48. Chapter Forty-Eight
Waking up this morning in Nate’s bed, surrounded by warm bodies and multiple different limbs laid across me, I felt happy and most importantly, safe.
Now, sitting across the table from Colin as he speaks on the phone to my mother, I feel sick. My hands are clammy, my pulse is racing, and my mind’s swirling with conflicting thoughts and emotions.
It was my idea to speak to her today because I miss her and I want to check that she’s safe and healthy. I also have so many unanswered questions, and my therapist has told me that knowing the answers to the questions I have could help me along my healing journey and it could give me some closure.
However, I’m also dreading this call. I can’t help but feel a little bit of disdain when I think about her and I do partially blame her for everything that the twins and I have been through these past few years.
“Yeah, she’s here now, Clarissa. Give me a moment and I’ll pass her over,” Colin says, removing the phone from his ear and placing it on the table between us. He presses the mute button before glancing over at me.
“You don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to, Callie. She understands-”
I shake my head, cutting him off.
“I’ll talk to her. I need to. She knows things that I don’t and there’s also a lot of things that she likely doesn”t know about.”
He watches me for a bit and then nods his head and stands from the table. Before he exits the room, he knocks his knuckles against the doorframe and turns to me.
“Kat and the boys are in the living room if you need them, Sophie is also upstairs and has asked me to let you know that she’s there if you need to talk to her as well. You can stay here as long as you like, Callie. You’re a part of the family now, and we want to help you in any way that we can.”
His sincere words hit me with full force and tears form in my eyes.
Once he’s out of the room, I turn my focus to the phone lying on the table in front of me.
I can hear her soft breathing filtering through the phone and the sound of faint laughter in the background. The corners of my lips tilt upwards when I recognise the deep laughter as Uncle Johnny’s and hear the sweet little giggles of my sister, Crystal.
When I pick up the phone, I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, and then I unmute myself.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Callie! Oh, baby, it’s so good to hear your voice!”
I squeeze my eyes shut, praying that my tears don’t fall as I hear her soothing voice.
“It’s good to hear yours too,” I tell her, my voice shaky.
It’s the truth as well.
After years of not seeing her or hearing from her, my heart warms at the sound of her voice.
“I need to know, Mum,” I whisper, wanting to get straight to the point of the phone call.
I’ve cried way too much in these recent weeks and it’s exhausting. The sooner I get this call over and done with, the sooner I can release all of my tears and hopefully work on building myself back up now that all of the secrets and the darkness are gone.
“What do you want to know, love?”
“W-we found the certificate you had hidden. I know that Derek isn’t my Dad. So the first question I have for you is that. Who is my Dad?”
She releases a shaky breath, “Well, Callie, you have to understand that at the time, your-”
“No, Mum!” I snap, shaking my head. “I don’t care about what led up to it or what was going on between you and Derek, I just want to know who my real father is.”
“His name was Harley.”
My brows furrow at her choice of words and I rub at my chest, trying to ease the ache that’s starting to appear.
“Was?”
“Derek killed him.”
“Why?” I ask, hearing her sniffle down the phone.
“Your father worked for Derek. He was part of the security team. Cameron somehow convinced your father that Harley was stealing money from them and also selling information to their enemies. I tried to defend him, but Derek always believed Cameron over anyone else. So, he took Harley down to the basement to interrogate him.”
She pauses, clearing her throat. “I-I thought he’d be fine. I thought that Derek would realise that Harley was innocent. Instead, Derek came out of the basement a few hours later, covered in blood and called Paul in to clean up. I found out that I was pregnant a few weeks later and I knew that I couldn’t ever allow Derek to know the truth, so I never said anything.”
My lower lip trembles as I listen to her heartbroken voice.
“Thankfully, Derek was busy once you were born, so he allowed me to register you by myself. I was planning to put his name on the certificate as your father, but it felt like a betrayal to Harley, so I left it blank and then made sure to hide it when I got home. Fortunately, he never asked to see it.”
“I’m sorry that you lost him, Mum.”
“I’m sorry too, baby.”
The line grows quiet as I let the information settle in my mind.
“Callie,” she says, breaking the short silence. “Connor and Callum have filled me in a little bit about the last few years. They said that it’d likely be easier for them to tell me instead of you… I just, well, I want to apologise to you for everything that you’ve had to suffer through. I know that it couldn’t have been easy and I feel terrible knowing that I could’ve possibly done something to stop everything happening to you.”
“I don’t blame you,” I blurt.
“Callie, love-”
“Not entirely anyway,” I add before she can accuse me of lying to her. “I know that you’re also a victim in all of this, Mum, and I know that everything happened to me because Derek and Cameron chose to do it. But, there must’ve been something more that you could’ve done. You were gone for years, and nothing helped until I mistakenly met Colin.”
“At the time, I thought I was doing enough,” she sighs, heavily. “I’d given Colin information about Derek and I’d helped them locate one of his old storage units. I should’ve done more, I know that now.” She pauses for a moment to blow her nose. “Truth is, darling, I was scared. Not only for myself but for Crystal as well. We were safe, and I never thought that Derek would do such horrendous things to you all, so I left Colin to do everything with his team and I took a step back from it.”
Her words send sharp, stabbing pains through my chest and a tear trickles down the side of my face.
“I understand, Mum, but I also don’t think that I can forgive you any time soon,” I whisper, wiping tears off my cheeks as they start to fall. “I need some time, and I need to properly think about everything before we talk again.”
“Okay, love. I’m happy to wait.”
