Page 29 of Philly
“Whoa, are you okay?” Lina said, drawing her attention back to the table. Callie blinked at her, unsure why she’d asked. Lina’s eyes dropped to her glass. Her empty glass. Wow, she’d downed a double old-fashioned in less than ten minutes.
“Food,” Charley said. “She needs food.”
“And some water,” Juliana added. Joey nodded.
“You want to talk about it?” Lina offered. “You don’t have to, but just offering.”
She looked at the open and curious expressions on the women’s faces. What had happened that night felt like something she needed to keep between her and Gabriel for now. But while she decided to keep her mouth shut about Gabriel, she realized that maybe, someday, if she stuck around, it could be different. She didn’t have a lot of friends, as she’d told Gabriel. And these women weren’t her friends now, but as they looked at her with genuine concern, she wondered if, maybe one day, they could be.
16
Philly sank into a chair, leaned back, and kicked his feet toward the fire. Back in the clubhouse, after a long day that had started at five in the morning, he admitted to himself that he was beat. The conversation with Callie the night before hadn’t helped his sleep, either.
“How are you?” Hawkeye asked as he, Lovell, and Monk joined him. The only one of them still serving—as a reserve—his brother had returned from a long deployment only a few weeks earlier.
Philly cocked his head and half shrugged but didn’t say anything. In truth, he was still reeling from his conversation with Callie. No one said anything more, and while his brothers would sit for hours with him, the time had come to break his silence and tell them what lay between him and Callie. Not that he knew himself anymore.
“I was seven when Callie and I first met,” he started, then proceeded to tell them about their decade-long friendship, about the adventures they’d had, the mischief they’d gotten into. He told them about Callie’s grandparents and what good people they were, how they’d always welcomed him and Matthew intotheir home, even when Callie and Daphne weren’t visiting. He told them how she’d grown up on the other side of town, gone to private school, lived in a nice house with her district attorney father and physician mother. They already knew how he’d grown up, so he didn’t need to draw any comparisons.
He took them along the journey of his and Callie’s friendship, the friendship that changed around the time he turned fourteen, then imploded in that one night three years later. That night, he’d always been so certain about what had happened. That his perspective on it was the only right one.
He didn’t fight the hollowness of his voice as he relayed the words sixteen-year-old Callie hurled at him. Again, he didn’t need to elaborate; they’d all understand how something like that would stick with him.
His brothers remained silent, listening. Finally, he took a deep breath and told them about the conversation he and Callie had had less than twenty-four hours ago. He didn’t give the details of her punishments, that was her story to tell, but he gave them enough that they got the picture. And understood why he felt a bit at sea. It was hell on your emotional frame of reference when something you always believed to be true was not, in fact, true.
“Could her father have done that?” Hawkeye asked when he finished. “Essentially ruin your life?”
Philly inclined his head. “Yes. He had a lot of power in town and a lot of friends. We lived on the outskirts, barely in their jurisdiction. I think the only reason my father, Matthew, and I skirted the radar of the authorities is because my dad chose to drink and wreak havoc in the next town over, which was actually geographically closer. It didn’t hurt that I was a good athlete. Callie and Daphne didn’t go to the public school, but the fact that our football team won the state championship three of the four years I played kind of made me, I don’t want to say untouchable,but very well liked. Even by people who wouldn’t normally like a trailer-trash kid from the wrong side of town.
“But if her father took it into his head to come after me, yes, he could have. And the police chief was a complete dick. Might still be—both a dick and the police chief. I don’t know, I don’t keep up with the town.” He paused, then added, “And to Callie’s point, I was almost eighteen. Three months from graduation.”
“Your age and your status as an athlete wouldn’t protect you once you turned eighteen and graduated,” Monk said. Philly nodded.
“Do you believe her?” Hawkeye asked. “Believe she was trying to protect you?”
He paused. Not because he had to think about it, because he didn’t. He believed her. But even as big a revelation as that was, what occupied his mind most since last night hadn’t been that question. He’d spent most of the past twenty hours or so beating himself up for not knowing what her life had been like. It was true what she’d said, that neither ever spoke much about their families, but that seemed a paltry excuse.
He sighed. “I do.”
“But the sting of those words still hurt,” Monk said.
He thought about that, then nodded. “They do. Words matter; they have meaning. But what’s harder is changing my perspective on them. Not because I don’t want to or because I don’t believe her, but because they were such a…”
“Pivotal moment for you?” Hawkeye offered. Again, Philly nodded.
They sat in silence for a long moment, then Lovell spoke. “Words do matter. They do have meaning, but what meaning are you going to focus on?”
Philly glanced over. Lovell’s green eyes held his. “Will you hold on to the words themselves and what they made you feel? Or will you focus on the meaning behind them? On the fact thatshe did what she could to protect you? She didn’t just hurt you that day, but herself, too. But she did it to protect you. You can either focus on that, that she loved you enough to do that, or you can focus on how she chose to do it. The choice is yours.”
Fuck. Philly closed his eyes and let his head fall against the back of the chair. Lovell was right. He wouldn’t ever forget the searing pain of that night, but the truth was, Callie had never betrayed him; she’d never turned into someone he didn’t know. She’d stayed true to the loving, caring, kind, smart-as-hell girl he knew. Yeah, she could have approached it differently, but she’d beensixteen, almost seventeen, but still young. They’d both been so young.
In the last twenty hours, he’d accepted that he’d have to rearrange his thinking. It wouldn’t happen overnight; everything was not suddenly fine between him and Callie. But when things got awkward between them, and they would as they both learned to navigate through this change, he needed to remember that she’d protected him. One of the few people in his hometown to do so.
That shift in perspective anchored him, easing some of the turmoil. He nodded his thanks to Lovell as his phone dinged with a text. Pulling his device out, his chest squeezed. Callie. Asking if she could see him. He didn’t have to ask what about. Laura Nolan.
Yet another thing Lovell had been right about—the importance of knowing the real reason for her interest in the Nolan family. He could hardly fault Callie for wanting to find out if her friend was targeted or for wanting to bring Liza’s killer to justice. He’d do the same.
He sent a quick text back, telling her he was at the club and she could stop by. As he hit Send, he realized she might not be comfortable coming to the Falcons’ domain. He wasn’t ready to have another conversation with her in his home, though. Hesupposed he could have agreed to meet her out. But he was tired, and it was warm in front of the fire. And he could lean on the quiet presence of his family.
