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  Yet, every time I tried to get near her, she’d go out of her way to tell me that she didn’t need me.

  That she didn’t want me around.

  That I was nothing to her.

  And eventually I realized that I needed to give her time to calm down.

  Only, I was still waiting for that calm to come.

  Even all these years later.

  “I’m sorry… but I really don’t want to do an interview with you,” Malachi admitted, not sounding sorry in the least. “I’m just… I don’t want to do it.”

  Calloway tilted her head, her eyes soft, and she smiled. “You don’t have to.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “But,” she said, “if you want to interview with me… I won’t post your name or your face. We can do it anonymously.” She paused. “I just did that with a couple of Navy SEALs this weekend. They were willing to do the interview, they just didn’t want to be photographed or have their names printed.”

  Malachi looked torn as if he would be willing to do it as long as those two things happened.

  “She’s trustworthy,” I murmured. “There was one time that I told her a secret, and she promised not to tell my parents. She even got punished for it because it affected her. But she never told.”

  Calloway snorted.

  “What did he do?” Malachi asked curiously.

  Calloway looked at me with raised eyebrows, and I shrugged.

  “I can’t,” she said softly.

  “I can,” Sammy said as he came up to us. “Louis wrecked his dad’s car because he was getting a blow job. Totaled it. Calloway took the blame.”

  Calloway’s face flamed.

  “How…” she started.

  “And why couldn’t you just tell him?” Nico asked.

  “Because he was drunk as fuck at the time,” Sammy said. “We all were, honestly. I don’t even think any of us know the whole story, but Calloway.”

  Nico turned to look at Calloway, who flushed bright red.

  Calloway was also the one doing the blow job. So technically it was her fault… not that I would ever tell Nico that.

  Calloway had said that she was the one to wreck my dad’s car. She hadn’t been. But the alternative would have been to tell everyone that she’d been giving me a blow job with two passed out people in the back seat, and me drunk off my ass. Funny enough, she’d been the only one not drunk, and was the only one who really knew everything that had gone on, just like Sammy had said.

  When we’d gotten out after the wreck, she’d taken the fall because that was the only way the rest of us didn’t see jail time.

  I wasn’t the smartest kid in the world when I was sixteen.

  Thankfully, I’d changed my ways.

  That wreck had been a wake-up call and a reminder that we were one of the lucky ones.

  It could’ve been so much worse.

  So, so much worse.

  “What all will you be asking?” Malachi asked then. “I’m okay with answering stuff about SWAT. Just not stuff about… other stuff.”

  Meaning, he wasn’t okay with talking about his time in captivity as a prisoner of war.

  I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about that either, had it been me.

  “Agreed,” Hayes said.

  Hayes and Malachi had been in the same place. They’d moved to Kilgore, Texas because they’d followed their friend, Luca Maldonado. Luca who’d also been a POW—prisoner of war—and was working at the Kilgore Police Department.

  “I think I’d like to know about the SWAT call that happened last week,” she said softly.

  All of us groaned.

  That’d been the SWAT call from hell.

  “We’re not allowed to talk about that one yet since it’s an ongoing investigation,” Nico murmured.

  Calloway sighed. “It was worth a try.”

  Nico grinned at her, making me want to punch the old man square in the jaw.

  He may be married, and he may be old enough to have grandchildren, but he was still hot—or so I’d been told. And Calloway wasn’t blind. She knew he was hot. Just like I thought Calloway’s mother was still beautiful.

  Not that I would ever say that to her. I liked my balls exactly where they were, thank you very much.

  “What about anything you want to tell me then,” Calloway suggested. “Anything. Whether it’s what you like about the job. What you don’t like. Your hopes for the future. Whatever. You can even tell me your funniest SWAT call.”

  Malachi got a gleam in his eyes, and I knew exactly what he was going to tell her.

  “Don’t you dare,” I ordered.

  Malachi’s eyes turned to me. “This is her, isn’t it?”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Who is her?” Calloway asked, sounding confused.

  “This is her,” Sammy confirmed.

  Calloway narrowed her eyes. “You better not be talking about him and me.”

  So that was how we ended up spending an hour around the old bar with the stripper pole in the middle of it. Malachi started retelling the story of when he first got on the team. The very first SWAT call we ran, Malachi and I had been partners of sorts. He’d had my back and I’d had his, and he’d seen the goddamn braid that I carried around with me everywhere.

  “So there I am, walking around a corner when something soft as fuck slaps me in the face,” he continued. “When I look over at this motherfucker, I see this long braid of hair poking out of his shirt, and he’s holding his hand up in the universal sign of ‘don’t move.’”

  That’s when I know that Calloway’s already caught on.

  She stared at me, her eyes hot with anger.

  “He carries that thing around like a lucky rabbit’s foot,” Malachi said.

  My brows rose. “And you don’t carry around a picture of your fuckin’ dog?”

  Malachi sat back in his seat and raised his brows at me.

  “Oh, this is going to be great,” Calloway said. “I think I’ll write about this. What y’all bring with y’all on duty every day. What do you bring?”

