Make Me Your VIllain, page 13
I didn’t want to leave.
“I wish I had a choice.”
Because I didn’t.
My parents would never forgive me for not coming, and unfortunately, I needed a job to live the kind of life I loved living.
“You could always go with me,” I teased.
He pulled out and disposed of the condom, and I just lay there like a lump on a log—or a lump on an ottoman—while he did.
“I wish I could,” he replied. “But I think my guys might start quitting if I don’t start working again.”
I snickered. “You can hire new ones.”
He chuckled as well. “But new hires are kind of hard to deal with. They don’t know the jobs, or the expectations. And new hire paperwork is a bitch.”
I sighed and rolled over, my eyes going to the man that was standing beside me, looking down at me hungrily. “Then I guess we’ll just have to make the most of this night.”
He bent over and scooped me up, pulling me into his arms like an oversized child.
“Guess I’ll have to,” he teased.
Then he carried me to my bed.
But a flash of light as we moved, and a shift of a shadow, had me placing my hand against Callum’s neck. “I think I saw something. Hold up a second.”
“About that…” He hesitated as he looked out into the deserted darkness. “I’m pretty sure we just gave your ex a show.”
CHAPTER 16
The fuller the fridge, the more energy efficient it is.
-Text from Iris to Shine
IRIS
The last thing I wanted to do was leave.
In fact, if I had to choose two things that I didn’t want to do, they would’ve been getting out of the bed that I was sharing with Callum. Followed by having to shower his smell off of my skin.
After saying our goodbyes at the road, I watched as he rode away on his motorcycle, tingles of excitement in places that wouldn’t get attention for the next few days.
I was just turning around to head to my car when a hand curled around my wrist and squeezed.
“You need to be careful with him,” Teller growled.
I gasped and yanked, but he didn’t let go of my hand.
“Let go!” I ordered.
He squeezed me just tight enough that I knew I wasn’t getting away if he didn’t want me to, but loose enough that he wasn’t hurting me if I didn’t struggle.
“You need to listen to me, Iris,” he ordered harshly. “That man isn’t the nice guy you think he is.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
I tugged again on my hand, and this time he let me go, knowing he had my attention. “I’m trying to tell you that that man you think you like? The one that you let fuck you in front of a window last night knowing I was there? He’s bad news.”
I would’ve rolled my eyes had he not been utterly serious, which made my stomach clench slightly.
What did I know of Callum?
I mean, other than he was nice, funny, sexy, and sweet?
“He’s a killer, Iris,” he said. “Nobody has been able to prove it but… he’s bad.”
Now that I didn’t believe.
“What are you even talking about right now?” I challenged.
“I’m talking about the fact that you are dating a man you don’t even know,” he snapped. “You’re fucking him, and you’re letting this biker into your life, and when you’re ready to scrape him off, he won’t go as easily or as nicely as I went.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, yeah. You sure went nicely.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m just trying to protect you. I’ve had some things happen at work lately.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
So I didn’t.
“You need to be careful with him,” he urged. “Trust me on this.”
I sighed. “There are a lot of things that I can deal with but made-up shit isn’t one of them.”
“I’m not making anything up,” he promised. “I swear.”
“Then you’re going to have to give me some more concrete evidence than ‘he’s bad. Stay away from him,’” I pointed out. “Because right now, it just sounds like you’re a nut who can’t let things go.”
Teller crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t really care if you believe me or not. But just sayin’, it’s your funeral.”
Then he left, leaving me with way more questions than answers.
Sadly, I didn’t have time to do anything.
I had time to get in my car and drive to my parents’ house.
The two-hour drive, I thought about nothing but Callum.
Even when I turned on the radio, every single song reminded me of him.
Meaning, when I got to my parents’ house and found it completely devoid of people, despite the copious number of cars in the driveway, I wasn’t happy.
I’d just spent two hours driving, on my one day off, and they weren’t there.
Not to mention that I had a whole lot of things that I could do at my own place.
Like the laundry that I hadn’t touched in a week, or the bills that were piling up, waiting for me to pay.
I was a check girl.
I didn’t put any of my information online—and that included paying bills. So, like my paranoid father, I made sure to always keep as much of my life off-line as I could.
Which meant the inconvenience of writing checks and sending stuff snail mail.
“Where are y’all?” I wondered as I started to move through the house.
I found all of their stuff—my sister’s suitcase, and my mom’s Kindle e-reader that she was never away from, and my brother’s car keys.
But no family.
That’s when I pulled out my phone.
We had an app that we used when we couldn’t find each other.
Pulling it up, I waited.
When it finally loaded, I looked at everyone’s location and felt my stomach drop.
My mom. My dad. My sister. My brother. And even my brother’s wife were all at one of my favorite restaurants. Without me.
