good for me, Si,” he murmured against my skin. “Perfect. You were made for this. Made for me.”
“Cal,” I whined, needing him closer.
He guided his cock inside of me. His eyes locked with mine over my shoulder as the pleasure wave washed through me.
It was a tight, perfect fit. I gasped, my arm instinctively coming up to wrap around his neck, pulling him closer.
“Look at me,” Cal whispered, his voice rough.
He began to move. It wasn’t about speed. It was deep, rolling thrusts that seemed to touch my soul. Because there was nowhere to hide, I couldn’t close my eyes, I had to watch him loving me right now.
“Who am I?” Cal asked, withdrawing almost completely before snapping his hips forward, burying himself to the hilt.
“Cal,” I choked out, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. “You’re Cal.”
“Am I a shadow?” he asked, leaning in to kiss the tear track on my cheek.
“No.”
“Am I a memory?”
“No.”
“I’m right here,” Cal vowed, grinding against me, hitting that sweet spot that made my vision blur. “I’m the only one here. I’m the only one that gets to be inside of you. I’m the only one who knows how you sound when you fall apart.”
My hand clutched at his back, nails digging in, trying to merge our skin together. The jealousy, the fear, the spiral, it all evaporated under the weight of his love.
“I love you,” I sobbed, the pleasure building into a cresting wave. “I love you so fucking much.”
“I love you,” Cal answered, his control slipping, his thrusts becoming harder, more desperate. “You’re mine, Silas. You’ve always been mine. Since the beginning.”
He kissed me then, deep, wet, and messy, swallowing my cries as we both went over the edge together. The sensation of Cal cumming inside of me was far more intense than it had ever been. I fell apart in his arms, shaking, completely unmade, and put back together by his hands.
Cal kissed my shoulder, lingering in the afterglow. “We gotta shower again. We promised Lena we’d train with her today.”
I groaned. I still hadn’t fully come down yet. I didn’t ever want to, not after that.
We pulled ourselves out of the bed and to the shower again, taking our time getting ready. The silence between us wasn’t heavy anymore; it was light. It was settled.
Lena started texting Cal as soon as we stepped out of the shower, asking if she could come bother him yet. Then she moved to texting me. When we didn’t answer fast enough, she made a group chat and started texting us both there.
Are we going training yet?
Can we get coffee on the way?
Helloooo?
I’m going to go to both of your rooms and knock until you guys wake up.
We’ll just meet in the lobby, and yes, I will take you and Si to get coffee.
I laughed at the text. “I didn’t ask for coffee,” I said with a smile.
“I know, but it’s kind of my job to get it for you every day again so…” Cal said as he walked over to me, putting a hand on my waist and pulling me in for a kiss.
We got to the training facility forty-five minutes later. Lena hadn’t stopped talking since she saw us in the lobby, buzzing about how she hadn’t been back at the PC since being called up.
“When were you guys here last?” she asked as we got out of the rental car.
“A year ago, I think?” Cal said.
“I don’t exactly remember,” I said awkwardly, dodging the question.
We went inside, and it felt like stepping into a time capsule. The place hadn’t changed in the slightest, but being back here now? It felt like a different universe.
Lena ran ahead, catching sight of one of her other friends on the roster, another young girl by the name of Mira Maddox.
Cal caught the look on my face instantly. I was remembering everything. Taking it all in.
“I still remember the first time I saw you,” Cal admitted quietly as we stood away from the others in the building.
I turned to look at Cal. He had a soft smile on his face.
“I noticed you when you walked in that morning with Evan. He couldn’t stand me from the jump,” he said with a laugh.
“You had on that hoodie you lost in the airport that one time, and you stood with Evan at the back watching me run drills until they told you that you had to get into the ring with me. Is it wrong of me to say I had hopes then that maybe you weren’t straight? ”
I giggled. The fact Cal remembered that day as vividly as I did warmed my heart. “Evan was so annoyed by you,” I laughed. “And I remember noticing your tattoos immediately. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure I was checking you out but wasn’t consciously aware of it,” I joked.
“Boys!” a familiar male voice called out.
We turned around, and there he was. Like a ghost from the past.
Tate Martin.
The Aftershock GM who ran the Performance Center. He’d aged now, more than he had back then. His hair had grey in it, and he had a beard now, the signs of the battles he fought in the ring with legends and many other men showing through.
“It’s so good to see you guys again,” he said as he came up and shook our hands.
“It’s good to see you too, Tate,” I said with a smile.
“You boys here to train for tomorrow?”
We nodded.
“Yeah, but we promised Lena we’d work with her as much as we could today,” Cal said as he glanced over to Lena, who was already warming up in the ring.
“Well, if you guys need to hang out after I close this place up like you used to, it’s not a problem,” Tate offered, a knowing glint in his eye.
“That would actually be amazing,” I said, my heart skipping a beat. “That way we can take our time working with her.”
Cal caught it immediately. It had nothing to do with working with Lena, and everything to do with wanting to be back here alone with him like we used to.
“Agreed,” he said with a nod. “Thanks, Tate.”