Chapter Twenty-Four
I was still out of breath from my jog around the corner. Of course, my timing was shit, and I’d lost sight of the taxi Calli was in before another had shown up. I had no choice but to get back to the penthouse and my team.
I have nothing to say to you, Mason. You took something from me I wasn’t offering, and in doing so, you might’ve taken away my only opportunity to find the peace I desperately need.
Calista’s words echoed in my head, ricocheted around, and sliced me to shreds. I’d taken a lot from the woman in the last twenty-four hours. Raw pain took a tour around my bleeding insides, leaving its own damage.
I held my phone up to my ear, getting Calista’s voicemail for the third time.
“Mase?” Not even Pete calling my name could fully pull me out of the last vision I had of her getting into the taxi, looking devastated. Her last words to me had been angry, but her face was a mask of suffering.
After I get Tom what he needs, I have one more thing to do, then I’m out.
I hadn’t asked her what that one last thing was. I’d been too caught up in the feel of her. Too busy fighting an internal battle to comprehend what she’d said.
“Mason!” Pete snapped.
“I need a minute.”
I dialed Calli again.
Jason Anderson had to be that one thing.
“We don’t have a minute,” Pete said.
Goddamn voicemail. I stabbed at the screen of my phone and asked, “Who’s Jason Anderson?”
“Shep’s working on it. Now, what’s going on?”
Nothing. Everything. If Jason was her endgame, I hadn’t taken that from her. Not only because there was no way in hell Shep would’ve left a digital footprint when he got the security footage, but even if he had, seeing Calista in person would’ve tipped Jason off.
You’re not entitled to everyone’s thoughts. You don’t have the right to demand truths someone doesn’t want to give.
Fuck, but the woman was right. I’d become the one thing I hated only a little less than a liar—an entitled prick. I needed to explain why I’d overstepped. I didn’t think she understood the way she’d trembled, the fear that had rolled off of her, the way she’d flinched at the sight of him.
I might not have been entitled to her every thought or secrets, but when it came to her safety, while she was a part of the team, I would do what I had to do to keep her safe.
I’d blow through every boundary, step over lines, and be the dick she loved to call me.
I’d take whatever hate she wanted to throw my way as long as she was safe.
“Are you okay, brother?” Gavin inquired.
“Not even a little bit.”
“You care to explain that?” Pete pushed.
Fuck. I scrubbed my hands over my face and blew out a frustrated breath that did nothing to extinguish the burn of her verbal blows. The woman served up one hell of a tongue-lashing. She knew exactly the right buttons to push.
“I think I . . .” No, that wasn’t how I wanted to start. “I was going to . . .” That wasn’t right either.
I needed to recalibrate my brain and get my shit straight.
We needed a plan and answers from Shep about this Jason character.
But before we did that, I had to convince my best friend and teammate I hadn’t gone completely around the bend, which wouldn’t be easy to do, because I was fairly certain I had.
“I changed my mind. I’m actually fine.”
“You have the emotional intelligence of a toddler.” Pete thrust his hand through his hair. A clear sign I’d pushed him well past his patience.
Gavin, Aiden, and Catarina all looked like they agreed. Fallon was straight up looking at me like I was an idiot, and Jack looked like he felt sorry for me.
My best friend didn’t lose control, not even of his own hand, giving away his frustration.
Before our plane had touched down in Dubai, I’d had that same detached cool.
Seeing Calista in her black dress had frayed whatever control I’d thought I had.
But it wasn’t the dress or the sexy shoes, or the long legs that I now knew felt better than I’d imagined wrapped around my hips.
It was that split second of wide-eyed shock when she opened the door and saw me. It was that zap of electricity. It was the energy surrounding us that I wanted to deny but couldn’t.
“I fucked up,” I finally admitted.
To my shock, Pete leaned aggressively close and narrowed his eyes. “Wake. Up.”
I reared back to put distance between me and my best bud. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d worked shit out with our fists, but we didn’t have time for that shit.
“Come again?”
“I heard.”
“Heard what?”