  That question was aimed at Nathan.

  But before Nathan could say a word, I ripped my shirt off and showed her the tattoo that I got.

  I did it for two reasons.

  One, I didn’t want Nathan losing the calm and chill vibe he had going on. Because Nathan carried a stuffed animal around that was on a keychain. One of those Happy Meal things that kids got.

  Nathan had been putzing along one day in the strip club during training and had somehow lost it. He’d been… inconsolable. When we’d tried to get any information out of him about it, he’d been forthcoming, to a point anyway—telling us that someone important had given it to him.

  Needless to say, I didn’t want Nathan having to explain that. That’d likely been why he hadn’t wanted to talk to Calloway at all.

  Secondly, the reason I’d taken my shirt off was that I wanted Calloway’s eyes on me. The idea of her staring at my body felt like something I needed.

  “This is the goddess Soteria. The spirit of safety and deliverance and preservation from harm,” I said as I showed her my back. The tattoo itself started at my lower right rib cage and crawled all the way down into my pants.

  “Holy shit,” Calloway breathed. “That’s big. How long did that take?”

  “Three sessions and eight hours a piece at each session,” I answered, turning around and pulling my shirt back down.

  Nathan’s eyes caught mine, and he looked at me with relief.

  I gave him a chin lift.

  “So you have a tattoo and carry around my hair…” She trailed off when Saint, the quietest of the bunch, interrupted. “That’s your hair?”

  I sat back in my chair and let Calloway dig herself out of that one.

  I hadn’t told any of them whose hair it was. They’d asked, of course, but they didn’t need to know that I c
arried that fuckin’ braid around with me because I missed the person whose head it used to be attached to. They didn’t need to know that I was that far gone for a certain black-haired woman that hated my guts.

  Well, they knew now. And I knew they weren’t going to let it go.

  “Um, yes,” she said, her eyes narrowing in on Saint. “What do you wear, carry around, or have tattooed on your body that you feel helps keep you safe?”

  Saint pulled up his shirt sleeve and showed off the raven on the inside of his bicep.

  “Got this when I was eighteen. Not sure what for at the time. I had no idea what I was doing with my life. But I knew what I’d already lived. And ravens feed on corpses. Without giving you the complete rundown of why I would need that other than a ‘protection’ kind of thing, this is what I have,” Saint explained.

  Saint was an utter mystery to all of us. He was the quietest of the bunch, which was kind of funny seeing as he was our negotiator.

  He was also standoffish, watchful, and never really interacted in things the way everyone else did.

  I honestly got the impression that he disliked us at times.

  “Can I get a picture of all of y’all with your talismans or whatever you carry with you on shift?” she asked finally. “I think I’ve got more than enough to publish my article. Now I just need a picture to go with it.”

  When nobody moved all that fast to do as she bid, I stood up and ripped off my shirt all over again, this time tossing it onto the bar top we were all standing around.

  The next thing to go was my pants.

  Luckily, I was wearing slip-on work boots, meaning that I didn’t look like a complete dumbass when I hastily took them off.

  It was only when I looked over at Calloway while in my underwear that I realized she was standing still in shock, staring at me as if she was devouring my every move.

  Sammy chuckled and pulled out the crucifix he wore around his neck. Booth and Bourne pulled out the Saint Michael medallion they wore around their necks.

  And on it went until they were all standing around the bar.

  Calloway finally came unstuck and went for her camera bag that had been left abandoned by the door.

  When she came back, it was to find Nathan standing there with his McDonald’s toy.

  He had a blank expression on his face, and he was staring at the toy as if he was holding something so precious in his hands that he couldn’t bear to look away from it.

  Thankfully Calloway didn’t ask.

  And when she looked at me, I knew that she knew why I’d taken my shirt off like I did. At least, she knew some of the reason. The other half of the reason, she was likely trying to ignore.

  “Just not my face,” Malachi reminded Calloway.

  “I remember,” she said softly. “And honestly, if you’ll stand to the side there, your face should be hidden by Saint’s bicep when he flexes and shows off his raven. Nathan, you’re perfect where you are. I can’t see you at all except for those great looking forearms.”

  Malachi flashed her a quick grin and did just that. Nathan didn’t say a word.

  Saint flexed his arm.

  And Calloway took the picture.

  Once she was finished, she started to pack up her camera once again, and everyone started to leave.

  Most said quick goodbyes, and a few stopped to grab Calloway up in a hug before they did.

  The only ones left after five minutes were Malachi, Sammy and me.

  Calloway was talking to Sammy, and I looked over at Malachi.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked stiffly.

  Malachi stared at me with his haunting eyes and quietly said, “You want her, get her. Nobody’s gonna wait forever.”

  Didn’t I know that.

  “And I saw her out on a date last week. She was eating with some douchebag looking guy wearing loafers,” he continued. “Thought you might need the in that it got you.”

  With that, he left, leaving Sammy, me, and Calloway the only ones behind.

