Educating Callie

by Emma Jayne Mills

  “Don’t do that sis.” Cam came around to the side of the bed and sat back down on it heavily. “You know I can’t stand it when you do that.”

  “What do you want me to do Cam? Get hysterical? Run around screaming and tearing my hair out? Cower in a corner and be afraid to live my life? Please enlighten me here, because I really don’t know what you want from me!” I lost my temper. “It’s not exactly a normal life experience, having a serial killer stalk you. Constantly looking over my shoulder. Dissecting every situation I find myself in through sheer paranoia because it was only ever a matter of time before he came back for me. I’m sorry if my reactions aren’t to your liking Cam, but I really don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do!” I was crying by the end of my rant and Cam was there in an instant pulling me to his side and dragging me into his arms. “I can’t do it Cam. I can’t do this again.”

  “I’m going to keep you safe.” He said the words but I didn’t think either of us really believed them.

  *****

  Chapter Thirteen

  I watch them, all dressed in black, pretending to mourn a woman they barely knew. I knew her. I knew her inside and out by the time my teachings were complete. They gather around her husband, feigning concern and sadness at her death. They do not know that she died a better person. She died with the knowledge of her mistakes. And that was my doing. They ought to thank me, not hunt me.

  Flanked by her ever present bodyguards, my lady remains out of reach. I fight the desire to make my presence known. They would be none the wiser; it would alert them to nothing. I have remained hidden among them for so long now, it wouldn’t occur to them to look in my direction. However, she is weak at the moment and it would irritate me immensely to be in her company while she is in this state. I no longer feel she is able to control her guard dogs in my presence. I will wait for her a while longer. Our time is coming my lady.

  *****

  The sound of the TARDIS landing filled the room and I reached for my phone on the kitchen island where I’d left it. Cam slid it across to me with a flick of his wrist and I opened the message. We had all come back to our house after Kat’s memorial service. Mick had offered, but her family hadn’t wanted a gathering at the pub, so he had closed for the night as a mark of respect.

  J: I need to see you.

  I ignored it. After what had happened at the pub and everything I had learned from Nate and Cam about my relationship with Jase I wanted nothing to do with him. I put the phone down. Cam was frowning at me.

  “Hey Cal, play list for our sleepover? What do you want on it?” Sally called from the sofa. Her and Liv were going through all mine and Cam’s music and taking out what they wanted.

  TARDIS.

  J: It’s important!!!

  I ignored it again, putting the phone face down on the island, also ignoring the heat of my brother’s gaze.

  “Cal?” Sally called again.

  “Hmm? I don’t know, whatever you guys want.” I said, distractedly.

  “You’re going to ditch us aren’t you?” Nat said with disappointment. “You’re going to get Nick to come and rescue you from our girl’s night and take you off on his bike to do whatever crazy shit it is that you two do together.”

  TARDIS.

  I didn’t look at my phone.

  “Well, I hadn’t planned on it, but now you mention it...” I looked at Nick and he winked at me.

  “Just don’t get lost this time.” Cam warned and Nick and I laughed.

  “Lost?” Sally wanted to know.

  “The last time Dana tried to organise a girl’s night Callie and Nick took off. They were meant to be going to Stonehenge, but they got lost. God knows where. For three days!” Cam was shaking his head, but there was a trace of a smile on his lips.

  “Hey, it wasn’t an entirely wasted exercise, we learned how to swear in Dutch.” Nick argued and I nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

  “Callie! Don’t you even think about it!” Liv screeched and pointed at Nick, “Nick you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to take her. I don’t care how much she begs!”

  “Chill Olive.” I told her, she stuck her tongue out at me.

  TARDIS.

  Cam raised his eyebrows at me and I ignored him again.

  “I’m not ditching you ok?” I sighed. Admittedly a girly sleepover was not high on my to do list right now. My head was all over the place what with Jase and the murders, but I knew they were all excited about it so I would be there.

  “Good. Because if you even try I will have you handcuffed before you can blink.” Dana pointed a corkscrew at me and went back to opening the bottle of wine in front of her, “I can do that! I’m married to a copper. I can get handcuffs!”

  “Now there’s an idea...” I murmured quietly, wondering if Adam took his handcuffs home with him.

  “For the record, I am very much in favour of where your mind just went Angel.” His voice came softly at my ear. I looked at him sideways and smirked as his arms snaked around my waist from behind and he pulled me tight against him. The thought of all things I could do to Adam if he were in handcuffs made me groan quietly as I rested the back of my head against his chest and closed my eyes.

  TARDIS.

  “Oh for fuck sake!” Cam said as he and I raced to reach for my phone; he got it before I could stop him and read the messages.

  “Is he fucking serious?” my brother ground out through gritted teeth and his face darkened as he looked at me.

  “Just ignore him.” I brushed it off.

  “You’ve been ignoring him Cal! We all have at your request. And guess what? He hasn’t gone anywhere, so that worked out really fucking well didn’t it?” Cameron was pissed off, seriously pissed off.

  Adam held out his hand to Cam for my phone and Cam passed it to him. I had no problem with either of them reading the messages; I just didn’t want to deal with their reactions. I was sure if I ignored Jase, he would eventually get bored and go away. Eventually.