“I. Heard,” he repeated. “This place is big, but it’s not a palace.”
Gavin shifted uncomfortably, and I wondered if he’d heard too.
Irrationally, anger hit me square in the chest. Her sounds were mine—all mine. They were just for me and not for anyone else to hear.
“You listened to us,” I growled, intentionally allowing him to hear my displeasure.
“Fuck no. The two of you weren’t exactly quiet. Fallon and I went into the far TV room and put on a movie as soon as we realized what was happening. We were the only two still awake.”
Jesus. Fuck me.
“So why are you getting in my face, telling me to wake up?”
“You know I love you like a brother, but you are a dumb son of a bitch.”
Now he was just being rude, calling my mother names. Not that he was wrong. My mother was a bitch. A lying, grasping bitch, and if I was being thorough in the description of her, I should also add cheating, money hungry, and useless.
“I don’t know why you gotta bring my mother into it.”
Redirection was my new best friend. I no longer wanted to participate in this conversation.
I knew what came after Pete’s name-calling—truth bombs.
And I was in no mood to be hit with another verbal assault.
It would appear Calista and Pete had something in common with their choice of armaments.
Neither of them started with a nice small Mk 81—tear through some flesh, cause some injury.
No, they went straight to the JDAM and dropped two thousand pounds of mass destruction.
You took something from me I wasn’t offering.
Calista’s blow slammed into me again.
“I’ve waited a long damn time for this moment,” Pete went on.
“What moment?”
My gaze sliced to Fallon, standing next to Pete with his arms crossed over his chest, looking like he’d happily deck me.
What was his problem? The only person who should be pissed off at me was Calista, and the only reason her anger was valid was because I’d gone behind her back.
I should’ve told her I’d asked Fallon to pull the footage.
Thankfully, the rest of my team hadn’t been around the last few days to witness my downfall, or they’d be in on the riot act too. Although Catarina looked like she wanted to take a swing at me. Was that a sisterhood thing? Did she think I’d hurt Calli, so now she was pissed on her behalf?
“This moment.” He jabbed his finger toward the floor. “When you finally care about a woman enough to put yourself through the emotional wringer. So I’m going to give you some friendly advice—wake the fuck up and deal with your shit before you lose her. She is not your mother.”
“My mother?”
What the hell was he going on about my mother for? I hadn’t seen or spoken to the woman in ages.
“You’re going to let Calista walk out of your life before she can turn into your mother.
You think control equals strength. You’re dead-ass wrong, brother.
Strength is facing your shit. Strength is besting the ghosts of your past instead of allowing them to haunt you for the rest of your life.
You talk a big game about your control, and I’ll give it to you, Mase.
No way in hell I could’ve turned down all the ass that’s been thrown your way.
There’s not a chance I would’ve gone ten years without a woman. No doubt you have control.”
“Pete,” I warned.
“But you’re weak as fuck, because you’re going to let that woman—the only woman in ten years who, for some magical reason, you let in—walk away. She didn’t break down your walls and storm the gate. You opened those fuckers up wide open and invited her in.
“Now you’re getting cold feet. You’re scared, so you’re trying to push her out and close the gate.
But you can’t even do that. She fucking gutted you, and she wasn’t wrong, Mase.
Your measure of truth is in place as an excuse to keep everyone locked out.
No one can live up to your standards unless they bare their soul. ”
I blocked out every word Pete hurled at me, not ready to deal with the truth. Everything he’d said was on the money. I had opened the gate for Calista. But first, I’d unlocked the sixty-five padlocks I used to keep it closed. Then, after it was open, I’d rolled out the red carpet.
Fallon shifting snagged my attention. Happy to have a target rather than having to admit to myself I was what Pete said I was—weak as fuck—I focused on him.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve known you a long time,” he started. “Knew you didn’t see your parents, but I had no idea you had problems with your mom.”
Fuck me to hell and back.
I twisted my neck, trying to relieve some of the tension. Though the stiffness could’ve been from the guilt that kept piling on.
