I stare at him, and I can’t help but remember the first day of school when he sat down across from me at a table in the cafeteria. “Bernadette, right?” he’d asked when he damn well knew what my fucking name was. When he’d been stalking me.
If I were talking to any other woman besides myself—especially someone like my little sister Heather—then I would tell her to get the fuck away from these guys, run as far and fast as she could. Stalking isn’t sexy. It’s fucked-up. And yet, when Cal holds out his glass for a refill of juice, my heart just melts for him and I know that even if he is a creepy psycho stalker, he’s my creepy psycho stalker.
“I love you,” Callum tells me, just as I start to pour the juice. I end up sloshing an inordinate amount on the bed, but I guess it doesn’t matter since it smells like wet pennies and mud from the bottom of Cal’s boots. “You know that, don’t you? I’m sorry if I haven’t said it in so many words.” He reaches up and ruffles his angelic blond hair with his slashed and splinter-filled fingers. I’m going to need a pair of tweezers to get most of them out.
Cal downs the second glass of juice and passes it back to me while I consider my response to his statement.
“Callum …” I start, and he chuckles, reaching out for the medical kit. Flicking it open with shaking fingers, he removes a sterile wipe and begins to clean a spot on his inner elbow, swiping away the blood and grime. I reach out and snatch a pair of gloves, slipping them on before I take over the task from him. “Pretty sure I’ve loved you since I was eight.” I take an unopened needle from the bag, tear it open, and attach it to the saline bag.
I’ve done this before, but only on cats. Penelope once found a litter of abandoned kittens in a trash can on our street. She took them to the nearest vet but since we didn’t have any money, they refused to help. I guess the guy felt bad because he showed us how to give saline and sent us home with a bag and some needles. The kittens seemed to get better until Pam found them.
She drowned each and every one in the bathtub. When Penelope and I saw what she was doing … Only one cat was saved, and he lives with a nice family whose kids go to Fuller High.
Anyway, I check Cal’s inner arm for a vein and then do my best to slide the needle in with a single, easy motion. It’s as if my body can sense that the shaking isn’t helping either of us, and as soon as I touch that metal to Callum’s skin, my hands go as still as a surgeon’s. With the needle in place, I lift the bag up and give it a gentle squeeze.
“Say it to me,” he breathes, his face far too close for comfort. We can’t be like this, desperate and needing each other the way we are. Even though this is definitely not the time or place for it, I crawl into his lap and straddle him. He palms my hips with a long, deep sigh, closing his eyes as the fluids drain down the tube and into his arm. “Say it in simple words.”
“I love you, Callum Park,” I say easily, because I’m not at all ashamed of it. I love Havoc. All five of them. And if I ever tried to deny it in the past, it was only because I didn’t trust myself. Because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I won’t do that anymore because more than anything, I want to make sure I’m worthy of that fucking crown. “Now, don’t you dare fucking die on me.”
I rock against him, fully aware that neither of us is in any state to fuck. Doesn’t matter. If stirring up a little passion can help us both breathe easier then screw it. I’ll rub myself all over my stalker’s dick.
“I killed six men just to get back here,” he whispers against my mouth. But not like he’s looking for praise. No, it’s more of an … observation. “Nobody can keep me from you, Bernadette. Not even the world.”
I kiss him again, but it’s slow and tentative, almost unsure. I don’t want to hurt him. And holy fuck, is he hurting right now. Cal is the one that cups the back of my head and brings some heat to the connection between our lips, tasting me and savoring whatever it is that he finds there. I want him to dance for me again, to show me with his body what he sometimes struggles to say with words. Love me for every dark, ugly, hideous thing that I am.
“We should get those stitches in,” I murmur absently, letting him take over holding the bag. It’s a little weird, to see a man holding a bag of saline that’s connected to his arm, but it works. I’ve seen Pamela, in her part-time work at the nursing home, set up plenty of IVs. And let’s be honest: anything that bitch can do, I can do. Ten times better at that.
“I’d rather feel the warmth of your body pressed against me,” Cal murmurs, nuzzling the side of my face like an animal seeking out the comfort of his mate. “You ground me, Bernadette. Mason was right: I am still human. But only because of you.”
“Who’s Mason?” I ask, but Cal just keeps on smiling.
“Stitches, let’s get them over with,” he whispers, his voice as hoarse and dark as it’s ever been. Whoever Mason is, I imagine he’s the one that put Callum in this state. And Cal, he isn’t used to coming up against anyone that’s at his level.
