Page 49 of Always: A Legacy Novel

It didn’t take his step-father long. Calisto darkened the library’s doorway, put his hands to both sides of the doorjamb, and hung his head low.

“Cross, please tell me why the sweet fuck I just got a call from Dante Marcello while he’s in Italy with his wife on a business trip? Tell me why, son, please.”

Ah, shit.

“Oh, yeah. Something happened yesterday,” Cross said, sticking his favorite pick into the strings on the neck of the guitar.

“Something happened.”

Cross lifted a single shoulder. “Basically.”

“You exasperate me, Cross.” Calisto, never raising his head, sighed heavily. “You do know that, right? You’re exasperating.”

He didn’t respond.

He figured his step-father wasn’t looking for a response, really.

“I have one job where being your father is concerned,” Calisto said. “Do you know what that is?”

Cross looked up from the Stratocaster. “I don’t know, love me or something?”

Calisto made a noise under his breath. “Yeah, shit, okay. Two jobs, then. The other one is keeping your ass alive long enough to see adulthood. After that, it’s all on you. I don’t think you even realize how hard you make that job for me sometimes.”

“The keeping me alive bit, or the loving me?”

“Right now, you’re making both of them hard, son.”

Cross nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

“What the hell were you thinking yesterday picking Catherine Marcello up with Zeke and going to the goddamn beach?”

“That I wanted to go to the beach, and she might like to go, too.”

And she did.

“I can’t believe you seriously snuck that girl out, Cross.”

Cross hadn’t done that at all, but he didn’t correct his step-father. He didn’t know what story Catherine had told her parents for what she did the day before. He did know that she had lied to him—by omission at the very least—because he had assumed her parents were fine with her going out, and she hadn’t told him any different.

“She is not like you, son,” Calisto continued, seemingly unbothered by Cross’s silence. “She does not have the freedom you do, or the lack of rules because you know what, she actually follows the ones she has. Or she used to, before you … do whatever the hell it is you keep doing with her.”

Cross didn’t think that was true, either.

Catherine wasn’t all good.

She was just sly.

There was a difference.

“Don’t you have anything to say at all?” Calisto demanded.

“I mean, not really. It won’t happen again.”

Calisto blew out a harsh breath. “You’re goddamn right it’s not going to happen again. New rules, Cross, starting now. You follow whatever the hell that girl’s father wants regarding her, what she’s allowed to do, and what you can do when you’re even thinking about breathing in her direction.”

Cross didn’t like that at all, but whatever.

It was what it was.