“I hate my mother.” There, I said it.
Fallon’s brow winged up, silently calling me out on my bullshit.
“My mom and dad had this on-and-off relationship before she got pregnant with me.
When she found out she was pregnant, she went back to my dad because the new guy she was screwing wanted no part of a kid—his or not.
My dad took her back and married her. I guess everything was okay for a few years.
Then when I was around five, she took off.
“She comes back a few months later, my dad takes her back. The next time she did that, I was around twelve. Now, that time I remember clearly, and it wasn’t a few months—she was gone six.
She comes back, cries, begs, tells me and my dad she’s sorry for leaving us.
She had a hundred bullshit excuses why she needed to find herself or be alone or whatever lame shit she said.
My dad lets her move back in. It takes me a while, but I forgive her.
She’s my mom, I love her. I want to believe she loves me.
“The next time she bails, it was a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday. She doesn’t show her face again until my eighteenth birthday. But now, I’m an adult. I gave my dad the choice—her or me. He picked her, so when her lying bitch ass walked in the door, I walked out.”
“That’s fucked, Mase,” Fallon muttered his understatement. “Straight up, brother, she’s a bitch. She. Is. Calista’s not—”
“Calli was never going to stay.” Fuck, that bitter pill of rejection hurt like a mother when it got stuck in my throat.
“She was always going to leave. I knew she was going to quit before we came downstairs. I knew after she gave Tom the intel he needed she was going to take off and go find her peace. Find a better life. And damn, she deserves it. But that doesn’t make her walking away hurt less. ”
“You asked her to come back to SD with us?” Fallon asked.
“No. I . . .” I paused.
That hesitation meant Pete could jump back in.
“You chickened out, you dumbass. I don’t get it, but whatever the hell you two have going on has both of you tangled together.
Did you ever maybe think she wanted to come back to California with you, but didn’t want to .
. . I don’t know how chicks think . . . seem clingy? ”
“You’re right, okay?” I exploded, lifting my right hand to squeeze the back of my neck. “But why the fuck are we talking about this now when she’s out there somewhere doing God knows what?”
“Because while we’re waiting on Shep to call,” Fallon started, “we’re sorting your shit out so that when we have actionable intel, you’re ready to roll out, and when we get to her, you won’t have an excuse to puss out.”
My hand dropped from my neck to my chest. Christ, was I having a cardiac episode?
Was the ache from the thought of losing her completely or her coming back to California?
From the moment she’d walked out the door, I felt the pressure building, and it was only partly because she was pissed at me.
If the thought of losing Calista forever made my chest feel like I was having a heart attack, the reality of that would surely kill me.
“Mason.” Catarina called my name. “I do know how women think. And I know what I saw when she got into the elevator. She’s scared.
Of you, of being rejected, of accepting help, of failing.
I get the feeling the two of you are exactly the same—too afraid to trust because both of you know how bad it hurts when the person you trusted burns you.
It’s going to have to be you, asking her to stay.
She won’t let herself hope for a life with you. If you let her, she’ll run.”
Isn’t that what she’d already done while I stupidly hesitated, too caught up in my anger to stop her? Instead of nursing my pride, I should’ve tossed her over my shoulder and locked her in our room until I’d talked some sense into her.
Our room.
Christ.
Before I could come up with a response to what Cat had said, Pete reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and frowned.
“Unknown caller,” he announced. Then answered, “Who’s this?”
Pete frowned again, but it wasn’t until his shoulders tensed and his eyes fell to the floor that I knew something was wrong.
“What’s—”
“Let me put you on speaker,” Pete spoke over me. “You still there, Atlanta?”
“Yeah. Like I was saying, I’ve been calling her for the last ten minutes.”
“She bolted,” I told her. “Before I could get to her, she got into a taxi.”
“Any idea where she’d go?” Aiden asked.
“To Tanner.”
Who the fuck was Tanner?
“Who’s Tanner?” Pete voiced my thought.
“The man who has everything Calli needs to take out Jason Anderson.”
Now we were getting somewhere.