and gestures in Hael's direction. “He is. I'm going to find out why none of our crew told us a goddamn pig was at the house.” Vic scowls as he pulls away, nodding at Callum as he passes.
My eyes meet Cal’s blue ones, and I lick my lower lip.
Aaron's body is broken; I'm worried about Callum's soul.
“This is so crazy,” Whitney murmurs from behind me. I turn my head slowly as Vic and Hael slip out the door, just two shadows in the night. Whatever she sees on my face must scare the shit out of her because she stands up, leaving a pale-faced and groaning Aaron alone on the sofa.
“What can we do to help him while we wait?” I ask, my voice a cold thread of steel. “Because if he dies here tonight, so do you.” Whitney's face pales and she takes another step back, looking at me like she's considering calling the cops and risking sending us all to jail, just to save her own ass. What she doesn't know or maybe just hasn't figured out, is that Callum isn’t going to let her get anywhere near a phone, a door, or a window. She's stuck here, for better or worse.
“We need to elevate his legs and keep him warm,” she says, swallowing hard, stray strands of hair coming loose from her bun and sticking to her sweaty forehead. She's got full-on hooker makeup on her face, probably from some long-ago Halloween party. My throat tightens up as I think about the altercation in the fun house, of Danny aiming the gun at me, of Callum lifting the baseball bat.
Fuck.
“He could go into shock …” Whitney continues, giving Callum a wary look.
But she needn't worry about him.
If something happens to Aaron, I'll become her worst nightmare.
“Fine. Get a warm rag, some blankets, pillows. Get him orange juice or something.” I bark out the orders, even though I have no clue what I'm doing. But somebody has to do something, so it may as well be me. Take him to a hospital, Bernadette. The rational part of my mind is screaming at me, but the other part, the darker part, is fully immersed in the world of Havoc.
No cops, no hospitals.
Aaron could lose his sisters. He could go to jail. We all could.
We deal with this our way.
“Did she stutter?” Callum asks, leaning casually against the wall, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. His voice is pleasant enough, his expression serene, almost too calm, as he turns blue eyes over to Whitney, spurring her into action.
I give Cal a look of thanks as I sit down on the edge of the sofa, sweeping Aaron's auburn hair back from his forehead. My throat feels tight, like there's a sob stuck in there somewhere that I'm just too stubborn—or perhaps just too broken—to let out.
“He isn’t going to die,” Callum tells me, like he somehow knows this for certain. I look down at Aaron for several quiet moments, trying to commit his face to memory, the smooth line of his jaw, the tiny scar on his right earlobe. But then I realize I’m doing it and why I’m doing it, and I get furious all over again.
“You can’t know that,” I growl, turning back to Callum and finding his eyes not on Aaron, but on me. We stare at each other for a long time before he finally speaks in that beautifully dark voice of his, like his vocal cords are shaped from the shadows of Halloween night.
“He won’t go, not when there’s so much uncertainty between the two of you. He’s never stopped loving you, and he’s never had the chance to truly prove how sorry he is for the things that happened.” Cal pauses as Whitney comes back into the room, carrying a glass pitcher of orange juice and several glasses. He takes one from her and then looks her dead in the face. “Sit down at the kitchen table, and don’t try anything I might not like.” He taps the end of the bloodied baseball bat with the toe of his boot and her face pales even further, a feat I hadn’t considered possible.
Callum brings me some juice, letting his fingers linger against mine for longer than is really necessary. Neither of us misses how much they shake, but we both know that emotional wounds can be dealt with later. Physical ones have an expiration date.