I blow out a shaky breath and hear a quiet sob on the other end of the phone.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, feeling guilty about making her cry.
“You don’t need to apologise to me, Callie. I’ll send Crystal round with the twins tomorrow so that you can spend some time together. Look after yourself, baby.”
With that, the call ends.
I place the phone down on the table, staring at the dark screen with furrowed brows.
“Hey, Pretty Girl. You okay?”
I turn to find Ryker walking into the kitchen with a small light pink gift bag in his hands.
Nodding my head, I wipe my dampened cheeks.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I tell him, smiling. “Just a lot to wrap my head around at the moment.”
“Well, we’ve come up with a little plan, something that might help take your mind off of everything for a while.” He places the bag in front of me and sits beside me. “This is something from all three of us.”
Eyeing the bag with caution, I pull at the black ribbon that’s keeping it together and slide my hand into the opening. My hand touches a square, bumpy box, and my eyes rise to meet Ryker’s.
“What is it?”
He laughs, shaking his head and standing from the table.
“Just open it, Callie.”
Pulling the box free, I place it gently on the table and lift the lid.
Inside is a thin chained necklace with a heart dangling from it. I lift it out of the box, bringing it closer to my face and inspect the four coloured gems meshed together inside the heart.
Ryker’s hands rest on my shoulders as his head dips beside mine.
“That’s all of our birthstones inside the heart. Flip it over and look at the other side.”
Flipping the heart over, my eyes scan across the small inscription, and my heart melts.
To the moon and back
“I know that it’s what you and the twins say to each other and we wanted to get you something that resembled all of the people that you love,” Nate says as he walks into the room with a nervous-looking Brad behind him.
A wide smile spreads across my face as my eyes bounce between them and I place my new necklace back into the box.
“I love it!” Jumping out of my seat, I wrap my arms around Ryker, squeezing him tightly against me.
“I love you too!” Brad shouts.
My eyes turn wide and I loosen my hold on Ryker, spinning around to face Brad.
He is staring at me with shock evident on his face and his mouth gaping open.
“I, uh, I thought you said-” His eyes dart to Nate as if asking him for help with what to say. Nate shrugs, squashing his lips together to hold in his laughter.
A giggle escapes me and Brad’s eyes snap back to mine.
I walk over to him and rise onto my toes so that I can reach my arms around his neck.
“I love you too,” I whisper before pressing my lips against his.
He groans against my mouth, planting his hands on my hips and kissing me back.
“Okay, it’s great, we all love each other. Can we move on to the next part of the surprise now?”
Brad’s tongue strokes against mine once more before he reluctantly pulls his mouth away from mine and nods his head at Ryker.
As we walk into the living room, Brad covers my eyes with his hand and presses his body against mine, guiding me into the room.
“Wait, we’ve all had an ‘I love you’ now?” Nate asks from somewhere in the room.
“Well, we just witnessed Brad and Callie confess their love to each other, so yes, Nate, we have,” Ryker grumbles.
“Yeah, I know about that obviously, but when did Callie tell you that she loved you?”
“Well, if you must know, she told me she loved me on my sixteenth birthday after sucking my dick.” Brad’s chest vibrates against my back as he laughs at Ryker’s comment. “And we heard you two moaning about how much you loved each other last night,” he adds.
Nate groans whilst I giggle, my cheeks heating when I realise that Ryker and Brad must’ve been in Nate’s bedroom long before we finished having sex.
“Okay, come on, I want to show her now,” Brad whines.
Rustling ensues around me, and Brad shifts me over to the side until my legs bump against something.
“Sit here and keep your eyes closed until we tell you to open them,” he instructs.
I carefully manoeuvre myself around the arm of the chair and then settle into the seat, squeezing my eyes shut moments before Brad removes his heavy hand from my face.
He moves away from me, repeating his previous words about keeping my eyes closed.
Placing my hands in my lap, I twiddle my fingers together as I wait for them to give me the go-ahead to open my eyes.
After a minute or two, they collectively tell me to open them.
As I peel my lids open, an amass of red roses greets me, scattered across the whole of Nate’s living room. The furniture has been pushed back to create a wide space in the middle for a bunch of comfy, fluffy pillows and blankets to cover the floor.
Among the blankets are packets of crisps, boxes of chocolates, and a few packs of Sour Patch Kids.
“What”s all of this?” I ask, ripping my eyes away from the sweets to look at the three guys who are gathered behind the sofa.
“This is our first group date!” Nate exclaims.
“We’ve got your favourite flowers, your favourite sweets, and The Maze Runner is lined up on the TV!” Brad tells me with a shy smile.
“We would’ve taken you out, but we know that you need to rest your legs sometimes, so, we decided to do this instead.”
My eyes scan the room as appreciation and love fill my chest at all of the little things that they’ve managed to include on this little date.
I stand from the chair and walk into the middle of the living room, settling myself down on the mound of pillows and snatching a bag of my favourite sour sweets before turning to the guys again.
“Are you coming to join me, or am I having a date by myself?”
Each of them rushes toward me, bundling onto the floor and fighting over snacks as I press play on the movie. As they each settle down around me and turn towards the screen, I can’t keep the smile from taking over my face.
After all of the beatings, the hidden bruises and the gnarly scars, I’m free, I’m happy and I’m safe. I survived and I’ve managed to find happiness with three of the most loving, attentive and supportive men.
There’s still a long road to recovery ahead of me, and there are still a few relationships that need to be mended, but with Nate, Brad, and Ryker by my side, I know that everything will work out perfectly.