Chapter Thirty-One
Max
Cal enters a code at his mother’s door, and we step into the foyer.
“Hello?” Cal calls through the small space as we step into the open living area attached to the kitchen.
“In here!” Sophia comes into view, sitting sideways in a big, round black and white chair with a sizable pink book propped on her legs.
She looks up, her dark brown hair up in a messy bun and her feet dangling off the side of the oversized chair.
Across the kitchen, Maggie is drying a glass.
“It’s so weird watching you just walk in here every day,” Sophia, the youngest sister, who I learned when she joined us at the bar the other night is twenty-three, puts a bookmark in the page of her romance-looking novel while peering up at Cal. “Like you’re just… around now.”
“He is around now, Sophia, and if you keep being rude it’ll be even shorter than last time,” Maggie rolls her eyes at her little sister.
“Plus, he brought Max,” Maggie wiggles her eyebrows at me.
“Does that mean you’re allowing us to hang out with her, Cal?
Or are you going to lock her in the basement until you’re done with your meetings or plotting or whatever it is you do all day? ”
Cal forces out a sarcastic laugh. “Ha ha. She is welcome to do whatever she likes.” His eyes look over me. “I shouldn’t be too long today, maybe we can plan for a late lunch? Unless these two scare you off before then.”
A smile slides my lips apart. “I think I can probably survive till lunch, but dinnertime might be pushing the limits.”
“Oh, if you leave her here that long, she’ll have her hair permed, making lobster ravs with Mom in the kitchen in matching aprons and five-inch stilettos,” Maggie cackles as she finishes the sentence.
“With Frank Sinatra playing on repeat!” Sophia tosses the words into the air with her head thrown back in laughter against the armrest of the chair.
I’m grinning, leaning close to Cal’s ear to whisper, “What are ‘lobster ravs’?”
I can tell he’s trying not to smile as his lips roll together, meeting my eyes. “Lobster ravioli, and I will be back by one—can’t risk your hair, but wouldn’t mind the ravs.”
My hands are on my hips as I lean away from him. “Excuse me, I could totally rock a perm. And maybe, possibly, not fuck up ravioli.”
“I’ll be back at one. Please,” he levels an icy look at each sister. “Please, be nice. Or maybe be silent.”
“Blah, blah, fun sucker.” Sophia opens her book, sticking her tongue out in his direction without looking at him.
Maggie busies herself with shuffling remaining dishes into cabinets, but I catch her eyes glance over her shoulder in our direction before I feel Cal’s hand on the small of my back. My eyes flick up to him as the warmth from his hand spreads through my body.
“I’ll be back soon. Are you sure you’re okay?” His eyes search mine, looking for any indication I’m not.
I nod and he nods back, offering me a small smile before he turns to backtrack out towards the foyer.
“He’s different with you,” Maggie almost whispers the words.
I notice that she is leaning on the expansive, white marble island with her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
“Every other time he’s home, he’s… it’s like he slides across ice.
Hard. And cold—unforgiving. He’s here, but unwilling and a shell of himself. ”
“He’s scorched earth on the outside, like fried desert,” Sophia chimes in, but her eyes don’t leave the pages of her book. “With you it’s like, there’s… cracks of something coming through.”
I don’t know what to say to either of them, but I offer her a small lift of my lips. “Really? He’s just the same Cal as always to me—”
Fast footsteps pound from behind me and I whirl around, panic flooding my body.
The blood on his shirt yesterday was the first time the reality of this situation has crashed down in front of me.
He said everyone was fine, and that’s the most important part, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t keep me up a little late last night thinking about what he said.
That my route to school has to change and I have to take more of his men with me.
And then my eyes catch Cal jogging down the hallway back towards us.
He stops abruptly, his eyes bouncing from one sister to the other before landing back on me.
He tugs on the lapels of his suit jacket, takes a tentative step forward, and clears his throat.
“I… uh, I forgot something.”
My eyebrows pinch together, but my lips tilt up at the expression on his face.
Embarrassment? Confusion, maybe? I feel like it’s a look I have rarely seen on his face. Always confident and unwavering, but he seems cautious, almost uneasy, but his eyes almost look happy.
He takes another step forward, looking from me to each of his sisters again. The pause is long, and the silence is longer.
I tilt my head and lean towards him as he gets closer.
“Well, genius? We are waiting. What is it?” Sophia says from behind me at the same time as Maggie says, “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
Cal shoots daggers at them with his eyes, squinting slightly as he closes the last two steps between us and fixes his golden-green gaze on mine.
My breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my throat, sending a burst of something hot through my chest as he reaches up to run his fingers across my cheek. He cups my jaw lightly and runs his thumb across my cheek.
Visions of him loving me with those hands play uninvited in my mind. Him above me. His shoulders working. His lips painting every inch of my body with kisses. And his tongue.
I see his jaw work, and I wonder if the same scenes just flashed before his eyes. But he softens, with a smile touching his lips, crinkling the spots at his temples.
“I’ll see you later.”
I part my lips to respond, but his lips are pressed against them before a sound can escape. My eyelashes flutter against the tops of my cheeks as my eyes close and I reach out to press my hands to his chest. The kiss is slow, light and flawless.
But he pulls away too soon. Heat has risen to flush my cheeks, and it only deepens as I come back to reality and the realization that his sisters are behind me.
He kisses my cheek once, gives me one more smile before it falls. He nods to each of his sisters, buttons his suit jacket, throwing them a gruff, “Bye,” before he’s turning on a heel, briskly walking back in the direction he came.
And I watch him go until I hear the door shut from the foyer.
I hear a thud and twist around to see Sophia has thrown her book on the floor beside the chair.
“Don’t need that anymore when I’ve got a grumpy, sunshine romance happening right in front of my face—in real life!” She throws her hands up and shrieks, kicking her feet in the air, “Crying, screaming, throwing up!”
“Like I said, he’s different with you. Because whoever that was?” Maggie is standing closer to me, now, pointing towards the foyer, laughing hysterically, “Haven’t seen him since he left when he was eighteen. No, probably before that. Early teenage years maybe.”
Her tone sobers and she looks towards the foyer and back at me wistfully.
“That guy that ran back in here? He was always the best of all of us. And I think we all just assumed he was gone.”
The heat on my face burns hotter. But her eyes look watery.
I can’t even begin to imagine what this family has been through.
Their brother leaving for years; their dad dying.
But Cal has always been Cal. That person that ran back in here is exactly who he has always been with me since the day I met him.
“He’s just… Cal.” I try to smile at them, but I think it’s a grimace instead. “I’m sorry he isn’t that guy when he’s here. When I met him,” I stumble over my words a bit and shift my weight on my feet, not feeling uncomfortable, but feeling sad. For them. And for Cal.
“When we met years ago—before he came back here—I mean—sorry. Um, before all of—” I spin my hands around the air. “The stuff. He was just like that. Every day.”
Minus the kiss, but damn do I regret not getting to know that part of Cal sooner. Not getting to know all of Cal sooner.
“You like, break the ice or crack the desert or whatever.” Sophia stands and smooths out her sweatpants, walking towards where Maggie and I stand in the doorway. “I like it. Now let’s go get breakfast.”