Craving Redemption

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  My anger fled in a puff of smoke and remorse instantly took its place. I walked up behind her, wrapped my arms around her middle, and rested my chin lightly on her shoulder.

  “What do you mean, when dad brought her home?” I asked, giving her a little squeeze and teasing to lighten the mood. “Did you guys live together? One big happy family?”

  I’d been joking, so when she nodded her head, I was stunned.

  “What? Why?” I asked, my voice high in surprise.

  “Well, she was young. Just eighteen when your dad found her—”

  “Found her?” I squeaked, my voice growing even higher.

  “Ugh. Sit down, Callie, before you hurt yourself,” she said in exasperation, all traces of our argument absent from her tone. She pushed me toward one of the stools and slapped a wet washcloth on the counter, nodding her head at it as if to tell me to get started.

  As I started cleaning off dried juice and what looked like Easy-Mac off the counter, she told me my parents’ story.

  “Your dad was… eh, about twenty-three when he brought her home. Poor thing was black and blue, and your dad wasn’t much better.” She shook her head at the memory. “I cleaned ‘em both up and put your mama to bed. I’ll never forget the look on your dad’s face when he informed me quite strongly that she was staying with me. He didn’t have his own place back then, but he was rarely at my place, either.”

  She paused to search for the broom, then once she started sweeping, continued with the story.

  “Well, I wasn’t having none of that!” she chuckled quietly in her throat. “Made your dad explain as much as he was willing—which wasn’t much. But from what I pried out of him—your mama was from a little town in Mexico. She was real smart, so her parents were hoping to send her to a college up here in the States, you know, give her more opportunities than she would have had back home.”

  “So my dad met her while she was in college?” I asked her, becoming impatient by the slow way she gave me the facts.

  “Stop interrupting me if you want me to finish!” she warned, as she lifted the broom off the floor and swatted my legs with it from across the room.

  “Okay, fine!” I giggled back, pulling my legs up in front of me.

  “Well, her parents made a deal with some boys from up here, promising that they’d get her into a school and whatnot.” She glanced at me, giving a small shake of her head. “They didn’t. The Jimenez brothers—”

  “Jimenez!” I gasped, dropping the wash cloth onto the floor.

  “Yup, same ones. Pick up that washcloth and get a new one. This floor is filthy,” she ordered, brushing dirt into a dustpan I didn’t even know I owned.

  “Anyway, they brought her up here, didn’t plan on helping her do anything, and that’s where your dad came in. He took one look at that girl and had to have her. I’m not sure what happened, but your uncles backed him up and he took her home with him.”

  “Why didn’t he send her home?” I asked, fascinated by this story that I’d never heard before.

  “Couldn’t send her home—then she’d be right back where she started,” she told me offhandedly, as if it was a simple thing to understand.

  I finished up the counter, which was pretty much spotless at that point, and started washing down the front of my cabinets quietly. I needed a few minutes to process the new information I’d been given. I never asked my parents how they’d met, it hadn’t seemed important, but I suddenly wished that I had.

  “It’s history repeating itself,” I murmured to myself.

  “What?” Gram called out from the corner of the kitchen where she’d started to mop the floor.

  “It’s history repeating itself,” I said again, my voice carrying across the kitchen.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say it’s repeating itself, but it does seem pretty similar,” she answered distractedly as she scrubbed a stubborn spot on the floor with her foot pushing on the head of the mop.

  “Is that why you let me move with Asa?” I asked as I stood, stretching my back.

  “Your Asa looks at you the same way my boy looked at your mother,” she told me seriously, pausing in her mopping to look me directly in the eye. “And your father would have never let anything happen to your mother if he could stop it.”

  My throat burned with tears I refused to let fall, but instead of acknowledging her words, I bent down and started cleaning the front of the oven.

  Later, I followed her around the house, helping her clean and burning in embarrassment when she opened my closet full of dirty laundry and gave me an equally dirty look before scooping it into her arms.

