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35

Calista

After

After our last tour to Primrose Ranch, it was like the two years between us didn’t exist.

Those years didn’t exist in the spaces of time where he held me close and we watched TV on the couch. When I sat on the kitchen counter and we talked while he made a meal for us to share. When we rocked side to side around the living room to his favorite song and he quietly sang along to the lyrics with our hands clutched to his chest.

But then they also very much existed.

They existed in the lines etched into his face that hadn’t been there before. When he would work in the back corner of the café that I owned and built all on my own. In the way we’d both grown separately during our time apart, and with that came the realization that those parts of us had become strangers to one another. Different versions of who we’d been, learning one another all over again.

They existed in Jerry, who was between us at every possible moment, staring at Fane like he hung the moon. When he would look at me, his gray-blue eyes asking the question, He’s mine? I get to keep him, right ?

On the couch, during walks, outside in the backyard where we’d looked up at the sky almost every night since that first time Fane had done it with the pillows from our bed, Jerry was there. Proud as all hell to be the center of attention, his soft snores the backing track to our quiet murmured conversations.

It felt perfect, but there were times when that perfection carried a weight.

It was hard not to feel it.

All the what-ifs on how it could have been different.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him in the darkness of our bedroom with my hands pressed against his warm skin, his mouth leaving soft, delicate kisses at the hollow of my throat.

“Me too,” he whispered back, closing this chapter that we’d lingered at the end of, unsure if we were allowed to close it.

But we were, and as he sunk into me, the overwhelming pleasure he made me feel turned that heaviness into something else. Structures and monuments just for us. A tribute to what this path of ours looked like.

So different from what we had originally thought, but still perfect. With every thrust, every moment we lost ourselves in one another, it was perfect. The only thing that mattered anymore was the echo of Fane’s words. His direction, his praise, his questions.

When he finally left to head back to Artington, it wasn’t shocking. We’d talked about it over and over, and I was both a little startled and not at all when he told me he’d already planned on never going back for good.

“Whole lot of confidence you had there, buddy.” I dug my pointer fingers into his sides when he told me that, even though the sentiment had made my insides tingle and my heart flutter. I’d somehow ended up beneath Fane with his hands finding every ticklish place on my body until I was crying, and Jerry jumped from his couch onto ours in a physical demand not to be left out of all the fun.

When we woke up Saturday morning, the tone of Fane’s impending trip had changed.

Everything about him leaving seemed wrong. Everything.

It wasn’t one specific thing. I couldn’t place it, but my stomach filled with a lead weight that made it hard to roll out of bed, to help him pack.

To watch him go.

“Just a few days to close everything up and hand in my notice,” he said. Eyes dark and heavy with the same emotion that hung thickly in the air around us where he stood at the front door, duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

“Yep!” I was doing the smile I called on only in cases of emergencies when the threat of tears and mental breakdowns was so likely I had no other choice but to bring out the big guns.

He didn’t say anything in response to that. What he did do was drop his bag to the floor and walk right up to me and then his lips were on mine.

Moving. Tasting. Remembering. Making sure I didn’t forget.

The moment he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to him, mine slid around his neck, and he walked us the few steps needed to get us back to our bedroom.

I fumbled with his belt, tugging down his jeans and pulling out his cock within mere seconds of my back hitting the bed. When I pushed on his chest, he held tight to my legs that were wrapped around him and flipped us.

Our mouths were fused together, hands clutching tightly, fingertips bruising. Fane, still with his boots on, lifted up the shirt that I had on—his shirt—with nothing beneath and watched as I ran the head of his cock along the seam of my pussy before notching him at my entrance and dropping down on him, inch by inch, until my legs were shaking. With a tight grip on my hips, he thrust into the hilt, and the only sound was our ragged breathing while he waited for me to adjust to the way we fit together.

Fane captured every one of my cries when I started to roll my hips, when I picked up speed, lifting and lowering myself in a panicked rhythm.

Desperate and frenzied.

I held onto every grunt that purred from his chest. Relished the places on my body his hands lingered.

His name tumbled out of my mouth on a loop as I held him tighter like this was it. Like I was about to lose him for a second time, even though he’d told me more times than I could count that this was it for him. He was coming back.

Those three words were still right there. I’d tried to show him in other ways, I was desperate for him to know every thought in my head, but they remained where they were, unspoken.

“I know, baby,” he grunted against my lips, and then he was standing up, pressing me against the wall, letting one of my legs fall from his waist while he hooked the other higher, filling me deeper, harder.

