I scrambled away from him, hating the fact that I was naked in front of him with my words between us. I pulled the blankets to my shoulders, but didn’t turn away from him as I watched him run his hand down his face.

“I love you, Calliope,” he told me softly, crawling under the covers with me and pulling me into his arms. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I was silent as I watched him, tears blurring my eyes.

“You’re my family,” he mumbled, kissing me and then rubbing his lips down my neck. “You’re everything.”

He took one nipple into his mouth and sucked gently, pushing the covers to our knees before grabbing the back of my leg and sliding it up his hip. He ran his fingers between my legs lightly, barely touching me before sliding it up to rest on my stomach. He let go of my nipple and ran his tongue around it once before raising his eyes to mine and leaning up on a forearm.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised as he shifted his hips and pushed inside me. “You belong with me.”

My back arched and I lifted my hand to his hair to pull his face to mine.

“I love you,” I whimpered, my body feeling almost weightless in relief.

His jaw went tight at my words, and he leaned back so he could slide his hand between us, hitting the perfect spot with his thumb.

It didn’t take long for me to come, taking him with me.

I barely made it to the bathroom to clean up afterward before dropping with exhaustion. He pulled me on top of him like a blanket when I made it back to the bed, and I pushed my face into his neck. I couldn’t get close enough to him. Neither of us said a word about our lack of protection. We were forgetting as much as we were remembering the condoms, and I knew I needed to get on birth control, but every time I’d used it in the past it had been non-stop periods for me.

I wondered how long we could play with fire before getting burned—but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

Chapter 50

Callie

I didn’t realize that it would take almost a year for Farrah to come back to herself. I should’ve known. I should have guessed that years of abuse ending in a beating so bad she’d forever carry the scars would take a long time to recover from. But I’d optimistically thought that when things settled down, she would turn back into the snarky girl I loved like a sister.

That year was one of the longest of my life.

Gram brought Cody with her to visit a few times, but the brother I knew was nowhere to be found.  He was quiet and intense in a way he’d never been before, and his body had changed so much since I’d seen him last that it was startling. His shoulders had broadened and his jaw was sharper, making him look more man than boy. But when he smiled at Gram, his eyes crinkling, I couldn’t help but notice the little boy I’d chased around the house with a tube of my mom’s lipstick when I was six years old.

I hadn’t kept in touch with him the year before like I’d promised, but it was as much his fault as mine. We’d seen each other on his school breaks, but in between those times, it had almost seemed as if he was avoiding me. That all changed the year he graduated from high school.

He became a repeat visitor to the apartment in Sacramento, spending his time equally between Gram’s house and mine whenever he was home. The minute he finished his classes each term, he’d be on the first flight to California, even refusing to attend graduation. I loved it. It made me feel like my family was back together, finally.

I was happy to be reconnecting with my brother, but the rest of my life seemed to be in some sort of limbo.

Asa had stopped asking me when I was moving, but he visited more that year than he had before, averaging about six weeks between visits. It had to have been exhausting, making that drive so often, but he didn’t complain and he wouldn’t let me drive north instead. He said he wasn’t comfortable with me driving so far by myself, which I thought was ridiculous, but not worth causing an argument over.

Those visits were also different than they’d been before. In the past, every visit had become an event that I planned for, but I no longer had time to worry that the apartment was spotless or his favorite foods were in the fridge. Farrah took up all of my extra time, stopping by the house at all hours to do nothing but watch TV or help me make dinner.

I slowly watched her heal, and refused to allow myself to become impatient at her progress.

It was odd, but Farrah and Cody rarely crossed paths. She seemed to know that I needed time with my brother, and would make herself scarce whenever he was in town without my Gram. I hated that she was so weird about it, but I didn’t push it until one summer night when she was almost back to normal and Echo called and asked me and Cody to go out with them.

The bar we went to was run by the Aces; I swear they had their hands in so many things I didn’t know how they kept them straight. I wasn’t complaining, though, because Cody and I walked in without one person looking our way. It was in a strip mall, one of the old ones built in the seventies, and the floor to ceiling windows in the front made me assume it had been a Laundromat at some point. It just had that look.

I greeted Chucky and Echo, introducing them to my brother while I searched for Farrah. She was standing near the bartender with a hand on her hip, the pose making me smile. I was so glad that she finally resembled the girl I’d met two years before, that I was grinning wide as she handed something to the guy behind the bar.

The music cut off with a screech as she made her way to the middle of the floor, and men around the room yelled out their annoyance as the music started again. It was some sort of Pop music that I hadn’t heard before, but the beat blared out of the speakers so loudly that I could feel it in my chest. It wasn’t something they wanted to listen to, and they were complaining loudly, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Farrah, and soon everyone else was staring silently, too.