  “This is disgraceful, Callie!” she told me with a disgusted sniff, dropping the laundry in the middle of my bedroom floor.

  “I was in a hurry!” I griped back.

  “I’m gonna make you a list,” she huffed as she stripped the sheets off my bed. “Things you have to do every day, things you need to do twice a week, and things you can get by with doing only once a week. You follow my list and you won’t have to live in a pit.”

  “It’s not a pit!” I argued, my hands on my hips as I watched her wrestle with my comforter.

  “It’s a pit.”

  I helped Gram remake my bed before we headed out for dinner with her grumbling that she was too tired to cook. I felt like shit that she’d driven all day and then cleaned my house all afternoon, but I also knew that she’d loved it. She lived to take care of her kids, and in a weird way I think my living in a pigsty made her feel validated. I really did need her—at least to help me clean up my shit.

  After we curled up in bed that night, on sheets fresh out of their packaging, we talked for hours about everything and nothing. I fell asleep as she ran her fingers through my hair and spoke about the latest drama in her trailer park. I didn’t have nightmares at all that night.

  Gram’s visit was over before we knew it, and I had to say goodbye once again. She was able to stay with me for nine days, and it had been blissful having her there when I got home from school each day. She’d brought up garbage bags full of my clothes, four loaves of freshly baked banana bread, and an entire box full of homemade jams and canned fruits with her. It was like heaven having all of it at my disposal.

  But the best part of having her there was just… her. She made me feel like a kid again, and I soaked it up like a sponge.

  While we were having our visit, Asa only called twice. He didn’t even seem to notice that something was off—but he still told me that he’d let me have time with Gram without “interruptions”. I wasn’t sure if he was being thoughtful, or if he was grateful he didn’t have to babysit me long distance. I was able to ignore the feeling nagging in my gut that something was off while Gram was there, but it seemed as if the minute she left for San Diego I was hit with a massive force of anxiety.

  Why wasn’t he calling?

  Chapter 32

  Grease

  When I left Callie in Sacramento, I was anxious as fuck to get away from her. I’d wanted her dependent on me, and I loved the fact that she looked at me like she needed me… but the reality of that was a little more than I could handle. Part of me had wanted to stay with her and take care of her, and the other part of me wanted to just get back to where my fucking world made sense.

  By the time I’d pulled up to the club, I was fucking beat. I barely said hello to the boys before slamming into my room and passing out on the bed. I didn’t want to move for at least twenty-four hours.

  The next day, Slider called me into his office to get a rundown on the nonsense down in San Diego, and I had to wait through his ranting and raving before I could try and explain. I knew Poet had already called him, and he was just trying to make a point, but I still walked him through the entire episode. I thought his head was going to explode when I told him about Jose trying to fuck us over, and when I described the Jimenez boys showing up at Rose’s I saw a vein on his temple throbbing above his clenched jaw. He was pissed.

  The rest of th
e week was pretty uneventful until Callie went radio silent on Friday night. Since I’d arrived at the club on Monday, I’d been giving her a call every night, but doing whatever the fuck I wanted the rest of the time. I wasn’t going on any runs, and the mechanic shop we ran as a legitimate business was pretty dead, so I didn’t have a lot of work to do.

  I was enjoying my freedom, barely thinking about Callie at all, when I called her phone Friday night and she didn’t answer. There were a shit ton of people at the clubhouse that night, so I got distracted for a while, waiting for her to call back, but about an hour later I realized I still hadn’t talked to her.

  I spent the rest of that night pacing my room like a pussy, getting angrier and angrier that she hadn’t answered her phone or called me back. It was like as soon as I couldn’t get a hold of her I missed her like hell on fire.

  At one point, I even called the boys down in Sac to drive by her house and make sure her car was there. Knowing that it was didn’t seem to make a difference because my saddlebags were packed and ready before Slider pulled me aside and told me to suck it the fuck up.

