And, almost like he could read my mind, Cal had slipped into my bedroom and carried me out. Saving me from being alone. I fell asleep with his body curled over mine as we slept together in his bed, safe again. It was stupid. We could have gotten caught. It was dangerous and irresponsible.
So we did it every night for the next week. And then the week after that.
“Do you think they noticed last night?” I asked him one day as we walked into the lunch room. No more stares—people seemed to have gotten used to us being together. Hopefully as brother and sister. Though I suspected a few teachers were catching on, mainly because Cal had a habit of grabbing my butt when he thought no one was watching.
Cal snorted. “They don’t notice anything besides themselves. Too self-absorbed.”
“Don’t talk about my mom that way.”
He touched the small of my back lightly. A way of apologizing without saying anything too revealing out loud in front of the crowded lunch room. I appreciated it.
“She doesn’t notice you, though,” he said as we sat down.
I shrugged. “She’s busy. She’s a single mother. She doesn’t have time to notice me. I’m fine with it.”
“If you have to say you’re fine so much, you’re probably not. Quit trying to convince yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. When I glanced back at him, he had leaned back in his chair and was watching my ear again. I felt the blush creep back into my cheeks. I loved the way he looked at me. Especially the soft look he got when he saw me wearing his earring, even if I had to hide it with my hair when we were at home. I doubted James cared about his son enough to notice the diamond stud, but I didn’t want to risk anything.
“He’s looking at you again,” said Cal without removing his gaze from the sparkle in my ear. “No, don’t look at him. Don’t give him the satisfaction. But I thought you should know.”
I grimaced and glared into my peanut butter and jelly. Jess plopped down in the seat next to me, but I didn’t dare look up. Not now that I could feel Nate’s hateful gaze on me again.
“Should I beat him?” Cal asked casually.
“Oh hush,” Jess said, slapping his hand. Cal snorted, a smile perking up his face. Cal was warming up to Jess and her bold, brash, standing-up-to-tattooed-men-for-the-good-of-her-friend ways. “It’s not like he’s going to try anything.”
“Don’t tempt fate.”
Cal frowned. “You should worry. I told you—”
“That he’s dangerous but you’ll protect me, yeah, yeah, I got it,” I grumbled. Jess peeked up at us, interested. She knew something was up. But honestly, I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about lately were the wonderful dreams I kept having in which Nate was tossed off cliffs or hit by busses.
“Do you want me to protect you now?” Cal asked.
His voice had changed. There was an edge to it, and he was sitting up in his seat. I felt, through the rising hair on the back of my neck, Nate’s presence pass by me. I locked my jaw as I watched him walk away, gliding out of the cafeteria.
“You can protect me by sitting the hell down.”
He gave a dramatic sigh, but relaxed now that the danger had passed. “Fine, Pink. But I’m worried about you. This doesn’t feel right.”
“You’re imagining things,” I said, ignoring the shaking in my voice. Jess’s silent frown didn’t agree with me.
I looked down at my lunch and repeated myself one more time, ignoring the echo of Cal’s ‘if you have to say you’re fine so much, you’re probably not’ in my ears:
“It’s nothing.”
***
“Honey, have you seen Callum?”
I jumped in surprise, dropping my backpack on the kitchen floor with my hand still clenched around the doorknob. I glanced at the microwave clock: 6pm, the time I normally got home unless the student council meeting ran long. Mom knew that too, but she had never been waiting for me at home like this. Mom also hadn’t talked me at all in about a week, I realized. Something about that made me sick to my stomach.
“Um. No. Doesn’t he normally get home at four?”
Mom pressed her lips to the edge of her coffee cup. Coffee? Mom was a teetotaler, even when it came to caffeine. I had never seen her drink coffee, except for in the few weeks surrounding Dad’s death. Especially not strong black coffee like the smell wafting from her mug.
“Yes,” she said shortly. She took a sip.
“And he hasn’t gotten home yet?”
She shook her head. Her forehead was wrinkled with worry, and I could almost feel the knotted tension in her shoulders from here.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Oh God. Something was wrong. I knew it. Mom had always had a sixth sense about these things. And she was terrible at hiding it.
“Are you sure he didn’t wait around for you?” Mom asked. She glanced upstairs, towards Cal’s bedroom. “Maybe he was going to walk home with you? Are you really sure you don’t know where he is, honey?”
“Mom, is something wrong?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
Mom took another sip of coffee. A really long, thoughtful sip that made it obvious she was lying.
“Alright. Fine,” I said, scooping my backpack back up and planting a hand on my hip. “Then why do you need him home so badly?”