  “It’s fine. I’ll just block his number, you can do that can’t you? Of course, I have no idea how, but it can’t be that hard. I can Google it. It’s about time I learned how to use...”

  “Rambling Cal.” Nick interrupted, leaning over Adam’s shoulder to read the messages for himself. “I thought you were going to tell me if this carried on?”

  “He did stop. For a while.” I answered Nick’s accusation.

  “I’m going to kill him.” The hand on my waist got tighter as Adam scrolled through the messages. There was a chilled edge to his voice that I hadn’t heard from him before and I knew I needed to calm him down somehow.

  I turned and laid my hands on his chest; he relaxed into my touch instantly and brought his eyes down to mine. “No. You’re going to ignore him and he’s going to get bored and give up.”

  “He’s got no intention of going anywhere Angel.” His voice softened as he spoke to me, but I could still hear the anger in his tone. Adam passed my phone to Mick who had held out his hand for it.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Luke said, walking into the kitchen.

  “No Luca. He’s your friend. You’re not getting involved.” I pushed out hastily.

  “Not anymore Callie. Not after what he did to you the other night in the pub. But he has listened to me in the past.” Luke said, looking at Nate who had followed him into the kitchen and was now leaning against the wall.

  “That was then mate. He’s lost it even more since.” Nate shook his head at Luke.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked them, turning in Adam’s arms again. His grip on my hips told me he obviously had no intention of letting me go any time soon.

  “I talked him out of doing something stupid after you two broke up.” Luke shrugged, refusing to make eye contact with me.

  “Luke?” I questioned as I laced my fingers with Adam’s on my waist and felt more of the tension leave his body. He rested his chin on the top of my head and inhaled the scent of my hair.


  “He was going to do something he’d regret and Luke talked him out of it.” Nate rushed out, pleading me with his eyes to drop it. This was obviously something he hadn’t wanted me to know about.

  “What was he going to do Luke?” I demanded.

  “He wasn’t thinking straight. He’d messed everything up between you two. His head was all over the place and he was desperate to get you back.” Luke explained.

  “Luca...” I said quietly.

  “Spit it out fella.” Mick said from the living room where he was leaning against the back of the sofa next to Greg, listening to the conversation. He had passed my phone on to Jared and now Vinnie, who was leaning against the kitchen island next to Cam, had it. Liv, Sally and Nat sat together on the sofa and everyone in the house had gone quiet, waiting for Luke to speak.

  “It wasn’t long after you broke up. He couldn’t get you on the phone, I tried telling him that you’d lost it but he didn’t believe me. He said he just wanted to know that you were alright. We told him you were fine, but he wanted to see for himself. Nick was doing his best to keep him away from you, but he couldn’t watch him all the time.” Luke breathed in deeply, “When he got here, you were already asleep, the lights were all off. Nate and I followed him, he was around the back, at your bedroom window.”

  “You sleep with the window open, so he was going to climb in.” Nate took over when Luke went quiet. “He said he wanted to slip into bed next to you and hold you for a while. He said he’d done it before, lots of times.”

  “What?” I whispered, I tried to lean further in to Adam but there was no space left between us, I wanted to attach my body to his somehow, to climb inside him where it was safe and never come out. He leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

  “Creepy much.” Liv murmured.

  “That’s exactly what we told him. I said that you would be terrified, it was different when he’d done it before because you were together and you’d expected him to do it.” Luke looked at me and I nodded in confirmation, Jase had climbed in my window before, many times over the years. But like Luke said, that was different because I knew he was likely to do it. I shuddered as I found myself wondering what he would have done the night of the storm if I had been asleep.

  “Anyway, I told him that if he did it he’d scare you and there was no way he would ever get you back after that. It took a while to talk him out of it and I was afraid we would wake you up so Nate pushed your window closed.” I frowned at Luke’s words, remembering a night when I had woken from a nightmare and been convinced I had heard something outside my window. I looked to Cam who nodded his agreement, he remembered too.

  “Jase kept saying he was sure that it would be fine, because you guys had been together for so long you could never be afraid of him. You spent practically every night together. Anyway, eventually I got him to see sense and we managed to get him home.” Luke finished.

  “I’ll kill him!” Cam growled.

  “I think there’s a queue.” Dana said quietly, leaning her head on Greg’s shoulder and Mick nodded in agreement.

  “He has to be told once and for all Callie. What with... everything going on, Jase is just one thing we really don’t need to keep dealing with right now.” Cam hesitated over mentioning my current stalker situation but we all knew what he meant.

  “Cameron’s right love, this is one problem we don’t need at the minute. We’re all doing our damndest to keep you safe and having to look out for Jase on top of that isn’t helping matters.” Mick attempted to soften the blow.

  “You alright Cal?” Nick asked me.

  “Yeah. I just...” I sighed and looked at my best friend, “What happened to him Nick? How did this happen to him without us realising? We should have noticed sooner. I should have noticed!”

  “You did notice baby girl.” Vinnie leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter top. “You’d been noticing for over a year.”

