“She’s in there.”
She?
Nodding my thanks, I fly past her, throwing myself into the room, heart pounding, only to stop still, dead in my tracks.
“Do you know how hard it’s been to track this place down?” Calla asks, pressing away from where she’d been leaning up against the rickety desk shoved into the corner. She looks terrible; her eyes red and swollen, hair a messy bun atop of her head, wearing a mismatched loungewear set with a pair of flip flops.
“I trawled through thirty –thirty– high schools, ringing them off the hook to ask if a Blake Millen worked there. I think they thought me crazy. I got so desperate I asked Giselle for the address, but she wouldn’t tell me.”
“What the fu—”
“Until finally I got a hold of this place.” Calla tries for a toothless smile, but it falls flat and shrugs. “You were getting so hard to find I thought you never wanted to be found. Not by me at least.”
“You’re right.”
Calla chokes like the wind has been knocked out of her, reaching behind herself to grab a hold of the desk.
I hate seeing her like this – upset and unsure – but what else am I supposed to do?
She put us in this mess, not me.
“What the hell happened, Blake?” I flinch at the sound of my name on her lips, my hands curling into fists to stop myself from reaching out and touching her. “One minute we we’re fine, the next—”
“I know the truth, Calla.”
“The truth?”
“That you’ve known all along.”
“Known what all along?”
“Who my brother is.”
“Your brother?” Calla throws her hands in the air. “What does it matter? I couldn’t give two shits who your brother is. It’syouI’ve fallen in love with! Not him!”
Blood roars loudly between my ears.
“You’ve fallen in—”
“And I wouldn’t have even known who he was, if I hadn’t been receiving messages from Thomas hiding behind an unknown number, trying to break us apart. I—”
“Hang on.” My legs have turned to mush, leaving me to reach out and grip the door handle behind me to stop myself from falling. “What do you mean you’ve been receiving messages from an unknown number? And how do you know it’s McAvoy?”
“A couple of months ago, right after I spent the night at yours, I started getting these messages from an unknown sender. They were weird, but I didn’t think much about them. In all honesty, I thought maybe it was a jealous ex-girlfriend. The last one I received was a newspaper article about Grey. You were mentioned and I put two and two together. Thatwas it.” Calla shrugs, her forehead creasing. “I cornered Thomas about it a couple of days ago and he all but admitted it was him behind the number… before he fired me.”
My brows shoot up, landing somewhere before my hairline. “He fired you?”
“Yep.” Calla flattens her lips, a fresh surge of tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, clinging to her bottom lashes. “It’s been a pretty shitty past couple of weeks, if you couldn’t tell.”
She gestures to her oversized outfit and bedraggled hair, pulling a watery laugh from my chest. I itch to hug her to my body, to kiss her and promise her everything is going to be alright, but I need to know something – clear cut and crystal – before I do.
“So, you didn’t know before…”
“Before what?”
“Before you met me?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “Absolutely not.”