Irrational hurt swept through me, but I decided to try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Bringing up the home screen on my phone, I cued up the group text and thought about what I was going to say.
I realized eventually that I wasn’t going to get rid of the anger and decided to just write what I wanted to write to the group text that I had going with my entire family.
Me: Where is everyone?
Anderson: Eating.
Me: Where?
Anderson: why are you asking?
Me: Because the house is empty, and I literally drove two hours, and I can’t find y’all. Even though y’all were the ones to invite me over.
Mom: Um, we didn’t think you were coming.
Me: I come every Sunday, Mother. Why would you think I wasn’t coming?
Dad: Because it was getting on noon, and you weren’t here yet.
I was getting angrier by the second.
Me: Maybe because I had to work yesterday, go home, and grab a spare change of clothes before coming back? And it takes me an hour extra to get here when I have to work the night before, remember?
Dad: oh, yeah.
I shoved my phone back into my purse, angry and hurt. Even more, I was upset that they hadn’t waited. Why hadn’t they waited?
I pulled my phone back out on a whim and looked at my phone before deciding, fuck it.
I texted Callum.
Me: I miss you.
Callum: I miss you, too.
I sighed and went back to being hurt.
The text didn’t help.
In fact, I think it only hurt, because now I wanted to cry on top of being angry with my family.
I drove around town for a while, pissed off and wondering what to do. In the end, after an entire hour of being upset, I drove to the restaurant, and when I got inside, I glanced around, wondering if I could see them from the hostess stand.
And, sure enough, there they all were, in the middle of the restaurant, all eating and laughing without me.
The hostess came back up to the stand, her eyes frowning hard.
“Didn’t I…” She looked at the table where my family was sitting, then back to me with confusion.
I ignored the question that I knew was on the tip of her tongue and shrugged.
“Can I have that table right there? The one by the window?” I asked, feeling hurt start to leach into my throat.
Normally it took a really long time to get into the restaurant, but there were always tables for two—or, when I saw them, one person—because the restaurant owner felt like there should never be a wait for someone that had less than two.
Which ended up good for me because I wasn’t staying long.
I was getting my fix and leaving.
“You don’t want…” She pointed at the table across the room where my family sat.
There was even an empty chair.
“No, I don’t want.” I shook my head. “They left me.”
The hostess’s eyebrows went up, understanding dawning.
“Oh,” she nodded once, walking past the roll window and picking up not one basket of rolls, but two. Obviously, she realized that I was in an existential crisis and needed a carb overload. “I’ll get you right now. You want the window seat? Or do you want the one closest to the fish tank where they can’t see you?”
At Dune’s, you chose the window seat because it overlooked the lake. And the lake, especially at this time of the year, was freakin’ awesome. As in, it was so pretty, the lake made national magazines.
No matter what my mood, I was overlooking the lake.
After seating me, she walked away with a soft rap of knuckles against my table, then left me with my rolls and my thoughts.
It took a whole two seconds before the waiter was there, looking frazzled, to get my drink order.
Callum: where are you?
Me: I’m at a restaurant, sitting by myself, because my entire family decided to go eat without me.
Callum: Want me to come?
The offer made butterflies swim in my stomach.
Surely, a ‘bad guy’ like Teller tried to tell me Callum was wouldn’t offer to drive two hours because of me being sad.
Smiling, I texted back.
Me: No. I won’t be here that long. I’m going to grab something to eat and head back to a hotel in Dallas. I don’t think I’ll be staying here tonight.
Callum: Okay. Let me know when you’re on your way.
Usually, I wouldn’t be so butt hurt about my family forgetting me, they always did.
Even my brother, who I knew loved me, sometimes overlooked me.
It was hard to be the invisible child.
And only invisible children knew what it felt like.
My parents, though they loved me, never made much of an effort to really include me as they did my sister. Not because they were purposefully doing it, but because my sister was just that much more flamboyant. In your face. Needy.
I loved my sister, too. But I didn’t like that she got all the attention while I got what they remembered to give me.
Hell, even Anderson’s wife, Davina, liked my sister better than me.
“Here you are,” the waiter brought my drink over and set it down on the table next to the basket of rolls I’d polished off within two minutes. “Would you like to place your order now?”
I would’ve answered, but a commotion at the front of the restaurant had me glancing that way.
What I saw made my heart clang against my ribcage in adoration.
I saw the hostess and two waitresses gathered around the large picture window at the front. However, it wasn’t what was on the inside that had the women fascinated, but what was on the outside.
Through the large window I could make out a figure—a very bulky male—backing his bike up into the parking spot.
The sight of the cut on the man’s back had my heart all but stopping inside my chest.
Two minutes later, there he was walking in, hair looking wild, with a grin on his face that made my heart skip a beat.
I placed my hand over my heart and felt the crazy thumps that it produced at the sight of him.
