Chapter 34 Callum
THIRTY-FOUR
CALLUM
Deena didn’t answer the text I sent her around midmorning or the call I placed at lunchtime. Our fight from last night lingered in my psyche like the remnants of an oil spill on the ocean, thick and polluting. I’d gotten carried away; I knew it.
But why did Deena insist on working? I had enough money to last ten lifetimes. Her business made ends meet—but she didn’t need to do that anymore. It would be better for her, for me, and for the baby for her to relax and let me take care of everything.
And why wasn’t she answering the damn phone?
I changed tack and called my sister. Erica answered on the third ring. “Everything okay?”
“Can you go check on Deena?” I asked. “She’s not answering my calls.”
“Maybe she’s giving you a sign to back off, Cal.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t in the mood for my sister’s sanctimonious, know-it-all bullshit. “Forget it. I’ll ask one of the staff to do it.”
“Calm your horses,” she said. “I’m on my way.”
Sure enough, I heard a door open and the sound of footsteps. As I sat behind my desk, my knee bounced. I pulled my phone away from my ear to check it when it buzzed, but it was just an email. Still no text from Deena.
“Just got upstairs. I’m almost there,” Erica said, as if she knew my stress levels were hitting the roof. I heard her knuckles rapping on my bedroom door. “Deena?” she called softly. “Deena, are you awake?”
“Open the door and check on her,” I ordered.
“What if she’s changing?” Erica said.
“It’s fine.”
“I don’t think it is, actually.”
“Just check on her,” I barked.
Erica sighed, but I heard the door latch catch against the jamb—and then silence.
“Erica?”
My sister ignored me. “Deena?” Her steps went from hardwood to muffled carpet. She was in my room, on the rug. Another door opened—the bathroom or closet? I heard the squeak of the bathroom door hinge, then, and my pulse took off.
“Cal…”
“Check the upstairs living room. That’s where she was working yesterday.”
“Cal—”
“Or the kitchen. Have you been to the kitchen today?”
“Cal.”
“What?”
“She’s gone.”
I frowned, staring at the surface of my desk, seeing nothing. “What?”
“She’s gone. Her clothes are still here, but her toiletries are gone, and I don’t see her computer. The shoes she always wears are gone, and some of the hangers in the closet are empty. Looks like she took her jackets.”
“Her jackets? It’s summer.”
Erica paused. “Jackets are expensive.”
A pit opened up in my stomach. Suddenly, I was so dizzy I had to grip the armrest of my chair just to stay seated where I was. Words clung to the inside of my throat, sticky and burning. I forced them out anyway. “She left, and she’s not planning on coming back.”
Erica said nothing.
My breaths came faster. The enormity of my fuck-up loomed over me, but my anger fought against it. She couldn’t just leave. She couldn’t just decide to walk away. She told me she was mine. She was carrying my baby. Our baby.
She was already gone.
I’d killed the relationship, just like I’d killed Gracie. I’d loved her too hard, crushed her to me and suffocated her. I knew it. I could see the shape of Deena’s hurt, of my own guilt. I knew what had happened, but I couldn’t accept it.
She was wrong. She didn’t need to work. If she just thought for one single second, she’d see that I was right.
She could set aside her business and focus on her health.
She could let me handle everything else.
That was the easiest, cleanest, and simplest way forward.
The only way that made sense. Why didn’t she see that?
I stood up so suddenly that my chair flew back and hit the wall, but I was already halfway to the door. “Willa!” I called out. “Cancel everything for today.”
The receptionist stared at me, wide-eyed, from the front desk. I mashed the elevator button a dozen times, bouncing on my feet. My heart was beating too fast. My breaths were too shallow. I couldn’t get enough air in.
The walls pressed in on me, and the feeling only got worse when I finally stepped into the elevator.
I called Deena again, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer.
I texted her. I called again. By the time I was in the car and my driver was weaving in and out of traffic, I was ready to fling the device out the window and scream.
But I didn’t.
The pressure inside me grew and grew and grew until I got to Deena’s building.
