Chapter 11
Dallas
Five Years Ago
Lighting the cigarette, I inhale, blowing out the smoke as I drop the lighter back onto the table behind my bed.
I fit my other arm under my head, staring up at the shadows dancing across my ceiling and feeling the best kind of tired I’ve been in a long time.
“That shit stinks,” Golden Boy grumbles.
His arm presses into mine as he lies next to me.
I raise the cigarette to my mouth again. “So leave.”
We’re done. I’m drained, warm, and relaxed, but I don’t need to cuddle. When they stay, they ruin it.
I suck in another drag, my lungs filling to bursting before I blow a long stream of smoke into the air above the bed. He’s still, the sheet lying at our waists, a light sweat gleaming on my chest.
I need a shower.
I need food and water, but I can’t force myself to get up.
I know that this entanglement is a mistake without Macon pointing it out to me, but there’s something about Callum Ames I’m doing a shitty job resisting.
This is the third time we’ve been together this week, and I rarely see someone three times total.
He’s good at foreplay. It gets me every time. Making me want to fuck him up in ways we both like. Someday, I’ll pass him on the street with his trophy wife and kids, and we’ll share a look, and I’ll say in my head, I know what you feel like.
That’s why I’m doing this. Because it will end, and I’ll get to see him someday and remember the things we did in my bed.
“What does that mean?” he asks me.
I glance over at him, then follow his eyes to the set of parentheses drawn on the wall, next to the door.
I suck on the cigarette again. “Solve the problem in the parentheses first,” I tell him.
I wait for him to ask again, what it means, other than being a mathematical rule. Which I’ll ignore, because it’s none of his business.
He doesn’t ask, though. Good boy.
“I should get going.” He sits up, getting the message. Removing the sheet and scooting down to the bottom of the bed, he grabs his jeans. “Before I have to run into your sister on the stairs before I run into her at school.”
“You won’t still be here in September.”
He jerks his head at me, his eyes thinned in anger.
Then he launches at me and grabs my cigarette. “Damn right I won’t, because you fucking stink.”
I rise and grip his wrist, taking his neck in my other hand and throwing him down on the bed. His blue eyes light up with a smile, and I wrestle him, trying to get a hold of my cigarette as he evades me.
“You’re gonna start a fire,” he points out.
I get the cigarette, prying it out of his hand. “It wouldn’t be the first in this bed.”
I crash down on my side, pulling the sheet back up to my waist again.
When he just sits there on his side, not getting dressed, I glance at him.
“What?”
I shouldn’t even ask. It’s just going to start shit, but his jaw is tight and those eyes look how they did when his father threw that football in his face.
“I don’t want to hear about other people you sleep with,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “You understand?”
I didn’t say shit about other people, just alluded to the fact that nothing but fire happens in this bed. Go piss and moan somewhere else. Jesus.
Fitting the cigarette between my lips, I smoke.
But in a second, he’s on top of me, pressing his forearm into my neck as he stares down like the master of the manor.
His weight constricts my throat, and I can’t take a full breath.
“Do you understand?” he bites out again. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Who the fuck does he think he is?
Snuffing out the last small embers of the cigarette on his chest, I hear him growl as I flip us over and pin him to the bed.
He bares his teeth, trying to push me away as I grapple for his wrists. “You’re not the prince here, rich boy,” I tell him, noting the small pink circle marring his perfect skin. “Here, I say and do whatever the fuck I want.”
Giving me orders as if we’re a fucking couple? What is he, falling in love?
“And you think that makes you free?” he fires back. “Yeah, I can tell. You’re so happy.”
“Fuck you.”
I catch his wrists and slam them to the mattress by his head.
“What if I start paying you, huh?” he spits out. “You’ll say and do whatever the fuck I want, won’t you?”
“How much we talking about here?” I taunt.
How much will he pay for a screw? I don’t mind doing him for free, but if he wants to own my ass for a little while, I might entertain the idea. It’ll cost him, though.
His face softens, his mouth trembling. “I’ll pay you whatever you want,” he whispers.
He stops fighting, and I stare down into his incredible eyes, watching them shimmer.
Like the pool at his house.
He goes on, “As long as you fucking shut up about other people in here. Especially women.”
Why?
Why women?
Does he hate them? Like have a vendetta against them or some shit?
He pushes up, and I slide off of him as he sits there. “I just want one place where I don’t have to watch my back, Dallas.”
What the hell does that mean?
Why would he have to watch his back?
