“Who the hell is he? What the fuck? Let go of my sister!”

I wanted to go to him. His voice was so strained it was cracking like it hadn’t done in years, and I knew he would be embarrassed,  but I was too wrapped up in making myself breathe that I didn’t have the capacity to comfort my brother.

“Cody, that’s Callie’s friend. You just leave them be a minute and she’ll come talk to you,” Gram told him in a no-nonsense voice I’d heard before.

“Screw that! That guy’s like forty years old! What the hell is going on?” he yelled again, his voice once again his usual deep tenor.

They argued some more, but I didn’t catch what they were saying, because all of a sudden we were moving and Asa was speaking quietly in my ear.

“It’s all good, baby, but you need to climb down. Your brother’s about to stab me with one o’ your Gram’s kitchen knives and she’s gonna be pissed,” he told me in an amused voice, his hand rubbing soothingly up and down my back.

I’d finally gotten my breathing under control, so I slid my legs down the outside of his body and stepped away, mumbling, “Sorry,” before I faced my brother.

Cody and I faced each other across the room, both of us uncomfortable with our audience. Any other time, we would have already been hugging and pushing each other around, but we were so far out of our comfort zones that we just stood there staring. He didn’t want to seem like a pussy to the men who filled the house, and I was embarrassed that he’d just seen me wrapped around Asa, so neither of us made a move until I finally found my voice.

“I don’t think he’s forty. Maybe thirty,” I told him with a small grin.

That was all it took.

We met in the middle of the room, wrapping our arms around each other as he swung me around slowly. It was what we always did when we saw each other for the first time during his visits. A few years before, he’d grown taller than me, and to prove that he was bigger he’d swung me around, teasing that he wasn’t the little brother any longer.

Having my brother near always made me feel like the world was right again, but this time I knew it was just an illusion. Nothing would ever be right again, and breathing in my brother’s familiar scent reminded me in a flash that I was the reason we’d lost our parents.

How I’d managed to put it from my mind, I didn’t know, but the minute he set me on my feet, I stumbled to the side as if hit, hearing the voices of the men who killed my parents inside my head.

They were calling me by name.

He reached out for my arm, an alarmed look on his face, but I pushed him away, unable to bear his comfort.

“It’s my fault,” I told him, surprised. “Oh, my God. It’s my fault they’re dead.”

His face drained of color as he watched me, but I didn’t see anything else because I was running for the bathroom with my hand over my mouth as if to hold in the vomit that was pressing at the back of my throat.

Chapter 15

Callie

I wasn’t sure if I should be thankful that I didn’t actually throw up or disappointed that I hadn’t purged the nastiness in my stomach. I rinsed my face over and over with cold water, filling my mouth with the cool liquid—but nothing could take away the bitter taste of bile in the back of my throat.

A knock at the door warned me that someone was coming in before it opened. When Gram pushed her head in and walked inside, I wished for a moment that I would’ve taken the time to lock it. She was pissed.

“Calliope Rose Butler, what in God’s name was that all about?” she hissed at me, crowding me into the space between the countertop and the bathtub. “If I didn’t know you were hurting so bad, I’d slap your mouth for spewing crap like that to your brother!”

I don’t think she expected me to answer her, but I felt the need to defend myself, so I stood up tall and answered her.

“They were calling my name, Gram,” I told her, sucking in my breath with a deep sob, “I could hear them!”

I clenched my eyes shut, the pain of those words seeping through my body as I lost all sense of control. I couldn’t hold it in anymore; my voice was making god-awful noises, like the barking of a seal. I couldn’t hold them back.

Gram reached for me as I started to slide to the floor, wrapping one arm around my waist and the other at the back of my head.

“You are absolutely not to blame here, Callie. Not at all, sweetheart,” she whispered into my hair. “You got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all it was. Those men weren’t after you, baby.”

The tone of her voice had me raising my head as I tried to understand what she was alluding to. She wasn’t giving away anything with her expression, but once she knew I was keeping it together, she pulled me by my waist out of the bathroom and down the hallway.

Once we reached the kitchen, she sat me down at the table and walked to the fridge where her apron was hanging on the handle. It reminded me of a suit of armor as she tied it on; it was a way to protect herself.

“Poet, Asa, and Cody!” she called to the guys sitting in the little living room. “Get in here. We need to clear some things up.”

As the men made their way to the table, she started pulling things out of the fridge and setting them on the kitchen counter. That’s when I knew that the conversation we were about to have wasn’t going to make anyone comfortable—Gram was cooking.

As Asa walked into the kitchen, he stopped behind my chair and rested his hand on my shoulder for a second before sliding it across my collarbone and up my neck. When he reached my chin, he tilted my head back so I was looking at him upside down.