Page 7

6

Fane

After

I had intended on driving right to her house, but I also knew that I’d have to explain how I knew her address, and that would open up a whole can of fucking worms I wasn’t at all equipped at handling right now.

I parked my truck on the shoulder of the road just up from her parents’ place and waited for her to drive by me in her car, which looked like it could be dismantled by a stiff wind. I kept the glare firmly on my face when she stopped and motioned for me to roll my window down.

This wasn’t going to amount to anything good, that much I knew.

Despite the very high possibility that she was going to rip me yet another asshole, I rolled down the damn window.

She didn’t say anything at first. She just started rummaging around in her car for a second before her face lit up with a manic sort of grin. It looked like she was reaching for something in the footwell of the passenger side, and when she pulled back to show me, it was in fact her middle finger.

“Have you gotten less mature in the last two years?”

“Yep!” She beamed at me. “Feel free to get lost and never come back!” she yelled before zooming off. I was only glad that it was dark because I knew she wouldn’t be able to see me in her rearview mirror, and it was really fucking hard not to laugh.

I hadn’t laughed much in the last two years. I had a plan—one goal that ruled my life. The same goal that had destroyed it. Whether the woman in the car ahead of me ever found out or not, I knew she’d never forgive me.

So, I let myself laugh, just for a second, because as much as I wanted to throw her over my knee and see the imprint of my hand glowing red on her ass, I’d missed the challenge that was Calista Rose Grey.

Never one to take anything lying down, even when it was in her best interest.

Cali pulled into the gravel drive of a small house that suited her down to the ground. It was bordered with hedges that went as high as the sagging eaves that surrounded the exterior, with flowers planted out front and along a walkway that led right to the sidewalk. A small gate sat on an angle at the end of the footpath, even though there was no fence on either side of it. It held a sign that looked handwritten on cardboard, wrapped aggressively in tape, and severely water-damaged, but the words were still legible. It said, “Jerry is large but full of love. Don’t be frightened.”

The slam of her car door yanked me from a dumbfounded spiral about her sign, who Jerry was, and why that name pinched something deep inside me. It also gave me just enough time to smooth the contorted look off my face and reset my glare before she saw.

Everything Cali did, from the moment she stepped out of her car, was accentuated by the anger rolling off her in waves.

Look, I wasn’t an idiot.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t completely true, but I wasn’t too much of an idiot to where I thought continuing to rile up a woman who was clearly channeling the fear of God into everything she was doing was smart.

Then again, I wasn’t too smart either.

Calista didn’t even look back at me when I jumped out of my truck and walked up the path. It was then I realized I didn’t even think of going and getting my stuff.

“Not bad for a shit box!” I called after her.

I’d dumped my duffel bag under the desk meant to be mine at the office we were renting on Main Street. A group of strangers swooping into a tight-knit community with promises of improvements ?

Yeah, that never went over well.

The central, accessible location was supposed to help. Spoiler: it didn’t.

It rarely ever did, and I couldn’t blame them. It was just one of the many reasons I told my father to go fuck himself every chance I got. I didn’t agree with a damn thing he was doing.

That look of disgust that colored Cali’s features over dinner was the same look I had on my own face when I looked in the mirror at the end of each and every day.

It was a certain type of torture in working for the man who beat my mother in front of me from the time I could remember.

My earliest memories are of fear, anger, and hatred. Shaped by the lessons my father thought he was teaching me as I huddled in the corner, forced to watch.

Forced to witness it.

I hadn’t been a very big kid. Scrawny at first, then long and gangly. My body had filled out without me noticing, without anyone noticing. Especially when I started to go to the gym purely so that I didn’t have to go home. I would run for miles and miles, hoping that whatever road I was on would lead me far away from the life I had and the people in it.

I’d been sitting at the dining room table doing my homework, and he walked in, didn’t even say a single word before he swung an open palm at my mother’s face.

The roar of fury just erupted from me, born of every single moment that had come before that I’d shoved deep down.

It was fucked up.

It had all been festering and rotting and changing that part of your soul that is born pure and light into something dark and heavy. I didn’t think about anything other than my want for my father to endure every ounce of pain he had dished out.

At seventeen, I remembered standing over him, knuckles split and heart hammering, while my mother held tight to one of my arms, trying to pull me away while also keeping herself close. Sobbing and broken and fucking terrified.