Then it hits me. I like things he could never give me. Their taste, their breasts, their cute little skirts and their sexy hips…And he thinks, just like with his fucking father, he’ll never measure up.
I swallow the bad taste in my mouth, because yeah, okay. Maybe I get it.
My older brothers were too busy working or taking care of the younger ones to expect anything of me except to help work and pay the bills, but I don’t blame them. We were all doing the best we could.
With my parents, I was just a mistake. The beginning of the end.
“Forget it,” he breathes out, sounding exhausted. “I gotta go.”
He climbs off the bed and slides into his jeans, swiping his shirt off the floor.
I’m moving before I even know why. Flying off the bed, I rush him as he opens my bedroom door, and I push it closed again, stopping him. He goes still, and I stare at the back of his head, the heat of his skin against my chest.
I know what it’s like to not feel like you’re at home anywhere.
Not that I was ever abused, but I’ve never felt good here unless I was drinking or screwing.
I let my forehead fall to the back of his neck. I know what it’s like to feel unwanted.
“Every day,” he says in a quiet voice, “I flirt and spend every spare moment acting like I want to get some girl in bed, so everyone thinks I’m something I’m not.
” He draws in a shaky breath. “And my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to be like him, but at least he’s still here, and I envy him because he can do anything and not feel like shit. I feel like shit all the time.”
Yeah…
“Except in here,” he whispers. “Or in your car, in my car, in your shower, in my room…”
I don’t let him see my smile as he laughs, but I wrap my arm around his stomach and pull him against me.
Ripping his T-shirt out of his hand, I drop it to the floor and turn us around, gripping the front of his neck as I run my lips up his throat.
He exhales, relaxing in my arms.
I push him down on the bed and lie on his back, threading my fingers through his hair as I run my mouth over his shoulders and down his spine.
I breathe him in, the last remnant of his cologne making everything buzz under my skin. I’ve never told him, but I get hard when I smell him on my sheets.
I trail my other hand down his back. “Maybe it’s better you were so young when she died,” I tell him. “I wish I didn’t remember.”
I wouldn’t hate thinking of my mother so much if I barely had a memory of her. My throat swells with a lump.
Opening my mouth, I hesitate for just a moment. “I was in the house that day.” I lay my head on his spine, moving my hand back up his skin. “By myself.”
He lies there, not moving, and he’s probably afraid to. I don’t talk much when we’re in bed.
“I heard her cry.” I trace a line around his shoulder blade, remembering it like it was yesterday.
“I started climbing the steps, and I saw her closed door, and I just stopped,” I choke out.
“I was always scared of her. I didn’t know what to do with her, how to act around her…
I let my dad and Macon and Army handle the emotional stuff.
” I lick my dry lips, closing my eyes. “I wanted her to do it.”
I don’t know why my voice is thick or why it hurts in my throat. I’ve never cried over her.
“I really just wanted it to be over,” I tell him. “She wasn’t fully alive, but she just wouldn’t die, either.”
She had two more kids after me, who were just as big of a mistake to her as I was.
Of course she never said it, and she was never cruel, but we could feel it. Macon, Army, and Iron were her comfort. Her rocks.
I’d only known her at her worst.
“I saw the closed door, and I knew.” I glide my fingers down his arm, smiling at the goose bumps that break out as I blink away a tear. “I don’t even know how I knew. Her door had been closed before, but I just knew.”
And I let her do it. I didn’t stop her. I can say it was a mercy to let her be. She’d suffered long enough, and the stress had already killed my father two months before. It would’ve killed Macon to have to keep her alive as well as the rest of us.
“If she really wanted to die, though, would she have been crying?” I ask.
Maybe she wanted me to hear her.
Or maybe she knew I didn’t care, and that’s why she waited for the day when I was the only one home.
“I just sat down on the steps,” I whisper, “and stayed there until my brothers came home, and I wonder about that a lot. What would’ve happened if I’d gone to her?” I bury my nose in his skin, moving my lips. “She wouldn’t have been different but maybe I would’ve.”
Maybe I would’ve become a man with a fucking heart.
I relax into his back, lying on him as I slide my hand up and down, kneading his waist, then his neck.
I never told my brothers that I was aware of what she was doing in there.
Maybe I do have a conscience, because it scares me that they’d never look at me the same way again if they knew.
Callum is the only one I’ve ever told. Not even a girl with cleavage and legs and a little skirt. He’s going to want to fucking cuddle every time now.