Her cheeks tinged red at the confession and I felt like a complete asshole. Of course she couldn’t afford to pay for another house. While I’d been psyching myself up to convince her to let me move alone, I hadn’t even thought about the money situation. Gram was on a fixed income, and even with her social security benefits and my grandpa’s pension, there wasn’t a whole lot of extra cash left after she paid her bills.

Before I could reply, Asa spoke up from where he was sitting beside me with his hand on my knee.

“I’ll take care of her,” he told Gram before his eyes moved to me, “I’ll take care of you.”

I opened my mouth to say something back, but I looked like a guppy as I closed it and opened it again. I had no clue what I was supposed to say in a situation like that. He’d take care of me? What the hell was he talking about? He’d been watching out for me physically and emotionally from the minute we met, but for some reason, paying my bills seemed like a much bigger deal. It was like the difference between letting a neighbor borrow a cup of sugar and buying them a car. One of those was a completely understandable sacrifice, the other just seemed crazy.

“Asa, you’re a sweet boy, but I can’t let you do that,” Gram stated kindly from across the table.

“I’m a man,” he rasped, looking between Poet and Gram. “I’m a man and I take care of what’s mine.” His voice was solid. Resolute.

I sat there dumbly as they argued. They were talking about me, and yet I couldn’t think of one thing to say.

“You’ve known her for less than a week. She’s not yours. She’s sixteen years old, goddammit!” Gram responded, slapping the table with her hand, frustrated with the entire situation. I think the way Asa looked at me had finally sunk in for her because she looked like she was beginning to worry as she glanced between us. There was a difference between how a teenage boy felt about his girl and a man felt about his woman.

A teenage boy may speak strongly in defense of his girl, full of piss and vinegar and grand dramatic vows of how he’ll protect her—but that only lasts until the boy meets with odds that are no longer on his side. But a man? He’ll make it clear that he stands between his woman and the world, no matter what the consequences are. And then he’ll prove it.

Asa wasn’t making grand promises, vowing to slay dragons or sweep me off my feet. He was making a very serious gesture of commitment, and it was freaking me the fuck out.

“I don’t want to go all the way to Oregon,” I blurted, breaking into Asa and Gram’s staring contest. “I don’t want to be so far away that Gram can’t drive up and visit me.”

All the heads at the table had been watching the interaction between Gram and Asa, but they all swiveled toward me at my declaration, so I decided to keep going.

“Can’t I just go to Sacramento or something? I mean, that should be far enough away, right? That way, Gram can drive up and see me on the weekends sometimes. And I wouldn’t have to leave California, so all of my school stuff would transfer fine…” my voice trailed off at the end as I ran out of steam.

“That wouldn’t—”

“That doesn’t make—”

Asa and Gram’s arguments were cut off by Poet’s raised voice.

“Now that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” he told me with a nod. “Children need their elders around. Moving Callie so far away that her grandmother couldn’t visit, well, that would be a shame.”

He turned his head to Gram and convinced her with only a few words. “She’d be alone, yes? But we have a chapter in Sacramento that would look after her. And, well, Grease wouldn’t be able to live with her in Sacramento, would he?”

Asa sputtered across the table, realizing that his plan wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped. He wanted me with him; it was clear by the way he was speaking. And to be completely honest, I wasn’t opposed to that idea, either. I didn’t feel pressured by Asa’s wish to move in together, and at that point, I couldn’t even imagine being without him for five minutes. All of a sudden, the thought of living with Asa didn’t scare me as much as the thought of living all alone.

“Boyo, you understand Callie’s reasoning, yeah? Girl wants to be close as she can to her family and can’t say I blame her,” he said quietly to Asa who still hadn’t said a word. “Question now is how that affects your decision.”

Not one person around that table anticipated the answer Asa would give, because none of us saw a twenty-year-old man supporting a sixteen-year-old girl who wasn’t related to him—especially if she wasn’t even going to be living with him.

“I take care of what’s mine. Doesn’t matter where she lives,” he told us, giving my knee a squeeze before standing up from the table. He kissed my head gently as he passed by me, mumbling in my ear, “Be right back, Sugar. I need a smoke.”

He walked out the front door as if what he’d just promised was of no consequence at all.

Chapter 20

Grease

I wanted Callie with me. I wanted to come home to her at night, in an apartment away from the clubhouse where I’d had a room for the last three years. I wanted a fucking place of my own where I didn’t have to listen to bitches squealing and brothers fighting at all hours of the night. I wanted a goddamn living room that I could sit in with a beer in front of a big-ass TV.

I wanted a home, for Christ’s sake.