Cal didn’t reply.

“Joe,” she whispered, “you let me walk out this door, you’ll lose your chance.”

Cal didn’t move.

Vi waited.

Cal stayed seated.

Vi slid open the door, walked through and slid it to. He didn’t hear her calmly walking across his deck to the steps, he heard her running.

When he heard that, the glass shattered in his hand.

Chapter Thirteen

The Beginning

It was bad timing. Then again, it was never good timing for shit like that.

Never.

Ever.

But this was different. This was the worst.

Because Cal was home.

He had been home once in the last two and a half months. Once, for a night, gone the next day. I hated myself, but I’d looked. I always looked to his drive, even through the windows, a million times a day at first. I was getting better, bucking the habit. Now I only looked when I drove home, or drove away, or got in or out of the car. Progress.

Though I wore his t-shirts to bed every night. I knew I shouldn’t, I kicked myself every time I pulled one over my head. I just couldn’t stop.

The gifts had been coming; Colt and Mike had been dealing with them. Cal wasn’t around to care. Not that he would have cared if he was around, but he wasn’t around.

It wasn’t regular or steady but the girls knew about the gifts now. Keira had found the next one to come which was two days after the end of Cal and me. A Tuesday, another first. I didn’t know what was in them and Mike and Colt didn’t share. They told me they were keeping in close contact with Tim’s partner Barry in Chicago and they also told me they’d ordered cruisers to cruise our street randomly, which they did. It wasn’t the same safety I felt when Cal was in my house, in my bed or even next door, but it made me feel a little better.

I didn’t care much either. Let him send gifts. Whatever. I had a life to lead. That was hard enough. Fuck Daniel Hart.

The girls had taken Cal’s exit from our lives as I knew they would and I kicked myself, hourly at first then daily, for wrapping them up in that shit.

Just so I could have good sex, just so I could get off. A booty call. I’d hurt my girls for a booty call. Cal said it wasn’t that but it was. It was exactly that.

They didn’t know the extent of it and I tried to act normal and hide from them how it cut me to the quick, not as bad as I suspected, no, even worse, far worse, him being gone. But they were my girls, they felt deep, they sensed things, they knew me and I knew they knew something big had happened and it involved Cal.

At their accurate assessment of the situation, they rallied around their mother.

Keira had done an about face. Cal didn’t come up hardly at all. In fact, in the house he ceased to exist, even Dane had obviously been handed the edict that he didn’t talk about Cal. But when Tina mentioned Cal at that barbeque, Keira called him Mr. Callahan like he was a shadow in our lives, nothing more.

Kate refused to talk about him, switching the subject when he came up at the barbeque and it seemed almost that she hurt even more than her sister. Keira had always been Cal’s champion but they’d formed a bond somehow, Kate and Cal. Maybe over music preferences and pancakes, I didn’t know. What I did know was that Kate was cut to the quick, just like her Mom.

And Cal came up only when Tina brought him up at the neighborhood barbeque Jeremy and Melinda had a month ago and she’d brought him up three times in front of me and my girls, the stupid bitch.

Not taking Cheryl’s advice, I didn’t reel Mike in. I kept him on the line but I’d put my hand way too close to the fire and got burned. I was trigger-shy.

With patience, he stayed as close as I would let him. We dated. He even came over for dinner with the girls who were both very nice to him. I made him my pork chops and he’d said he’d loved them and ate them like this was true, something Keira approved of greatly and let this fact be known to Mike effusively. We made out and it was as good as ever. I’d even spent the night at his place when both of the girls were at a sleepover and his kids were with Audrey. We’d watched a movie in his room, fooled around in his bed but we hadn’t had sex. It was just that it had gotten late so he’d invited me to stay. I’d slept in his big bed, in one of his t-shirts and in his strong arms and I liked it. It felt healthy, it felt safe, it felt sweet but it didn’t make me vibrate, it didn’t electrify me, it didn’t make me feel alive.

But I didn’t need that shit. Healthy and safe I needed, sweet was a bonus. I didn’t need to vibrate and feel alive because, when it was gone, it led to feeling dead and that was no fun at all.

Mike didn’t push it. I suspected that he’d sensed things had changed with Cal. And he knew I needed it slow, he knew this because I told him, so we took it slow.

He didn’t introduce me to his kids, he wasn’t certain which way I’d lean and he knew they didn’t need that shit in their lives. If I leaned the wrong way, they shouldn’t be caught up in that. He was a good Dad. A better Dad than I was a Mom, I knew that for certain.

So it was bad timing that Cal was home when I was dusting in the living room and I saw the Jag turn into my drive. I knew who was in that Jag and I knew why they were turning in my drive. There was only one reason they’d come all the way down here to turn in my drive and I knew that reason.

Just seeing the Jag I knew it.

I knew it, knew it, knew it.

And it burned a hole in me.

I walked to the door, Keira’s new puppy, Mooch, following on my heels, yapping his puppy yaps. I disarmed the alarm and opened the door, dust rag still in my hand and Mooch ran out into the yard but I didn’t really notice.

The situation was worse; I saw the minute I walked out.

Feb was kissing Colt good-bye by his GMC, Jack in the crook of her arm.

Myrtle was trimming her rose bushes.

Tina was sunbathing in her front f**king yard when there was no need to do this, considering she had sun loungers on her back deck, and I knew why.

She was in a bikini in her front yard because Cal was washing his truck in his drive.

All of them were looking at the shiny, burgundy Jaguar in my drive. I knew this because I swung my head around to take them all in.

Then I looked at my Dad who was walking across the yard toward me, his face sharing the news before he said a word. My Mom, slower, unfolded out of the car, her eyes on my house, her face not communicating hideous loss like my Dad’s but registering dislike.

“Sweetie…” Dad said when he got close and it burst out of me.