When a minute passed and she didn’t text back, another message came through.
Lock: Please.
Callie: Maybe. Can I sleep on it?
Lock: The ball’s in your court, Callie. I’ll wait for your text. Have a good night, honey.
Honey…gah.
She dropped into bed, her head hitting the pillow with a thud. But when she closed her eyes, she didn’t feel tired at all. Not even a little bit. Damn sugar overload.
Come on, Callie, sleep.
She squeezed her eyes closed and rolled to one side, then the other. Fifteen frustrating minutes later and she huffed before climbing out of bed.
Great. Now she had insomnia too.
Lifting her phone, she headed to the kitchen, where she grabbed a glass of water and downed it. Her gaze moved to her phone. She’d set it on the counter, but her fingers itched to pick it up again. Call him just so she could hear his voice.
She shouldn’t. It was late. He was probably in bed.
She wrapped an arm around her waist as if that could somehow stop her.
Ten more seconds passed.
Screw it.
The phone only rang once before his gravelly voice sounded over the line. “Callie?”
“What would you do differently if you got a do-over?”
There was a pause. It stretched so long that, for a moment, she thought the line had cut out. Then he spoke. “I still would have temporarily broken up with you, but I would havemade sureyou knew it wasn’t actually real. I would have made sure you knew I still loved you. I shouldn’t have done what I did right after hearing about Winnie. I should have waited, calmed down, and figured things out.”
She dropped her head, chin touching her chest. “You still wouldn’t have been able to answer my call that night.”
“I would have. Because if you knew what we were up against, then I would have known you’d only call if it was important.Reallyimportant. And I would have gone to you. Next time you need me,I willgo to you.”
She swallowed before opening her mouth…but before she could respond, a flash of movement in her backyard caught her attention.
Frowning, she turned to glance out the window. It was dark. Almost pitch black out there.
She was about to turn away when she saw it again.
Gasping loudly, she stumbled back a step.
“Callie? What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s in my backyard.”
Lock pressedhis foot to the floor of his truck, but he wasn’t moving fast enough, dammit.
Someone was in heryard. The same person who’d written her those creepy fucking notes? It had to be. And it meant they were escalating.
He should have stuck close to her. He should have camped out on her street and refused to leave.
When he finally reached her house, he slammed the truck into park and ran to the door. He was halfway across her lawn when another car pulled up in front of the house.
Eastern. Lock had called him the second he’d gotten off the phone with Callie.