“ Fuck ,” I whimpered, my hands gripping the strands of his hair that had slowly started to grow out since he’d been here. “I don’t want you to go.” I pressed the words into the skin of his neck before I latched my mouth there, sucking hard and feeling the way his cock jerked inside me.

“Two days,” he panted. “I’m coming right back to you.” One hand snaked up my torso, pulling up his shirt and exposing my breasts. I pulled a hand from his hair to pinch and tug on one nipple before dropping it down between my legs and rubbing quick, hard circles over my clit that Fane watched with his lips parted and eyelids hooded.

“Okay,” I panted, nodding.

“My truth north. Right here.” The hand gripping my shirt moved over my heart, and I looked down at his chest, where his shirt covered his toned, honeyed skin, and knew the words that were inked right there. The time on his neck, the rose— my rose—the hand covering my heart, and the compass on it that pointed right at me.

“Okay,” I said again, meaning it.

Fane’s mouth descended on mine, and when I came with his name on my lips, he tasted every syllable. With a final thrust, I felt him thicken inside of me before he stilled, my name falling from his mouth like the holy tongue.

I only let myself think about him coming home and how fucking incredible it would be when he did. That as soon as he was back, this niggling feeling in the pit of my gut would have been for nothing. I told myself it only existed because there was only one time before this that one of us left the other, and it hadn’t been temporary.

It was all I knew, that’s why this was so fucking scary.

I stayed on the porch until his car disappeared, and only when Jerry let out his own little whine long after the rumble of Fane’s truck disappeared, did I look down at him, give him a little scratch under the chin and walk back into the house.

The whole place used to feel perfect for me and Jerry, now it felt too big, too empty. The way Jerry stared at the front door the entire morning while I made breakfast and showered to get ready for work, I could tell he felt it too.

By the time I’d gotten out, he’d somehow managed to grab one of Fane’s shirts from the laundry hamper and take it to his couch, where he dropped his head right on top of it, looking so forlorn that I snapped a photo and sent it to the man in question.

Calista: [Photo]

Calista: Just in case you were wondering who misses you more. It’s Jerry…

Fane: Miss you too, buddy.

Fane: What about Jerry’s mom?

Calista: Are you texting and driving?

Fane: Stopped for gas. Where’s your photo of how much you miss me?

Calista: You saw me an hour ago, I think you’re obsessed.

Fane: :(

Calista: [Photo]

My phone started to ring on my way into work, pinging through the car thanks to the bluetooth system in Delilah’s car that was so beyond advanced compared to what I’d been driving it felt closer to being an alien spacecraft than a vehicle intended for the roads.

When she had dropped off Jerry, she’d told me point blank it was mine to use until further notice. I tried to hand her keys back to her and so she proceeded to throw them onto the porch and run towards the idling car that housed Dylan, all ready to zoom away as her getaway driver.

“Hello?”

“Cali, you’re naked in that photo.”

“I am?” A hand flew to my chest, even though he couldn’t see it.

I heard the door to his truck close through the phone. “How am I supposed to focus on saving Darling if I’m thinking about the way your tits look covered in water?”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

“My dick is hard, and I can’t remember where I’m supposed to be going.”

“Oh no,” I cooed. “That actually sounds really awful.” I moved my hand from my chest to cover the laugh I couldn’t hold back.

“You’re such a brat.”

“Maybe you should teach me a lesson with number three on the sex list.”

Fane groaned so loudly that the smile on my face made my cheeks hurt.

“You’re killing me,” he whimpered just as I put the car into park out the back of Sunshine.

“I’m seeing Delilah tonight for dinner, and then maybe you can call me, and you can guess whether or not I’ve been wearing panties all day.”

Fane was only sort of able to speak a few coherent words after that. One of them being “Rosie” and another being “filthy.” Needless to say, the expression on my face was the perfect mix of flushed and happy.

The moment Gus strolled in for his coffee, then when my dad showed up a few minutes later, I knew that the churning in my gut from this morning had been stupid.

Sammy and I managed the Saturday shift with ease now that the contractors had left town. I had expected to see Ashton come in, but when I asked Sammy about him, she just frowned, lost somewhere in her own head, and walked off to clear the tables.

That was probably the weirdest thing that happened all day.

Fane had messaged when he got back to Artington with a photo of him on his hotel bed, face squished into a pillow, and another about how he was heading into a board meeting and that working on the weekends should be a crime. I sent him a picture response at that line, this time of me flipping him off while wearing an oven mitt…in the back kitchen of the café…working on the weekend.

The voice memo I got back consisted of a range of incredibly not safe for work language about what my aggression did to him, and Sammy was quick to remind me any chance she got about the blush that stained my cheeks for the rest of the day.

