Chapter 32
Dallas
Running across the field, I keep my eyes peeled. Gators, snakes…They won’t be out during a storm, but the high grass freaks me out.
Callum seems completely unbothered, though, and I’m the one who grew up in the wild.
Nearing the barn, I recognize it even though I’ve never been inside.
Two Locks.
It stopped being used for livestock years ago, now serving as a venue for dances or old-fashioned juke joint nights.
Mostly, it sits empty, though. Once in a while, you’ll pass by late at night, a couple of cars hidden along the side, and know that an unhappy wife is meeting her lover on this lonely road where they won’t be discovered.
Rumor has it Clay’s grandmother used to meet the late Sheriff Hawkins out here, their affair spanning decades.
I go for the side door, but Callum stops me. “It’s not in there.”
He flashes me that amazing smile that sends a current straight to my dick, and like a dog, I race with him to the other side.
I help him pull open the two large double doors of the attached building, and the bread truck sits inside.
I exhale, throwing him a grin. “You make me happy.”
He kept the treasure mobile. We can just drive it to the Bay.
Anna-Katherine climbs into the cab, and I stop Callum, taking the keys from his palm.
Jumping into the driver’s seat, I start the engine as he hops up on the other side of his sister.
And I don’t wait. Hitting the gas, I shift into second, pull onto the dirt road, and shift into third.
We race all the way to the Bay.
Passing Army’s cruiser, I honk like crazy, and he spins his car around, following us. In a minute, I know he’s alerted my family, because a convoy brings up the rear, Macon’s and Trace’s trucks—joined by another cop car, Jerome Watson’s Audi, and Vincent Law’s Land Cruiser.
“Are we going to make it?” Anna-Katherine asks.
She’s smiling, though.
She’s having fun.
I cast a look to Callum, his drenched hair sexy as fucking hell as rain drips down his face. “They’ll never catch us,” I tell her.
I still look at him, though.
As we cross the tracks, the lights behind fade away and Army screeches to a halt in the middle of the road, my brothers’ trucks blocking the way next.
All of the other police and cars stop, Army exiting his vehicle to go talk his colleagues down.
Who knows if they know what’s in the truck still, or if they’re just on the chase because we’re out during lockdown?
Or maybe it was because of the fight. I don’t care.
Cruising up to the garage across the street from our home, I leap out and hurry to unlock the door, lifting it up.
I jump back into the cab and pull the truck inside, quickly shutting it off.
We’re all silent, as if anyone would be able to hear us whisper.
I let myself take two breaths, and I nod to them, all of us exiting. Callum and Anna-Katherine race for the house as Macon’s truck rolls up. He jumps out, I throw him the keys, and I run through the storm.
No idea how much trouble we’re in, but Macon will move the truck when the coast is clear. Maybe this second or hours from now.
All I know is that in this moment I have everything I want, and something swells in my chest. Tears fucking pool, and I swipe them away before they fall.
I never let myself want much, because nothing was permanent. I saw everything as something I would lose eventually, but right now—tonight—I have him.
My family knows everything, and they just helped me fight to get the treasure back. To get him back.
Anna-Katherine is here—safe—and I don’t give a shit if the rain ever stops.
We run into the house, and Krisjen is there with Aracely, throwing a towel around Anna-Katherine. She smiles, kicking off her shoes before they hustle her up the stairs.
“Warm shower and dry clothes,” Krisjen says.
I follow but turn, pulling him in by the back of the neck as they disappear upstairs. Our lips meet, the fire on his tongue making me breathless.
His teeth catch my bottom lip as he pulls off his jacket, and I’m rock hard.
Dragging him up the stairs, I walk for my room, letting him spin me around and back me up as we kiss. I rip open his shirt, both of us stumbling through my door and slamming it shut.
I should check on my brothers and sister.
I should be helping monitor families in the Bay.
I can’t let him go.
Shoving his shirt to the floor, I hold his head, kissing him as I press my body to his. “I love you.”
Pushing him down to the bed, I plant my hands on both sides of him and come in again and again, grinding my groin between his legs. His hands slide up my back, kneading my skin as he arches up, kissing me back like this is our first time.
Like this is all new for us.
Like we didn’t just screw yesterday.
Fuck, I can’t stop. My body hums under my skin, his hands making me feel like my heart is about to float out of my chest.
He’s never leaving this bed.
Molding my chest to his, I lean my elbows into the mattress, threading my fingers through his hair as I wrap him up in me. “I love you.”
