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“She’s becoming a woman, you know?”
I nodded. I knew. How could I not? She captivated every fiber of my being with her beauty and uniqueness.
“Do you love her, Callum?”
I blinked a few times until the words sunk in. As unexpected as the question had been, the answer wasn’t as much. I knew without a shadow of a doubt how I felt about Alina.
“Yes, ma’am. I do.” The words were few but held the gravity of my world within them.
Miss Simpson’s gaze drifted from the blooms and fixed on my face, her expression unreadable until it was like the last piece of the puzzle fell into place, and the cloud in her mind cleared.
“I thought the pirate loved me too, but they were just words. Actions mean more than words, Callum.”
* * *
She had been right, not about a lot of things, not when most of the things she’d said were only nonsense, but about Alina? She was right, and that was something I hoped hadn’t changed about her.
If I were a betting man, I would’ve bet my house that actions still meant more to Alina than words.
I would have to wait until I left the forest before there’d be enough reception on my phone to call out, but I had a plan manifesting itself, and I was quietly confident it would get her wheels in motion, so to speak.
The rain was beating down hard on the windshield, amplifying itself inside the cab of my car. The wipers fought against the speed of the falling drops, unwavering in their monotony the war waged by the freezing weather outside.
My eyes darted between the screen and the road ahead, thumbing the home button repeatedly for a signal check. It wasn’t until I reached the outskirts of town that I got enough bars to make a call.
When the call connected to voicemail, I left a message with details for my brother to call me back. I knew he was the right person to ask for help. Besides, he was also the most qualified.
* * *
The rain had refused to ease up, and the storm raged through the night. It had only eased as the light greeted the next morning.
My brother, Charlie, had finally called me back the night before, so now I was idling my car at the bottom of Alina’s driveway, waiting for him to meet me.
I wasn’t kept waiting long. One of my brother’s best attributes, and his worst, as it also happened, was his punctuality, persistently so. If he was on time, he expected everyone else to be and got pissed off if someone was a few minutes late. Growing up with Charlie as my brother, I learned two specific things about him—to always tell him a time that was five minutes later than it needed to be so he couldn’t bitch and moan if I were late and not to pick a fight with him.
He was my little brother, but when he hit puberty, he filled out, and taking a hit from the big bastard was what I imagined to be hit by a freight train. The women loved it.
Charlie was never short on female attention, but he only had eyes for Simone throughout college. Her sparkly beauty kept him oblivious to all the tail he could have nailed growing up.
Seeing him pull up, I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head before climbing out of my car and dashing over to him, hopping up beside him in his old truck.
“Hey.” His gaze cast from me back to the driveway ahead of us and back again. “Alina Simpson? You’re begging for a favor because of Alina Simpson?” he asked in disbelief.
I shoved the hood back before attempting to warm my hands on the vents in his car. “Yeah, and she doesn’t know I asked you to come. So, expect some hostility, but don’t worry, it will be mostly directed at me.”
“You’re sending me into the front line? Fuck me, Cal.” The breath Charlie exhaled in haste clouded up the windshield before quickly disappearing. “Are you insane or suicidal?”
I answered his question with a shrug. There was a good chance I had lost my mind, but Miss Simpson’s words reverberated, “Actions over words.”
“Possibly both. But you should have seen her turning that whole patch by hand. She won’t ask for help, you know, not from anyone in this fucked-up town. So, the way I see it, she can’t possibly be pissed at me forever over it. Not when, in the end, it is for her own benefit.”
Charlie let out a chuckle, which I was under no illusion was for my benefit more than the humor of the situation.
Pushing the door open, I rushed back to my car, engaging the gear and trudging my way down the driveway with the headlights of Charlie’s ute flashing me in the rearview mirror with each bump he hit.
Getting Charlie’s help was likely to be either the stupidest or smartest and bravest thing I could possibly have done right at this moment. Time was about to tell, and as we approached the house, me moving cautiously, Charlie followed along behind in the protection of my lead.
ChapterFourteen