I scoot back and open the kit. I’ve never actually put a stitch in human flesh before, but I took home ec during freshman year. That counts, right? Besides, I saw Victor do it to me, that day Billie stabbed me in the bathroom, that very same bathroom where I ducked to hide from the shooter only yesterday. Poor Stacey. Poor fucking Stacey.
“Should I go get Aaron’s laptop so we can Google this?” I ask, already missing the ease of having my phone around. But Cal’s already shaking his head.
“No,” he says, leaning back into Oscar’s pillows. I wonder if ‘O’ will mind. I also wonder if ‘O’ will ever let me call him that. It’s a cute nickname, but if he wants to save it for his Cal bromance that’s fine by me. “I’ll guide you.” He nods his chin at the kit, a calm and peaceful expression settling over his features. When he first got here, he actually looked like he might kill someone—even Vic. This is better, this strange expression of contentment. “Needle driver,” he begins, pointing at one item in the kit. “Tissue forceps. Scissors, obviously. Needle and thread. We’re going to do an interrupted suture which means you’ll cut and tie off each stitch as we go.”
After cleaning his arm off with another antiseptic wipe, I do as he tells me, using the needle driver to hold the tiny, curved needle and threading it through his skin, just above the fat that I can see inside the wound. We start with the gunshot wound on his arm, this clean hole that goes straight through him. It looks too neat, too pretty to actually be real.
“I want you to go to the hospital. It isn’t like the VGTF doesn’t know about the shooting. Sara Young was looking for you.” My words come out quiet and low, almost absent-minded. In reality, all of my attention and focus is on this needle, this thread, these scissors. I make a stitch, tie it off. Make another stitch, tie that off, too.
“I’ll go tomorrow,” he promises me, azure eyes like bright gems in a pale face. “Tonight, I’m staying with you.” I look up to find him watching me and not the needle. He’s more interested in my expression, in the way my hair falls forward like a red and blond shield when I lean down to continue the stitches. Once we’re finished, I start on the exit wound. I have no idea if this is proper medicine or not—very likely it isn’t—but we’re rachet as hell here in Prescott. We do our own thing.
“Callum, I was pregnant,” I say, before I lose my nerve. There’s a long pause in his breathing that freaks me out, so I move my eyes from his wound to his face, only to find him with his eyes closed. Panic sweeps over me in a wave and a scream gets caught in my throat. My worst fear in the world would be to lose one of my boys. But then he blinks a few times and exhales.
“Oh, Bernie,” he tells me, face breaking. There’s sympathy there, but behind that emotion, there’s nothing but the endless black of rage. It startles me enough that the needle slips and Cal sucks in another sharp breath. He isn’t dying, Bernie. He’s in pain. Each time the needle goes into his flesh, he stops breathing until I’m pulling the thread through. It must hurt like a bitch. At the hospital, they always numb the spot first. We’re just running on a wing and a prayer here.
It occurs to me that I should get him some fucking booze. Or weed. Or both.
“When you were beaten on the lawn,” Cal says next, surprising me. He saw that? I keep my attention on the stitches, trying to give him time to process what I’m saying. “They beat you into miscarrying.” It isn’t a question. I told you: Callum understands me in a way that nobody else does.
Each boy holds a different spark, like a different color in a single rainbow. It just isn’t complete without all those shades, now is it?
“I’m not upset,” I say, which probably isn’t true. I am upset. But in a way that’s hard to explain. There’s relief there, too, which I feel guilty about even though I know I shouldn’t. I think, if this had happened any other way, I’d be alright. It’s just the idea that unsolicited violence is what got me to this point.
My cramps squeeze again, and I choke on my next breath as pain washes over me.
“You’re in pain,” Cal observes, but that’s a funny thing for someone with a GSW, a stab wound, and a slit throat to say. “You don’t have to want a baby to be upset, you know. You can just be upset, even if it’s for no reason at all.”
“Don’t lecture me,” I warn him, finishing the final stitch on the exit wound. Next, I spread apart the fabric at his shoulder and grimace at the torn, ragged edges of flesh. He really needs to see a fucking doctor. But I can also understand that the endless chasm of rage that I see in him, it needs to be soothed, too. And he can only do that if he feels safe, if he’s with me. “If anything, I should be the one telling you that.”
I take a brief moment to touch my fingers to his throat, and he shudders, snatching my wrist so hard that I actually cry out from the shock of it. But there’s no pain, not the way he holds me. Instead, his face is sad, distant, a reflection of the involuntarily reaction to having his neck touched.