Calliope
Water gurgles around the toilet bowl as I get my breathing to regulate. That’s the third time I’ve puked in ten minutes. I need to get home. Home. Home.
The world blurs and moves in a weird state of flash forward.
Then there I am, walking up to the front door. The open door.
How strange.
Not like I warned James I was coming home early. Usually I push through but today I just don’t feel well.
So I’m quiet when I walk in mostly because I already have to puke again.
This kid is stealing every last nutrient and then forcing me to puke out the rest. If this keeps up, I’ll have to go in.
That’s when I hear it.
A moan.
A breath.
I don’t flush as adrenaline rips through me.
My legs shake as I stand and then I’m before the bedroom door.
My life plays out in slow motion. Bees sting my chest.
My hand settles on the cold brass knob.
Twist and push.
There they are.
My water breaks.
I wake gasping. “No,” I cry out. Feeling that day rush through me like venom. “No, no, no.” I curl into a ball but the pain doesn’t leave. Not this time.
Then the sobs come. And the pillows I have tucked around me do nothing. Soren’s stupid perfect pillows.
There’s no comfort in a cold pillow.
Until a creak of a floorboard shatters my grief.
“Don’t freak out.” I hear Vex before I see him.
“What the fuck,” I screech.
“You were crying.” I feel the bed dip.
My body freezes.
“So you just broke in?” Again, but I don’t add it.
“I broke in.” The bed dips further until there he is, feet from my face, on the other side of the pillow barrier. “I don’t like your tears.”
He reaches out for me, only his hand pauses inches from my face before he drops it. This isn’t the same Vex who touched me in my kitchen. This one looks at me like I’m broken.
I am broken.
“Nightmare.”
He grabs a pillow, tossing it to the end of the bed, his eyes on mine. Waiting to see if I’ll kick him out or tell him to leave my pillows alone.
For a moment I think of Calypso. Of her warning not to invite him in.
But Vex broke in. And he’s here. And he’s…
“Why?”
“I told you why.”
“It’s not valid.”
His lips twitch as he removes another pillow barrier. He could have just come to my side of the bed. Instead he chose the wall.
Why did he choose the wall?
“Hearing you cry,” he says slowly, those eyes twitching as he looks for something I’m not sure I can give him. “It felt, wrong. I couldn’t let you cry alone.”
“Have you come to cry with me?”
“Maybe.” He removes another pillow. Now it’s just a body pillow between us.
But the maybe makes me pause. The raw honesty there. It can’t be faked and I realize that’s what I like about Vex. He’s honest. He’s a thief in the night only in here to steal my nightmares if I’d let him.
I’d let him.
Because I’m desperate. Desperate to feel something other than this pain that won’t let up. This pain that always exists just under the surface of who I am. Just pain I want to release and don’t know how.
I’d let him steal it.
I just don’t know how to let him in.
“May I hold you?” He grabs the pillow between us. Ready to move it aside.
“Please.” My voice cracks. “I can’t be… I can’t be anything to you.”
“I didn’t ask you to be anyone other than you.” He sets the pillow aside and lays down. He doesn’t touch me, he just lays down on my bed, his hands behind his head, his feet crossed.
He’s waiting for me.
I crawl back under the covers and curl up against him. “You’re cool,” I whisper snuggling closer.
“I run cold,” he rushes out. “That okay?”
“Perfect.” I lay my head over his heart that beats steadily in his chest. My palm rests on his stomach and for the first time in a long fucking time, I feel… okay.
I lay there, unmoving. Listening to his heartbeat, his hand rests on my shoulder while his thumb makes lazy circles on my arm where he holds me against his side. I can feel him twist strands of my hair between his fingers. And it’s just in the existing I feel like I’m not alone.
“I was married.” The words spill out of me before I can pull them back. And it isn’t like I would even if I could. “Have you ever been married?”
“No.” His thumb never pauses as the silence weighs down around us. “Have a couple brothers-in-law.” His voice flows differently now, almost distant.
“Girlfriends?”
“Calliope Cantemir,” he almost scolds. “Are you fishing over whether or not I’m available?”
“Ugh.” I sit up blinking against the darkness. “Maybe, I mean we did a thing, and then I never asked.”
“I’d never touch you if I belonged to another.” There’s a seriousness in his words. A weight to them as he holds my gaze.
That’s when it hits me. “My ex never made promises like that.” I can feel the wrinkles between my eyes.
For so fucking long I wanted James to see me. To hear me. To speak the same fucking emotional language I did.
And here comes Vex. Like a goddamn tornado into my life. He just showed up one day. And now? Now I can never be rid of him. Which is a horrible thought to have, isn’t it?
But he’s here. And he speaks the same language.
