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“I know.” He undid his seat belt and slid off his booster seat. “But I don’t want you to get in trouble either, Aunt Quinn.”
He was so sweet with his big green eyes all wide with concern. I reached back to ruffle his blonde hair and gave him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, kiddo. It’ll all be okay.”
As soon as I got out of the car and locked eyes with Callim, a shiver of fascination went down my spine.
Callum did his best to mask his anger when he opened Noah’s door and helped him out. His voice was falsely cheerful as he asked about homework and what they should have for dinner.
But when his eyes landed on me, they were hard as stone.
Dinner was unusually quiet and a bit tense.
When Callum took Noah up to bed, I considered taking the coward’s way out and hiding in my room. Callum was too gentlemanly to come after me there. But the idea of hiding fromhim appealed about as much as ripping all my callouses off and playing my guitar with raw, bleeding fingers.
So, I stationed myself in the library and waited.
When he came down, he walked unerringly into the library as if he’d known exactly where I’d be. I didn’t even pretend to be watching a reality show or reading one of his John Grisham books. I just stood up and met his hard gaze, ready to fight.
Callum didn’t disappoint.
“Where the fuck did you go?” he asked, weighing out each word slowly and carefully.
“We stopped by the guitar center. I needed more picks.” I pointed to my purse like he could see through the quilted bag and spot the plastic rectangles nestled in the inside pocket.
Callum didn’t bother to look. “I told you to come straight home.”
The way he said it smacked of Jason Cain.
I told you we’re doing it this way.
I told you we’re going.
I told you not to wear that.
I reined in my initial reaction, which was to get in his face, drop a few choice swear words, and then get the hell out of there. Through the tumult of thwarted instinct, I forced myself to remember that Callum wasn’t Jason. Hewasn’t. I didn’t need to fight or flee. When I thought I could do it without yelling, I took a deep breath and said reasonably, “We were there formaybetwenty minutes, Callum. Come on. You said things were going well with Jason.”
Furiously, he crossed the room in two long strides that brought him right in front of me. “That doesn’t mean you can just disappear with my son, Quinn. Do you know what I thought when the two of you weren’t home? I thought you’d been in a fucking accident.”
Callum’s face was so tight it looked like someone had shrink-wrapped his skin to his skull. He looked frightening and frightened all at the same time. And then it sank in.
Of course his mind had gone straight to a dark place. Because once, someone hadn’t come home on time, and it wasn’t because they’d decided to do a last-minute errand. It was because theyhadbeen in an accident. And then they never came home at all.
“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Callum, I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. I wasn’t thinking.”
He was still standing right in front of me, but only his body. His mind was somewhere else. It was five years ago. Trapped somewhere in the tragedy of Emma’s death and the miracle that Noah, in his car seat on the opposite side from impact, hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch. I knew what it was like to leave your body and get stuck somewhere else. In the last few years, I’d done it willfully. Sometimes it was better to leave.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, reaching out to take his hand. His fingers were stiff and unyielding as I threaded mine through them. He still had that horrible, glassy, unseeing look in his eyes. “Callum,” I said louder and stepped forward. “I’msorry.”
Slowly, awareness flickered back into his gaze. He looked down at our entwined fingers like he didn’t know how they’d gotten that way. He was still mad, but the hard edge of fear wassoftening. I wondered how much of that fear was for me and how much was for Emma.
Then he looked at me, and I knew he was seeingme. His eyes traveled over my face, my hair, my mouth before returning to meet my gaze. His voice was deadly quiet as he said, “Quinn, I can’t lose anyone else.”
“I’ll never let anything happen to Noah,” I whispered.
His fingers tightened almost painfully around mine. “But you’ll play fast and loose with your own life, just like you always have.”
His voice was rough. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was still furious.
But I did.
