Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,60

was seeing Hayes.

My boyfriend comes back after I hear the door quietly shut.

“I hope that you aren’t too annoyed I told him. It’s just, he’s like a father to me. I had to talk to someone about it. I told him two weeks ago, asking for advice.”

I nod. “I’m not annoyed. It actually feels good that someone else knows. Maybe it makes it a little more real? It just caught me off guard. What was his advice?”

The anxious grimace tells me more than his words do. “He wasn’t pleased at first, unfortunately. With everything the Callahan name has been through, and our roles within the organization, he wasn’t wrong to remind me just how much I could lose if this came out. But after I told him you were worth it, he kind of changed his tune. Told me he’s never seen me like this over a woman, so he knows it’s real. Told me that I sound like he did when he first got together with Ronnie.”

My heart does a backflip at him describing the conversation, because it sounds like he was telling Bryant how much I mean to him. Not that we’ve kept those words from each other, but it confirms that my feelings of how serious I feel about him aren’t unreciprocated.

Walking to him so I can wrap my arms around the back of his neck in a proper greeting, I lean my face into his neck and breathe him in. “It is real. And I know just how much is at stake—for both of us. I’m sorry about that, but not enough to stop this. I’m glad you told him.”

Hayes is quiet for a beat, stroking my sides with his large, callused hands. It’s been too many days since we’ve gotten to be alone like this.

“You know I grew up in foster care, right?”

I’ve read his file, or profiles on him over the years. Peripherally, I know about it, but never from the source himself. “Yes, but only from what you’ve disclosed to the media. Which I don’t think is much?”

“My agent has me read a variation of the same speech at most charity events I do for kids in the system, and that glosses over a lot of what I went through.” Hayes shakes his head, as if he’s disagreeing with his agent even now.

I hear the pain of the little boy he once was in his voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …”

“Bryant took me in, steered me down the right path and made sure I didn’t fall off of it. Before him and Ronnie, I was in and out of at least a dozen foster homes. My birth mother left me at a fire station when I was an infant, and my biological father was pretty much nonexistent from day one. Or so I’ve been told. Growing up, the homes weren’t so terrible, but the lack of any kind of care or love left me scarred. For a while, I stayed with some of the families who took pity on me on my travel baseball teams. But when I started to hit better than their sons, or they felt threatened, they’d ship me back out. I bounced around like a pinball, with no real family or home. I still don’t feel attached to many people. But I have Bryant. And now, I have you.”

A pang of grief shoots through my heart for him. It’s not a coincidence, at least I like to think it isn’t, that two people who were so deprived of love or compassion found their way to each other. I’m too afraid to ask him where he thinks this can go, because I’m not sure I’ll like the answer. I don’t know when we can be normal, or if that time will ever come. I’m too afraid to jinx it by talking about it now.

So I answer him in the simplest terms I know how, without having to talk about the logistics or what could go wrong.

“You do have me. I’m not going anywhere.”

27

Hayes

The weight rack gives off a tinny metal oomph as I set the bar back down, my muscles aching as System of a Down screams in my headphones.

I’m not sure why I even have them in, seeing as I’m the last person in here and it’s later than even hard work deems necessary. But it’s one of the nights that I’m not allowed to sneak over to Colleen’s house, and she’s not coming to mine, so I