AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I brushed past the man himself as he held the clubhouse door for me, rolling my eyes at how wrong she was.
“I know, Cal,” I told her breathlessly, continuing to drag my aching body down the clubhouse’s back hall to Bishop’s office. “I’m just walking inside. I’ll give you a call later, okay?”
“Okay, get some sleep,” she ordered, and I hung up just as Bishop closed the office door behind us.
He brushed past me, moving over to his desk while I shoved my phone into my back pocket. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
Maybe it was a little harsh, and I was a tad irritable, but I was exhausted and sore. I had planned to go back to our apartment and make the place as dark as the depths of hell. Then I was going to curl up on the sofa with the television on and sleep for as long as humanly possible. That was one thing I’d learned that helped me sleep, making sure I had other noises around me to disguise the natural creaks and crashes that came from outside, which my mind invariably assumed was someone coming to kill me.
I was pretty sure I’d added to that list of people that morning, but my father was still at the top.
As far as I knew, he was still out there. The cops had never caught him after what he’d done to Mom and what he’d tried to do to us. I think that was the part I hated the most. That he never paid for any of it.
Not for killing Mom, trying to kill Ali and me when he set fire to the house, or for making us so paranoid that we started taking those little pills to help us sleep.
He got to just walk away while I still struggled most nights to close my eyes.
“You can’t go home,” Bishop finally answered like that was it, and there was nothing else to say.
I tossed my backpack onto the sofa to my right, my entire body sagging with exhaustion. “What do you mean I can’t go home? I need to sleep, Bishop.”
“You can sleep here,” he countered again, his expression still entirely blank, giving me nothing. “There’s a room next to mine where Calli sleeps sometimes. I’ll put you in ther—”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
He sat back against his desk, folding his arms across his chest. “It’s a precaution… we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay,” I replied, holding my arms out. “Let’s figure it out. Tell me what’s going on. Am I in danger?”
My heart was beginning to race, and I knew I was being a bitch, but I had reason to be. I’d just been through hell at work with that bastard, I was tired and sore, and Bishop was standing in the way of me relieving all that tension without explaining why.
“Will you just trust me?” he urged, his blank look finally transforming, his shoulders drooping like the weight of the world was on them. “I know you want to stand on your own feet, and you hate having to rely on others, but contrary to what you think, you don’t have to throw yourself at every dangerous situation. I don’t want you to fucking do that.”
I swallowed the uncomfortable lump forming in my throat, that call-out really hitting hard.
Unfortunately, for a long time, my first reaction to fear had been to fight.
It was a habit I picked up in rehab.
Maybe a good one or a bad one, but one that had gotten me through a lot since then. It was about not being the person I once was, who was weak and let the pills and nightmares win, and my father win.
I licked my lips, pressing them together briefly before I spoke. “You’re saying you just want me to sit here while you handle a problem you won’t even tell me about?”
His hand scrubbed at his beard, his thumb stroking over the coarse hair. “Right now, I’m just asking you to let me fight this battle for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I give a fucking damn about you!” he snapped, my body jerking at his harsh tone. “Because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Because I’m Calli’s friend.”
Jesus Christ, Shay, stop torturing yourself. That’s all you are to him.
“Yes, because you’re Calli’s friend.”
“This is an obligation.” I just needed to hear him say it. I needed to know for sure so I could start to move on.
“Shay…” Everything stilled, the room suddenly hot, the air hard to breathe as I waited for him to continue, but he clenched his teeth and squared his shoulders, falling silent again.