  They’d been watching me lose it the entire night, and they were all laughing at what they called my ‘hysterics’. Fucking pricks. I knew that if it were Vera who wasn’t answering her phone, Slider would be climbing the walls or already halfway to Sacramento by then.

  When I finally got a hold of her, I was pissed as hell. If I had been in the same room as her, I don’t know what I would have done.

  She calmed me down with that sweet voice of hers, but when she told me she was having trouble sleeping, my anger disappeared. I wanted to make it better for her, but I wasn’t sure how. She wasn’t willing to move where I was, and I sure as shit wasn’t going down to the Sacramento Chapter and leaving all my brothers behind.

  Our options were pretty much nonexistent because of her stubbornness, and when I got off the phone, my frustration over being away from her—turned into being frustrated at her.

  So even though I knew it was an asshole move, I distanced myself.

  I didn’t call as often as I had before.

  I ignored the voice in the back of my head telling me that I missed her and she sure as hell was missing me.

  On Monday, after I talked to her, I volunteered for a run.

  I completely forgot to call her the day of her parents’ funeral—which made me feel like a complete dick and distance myself even more.

  I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.

  I just kept fucking up, and I kept waiting for her to call me on it—almost wishing she would bitch me out.

  But she didn’t. She just took what I gave her and didn’t make a single noise in complaint.

  And that pissed me off even more.

  It was no longer enough for her to need me. I wanted her to be willing to fight for me.

  Chapter 33

  Callie

  A week went by with only sporadic calls from Asa, and I was starting to wonder if I’d done something to piss him off. It’s not like I expected him to be calling me every hour on the hour, but what was once a phone call a night had turned into once a week. By the time that Friday rolled around, I was on pins and needles wondering if he was going to show up like he’d said he would.

  He hadn’t mentioned visiting again, but I was hoping that he was just going to surprise me. It was lame, and I knew it, but I held out hope that even though he was practically ignoring me, he still wanted to see me.

  When I got home from school on Friday afternoon, I felt a small bit of panic flutter in my chest as I took in the apartment. Farrah had spent almost every day with me after school and the place was trashed. There were food wrappers stuffed in the couch, unidentified dried liquids all over the counter and the floor, and there was a weird but disgusting smell coming from the garbage bag that I’d been too lazy to take out.

  I couldn’t let Grease see how horrid I’d let the apartment get, so I threw my bag onto the couch and raced toward the bedroom to change clothes. I got about halfway down the short hallway before shaking my head frantically and going back to pick up my bag so I could hang it on the end of my bed where it belonged. If I was going to clean up, I couldn’t leave shit lying around.

  It took me two hours and what felt like five buckets of sweat to clean the apartment, but by the time I was done it looked almost as good as when Gram had cleaned it. I wanted it to be sparkling, and I knew it wasn’t—but I just couldn’t figure out what the hell I’d missed. Gram was a freaking magician. God, I wished I knew where her list was. She’d left it on the fridge, but I had no idea where it had gotten lost and I had a horrible feeling that it was in the disgusting trash somewhere.

  There was no way I was rifling through that nastiness. When I took it to the dumpster, I’d found out that it had seeped into the bottom of the garbage can and started fucking fermenting. I’d had to clean the bottom of it with an entire container of disinfectant wipes, and the whole time I was reaching in the can—up to my waist—my heart was pounding. I just knew that Asa was going to walk in while I was hip deep in a freaking garbage can.

  He didn’t.

  He also didn’t show up when I took a long shower to clean off the sweat and garbage juice, or when I spent half an hour blow drying my hair.

  He didn’t show up when I was making dinner, or eating, or cleaning up.

  And he didn’t show up while I worked on what little homework I had while trying to watch a movie.

  He didn’t show up at all.