Oh, man. He knew just how to make my heart happy, didn’t he?
“Who is that?” I heard my sister, Abby, whisper.
Callum started to look around the restaurant, completely ignoring the waitresses and hostess who were heading toward him.
It took him about two seconds to find me, and when he did, his eyes went hot.
He flashed me a grin that did crazy things to my heart and started heading toward me.
That’s when my family finally noticed that I was there.
Which hurt even more.
I’d been sitting practically right next to them, three tables away, and they’d completely missed my presence.
I didn’t turn to them and look at their expressions.
Didn’t really want to, to be honest.
But even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have.
Mostly because one didn’t turn away from a man like Callum.
He was gorgeous, and so damn sexy in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, along with his cut, that it made it hard to breathe.
Hell, even his dirty brown boots, with bits of grass stains and blades of grass on them, were sexy.
I couldn’t stop the smile from lighting my face even if I’d tried.
He walked right up to me and grinned down at me before curving his big hand around the back of my neck, pulling me in close, and then planting a solid, sweet kiss on my upturned lips before pulling back.
“Hey,” I whispered. “When did you get here?”
He grinned. “That text you sent felt off to me… and I had this feeling you might need me. So I started driving this way. I wasn’t actually going to come see you, but I was going to be in the area because I just had…”
“A feeling,” I finished for him. “You were right. I needed you.”
He tilted his head, his eyes flashing over the length of my body before stopping on my hand that was fisted in my shirt. “What happened?”
I didn’t want to tell him.
In fact, I didn’t want him to hate my family.
Because I had no doubt in my mind that he’d be upset for me.
I opened my mouth to say ‘nothing’ but then I heard my sister say ‘why is he kissing her?’
And I felt my eyelid start to twitch.
Callum’s eyes went from my twitching eyelid to my sister and then back.
I felt my lips thin as I heard her next comment.
“Wow, he’s hot. Definitely don’t see how they’re together.”
I sighed and felt his hand tighten, fisting my hair and making my heartbeat start to pound.
“You keep dreaming, honey,” I heard Anderson’s wife snicker. “Your sister is hot, just like you are. But in a very different way. Where you attract the pretty boys, the ones that don’t get their hands dirty, your sister attracts the rough ones. Obviously, as evidenced by the man that’s holding on to her like his life depends on it.”
Sometimes, I loved the heck out of Davina’s ways.
She was blunt, brutally honest, and sometimes so achingly truthful that it hurt to hear.
But today, at least she was on my side.
“You keep looking at her like you want to be in her shoes,” my brother whispered. “You would probably cry if his callused hands touched your delicately soft skin.”
At that, I burst out laughing.
Anderson was right.
My sister had men that got manicures twice a week. Ones that worked in offices, and wouldn’t be caught dead in the sun, let alone mowing his own grass.
She wouldn’t be caught dead dating someone that mowed lawns for a living.
Me, on the other hand…
“Sit,” I urged, pointing at the other side of the table. “Do you want something to drink?”
Through all of this, the waiter had stayed at the side of my table, watching the spectacle.
It was when I saw his eyes take in Callum’s body that I realized why.
He found Callum just as attractive as I did.
Then again, I didn’t blame him. Not when you looked at Callum and you felt things inside of you come to life that you never knew could breathe.
“What, exactly, was that about?” he asked as he helped me into my seat, and then took the one across from me.
“Umm...” I hesitated. “My sister is kind of crazy.”
His eyes focused on me as he reached for a roll, and then the butter.
He lathered one up and then took a bite so big that he might as well have eaten the whole thing.
I offered him another one—after I buttered it—and then he ate that one in two bites, one big and one small, too.
“I’ll take a sweet tea, but only if it’s actually sweet. I don’t want one of those watered-down versions of ice and some tea. I want it strong and sweet. No lemon because that’s fuckin’ gross. You order any appetizers, baby?”
Baby.
God, that made my heart soar.
“Umm...” I hesitated again. “I usually don’t eat any appetizers here because they’re really big. And I can’t finish one.”
He flipped open the menu that I didn’t need, scanned his eyes over it, and then nodded. “Queso with bread chips, or do you want the fried cheese curds?”
Those were both favorites of mine.
Both was my immediate answer.
But there was no way I was ordering two…
“We’ll have both,” Callum said. “And then when we get those, we’ll order.”
My lips twitching, I waited until he left, and got a good glimpse of my sister’s startled eyes focused on our table, before turning back to Callum.
“You make me so happy,” I announced to him.
CHAPTER 17
Squirrels are behind most power outages in the United States.
-Useless facts
CALLUM
I wasn’t sure what made me start heading her way.
Call it intuition.
Call it a need so potent I couldn’t stop myself from following behind her, even if I’d wanted to.
