Chapter 24 #3
My heart panged, this whole process hurting a lot more than I’d expected. In fact, it was incredibly difficult not to sink to my own knees. I’d never experienced such agony before.
Yet the pain meant I was doing the right thing. Without it, saving myself from being hurt, meant putting Elliot in danger.
Being a good person was excruciating. Figured. That’s why there were so many assholes in the world.
“No,” I replied softly. “I won’t accept help. Because I don’t need it. I’ll fight my battles. Lose them if need be. And you’ll be here, safe.”
Elliot looked fierce, like a warrior ready to battle me. Even though he was good and decent and noble. I saw it then, that protective glint in his eye that I saw in my brother’s when he looked at Nora. Like he’d do anything, be anything in order to keep her safe.
“I’m not safe if you’re in danger.” His whole body vibrated with tension. Grief. Rage.
“I love you,” I smiled, telling him this fact instead of continuing an argument that would run us both into the ground.
He didn’t verbally reply to my words, he grimaced. As if I’d struck him, then he scowled at me. “Don’t you dare ,” he hissed. “Don’t you dare say you love me only because you know there’s a chance you won’t be back to live with the consequences of loving me. I won’t accept that shit.”
It might’ve amused me, and it definitely would’ve turned me on, to see that other side of Elliot in any other circumstance. Instead, it made me incredibly sad.
“You don’t have to accept it for it to be true,” I shrugged, forcing my voice to remain level.
I saw the look on his face, the battle, the love. I wanted to hoard it. Wanted this to be the last thing I saw of him before I left. Wanted so terribly for him to see me as the honorable, brave soldier going to battle—in fights she started—on her own, to protect those she loved.
But that only happened in movies.
“He killed her,” I said flatly. “Jasper. He killed Naomi.”
Elliot’s face froze at my words, staring at me, unblinking.
My hands stayed at my sides, my eyes on his, my face blank as my insides curdled. “I’ve known. For months. Since it happened. And I didn’t tell you. Because I’m a coward. Because I didn’t want you to look at me like you are now. Like you really see me.”
It was true. Elliot’s face was contorted in horror, disbelief. I’d managed to kill that reverence. I’d booted myself off the pedestal he’d put me on. I was down in the dirt where I belonged.
“Goodbye, Elliot,” I whispered.
I turned my back and walked out before I lost my nerve.
I moved quickly. I knew I had to. He was the man I loved.
The one who had quickly become my whole life without me noticing.
He was standing in the middle of his living room shocked, disgusted, betrayed.
But even that bombshell might not have kept him rooted to the spot, might not have made him disregard all of his feelings for me.
It gave me time, though. To do what I needed to do.
I wasn’t surprised to see him striding from the front door with purpose as I got into the car, yelling at me as I started the car and pulled out of the driveway. I watched him in my rearview mirror as he threw himself into his truck. The truck I’d already disabled.
Elliot was not hobbled by male pride; his next course of action would be calling for help.
Which was why his smashed phone was sitting on the passenger seat of his truck.
It gave me time. Not enough, but enough for a head start.
And if he did manage to raise some kind of calvary to follow me, by the time they got there, my job would already be done.
Or I’d be dead.
ELLIOT
Pounding on the door of Rowan and Nora’s place when they had a new baby was an asshole thing to do. But I figured the worst that could happen was waking a baby, and if I didn’t go there, the worst that would happen would be Calliope.
Not an option.
I’d walked there.
Because Calliope had been so fucking determined to do things on her own, intent on saving me yet not letting me save her back. Because I had never wanted to save her. I knew she was capable of that. But fuck if I would let her fight alone anymore.
She took that choice from me.
To protect me.
Sure, it was respectable, but it was also infuriating and terrifying as all hell.
I thought I’d mastered being okay with powerlessness.
In the middle of the ocean, in a storm with waves ten feet high, you had no choice but to come to grips with how little power you had over your own life, your own survival. I used to find it comforting.
Not right then.
Naomi was dead. She’d known for months. The sting of that betrayal hurt.
My body revolted at the knowledge of Clara’s mother being dead at the hands of Calliope’s ex, her being used as a pawn in his sick game.
It put an ugly smear on my feelings for Calliope, but it didn’t change them.
Didn’t kill them as I knew she’d intended. I wasn’t so fickle.
Rowan answered the door, jaw tight, which made sense since someone was pounding on his door like the sky was caving in.
His eyes did a quick scan over me, and though we didn’t know each other all that well, he seemed to read everything in my posture.
He likely deduced that there would be only one reason for me to be pounding on his door, covered in sweat, and what I assumed was a grimace on my face.
“Fuck,” he muttered, the single word heavy with dread and grief.
“Come in.” He stepped aside. “I’ll call Kip.”