I was out of the car in a second, taking in the drab brown brick and dirty windows.
No doorman. No security door. Just a flimsy glass partition between all the crackheads and junkies in the world, and the woman who was my heart.
She couldn’t stay here. She belonged with me.
My pulse jumped, and I punched the button for Deena’s apartment, then punched it again.
The intercom crackled. “Yes?”
Even that one word made my knees buckle. I leaned on the brick, fingers curling into the gap filled with old mortar, and exhaled. “Deena. It’s me. Let me in.”
The silence stretched, and finally Deena answered. “No, Cal. I’m not going to do that.”
The calm in her voice chilled me to my core. I blinked, willing my brain to understand. Willing myself to come up with the perfect combination of words that would make her see what needed to happen. Her, with me. This spat, over.
“Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I don’t…” I trailed off. What did I want to say?
I did want her to stop working. I wanted to wrap her in miles of bubble wrap and keep her chained where she’d be safe. I wanted to be in charge of every morsel that passed her lips and every exercise that moved her body. I wanted to control her in every way.
“I can’t do this,” Deena said, her voice distorted by the speaker. “You… Cal…”
My fingers dug into the edge of the brick so hard a trickle of blood ran down my palm. I slammed my hand against the rough surface. “Deena! You can’t just run away from this.”
“This isn’t working. It was never going to work. We need different things. I’ll have my lawyer contact you about custody.”
The speaker crackled again, and I knew she was gone.
Just like that. Foiled by an ancient intercom and a door that one solid kick would shatter.
But that wasn’t all that stood between us, was it?
There was the vast chasm of our clashing needs.
The things she needed that I couldn’t—wouldn’t—couldn’t—give her.
The things I needed that she couldn’t give me.
This wasn’t how this ended. My body felt light and heavy at once, and my vision was wobbly around the edges. I couldn’t accept this. I would die without her. I was dying without her, and it had only been a few hours. How would I survive days? Months? Years?
I backed up, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and yelled up at the building. “Deena!”
Sweat trickled down my back, and fluffy white clouds passed by above the buildings that towered all around me.
It was a sweltering day. The kind of day that brought all the smells of its millions of inhabitants and their trash, the heat of the car exhaust fumes mixing with the dead heat of sun-soaked concrete.
The kind of day that dragged me down to the sticky, inescapable darkness.
I stood on the pavement, choking on the oppressive heat, on the thick, muggy air, on the weight of the memories that chose this moment to rush back to me.
My sister had died on a day just like this.
“Deena!”
“Shut the hell up!” someone yelled from a neighboring building.
“Fuck you!” I yelled back.
Deena’s building loomed, silent and ominous. I looked at the door. I could break it down. I’d probably get arrested, but maybe I could get to Deena’s apartment before the cops got here.
And then—
And then? What?
“Sir?” My driver was behind me, hands clasped as he stood next to the car. I glanced at him, and he gestured to my hand. “Should I get the first aid kit?”
I opened my palm to find it bloody. Staring at the red spread all over my skin, I sucked in a few hard breaths through clenched teeth.
And I knew the truth.
I’d ruined this, just like I ruined everything. I dragged Deena into my apartment like I’d dragged Gracie into the neighbor’s yard. No one was safe with me. I wasn’t able to care for people the way they needed. My love was toxic. It killed.
My heart turned to stone as I watched blood drip from my palm and splash on the pavement between my feet. My throat was full of rocks, and I couldn’t get a full breath into my lungs no matter how hard I tried.
Deena was gone; she wasn’t coming back. And maybe she was better off without me. Maybe our child was better off without me. Maybe I was destined to ruin everything around me. Erica and Lila needed to leave before I ruined them too.
I nodded at my driver and let him dab at my hand, but I felt nothing. I stared at the smears of red on my palm until they were wiped away. My shoulders bowed under the weight of the thick, heavy, muggy heat. The weight of my failure. My grief.
This was the end of me and Deena, and maybe it was exactly what I deserved. A part of me died on that sidewalk, and I knew nothing would bring it back.