  “But I didn’t help him. I didn’t even try. I was just thinking about myself and how I could end things with him.” I argued.

  “Did he ever get violent with you before the other night?” Nick asked, running a hand through his hair and looking agitated.

  “No.” I reached out to squeeze his hand and reassure him. “It was just the control thing, wanting to know where I was, who I was with all the time. I thought it had only come on over the last couple of years, I had no idea he had always been that way, too young and dumb to see it I suppose. We argued a lot the last year or so, it’s no secret, you all knew. There was a lot going on, not just him changing, but my stuff too.”

  “Your demons were not a factor in his behaviour Callie. That’s all on him.” Jared told me gently.

  “I’m amazed you put up with it as long as you did.” Nat said, drawing her knees up into her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

  “Every time I tried to confront him about it he showed me the old Jase again and I’d second guess myself. I thought it was all me. My head wasn’t in the right place to figure it out properly. I was too wrapped up in my nightmares. I didn’t know who I was half the time, let alone who he was becoming.” I shrugged and she smiled sadly at me.

  “Not your fault Callie! Never your fault! NEVER!” Dana burst out, the memory just as painful for her as it was for me. Greg pulled her closer to him. She looked at me through tear filled eyes. “He should have been there for you after what happened, not you there for him. You were suffering and all he did was use it to control you.”

  “I wish we had been closer then, I would have performed an intervention.” Nat said. I laughed and some of the tension left the room.

  “Ok look, there will be no ex boyfriend killing tonight. Tonight is about Kat.” I looked around at them all. The men in my life looked about ready to head out and hunt him down there and then, but I couldn’t let that happen. Reluctantly they all agreed and slowly conversation started back up around the room. I took Adam’s hand and led him to my room, knowing he craved the alone time that I wanted too.

  “Sit.” I told him and pointed at the bed.

  “Angel?” he questioned, moving first to the window, closing and locking it.

  “Sit!” I told him again, he sat on the end of my bed and I stood, facing him. “I don’t want you going anywhere near him Adam. You, Greg and Cam, he would use your jobs against you in a heartbeat.”

  He reached out, hooking a finger through my belt loop and pulling me to stand between his legs. “Don’t worry. When we see him it will be official, all above board.”

  “No Adam. Not even then. He can be ignored. He’s proven that tonight. I ignored him and the messages stopped. He’ll stop and he’ll leave me alone.” I argued, resting my hands on his shoulders.

  “Vinnie turned your phone off.” He looked at me. “It’s been five months Angel. He’s getting worse, not better. An official visit may be just what he needs.”

  I thought for a minute, trying to see his point of view too, I knew he felt a need to protect me, it was in his nature. Just as it was in Cam’s and Greg’s and had been in my Dad’s, it’s why they did what they did. “Alright look, leave it for now. See if he gets the message. If he does anything else, you can talk to him. Please? I can’t have this blow up on top of everything else right now Adam. I don’t know how to cope with anything more. I’m already on the edge.”

  He searched my eyes, looking for something, I don’t know what. I didn’t look away. I let him search; in hope that he found what he was looking for. After a few minutes he smiled, “Alright, we’ll do it your way. But I’m serious Angel, one more foot out of line and I take over. I deal with him once and for all.”

  I nodded my agreement and Adam moved his hands around to my back, slid them into my back pockets, squeezed slightly and pulled me a step closer; he lowered his head, resting his forehead against my stomach. I moved my hands across his shoulders, up his neck and into his hair, holding him close to me, relishing the feeling of him in my arms. This man had come i
nto my life at the worst possible time, but it felt right. Who’s to say how long you should go between relationships, who decides whether it’s too soon or not? Where’s the book on that? I knew what was happening between Adam and I was happening fast, but I also knew it was right. Yet, still something was holding me back. It wasn’t my feelings for Jase I realised, I still loved him, but the love I felt for him had changed. It wasn’t that all consuming, romantic I can’t breathe without you love anymore. It was more like I care about you and want you to be ok love. Closure, there’s a word. I wondered if that was the key to my being able to move on with Adam. Nothing about my relationship with Jase had been resolved. I had no answers about him and Amy, I might have told myself I didn’t want them, but perhaps I needed them.

  “Woman, let me love you.” Adam groaned against my stomach and lifted his head to look at me. He stood, picking me up as he went. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling his body into mine, his words sent a shiver rippling all over my body as he backed me up against the door and buried his face in the hair that fell around my neck, inhaling deeply. Music blared loudly from the living room suddenly and someone hammered on my door.

  “Come on lovebirds, we’ve got a playlist to sort out and I need your back up girl or it’s going to be all boy bands!” Nat yelled through the door. “You can canoodle with hotness after we’ve all gone home!”

  I moaned when Adam moved his mouth to kiss the space between my neck and shoulder and I moved my head to the side to give him access. The butterflies in my stomach did a happy dance at the feel of his lips on my skin. I loosened my legs, but he didn’t let go. He raised his head to look at me and gave me a wolfish grin, “We could sneak out and go to my place.”

  “There would be no sneaking, we have to pass them all to get out of the house.” I reminded him, smiling. He kissed me lightly on the lips and rested his forehead against mine.