“We need to talk.”
Ouch. That never meant something good. That was a constant phrase around this house when Dad was dying, and I had developed an allergic reaction to it by now.
“About what?”
“About family things.”
“Family things like…”
“Things.” The coffee mug clinked against the granite countertop as she put it down. “Are you sure you don’t know where he is? This is important, Natalie.”
“I’m sure.” I started toward the hall, but halted. “Mom … does this have to do with James?”
Her hand slipped, letting a drop of coffee jump from the edge of the mug and hit the floor with a splat. Mom pretended to have not noticed, turning away from me.
“It has to do with the family. We’re not talking until the whole family is here.”
“Mom.”
“We’ll talk later. Forget it.”
“Fine, Mom,” I said, striding out of the kitchen with my backpack strategically placed in front of my pocket. Hidden from view, my hand slipped into my pocket and grabbed my phone. Whatever was going on, it was not good.
Very, very not good.
I threw my backpack on the bed and texted Cal:
NAT:
WHERE ARE YOU???
Ten minutes passed. No answer. I pulled off my shoes and laid back on the bed, ignoring the turning in my gut.
NAT:
THIS ISN’T FUNNY CAL.
MOM IS REALLY REALLY WORRIED.
STILL AT SCHOOL? SETTING DUMPSTER FIRES? IN JAIL?
Fifteen minutes passed. No answer.
NAT:
CAL. ANSWER ME GODDAMNIT.
I had just hit the ten minute mark again and was about to text him again when my screen lit up. Finally, an answer. I grabbed the phone but was surprised to see it was a text from Jess, not from Cal. And it didn’t look too good.
JESS:
HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE IT
WERE YOU THERE
JESS:
NAT ARE YOU OKAY
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ANSWER ME
My heart raced. What?
NAT:
I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.
JESS:
OH GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS
NAT:
YES.
JESS:
I THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN BY NOW…
JESS:
OH GOD, NAT, THIS IS BAD
THIS IS REALLY, REALLY BAD
My heart thudded in my chest, and I could feel a cold sweat wash over me. Frustrated, I picked the phone up to dial her number. Jess was terrible at texting. If my world was about to collapse, I needed to know what was going on.
/> But I didn’t get the chance to call her.
Because at that moment, I was distracted by the sound of a ceramic mug hitting the floor and shattering.
“Oh my God,” my mother’s horrified voice called.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Please don’t let Cal have done something stupid.
Though I knew that was a useless wish.
I raced downstairs to see my mother frozen in the kitchen, our old landline phone pressed to her ear and the shattered remains of the coffee mug at her feet. Coffee stained her perfect white shoes, and her eyes were as wide as the dinner plates in the sink behind her.
“Mom?” I asked in a small voice.
She seemed paralyzed at the phone, not noticing me. She nodded to herself as she listened to the person on the other line. She licked her lips—her worst nervous tick, the one she only did when things were catastrophically bad.
“No, his father isn’t here,” she rasped into the phone.
Oh God, Cal. What have you done?
“Mom.” My hands shook, and I leaned against the kitchen table to keep myself from keeling over. “Mom, please. What is it?”
“Is he … is he too badly hurt?” Mom asked.
No, no, no.
“Mommy.”
“I … I don’t know where his father is.” Mom’s eyes sank closed. “No. I’ll pick him up myself.”
“Mom!”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Mom ended the call and stared at the floor.
“Mom, please,” I whispered hoarsely.
Mom’s head finally snapped back to me. Her face was white. “Oh, Nat,” she moaned.
“What happened?”
“Callum was arrested about an hour ago. There was … there was a fight with another boy at school. There was a lot of blood, Natalie.” Her face fell into her hands. “I knew this was a terrible idea, I knew I shouldn’t have married him, Nat. I knew I shouldn’t have brought either of them into the house….”
I couldn’t hear her droning on about hating the both of them or about how they were both the same violent man. I couldn’t hear anything but the deafening buzzing in my ears.
Cal was in jail.
Cal had assaulted someone—and it wasn’t hard to figure out who that someone was.
Cal was in trouble. The kind of trouble he couldn’t talk himself out of, the kind that had consequences. And there was no way to escape the fact that our lives had just completely changed, even if I didn’t know what that meant at the time.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as my world collapsed around me.
By the time we got to the local county jail, Mom had dried her panic tears. But I was still frozen in shock. Once we parked, I only barely managed to stumble out of the car, still clutching my phone in one hand with white knuckles. I was unable to think of anything besides the horrific image I had in my head of Cal, covered in blood, locked in a jail cell.
I struggled to keep my breaths calm.