“Your ex was an idiot,” Vex states like it’s the simplest fact in the world.
I lean in for a kiss.
What I don’t expect is Vex to roll us over and hold himself back. There’s a sadness in his gaze. And his mouth opens and closes a few times. Before he looks over my head and closes his eyes. Hovering over me he looks so torn.
“I didn’t…” I absolutely judged this wrong. “I thought…”
“It’s not that, Callie.” He opens his eyes to look back down at me. “I want nothing more than to kiss you and see where it goes.”
“But.” I press.
He licks his lips. “Few things.”
“Just a few?”
“Let’s just go with the most important one.” He waits for my nod. “When I finally get you beneath me like this again, it won’t be after you compare me to your ex.”
Oh.
It feels like a weight just crushed my chest. Embarrassment floods through me and I want the bed to swallow me into a void.
“Don’t hide.” He grabs my hands and holds them over my head. “I can see you twitching to run. It ain’t like that.”
“Okay.” Fuck I feel small again.
“Callie, I want you but it’s okay to need to work through some shit.”
“I didn’t mean to compare.”
“You felt something and your brain supplied you with a hurt.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal.
“I’m over him I swear it, I never want to be with him again.” Stupid tears. “I didn’t mean to compare you. I just, I spent so long begging for him to love me that when you just keep showing up, I’m aware of everything I didn’t have.”
“Good.” His lips twitch. “You should be aware. Also there’s another reason.”
“Will it make me feel better?”
“Maybe.” His tongue does a little roll over his lips and why the fuck is that hot. Him saying no, is fucking hot. Everything about Vex…
“What’s your last name?”
He chuckles. “That’s another reason.”
“Noted.”
“Two other reasons,” he says slowly. “Soren and Lazarus.”
“What?” I sputter. “Lazarus is my boss,” I hiss. “And Soren?”
“I heard you had a date.” He lays down beside me letting go of my hands and gathering me close. Wrapping his legs between mine.
Not sex. Cuddling. He wants to cuddle? Am I reading this right?
“It was…” I groan.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“You say that now,” I sigh. “I choose you, Vex.” My fingers shake as they trace along his sharp jawline to his earlobe where he has little gauges.
“Baby, you don’t have to choose me.” He presses a kiss to my nose.
“Of course I choose you.”
“And I’m saying I’m a package deal.” He yawns and closes his eyes.
Package deal? “What does that mean?”
He pops open an eye to stare at me. “You know exactly what it means.”
I think my brain is glitching.
“What?” I sit up, the sheet falling down around my hips, exposing my Halloween sleep set. “Vex.” I rub my temples.
“Also.”
“There’s more?”
“I said also, didn’t I?” He pauses and continues when I don’t interrupt him again, though I’m not entirely sure I could if I wanted to. “No secrets.”
“That implies we have secrets between us.” I look down at him completely comfortable in my bed where he takes up half the space.
“Don’t we Callie?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“When you’re mine. There won’t be secrets.”
Okay. I think I’m understanding this language.
“Vex.”
“Hmm.”
“Tell me a secret.”
“Lay with me and tell me one of yours.” He tugs me back down to the pillow he insists on sharing with me. When I comply and snuggle back in, I lock in on those puppy dog eyes of his and just wait for a secret.
Maybe it’s silly, but I’m glad he said no. He’s right, there are so many pieces of me that need to heal that need to let go of the pain of my past and I don’t want to carry that with me.
Maybe I should see a therapist.
“Vex.”
“Ready?” He tugs me close. “I’m the youngest of five.” He brushes my hair off my face, his fingers trailing down the side of my jaw to my neck before his hands move to my lower back where he pulls me closer.
“And I’ve never wanted to hold anyone like this before,” he whispers against my hair, his breath warm and steady.
My heart hammers in my chest. “That’s not really a secret.”
“It is to me.” His fingers trace lazy patterns on my back. “I grew up poor. Lived in a big house in northwest Philly. Never really had my own space, not with four sisters. Our parents died young. Car accident.”
“I’m so sorry.” My heart aches for him. I loved my parents but the love in his eyes right now is different. Uncomplicated, wholesome love.
My parents’ love is sometimes conditional. Sometimes not. I never really knew what I was going to get.
But with Vex there’s so much love there for his parents.
“It’s not even that they died that gets to me, you know.” His hands pause as his eyes grow distant. “It’s the aftermath. Valentina was only twenty-four. Pearl twenty-two. Dorothy twenty. Ophelia.” He laughs at her name. “She was seventeen.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Ophelia is your favorite sister, isn’t she?”
He shushes me. “Don’t tell the others.”
I mime zipping my lips shut and throwing away the key.