  I sat there, listening to them talk for a few minutes, and realized that Calloway was ignoring me. Which pissed me off.

  She knew damn well that I was standing right there, yet she kept her body turned away from me, and she was staring at Sammy as if he was really interesting when we both knew that he wasn’t.

  When I couldn’t handle the ignoring thing she had going on anymore, I sidled up even closer to her and insinuated myself in between them.

  Sammy thought it was hilarious and backed up.

  Calloway, not so much.

  “So since when did you start doing this? Why do you do this?” I asked curiously.

  She set down the light that she was carrying and put a camera bag onto the counter directly next to it.

  “I’m here to interview you for my magazine because people love reading about heroes.”

  I blinked. “Your magazine?”

  She nodded. “Hero Magazine. It’s mine.”

  “The magazine is yours, or you work for the magazine?” I asked for clarification.

  “Mine,” she replied, looking away so she could start packing her camera bag.

  I watched in utter silence for a few seconds before I turned and glared at my cousin, Sammy.

  His lips kicked up at the corners.

  Oh yeah, he’d known.

  He’d known exactly who was doing the interviewing. That was why he wasn’t surprised or against it.

  The son of a bitch.

  “Well, on that note, I’m gonna go. You got the closing down of this place?” Sammy asked as he backed away.

  I nodded once, jaw clenched.

  We’d have words about him keeping his secrets later, that was for sure.

  “Have a good one.”

  Then he was gone, leaving just two. Calloway and me.

  The way I’d always wanted it to be.

  I wasn’t sure how she always managed it, but it never failed. I didn’t get to be alone with her. Not ever.

  This was the first time I’d managed in the years since I’d broken up with her.

  “I don’t like that you somehow hid this from me,” I muttered, my eyes on hers.

  Why was this kept a secret?

  She shrugged. “I didn’t really like that you had to donate your blood so I wouldn’t die, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Why do you refuse to talk to me?” I asked. “Why won’t you let anyone else talk to me about you?”

  She narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest in a defensive measure.

  “Why do you think that you deserve to know anything that’s going on in my life?” she countered.

  That was true.

  “I made a mistake,” I said.

  She snorted. “Which time?”

  “When I broke up with you,” I told her honestly.

  I mean, I was talking to her alone. I had to tell her everything.

  She snorted. “You didn’t make a mistake. I did in ever trusting you. I should’ve never taken that leap.”

  “You should have,” I said. “The thing is, I should’ve trusted you to take that leap with me.”

  “Whatever,” she said as she picked her lights up. “Have a good one, Louis.”

  Louis. I hated when she called me by my full name.

  For just once, I wished that she would call me by Louie, or Lou. Or hell, even Lou-Lou like she used to before I’d ruined everything.

  “Bye, Cal.”

  Chapter 3

  WTF is up with Grandpa Joe off of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Homeboy sat in bed for 20 years while his family lived in poverty but hopped up like a motherfucker to go to a candy factory.

  -Text from Calloway to Louis

  Calloway

  “Hello?”

  I swallowed hard. “Louie?”

  There was a moment of silence and then
Louis said, “What’s wrong?”

  I looked out my window at the dead kitten and felt my lip quiver.

  “I need you to come over here,” I whispered. “I need help.”

  That’s when the sob broke free, and I couldn’t stop the tears of anguish anymore.

  Dropping the phone from my ear, I backed away from my front porch and stared in horror at the window. Wondering how the hell something so horrible had happened to something so innocent.

  Ten minutes later, four police cars rolled up, and half the SWAT team got out of the cars.

  I only knew that because I could see them from where I was at on the ground, having opened the blinds to let the May morning sun into my rundown house so I could write my article.

  Standing up, I walked to the front door and opened it, trying studiously not to stare at my little Buttercup.

  Louis got out of the first cruiser that was parked closest to my driveway and hauled ass toward me, taking in my crying face and my ragged breathing.

  Louis stopped at the dead kitten, stared at it, and then stepped over it as if it was only mildly interesting.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking anxious.

  My lip quivered, and I pointed down at the ground. “The kitten.”

  He frowned, turned around, and looked down. “What about it?”

  My mouth fell open. “Somebody killed my kitten, man!”

  His eye twitched. “You’re crying because of a dead kitten.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.

  Instead of talking to him anymore, I moved until I could see Sammy.

  “Can you pick him up and put him into the shoebox so I can bury him? There are some gloves… I just couldn’t do it,” I whispered.

  Before Sammy could do a thing, Louis stepped backward, picked the cat up with his bare hands, and placed him into the shoebox.

  Honestly, I was half expecting him to toss him. Luckily, he didn’t, or I would’ve had to beat him.

  I’d just gotten that little kitten yesterday. Hell, I hadn’t even been aware that it’d gotten out of the house!

  “Do you see his chest?” I asked.

  “Somebody stabbed him?” Louis asked, bending down slightly to look closer.

  “It looks like it,” I told him. “That’s why I called you.”

  “You called me because you didn’t want to pick up your dead kitten,” he countered. “Something in which you’ve never been able to handle.”