Chapter 36 Calder #2
I swallowed. “Not physically, no, but I can’t help but think this was just as bad.
” There wasn’t much that curdled my stomach.
Not in my line of work. But opening up the storage building with one of the officers and seeing shelves lined with baby oil and K-Y Jelly, condoms, and sex toys, and sedatives. Lots of sedatives . . .
Callum grunted. “The kind of man that manipulates women into a sex cult is the kind of man who doesn’t even know how to find the clit.”
An unexpected chuckle erupted from my chest, and I stared at my brother. It was a glimmer of the old Callum who had spoken, and he realized it.
“Well, I guess the case is closed, then.”
I’d never felt so reticent about the idea before. It was always finished with one case and onto the next. I’d never wanted more time with anyone before.
“Unless there’s something else you need?” he said tersely, scorching any evidence that his former lighthearted nature still existed underneath all his wounds.
One step at a time.
“No.”
Callum whipped his chair around me, rolling toward the side door of his house.
“Then I’ve got a cell to monitor.” He grabbed a ball cap from the bottom of the coatrack, catching it the wrong way and sending the pole tumbling to the ground, hats and coats littering the floor.
“Fuck.” Twister barked and ran through the casualties.
“Here—”
“Leave it,” Callum snapped. “Just leave it.” And then he pushed outside and disappeared down the ramp.
I wouldn’t just leave it. I righted the coatrack and replaced every item except one.
I picked up the cowboy hat Callum had worn on every storm chase back when he was the infamous tornado wrangler, and I left it on top of his keyboard so he’d have to deal with it when he got back.
At some point, he couldn’t keep running from the storm.
I’d avoided the house for as long as I could.
First, touching base with the rangers and police.
Then checking on the status of Maxwell and the other women.
All the while, the pull to go back to her—to talk to her—burned in my veins.
But this was one scenario where I wouldn’t be the Director but a distraction when Lara needed to be with her sister.
So, instead of going back to the house, I went to Free Fall.
This time, it wasn’t a race, but a restoration. Every grip. Every hold. Every calculated movement. It wasn’t an exercise in climbing the rock face, but in facing the condition of my heart.
For someone who tracked things for a living—who was paid to notice what others couldn’t—somehow I’d both observed yet completely missed every sign that I was falling in love with Lara Crane. Or maybe I hadn’t wanted to see them. Had tried not to see them.
Before, my idea of love was the torture in Cassius’s eyes when he saw Mom’s lifeless body. When he passed from day to day, knowing surviving each one meant facing another without her. My idea of love was colored over in shades of grief.
It wasn’t until Lara was on her knees in front of Ben that I saw the path, clear as day, that my heart had walked out of my chest and attached itself to her.
It wasn’t a choice. It was a force of nature, too full to contain, that struck with a bolt of lightning and then seeped like a torrent of rain into my bones.
I couldn’t help the way I felt about her any more than I could control a thunderstorm.
I scaled the wall with deliberate slowness, feeling only a single sentiment sweat from every pore, strain from every muscle, and flow through every vein. I was in love with her. And not only would I do anything to save her, but I would also do anything to not live without her.
I pulled myself up to the ledge, turned, and sat. I’d seen this same skyline in every season of every stage of my life, changing but somehow always the same world to be explored. Until today.
Today, everything to the color-steeped horizon and beyond wasn’t a world I wanted to explore, but a world I wanted to share. And for the first time in my adult life, the choice of what to do or what came next wasn’t wholly mine to make.
A door opened and shut on the second floor, and I looked up from my crossword. After showering and changing in the Airstream, I’d finally returned to the house, puzzle in hand. By then, Cassius had made dinner and a foiled plate of leftovers greeted me on the kitchen counter.
Firm footsteps settled with familiarity on the staircase.
How many nights had I heard those same footfalls when I’d been burning the midnight oil, cooped up in the library reading or studying?
Cassius appeared in the doorway, his gaze ravaged as it found mine.
“Everything okay?” I set my puzzle down, the pen rolling off to the side. “She wake up at all?”
“For a little. Still pretty groggy, but ate a few bites of my chicken.” Cassius’s crispy hot chicken could tempt someone back from the dead—it was that good.