Page 36 of Callow

But I obediently slid into the car.

“Text me when you get home,” he said before slamming the door.

I wanted to sit there and decompress a moment. But Callow was standing there, waiting for me to pull off. So I stabbed the key into the ignition and pulled off, watching him disappear in the rearview.

By the time I was pulling into the lot of my apartment building, the worst of the desire had abated.

I deep-breathed the whole walk up to my apartment door, wanting a clear head.

I heard the TV on in my daughter’s room as I closed and locked the door.

“Daphne Elizabeth Waters,” I called, hearing her TV mute. “You have some explaining to do.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Callow

“You’re milking the fuck out of this,” Nave said, shaking his head at Perish as one of the club girls ran off to go get some oil to massage his shoulders with.

“Hey, it’s not my fault they’re such caretakers by nature,” Perish said as he sipped the iced coffee drink one of the girls had made for him. “Who am I to deny them the chance to do what comes natural to them?”

“I’m gonna call it now,” Nave shot back. “You’re gonna end up with a girl who doesn’t have a caretaking bone in her body.”

“Take that back,” Perish said, shooting him small eyes.

“And who thinks your obsession with the lawn is ridiculous,” he added.

“Curb appeal is important,” Perish insisted, sitting up straighter.

“Yeah, if you’re planning on selling a house,” Nave agreed. “Pretty sure we don’t need the neighborhood to give a shit what our grounds look like.”

“It’s good to take pride in things,” Perish said as one of the girls came back with baby oil. “Isn’t that right?” he asked her ashe got to his feet and slung an arm around her shoulders before leading her off.

“Was that Fallon I heard when I came in?” I asked.

Feeling antsy, I’d tagged along with the twins when they’d gone to the gym, figuring it would be a good outlet for the frustration that had been clinging to me like a second skin since I’d kissed Sabrina at her car on the street.

“Yeah, he was on his way out,” Nave said.

“Anything new to report?” I asked.

We’d hit a brick wall about the ambush. Even with a sketch to pass around, no one had seen the guy. Or if they had, they weren’t talking.

Bon and his guys had come up just as blank, but demanded we let them know when we knew something because their guy had been on death’s door for days and was going to have permanent damage to deal with for the rest of his life.

“Nah, man. He’s reaching out to other crews in the state and even out of state, but so far… nothing.”

Which meant we also didn’t know if we were the targets at all, or if it was the other club.

Either way, Fallon was going to want revenge for it. You couldn’t just shoot men from his club and walk away from it. He might not have been a bloodthirsty leader. But he cared about the reputation of the club.

People couldn’t just take shots at us.

And as much as a part of me was happy with shit being calm at the club, with most of my violent days being behind me, the other part—the part that had made me really fucking good at my job in the service—was itching for some action, for some skull-cracking.

I felt like life would always be a balancing act for me between those two parts of myself. Though as the years went on, I felt like I got further and further away from the young kid who had toomuch anger stored in his body, threatening to implode from the inside out if I didn’t find some other outlet for it.

Maturity and all that shit, I guess.