“You got the money already.” He kisses me back, grinning. “You don’t have to sweet-talk me.”
He tips his head back, letting me at his neck.
“I want to look at you every day,” I say.
I want to look forward to you every day.
Slowing, I rise up and look down at him. His golden hair is all over the place, his lips parting and closing again, so soft.
I touch his face. “I want to look at those eyes that flatten me when they turn gray.”
He holds my gaze, and I wish I could understand everything I’m feeling.
I used to think love wasn’t real. It was attraction and attachment mixed together, and I was just glad I’d never gotten deluded into thinking I was in love, but I want him to look at me, because it hurts everywhere when he does, and I like it.
“I love you,” I whisper, and it gets easier every time as I kiss him. “I love you.”
He pants, holding my head to his body, my mouth trailing over his throat to the other side of his neck and down his collarbone.
But he’s still quiet. Rising up, I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re not going to say it back?”
I’ve said it like four or five times now.
“I have said it.” He laughs under his breath. “Didn’t you ever listen to my voice message?”
His voice message?
“From five years ago?” he points out, trying to jog my memory.
Confusion sinks in. I don’t remember that.
Sitting back on my heels, I dig my phone out of my back pocket, bringing up our text history.
And there it is, just about the last communication we had all those years ago, other than a flippant, one-off taunt I sent him back when Krisjen started living with us.
My thumb hovers over play, and I’m nauseous all of a sudden. I don’t want to feel like shit about all of the time we missed.
I press play.
His heavy breaths hit the speaker. “You’re such a fucking cocksucker,” he says, his voice shaky.
I glance at Callum, his hands behind his head and a smirk on his mouth.
“But I have to thank you,” his younger self goes on. “I still want you, and I’d still say yes to you and do anything you wanted me to, and I hate myself for it.” He sniffles. “Because you don’t deserve it.”
Tears fill his throat as a lump lodges in mine.
“And even knowing that, I’d still come if you called,” he cries, but then his voice hardens. “Why do I love you?!”
I vaguely remember seeing this message come in, but I probably ignored it on purpose.
“You think I’m just a kid,” he continues, “but it won’t go away. It’ll never go away.”
I watch him watching me, the same thought probably occurring to us both. He was right. It never went away.
I was Nero, wasn’t I? Not him.
I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t learn.
“So I love you and fuck me and thank you very much for this,” he hisses on the phone. “Thank you for not giving me the only thing I want, because then you’ll always be able to treat me like shit and I’ll take it just so I can have you.”
It ends, and I soak in the sight of him here—with me and happy—relieved that he came back for me. In whatever way.
“I wouldn’t listen to it,” I admit. “I was afraid of what you were going to say, and I didn’t want to hear you say you hated me.”
Tossing my phone down, I lean over him again.
“I didn’t want to hear your voice.” I tell him everything I was feeling at that time, too. “It hurt like shit to not see you. To not go to you. I wanted you so fucking bad.”
He brings his arms down, holding my body.
“I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t forget you.
” I shake my head. “What the hell did you do that made you so special? Until eventually, I became so addicted to the escape that it’s all I thought about.
” I take his face in my hand. “My mother didn’t fuck me up half as much as falling in love with you did. ”
He gives me a sad smile.
“I fell in love with you a long time ago, Callum,” I say.
I kiss his mouth, coming in again and again, moving to his forehead, his jaw, his neck…“I love you,” I whisper again.
“I love you.”
And I hear the smile in his voice when he says it.
In a moment, he’s wrapping his arm around my waist and rolling me over onto my back. Straddling me, he covers my chest with his mouth and tongue, and I start to hear a headboard hitting a wall somewhere in the house.
Unfastening my belt, he opens my pants, and I lift my ass up so he can pull them down a little.
My dick springs out.
“You’re always so hard, so fast,” he breathes out, tonguing my tip as he looks up at me. “You know how beautiful your body is?”
As long as he thinks so…
He swallows me, covering my length, the heat of his wet mouth making me shudder. “Ah…”
“I want a mirror above our headboard.” He strokes me as he kisses everywhere around my dick. “I love to watch your body work.”
I thread my fingers through his hair, pleasure spreading up my stomach, down my legs, and I lift my head, watching his lips and the tip of his tongue drift up my shaft, tasting me. Holding my eyes, he licks the cum off the head.
Please.
He must see the begging in my eyes. He crawls up my body and kisses me. “Lube?”
I paw for the bedside drawer, and he reaches over, digging it out.