Page 47 of The Deals We Make

Fuck, I think back to that moment, when I realized my life was no longer my own. “I said I’d think about it. And then, Camelot laughed. Like, full-on belly laughed. Said it would only be a few hours a week to stay on top of things.”

Cue Ball had come into the room. He hadn’t been there when I approached Camelot or worked through the night to build up the defenses of the club.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“What?”

I stand and grab the whiskey bottle. I think we’re gonna need it. “Cue Ball crashed the conversation Camelot and I were having. Camelot tee’d him into what I’d been working on through the night. He told Camelot that if he was smart, he’d put a twelve-month security in place.”

“What does that mean?” Calista returns to the sofa.

“He said there was no way in hell a man with my talents should get away from the club for at least a year. Cue Ball thought I might have tampered with their system. He proposed to Camelot that I should be forced to stick with the club for a year to prove I hadn’t. He said there was shit I could do for the club to make them money.” I relive the moment in my head. Camelot looked pained. At the time, I thought it had been because Cue Ball was right, that I could have.

But what if it had been because he hadn’t wanted Cue Ball’s interference or his suggestion that the club should have a say in how my loyalty was enforced?

What if he saw me for what I was? A young kid who had done what he could to protect the club. He’d always treated me favorably, perhapstoofavorably in the beginning.

In hindsight, perhaps it was his way of making it up to me.

“Camelot told me that if no one hacked them within a year, he’d let me go. But I never told them who you were, Calista. I swear to God.”

“I heard you the first time you said that. Doesn’t change the fact you were the only one who knew and then those bikers showed up at my door.”

I pour myself another full glass and top Calista’s up. I rack my brain trying to think of the possibilities.

Had I accidentally let something slip?

I feel like I could swear on a lie detector test I hadn’t.

I never told anyone.

Had I muttered her name while trying to shore up the Outlaws’ system at speed?

“What did you do next?” Calista asks.

“Said I needed to go home, get some sleep. Reconcile that I was working for the Outlaws for the next year.”

“And did you?”

“Of course not. I came looking for…”

Calista.

“Me,” she says.

“Yeah. But you weren’t home. Your mom said you’d gone to pick up groceries.”

Calista watches the whiskey slosh in her glass as she swirls it. “I was upstairs. I heard you.” Her eyes travel to mine. “If we’re being honest and trying to figure out what happened that day. I was still mad at you, that you’d not been excited about the idea of hacking them. And then I heard you tell Mom to tell me that it was done. I think your exact words were, ‘tell her I fixed the mess overnight so she shouldn’t bother trying.’ And I was furious that I’d put time into something that you prevented.”

There’s a thawing between us. I can feel it. As I study her face, trying to make sense of what she’s thinking, I realize just how true my first thoughts about her outside that bank were. She’s turned into a real beauty.

“I went home to Mom’s house. Slept like the dead for the first time in days. And then came to your house. You were angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen you. You told me you never wanted to see me again. That you’d kill me if I ever came near you. I was so crushed by that; I didn’t know what to say to you. I thought it was a huge overreaction to me stopping your plan but that you’d get over it. So, I took a walk down to the shore. Everything was churned up inside me, like the waves. I’d made a deal I couldn’t get out of for twelve months. I had to somehow let my folksdown. And I’d done it all for you. But you hated me. I debated walking into the waves and letting them take me under.”

“Tiberius,” she says, followed by a sigh. Concern etches her features.

I shrug like it doesn’t matter. “I didn’t. Obviously. Decided to get some of those candies you like, the red-and-white-striped ones. But when I tried to get some cash out to pay for them, it said there was zero dollars in my bank account, and when I checked recent transactions, I saw the withdrawal had happened while I was looking at the sea, thinking of offing myself. When I came to confront you, you were gone, and your mom never opened the door to me ever again.”

I bank down all the feelings that are swirling again. The sense that the bottom had just dropped out of my world. That I’d lost my best friend, tossed away the life I was going to have, and gotten stuck with a motorcycle club for what felt like forever.