“You will never touch her again,” I spat at him. His face was covered in blood. His eyes wide with shock. “You will leave this fucking house, and you will never touch her again.” My throat burned from the way I screamed those words at him. “Or so help me God, I will kill you. I will fucking kill you. Do you understand me?”

He stared at me for a long time before he gave a single nod.

“Get your shit and leave.” I pulled back, one hand on my mom’s shoulder, steering her back toward the dining table where I just sat back down after getting her an ice pack wrapped in a dishcloth, and kept doing my homework. She sat with me, and I could feel her eyes on my face the whole time. Like she’d never seen me before. Like she was deciding if I would become someone that scared her too.

When I turned eighteen, that was when he reached out for me to come work for him. He probably thought it was some way to atone for what he’d done. I didn’t really know, and I didn’t fucking care.

“Are you coming in or not?” Cali’s voice sliced through the stillness, breaking the grip of my past like it always did.

I stayed at the end of the pathway, staring up at the home she’d built without me. She’d been watching me for a while. I could see it in the softness creeping into her face, a softness I didn’t deserve.

I reminded myself I was pissed at her too—for leaving in the dead of night with nothing but her key on the kitchen counter.

I schooled my face into the glare I’d made my trademark. She just rolled her eyes and unlocked the door.

“Now,” she said, with her hand on the door handle the other clutching her leftovers, “Jerry’s pretty docile at night, so you don’t have to worry, but you’ll see him in the morning, and he’s never had anyone over, so—”

Cali didn’t get to say anything else, because the moment she opened the front door, the galloping steps of what looked like a fucking bear was heading straight for me.

The next thing I knew I was airborne, then the wind was knocked out of me so violently I was half sure I’d cracked a rib.

It wasn’t what I was expecting to look up into, but low and behold, the exceptionally moist jowls that were hanging very close to my open mouth belonged to what had to be an almost two-hundred-pound dog.

“Jerry!” Calista yelled in the sort of way you might imagine a mother would when fretting about the welfare of their baby.

Jerry—clearly never the size of a baby—loomed over me, unmoving despite my coughs and Cali’s vain attempts at dislodging him.

“What are you doing? You’ve never run out that door in your whole life!”

All I knew at that moment, aside from the fact that she was clearly not speaking to me, was that I was looking up into the face of the sort of dog that I had dedicated a whole fucking Pinterest board to that Calista helped me put together.

I had dreamed of this dog.

I had dreamed of this exact dog, and I’d been determined to call him Jerry.

“Is that a dog? My dog?” I croaked out while she continued to tug back a dog that had a good fifty pounds on her. “Jerry?”

“No, he’s a rare breed of guinea pig,” she grunted out, trying her best to get him inside. “And Jerry is not your dog. He’s my dog.”

The best way to describe it was like watching someone pushing against a wall and expecting it to move.

“So glad you found another of your own species,” I grunted back, getting to my feet. “I’m fine, by the way.”

“Of course you’re fine,” she snapped. “Jerry couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Oh sure,” I groaned. “He’d just squish it to death.”

She was putting her whole soul into trying to move that dog, and he wasn’t budging. “I very much doubt it. He’s terrified of them. Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?” She huffed, pausing only to run her finger up the bridge of her nose.

“I’m just going to stand here.” I crossed my arms, watching her try to move her dog.

“You’re such a jackass,” Calista mumbled, moving to lower herself eye to eye with Jerry. “Jerry, please. We have to go inside.”

Jerry was clearly aware of what the words that were coming out of her mouth meant, but while her eyes were on him, his were on me, and his tail was thumping like mad on the ground.

“You know,” I said, knowing the words would piss her off and letting them fly out of my mouth anyway, “I think he likes me.”

“He does not like you.”

“Oh, I think he does.”

“He also likes to eat cat shit from Mrs. Antinello’s yard, so I wouldn’t be raving at his exceptional judgment skills.”

“Well, whatever helps you sleep at night.” I dropped my arms and walked toward them. “When you’re done wrestling with your small horse, I’ll be inside the house.”

I strolled by casually. The moment I passed a groaning Calista, Jerry trotted inside beside me, and she landed right on her fine ass, right on the gently packed up leftovers from her mom.

“You haven’t been invited in!” She sounded defeated and angry all at once that the laugh I barked was entirely unintentional.

“Rosie, I forgot how great you are at hosting. Feels like home already,” I said from the top of the steps, looking down at her. Cali just lifted her middle finger up and didn’t even bother meeting my gaze.