This could not be happening.
But it was.
“You’re lucky they didn’t press charges,” grumbled one of the guards as he brought the handcuffed Cal out. My head snapped up to see him, ignoring the cold air of the jail and night sounds buzzing outside the window. Oh God, he was bloody. By now the maroon stains that splattered his clothes had turned brown, but I could still smell the faint scent of sour copper. Cal’s face was still smudged with red too.
His gaze darted to me where I stood behind my mother, my face white and my hands shaking. He looked down at the floor. He mouthed something at me. I think it was ‘sorry.’
“Who was it?” Mom asked, clutching her purse to her chest. Her phone beeped again. James had been texting her nonstop for the last hour, but not once had she checked her phone. Important, but I couldn’t pay attention long enough to figure out what it meant. All I could think about was Cal. “Who did he attack?”
“Nathaniel Poole,” said another one of the men. “Another student at the high school.”
My stomach dropped. Of course, I had to have known that that’s who it was. But it was still horrible to hear it.
I wanted Nate to pay for what he had done—but not if it meant Cal wasting his life in some grand gesture for me.
Mom grabbed Cal by the sleeve, then immediately let go when she heard the crunch of dried blood under her hand. She gagged as she wiped the dry flakes off on her jeans.
“Let’s go,” she said flatly.
“I—” he started, staring at me with pain in his eyes.
“Stop.” Mom’s tone was entirely cold. She refused to look at him. “Save it. Your father is coming home.”
Shit.
***
“Why did you do it?” I asked him once we were home. It was nearly midnight by now, and we were still waiting for James’ arrival. Cal and I sat under the dim lights at the kitchen table, both of us clutching mugs of coffee. I had already offered to try smuggling him out of here before James arrived, but he just shook his head.
“For you, Nat.”
His voice was painfully soft and hurt.
“You know I didn’t want you to start a fight.”
“I didn’t.”
“Explain.”
Cal groaned and dropped his head. “He attacked me, Nat. I saw him waiting for you after school. Knew he wanted to hurt you. Couldn’t let that happen. He tried going after you when you left campus, which is when I stepped in. He got pissed. He attacked me.”
“And you slit his throat?” I hissed, gesturing at his bloody shirt. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t appreciate the Batman level protection. But I didn’t have to pretend to hate the fact that he was covered in my ex-boyfriend’s blood.
“It’s not his blood, Nat,” he said softly.
“What?”
Cal peeled back one of his many bandages, this one on his forehead above the right eye. I gasped and covered my mouth. Jesus, that was bad.
“He cut you?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks. Just bleeds a lot.” He patted the bandage back down.
“So…”
“I didn’t hurt him. Because I know you didn’t want me to. Even if he fucking deserves it.”
I stared into my coffee mug for a moment. Well, crap. I hadn’t expected that. My fingers crawled to his, and instinctively, he clasped my hand.
“I’m sorry it happened, Nat.” He brought my fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “I tried to avoid it. It’s fucked up.”
Fucked up. A good summary of the evening.
“He’s fine,” Cal said. “It’s why he didn’t bother going after me legally. And anyway, it lets him seem like a hero. The good overachieving hero taking pity on the poor fuck up, right?”
“Where is my son?”
James voice echoed throughout the room, harsh and bellowing. I heard my mother’s footsteps scurrying in from her bedroom, and James’ footsteps stomping to the kitchen.
Cal winced.
I squeezed his hand, then let it slip out of his grip. I wanted so bad to hold him, to protect him from his father like he protected me from Nate. But maybe part of really protecting each other was knowing when to pick our battles. Stepping in would only make it worse. Especially now.
“Is he going to hurt you?” I asked in a small voice. I didn’t know what to do. I had pepper spray in my purse, and my hand felt its way inside. It wasn’t a lot, but at least it would give him time to run. I could put up with James until then.
“No. He won’t, at least not in front of your mother.”
James appeared in the doorway. His face was bright red with rage, and his hands were clenched into fists at his side. A vein popped in his forehead. Beside him, my mother poked her head into the kitchen. Worry was etched across her face.
“What. The. Hell. Do you think you were doing?” James growled, stalking forward. Cal stood, and I felt his arm subtly move in front of me. Shielding me again. Like always.
&n
bsp; “I asked you a question, you son of a bitch!”
“James, don’t talk to him like that,” my mother said softly. She reached forward to touch his shoulder, but hesitated. The hatred was radiating from him now. Maybe she was finally seeing who he really was. Her gaze flitted to Cal, suddenly softer and more concerned.
Save Me: a Stepbrother Romance Page 10
