“She’ll live.” He tossed his own phone down onto the bed. “Apollo texted to say that he was handling my shit, and to enjoy my night.”
The way he said it so suggestively made me blink furiously at him. “He knew?”
“I’m sure everyone knows,” he sighed. “I wasn’t very subtle about how I felt about you. That was why Cutter made me run that marathon.”
“You should’ve told him to go fuck himself,” I grumbled. “And what did he say to make you run that? You seriously hate running.”
I hated pointing out the obvious here but…
“Doc.” He pulled me in tight to his naked chest. “Doc’s protective of you.”
I snorted. “He’s something.”
“He’s protective.” Jasper ignored my comment. “And he loves you. He doesn’t think any of us are good enough.”
I went up onto my forearms on his chest and looked down at him with confusion clearly written all over my face. “Doc tolerates me. At best.”
“Doc loves you, at least. He likes you a lot. Everyone likes you a lot.”
At that, I snorted. “Uh, hate to tell you this, Jasper, but not everyone feels the same way as you. I get told on a daily basis that I’m a pain in the ass. And honestly, I probably always will be. I’m a mess, and though I’m slowly getting my shit together, I still revert back to that angry teen quite a bit.”
“I think you’d be surprised.” He curled my hair behind my ear with two fingers. When it fell right back into place, he did it again, but this time held my hair there when his eyes once again met mine. “Everyone loves you. Especially all the kids. They think you walk on water, and that makes everyone like you all the more. Do you have a bad attitude sometimes? Yes. Do you refuse help when we all know you could use it? Also very much yes. But we also notice when you go out of your way to be kind to an old man and invite him to a club party. We notice when you agree to take a job in the middle of the busiest season of the year because you felt bad that you got someone fired. Let’s not forget when Apollo’s son died, you made him that picture frame with all the photos that you collected from every single club member you could find. Or when Knight and Elaine died, you went out of the way to help with the kids so the rest of us could grieve. You’re a good person, Calli. Maybe you should start letting yourself believe it.”
I pressed my forehead against my forearms, not sure what to say.
But it didn’t matter, because he kept speaking.
“Last year, when you broke your hand and foot in that accident, I’ve never hated another person more. That bitch was yelling and screaming at you, and when I pulled up you were trying really hard not to get mad. But then she said something about Anders and made a move in her direction, and I watched you transform into this glorious superbeing that would’ve taken on the entire world for her sister,” he murmured, his chest rumbling with his words as he continued to play with the hair that continued to fall from behind my ear. “That lady looked so damn taken back when you started to go off on her. She probably thought you were an easy target, but you most certainly are not. There you were, limping and barely able to walk, with your finger in that woman’s face.”
“You picked me up and carried me to the ambulance,” she muttered. “I wasn’t even finished with her.”
“You were about to hit her with your broken hand, so yeah, you were.” He smoothed his hand from my hair to my chin and lifted it. “We don’t see you like you see yourself.”
My body melted against his as tears filled my eyes. “My mom was a horrible person.”
He smoothed his thumb over the apple of my cheek. “What little I’ve heard about her, I can see why you wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”
“She calls me all the time,” I muttered. “And Searcy was working her ass off so much that she didn’t see, but Mom took advantage of her so badly. Always stealing her money when she wasn’t looking. Forcing Searcy to take on that role of a mom. Forced Searcy to drop out of school. Then, when that wasn’t enough, she started on me.” I swallowed. “One night…” I hesitated, unsure if I could get the words out.
“Tell me,” he urged.
“She tried to sell me to a man for five hundred dollars.”
He tensed underneath me.
“She said she was joking, but all jokes have a little truth in them. And that night was the night that I decided that I wouldn’t deal with her shit anymore. I made it my mission to get money and get the fuck out of there the moment I turned eighteen,” I replied. “Plus, if I wasn’t there to take care of, Searcy had one less mouth to feed.”
“Searcy shouldn’t have had to do any of that,” he pointed out.
“No,” I agreed. “She shouldn’t have.”
“Where is your mom now?” he asked. “Still running that diner?”
“The diner she ran shut down a while ago because no one would stay working there,” she said. “She sold it for a song to one of the waitresses or cooks. Baker went there a couple of weeks ago to meet Copper for lunch and they said it was a completely different place.”
“So why does she call you?”
“For money,” I said. “The first time she at least tried to disguise it as she wanted to spend time with Anders. But when I asked her why she wouldn’t want to spend time with Kent, too, she had no answer. It was like he hadn’t even occurred to her.”
