“Fuck,” I whispered to the ghosts settling around me. Maybe I should go back in there and rescind my agreement. Tell Price this was a mistake.
But then he would look at me with those amber fucking eyes, filled with compassion. Worry. I would crumble immediately, like I seemed to always do when he looked at me.
A job, Crew. This was a job and nothing else.I’ll do my six months, get the payout, and go back to how life was before. Willow would finally see that I just wasn’t cut out for life. If I thought Willow could handle it, I wouldn’t even be existing right now.
Life had taken my childhood, my sanity, my mother, and any ounce of care that was born into my heart. The universe put in so much effort to cause me pain that, at this point, it would be too cruel to try anything different.
The metallic flick of a lighter startled me, my back pushing against the cold wall behind me. Looking up, my eyes landed on Callum as he sank to the ground with me. Our backs were uniform, pressed against the wall, our feet digging into the gravel below as Callum nursed a cigarette.
Cigarette smoke. At least that was familiar to me.
Callum blew a large cloud in front of us, keeping his eyes forward. “Know what I usually do?”
The question threw me so off guard that I neglected to answer.
“My pops used to sing this lullaby to me when I was a kid. It was the only way I could sleep.” Another puff, a long inhale. “It’s pretty dumb now that I think about it as an adult, but it calms me down a lot. Gets me out of my head and into the real world.”
What the fuck was he on about? “What was it?”
Callum pushed his blond hair out of his face. It was light, almost bleached. The same color I had attempted to get my hair to and failed. On him, it made him look young. Too young to be smoking and far too young to be sitting beside a lowlife like me. “You want one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Oh, good. I think my lungs are fucked, and I’ve only been smoking for, like, a year.”
He didn’t say anything else, focusing on his cigarette as he stared into space. I cleared my throat, sorta invested in what he was telling me before. “The song?”
“Huh? Oh, right.” He shook his head like there were cobwebs in his hair. With a flick of his cigarette, he started to sing. “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, but Papa catches baby, cradle and all.” An easy, serene smile washed over his face when he stopped.
I watched the ash fall from his cigarette, wondering what Mom would have sounded like singing that same thing to me. “That’s really nice.”
“Yeah.” With a quick flick, he threw the cigarette onto the ground and snuffed it out. “Pops changed the ending, though. It’s supposed to end with, like,down will come baby, cradle and all. Pops said it was too morbid that way.”
I frowned. “Who would sing that version to their kids? That sounds terrifying.”
Callum’s laugh was loud. Louder than I expected. “I don’t know. A lot of kids’ rhymes and lullabies are morbid as hell. When I’m having a silent disco, I think of Pop singing that to me.”
“Silent disco?”
“Oh, you know.”
“I can’t say that I do, no.”
He turned his head, looking at me straight-on, his eyebrows furrowing into a V. Did he actually think I knew what that meant? “Uh, like, when you freak out on the inside. Your brain gets all stupid, and things go too fast. On the outside, your face looks fine, but you’re totally losing your shit in your mind.”
It was my turn to look at him, confused. “Aren’t discos supposed to be fun?”
“Ugh.” Callum scowled. “Not at all. They’re chaotic. Too much going on. That’s why I call it a silent disco. Pure chaos in my mind, completely calm on the outside.”
That sounded more like a personal observation than a general one. “Right. How did you know I was having a, uh… silent disco?”
A snort was not what I was expecting. Callum threw his head back until it hit the wall we were sitting against. “I have tons of them. All the time, actually. I know what one looks like.”
I nodded, deciding to enjoy the quiet in my head for now. Talking had mostly pulled me out of my head, and the smell of Callum’s smoking helped override the scent of bubblegum.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Absolutely not.” I shook my head easily.
