Page 54 of Time After Time

“Was she better in bed than me?” There’s a sob in her voice.

I want to tell them I’m here so they’llstop, stop, stop…but I also want to know what he’ll say.

“Cali, she was twenty-five, inexperienced. Let it go. What I want is to talk about?—"

My hand shakes. The pill bottle falls with a soft clatter against the hardwood floor.

There’s silence inside the room.

The door opens wide. Ransom clutches the door handle, his eyes filled with regret. “Ember?—”

I pick up the bottle of pills and hand them to him. “For Calypso. Mama wanted her to have them for her…ah…headache.”

I have no idea what I’m saying or how I’m saying it. In fact, I don’t know how I’m forming sentences. The words seem jumbled inside my head.

“Thank you, Ember. That was so sweet of you.” Calypso has a victorious smile on her face.

I have never understood people who feel better bymaking someone else feel bad. But she’s not my problem; she is Ransom’s.

I turn.

Walk away.

One foot in front of the other, all the way down the hall. I can hear his words still, echoing off the walls,“Cali, she was twenty-five, inexperienced.”

CHAPTER 16

Ransom

Ididn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of what I said. I just wanted to shut Calypso up.

I close my eyes for an interminable second, clutching the bottle of pills Ember gave to me. I walk up to Calypso, set the pills on the coffee table in front of the couch she’s sitting on. I see the gleam in her eyes, and I know.

I turn to assess her vantage point and feel a surge of betrayal slam through me.

I fix my gaze on her. “You knew she was out there.” It’s not a question.

Her eyes don’t waver. “I’m not blind, Ransom.”

“You goaded me.”

“I asked a question,” she replies lightly. “It’s not my fault you answered it like a man with something to hide.”

“You knew what you were doing.”

I know Calypso well enough to see how she saw an opportunity and took it…to hurt an innocent. I can see it in her eyes, the victory she thinks she has claimed.

Calypso doesn’t deny it. Just shrugs. “I didn’t make you say a damn thing. You said how you felt, and she needed to hear that, andyouneeded to hear that, because what we have, Ransom is?—”

“Nothing,” I cut her off. “We have nothing.”

She rises and walks to me. “Don’t say that.” There’s a plea in her voice, in contrast with the malice I just heard.

I shake my head, take a step back from her. “You think you and I are going to happen after you threatened to tell the family about Ember and me?”

“I…I’d never do that, Ransom. I just…I love you.”

My eyes all but bug out. “You think this is love?”