Page 184 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

“I’ll call you baby…” He nods, agreeing.

Cool. He’s letting me keep the name I never gave up. Wasting one of his rules to do it.

Adorable move. Manipulative as hell.

“But it becomes exclusive to me,” he finishes.

Ah. There it is.

He flips the chalk in the air, catching it without looking. “If you’re Baby when you’re in my hands and mouth? Then you’re Baby nowhere else. I ain’t sharin’ it. Not with nobody.”

He’s mistaken.

Baby’s not theirs, it’s mine.

A gag. A trapdoor to bail mid-scene without leaving my body. A firewall to separate pleasure from pain, addiction from affection.

“You think Baby means something sweet?” I laugh, but it comes out empty, scraped from the bottom of my throat. “If you knew what that word was built on, you’d back the fuck off it.”

His gaze sweeps my face, tracking the emotions spilling through their prison bars, looking at me, like—look, one of the walls I came here to climb.

“Allison, whatever it was built on,

“that don’t change what I’m askin’.

“Baby stays between you and me.”

My hand snaps out between us,

reaching, desperate.

“It’s in Ben’s contract. To say it.”

His jaw tenses. “Yeah, I know. And we’re not walkin’ outta here without fixin’ that too.”

I cross my arms, clinging to my veto like it’s all I’ve got left, trying to remember the days when I wasn’t the girl who caved like a little bitch.

“Fine.” My throat fights it, but I force it out anyway. “You get it. Nobody else.”

He doesn’t celebrate and moves forward, noticing the anxiety rising up in me.

For his other, he chooses: “Sunday’s my day. Every damn minute, I want you spendin’ it with me.”

I turn to face the wall,

to find control, a solid breath.

He stalks the pool table,

sinking in another.

Clause eleven:

“You need to come? If I can’t be there, you still tell me. Don’t matter when, if it’s three in the morning, mid-shift, bar packed, you send that text.”

What does he mean, if he can’t be there?

I rake my hair back. “How ‘bout I save you the suspense,” I say, feeling the pads of my fingertips shake against my skull as the reality of what’s happening sinks in. “Morning. Afternoon. Night. In Room 613. And that’s just maintenance, of course. Little Death arrives like clockwork in the middle of the night, but I take care of that.” I throw a hand around the room. “And it doesn’t count the times some bitch-ass sets me off.”