By the time I parked outside Delilah’s and found myself sitting at her kitchen counter with a mega-pint of wine, my feet were sore, my hands were a little crampy, but my cup was so damn full I hardly knew myself. Or maybe I did, and it had just been a really fucking long time since I’d seen her.

Dylan was out when I arrived, but halfway through our pizza and movie date, he walked through the front door, dropped the largest carton of chocolate ice cream I’d maybe ever seen on the coffee table, and kissed the absolute shit out of Delilah before disappearing down the hall.

“Holy moly.” I was fanning my face with one hand and stifling my laughter with the other while Delilah looked like she was about to spontaneously combust.

“He’s…passionate,” she mumbled, both hands pressed to her face.

“I’ll say.” That earned me a pillow to the face and Delilah turning an even brighter shade of red. An hour later, when Dylan came out, shoulder propped against the hallway entrance and eyes focused entirely on Delilah, I took my cue to leave.

“I should go. It’s like a whole hour and a half past Jerry’s dinnertime, and he always demands extra when I’m late with dishing it up. Plus, I feel like I should get out of the way of your…passion.”

“Good idea,” Dylan grumbled while Delilah just rolled her eyes, but I saw the little smile there. I couldn’t help the way my heart dropped knowing that Fane wouldn’t be there when I got home.

“Message me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” Delilah said, waving one last time from her front door before Dylan appeared behind her and closed it with a firm push. He really hadn’t changed one bit since we were kids.

The house was dark and quiet when I pulled up out front, and the only real reason I was going inside was because Jerry had been home on his own all day, and I was desperate to hold his big head in my hands and deliver the loudest smooch of all smooches. To talk to him and see if I could persuade him to snuggle with me all night in Fane’s absence.

I sent Delilah a message quickly before hopping out of the car and heading for the door. The moment Jerry was happy, fed, and sleeping back on his bed, all the things that might be waiting for me on the other side of a video call with Fane were sending waves of heat careening over me. Mind, body and freaking soul.

The second I tried to put the key into the lock of the house, I knew something was wrong. Namely, because the door was open. I couldn’t tell because I’d stupidly forgotten to turn the porch light on before I left. I never forgot the porch light, but I’d been so focused on everything else that had been circulating in my head that I’d missed it.

My phone was clutched in my hand, but any part of my brain that was telling me I needed to call someone—the police, my dad, Fane, Ashton, Delilah, anyone— stopped working entirely when the door opened on silent hinges, another of the things Fane had fixed, and I saw Jerry lying in the entry room.

Still and unmoving.

The sound that I made wasn’t something I could explain. It was a gasp, a cry, a plea. It was choking on air I couldn’t breathe. Something that encompassed every single way my heart was trembling where it thrashed inside my chest, desperate to get out.

My phone, my keys, my bag—it all got left and forgotten at the front door. The pain that shot up through my knees barely registered when I landed next to Jerry and pressed my ear to his chest. The noise I made that time was nothing short of a cry of desperate relief. His heart was beating, maybe it was a little sluggish, but I couldn’t really tell from the rushing that had started in my ears.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jerry?” My voice wavered when I reached for his head and placed a trembling hand in front of his shiny black nose to feel his breath moving in and out. It was shallow and light, but with the absence of his usual deep and heavy breathing, the clear and hard-to-miss rise and fall of his body, it felt like nothing at all.

The moment I realized that he was alive, something clicked in my brain. Two years of needing to be steady for everyone else, myself included, kicked back in. I’d managed to let go of the tension in my body that was a result of living that way bit by bit since Fane had come to Darling, and it all rushed back into me like muscle memory.

Like armor slipping right into place.

My phone. I needed my phone.

When I turned around, an arm already extended for where I had dropped it just outside the door my hand crumpled in on itself, a sharp pain shooting up my arm from the impact of shoving it right into a door.

My front door. My now closed front door.

I hadn’t closed it. I hadn’t noticed it swing shut or click into place. I wasn’t even sure how that could be possible when the lock had been broken. It had been broken, right?

With my hand clutched to my chest, I turned back to Jerry and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Declan wore a cruel, disjointed grin. His eyes were black pits—black holes sucking all the air from the room—widened a fraction with excitement at whatever he saw on my face.

A scream rallied in my chest. My lungs expanded, ready to shred my throat apart a second before he lifted his other hand, and I saw the glint of a knife that he flipped, catching it again like it was a fun little part trick, and he wanted to show off.

“If you make a sound.” He dropped the gun to his side and replaced it with his knife to the side of my neck, the metal cool as it accompanied a small sting when he pushed the point of it into my skin. “I will kill you.”