I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I just listened to her breathe until a little snore came out of her mouth. Her nightgown had ridden up, so her bare inner thigh was pressing against my stomach, and the heat in the room was making our skin sweat and stick together. Fuck me; I was never going to be able to sleep. I took a deep breath, pulled the thin blanket Rose had given me over us so the boys didn’t catch a peek of her ass, and tried to get my dick under control.

I must have finally fallen asleep, because I woke up to a bit of sunlight shining through the windows and Rose standing over us with a soft look on her face. It took me a second to figure out where I was, and I almost relaxed, but it was then that I realized that while one of my arms was innocently draped over Callie’s back, the other was beneath the blanket gripping her thigh, my hand so high up that my index finger was just barely inside her underwear and resting on hot, soft skin.

Chapter 14

Callie

I woke up the next day alone on the loveseat. I felt like an idiot for climbing in with Asa, but when I’d woken up in the dark my instinct had been to find him. I lay next to Gram, trying to force myself to stay put, but I couldn’t. My anxiety had built and built until I’d finally crawled out of bed and went to find him.

Now I couldn’t see him anywhere. The house was really quiet, a big change from how crowded and noisy it had been the night before. When I sat up and started to fold the blanket I was using, I noticed two men out of the corner of my eye. They were sitting casually at the table, turned toward me, and the dark haired one I’d kicked in the face gave me a little smile.

“Your Grandma went with Poet to get your brother from the airport,” he informed me, watching closely. Knowing that I must have looked like a basket case the day before, I met his eyes calmly and nodded nonchalantly, as if to prove that I wasn’t going to start screaming and running around the house like a lunatic.

I’d caught some kind of second wind, and the weak little girl I’d been the day before was pushed to the back of my mind as I stood up slowly and turned my back to him. I was afraid, that feeling wasn’t going away, but somehow in my sleep I’d formed some sort of a barrier between my emotions and my actions. I wasn’t panicking. The fear was a throbbing mass in my belly, constant but controllable.

I focused on cleaning up my sleeping area and quickly walked to Gram’s room to get dressed before I asked where Asa was. I was trying to act relaxed, but it felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I knew Gram wouldn’t have left me alone with those guys if she didn’t trust them, but I was still uncomfortable that they’d been in the room while I slept. The longer I was awake, the more aware I was that I hadn’t seen Asa, and by the time I was dressed, I was almost in a full-blown panic. I guess I wasn’t as calm as I’d thought. I knew it wasn’t rational. I knew that I was acting like a freak, clinging to him when I barely knew him. He was probably irritated as hell that I wouldn’t leave him alone. But I couldn’t stop myself; it felt like he alone could protect me from the outside world.

I stayed in Gram’s room for as long as I could, straightening her bedding and going through the bag I’d brought with me. Asa hadn’t packed much, but at least he’d remembered the essentials. I found my iPod at the bottom of my bag and held it to my chest, thankful that he’d thought to pack that small piece of technology. It was silly, but it felt like one piece of normalcy in my suddenly upside-down life.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I took a deep breath and made my way out into the living room. The men were still sitting at the table, and I stepped as close to them as I could make myself, stopping six feet away. I battled with myself whether or not to ask where Asa was when he suddenly walked into the kitchen from the small hallway leading from the bathroom. He was fully dressed, his hair wet, and he held a towel up to his beard, rubbing it from side to side.

I stood in silence until he noticed me, running my tongue over the cuts in my mouth to keep me from speaking. I catalogued where my braces had rubbed against my cheeks and tried to focus on remembering if I had wax in my purse or not, acting as though I wasn’t waiting for him to acknowledge me. I refused to be the one who spoke first or to run to him like I wanted to; I needed him to come to me.

“Hey, sleeping beauty. These boys wake you up?” he asked me with a small smile, walking slowly toward where I was standing. The men at the table hadn’t noticed that I’d come out of the bedroom, and both their heads swiveled around quickly in surprise.

“No, they didn’t wake me,” I replied, begging him silently to come closer.

He seemed to understand what I needed, or maybe he needed it too, because he came right to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and lifting me up in a bear hug until my feet were dangling off the ground. His beard tickled across my neck and I grasped his shoulders tighter in response. It was exactly what I needed.

I was disappointed when he let me down, but he kept his hands on my hips once my feet were safely on the floor. He was about to say something, but I’d never know what it was, because just seconds later the front door banged open. The noise startled me so badly that I jumped up, knocking my forehead into his chin as I wrapped my arms and legs around him. I wasn’t tall enough, so I ended up lower than I’d wanted and ended up pulling and scratching my way up his chest until his hands gripped the back of my thighs and hoisted me the rest of the way.

It must have only taken seconds, but by the time I was safely in his arms, I heard my brother yelling.