  When I finally crawled into bed at midnight, my belly felt… hollow. I berated myself for imagining that he’d show up to surprise me, but I’d been so sure that if he hadn’t been able to get away, he would have called. Those thoughts—the silly thoughts that convinced me that he’d never stand me up, had my heart racing in fear. I started imagining him getting into an accident on the way to see me and how awful I was for thinking the worst.

  So I called him, just to make sure he was okay.

  “Hey, babe,” he answered on the third ring, sounding just fine.

  “Hey, I was just… calling to say hi,” I lied. I couldn’t tell him that I’d been waiting all day for him, or that I’d been thinking he was dead on the side of the road somewhere. He hadn’t even mentioned coming to see me in weeks, and I didn’t want to look like a jackass for assuming.

  “Oh, okay. Everything all right?” he asked gently, and then my stomach became one huge knot because I could hear him covering up the phone while he talked to someone else.

  “I’m fine. I just thought you’d be visiting soon,” I answered him, immediately slapping myself on the leg as I realized how needy I sounded.

  “Yeah, shit’s been pretty crazy around here. I haven’t been able to get away. You know how it is…” his words trailed off, but I could hear people speaking in the background and then he chuckled.

  That small laugh hit some sort of trigger, because all of a sudden I didn’t feel like an asshole for calling him. All of a sudden, he was the asshole.

  “Hey, Grease?” I called sweetly to gain his attention.

  I knew the second he realized what I’d said because he inhaled harshly into the phone.

  “The fuck?” he growled, almost giving me the reaction I was hoping for.

  “The next time you tell me that you’re going to be here, could you please let me know if you’re not actually going to be here?” my tone hadn’t changed, but there was no way he could miss the bite in my words.

  “I didn’t tell you I was coming down there, Calliope,” he growled again, frustration evident in his tone.

  “Yeah, you did. Before Gram came up—when you had your panties in a twist that I didn’t answer my phone for a few hours. Remember? You were all fired up to see me and then you just disappeared off the face of the earth,” I told him calmly, my heart racing.

  “Ahhhhh FUCK! I forgot,” he groaned, “I’ll come down as soon as I can, Sugar. Okay?”

  He was trying to apologize, but I
was done with his bullshit. He’d left me in Sacramento, full of promises to visit, and he couldn’t even be bothered to call me very often. Fuck him.

  I took a deep breath, listening to him apologize and tell me he’d visit as soon as he possibly could. He said all the right things, and I wanted to believe him—but I didn’t. I was just biding my time, and as soon as he paused to make sure I was still on the phone, I dropped my bomb.

  “Don’t bother coming back,” I told him flatly and slid my phone closed as I heard his pissed off voice calling my name.

  That was the reaction I’d been hoping for.

  I lay awake again that night, but for once it wasn’t because I was crying. Instead, I was making a list in my head of the things I needed to do.

  First on the list was to party with Farrah, and anyone else I could think of, in Grease’s apartment.

  Second was to find a job and move the fuck out of there.

  And third was to never stop moving or planning, so I didn’t have to notice the ache in my chest.

  Chapter 34

  Grease

  I was at a party at the club when I got Callie’s call. Shit, every night at the club was some sort of drunken get together—but this one was different and I was thoroughly enjoying watching the women in the room. There was a clear hierarchy. It was one of the only times a year that sluts and old ladies would be anywhere near each other—the party for a new member—and it was fucking hilarious. I was waiting for a catfight to break out.

  Dragon had gotten his cut earlier in the day, and he was weaving his way around as different brothers patted him on the back. Poor fucker had a massive healing tattoo on his back—but dealing with that shit was tradition. All of us had gone through it and survived—he would, too. I was looking at him when he stopped dead, staring across the room. When I followed his eyes, all I saw was Brenna and Vera—so I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was looking at. He had the stupidest fucking look on his face, almost dazed— and I wondered what the hell he was doing. As soon as he started across the room, my phone rang in my pocket and I lost sight of him as I tried to make my way through the crowd to answer Callie’s call.