His voice scared the shit out of me. As did his expression. Because it was grim. But it was also expectant, like he knew this was going to happen at some point. That he was grieving Calliope before she was even gone.
And she wasn’t gone.
She wasn’t.
I would not lose her. To that world.
To herself.
I recited that like a vow as I stepped into the house that smelled of cinnamon and baby powder.
A home.
I’d get one with Calliope.
This would not be our end.
This would not be her end.
Despite how much it felt like it was.
Kip arrived within less than fifteen minutes.
Not surprising if you were just going by the size of the town.
But Kip had a family. And he dropped everything, hearing Calliope was in trouble.
It was a testament to how much those men loved Calliope but also proof that they had been expecting this, waiting for it.
Nora had been in the kitchen when I arrived, offering me refreshments though it was obvious she was confused about the reason for my visit.
She had a baby strapped to her and a toddler at her ankles.
Rowan had hoisted the little girl up with a delighted scream, murmured something to his wife, then she’d nodded and left the kitchen with the children.
I wasn’t sure what Rowan had told her, but I didn’t have the mental capacity to think about that.
My priority was Calliope. And these were two fucking badass men who loved her, who had training. According to Calliope, they could do something. At the very least, they could arm me to the teeth and give me a fucking plan.
What I didn’t expect was the exact opposite.
“What do you mean we can’t help her?” I ground out, my hands fisted on my knees, fury bubbling up inside me with nowhere to go but toward the two men in front of me.
The two men trained in battlefield warfare, who had experience with things I had never even dreamed of. All things that could be of use to Calliope.
And things they were refusing to utilize.
“I mean, we’ve called in whatever favors we have to track her phone, her vehicle, but she’s too smart for that.” Rowan’s mouth formed a stern line.
“She’s not going to let us help,” Kip added quietly. For once, there was no smile on the man’s usually jovial face.
He had the same expression Rowan wore. Dread. Fear. Resignation.
“I don’t give a fuck if she is going to let us or not.
” I ran my hands through my hair, wanting to yank it out from the roots.
“We are going to ensure that whoever the fuck she’s going up against isn’t going to kill her.
Because she seemed convinced that was a definite possibility the last time we spoke. ” I hurled the words at the two men.
The last time. Fuck if it was going to be the last time I spoke to Calliope.
“I love you.”
Never had the words I longed to hear from her been so sour in the air. Because they were not spoken in surrender to us, to me, but in goodbye.
Both men winced when I mentioned Calliope’s death but quickly reapplied their masks. They were professionals.
“She can handle herself,” Kip proclaimed resolutely.
“You’re fucking kidding me!” I erupted, unable to keep my calm in front of two men I respected. Right then, I wanted to beat them into fucking pulp, even though they had years more training than me. At that stage, I felt I could take them.
“You’re going to leave her alone?” I spat the words, heavy with judgment. “She’s your sister .”
“I’m well fucking aware.” Rowan’s nostrils flared, his quiet voice brimming with menace. “And I have a lifetime of experience and worry when it comes to Calliope. I have faith she’ll come home.”
His words sounded resolute, heavy with certainty, but I saw the doubt shadowing his eyes.
“Faith,” I scoffed. “I’m not pinning anything on faith when it comes to her.”
“You have no choice.” Kip clapped me on the shoulder, and it took everything in me not to throw a punch at him for touching me.
“Trust me when I say both of us would move heaven and earth to be able to do something right now. But it’s not heaven or earth Calliope is facing right now.
It’s a dangerous fucking underworld we weren’t aware she was tangled in until you told us.
” His jaw flexed as I saw how much he cared about her and how powerless he also felt.
“If we left right now, we’d be too late,” Rowan added.
It had taken me half an hour to walk to his place, another fifteen for Kip to arrive, another ten for me to relay all the information I knew about what Calliope was wound up in.
Then twenty for them to make calls, do research on Jasper Hayes—the man didn’t exist, although both of them remembered the boy he had been with Calliope.
Both of them were surprised as all hell that he was not only still in her life but ruining it.
She kept a lot from her family. I didn’t tell them about the attack, the rape. That was hers to share.
While I was doing all of that, she’d been speeding to New York, either by doubling the speed limit in her sports car or by taking a jet. We didn’t know. She could’ve been there already.
“You can’t know that,” I ground out, arguing with Rowan even though I knew deep down he was speaking the truth.
“I can,” he protested. “Calliope is not one to drag anything out. Whatever she’s doing. It’s likely already done. We can’t help her. All we can do is trust that she’s capable of fighting for herself.”
I stared at both men. Brimming with fury. Worse because I knew they were right. I’d known it the second Calliope walked out the door. There was nothing I could do to help her. Nothing but wait and trust that her strength would keep her safe.