Page 52 of Caleb's Salvation
But I wasn’t afraid of his growls anymore. I couldn’t be. Not if I was going to go to war with him and win.
“I’m having a hard time keeping this straight in my head,” I said with just a little bit of Texas sass. “Do you or do you not want me to keep fucking you?”
He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me up against his chest. His face in mine, mine in his because I was not backing down.
“I’m trying to do the right thing,” he snapped.
“The right thing would be to call my son by his name.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Sam, but I’m not fucking calling him Sammy.”
“You might be tempted to when he smiles. That’s when I always do.”
He kissed me. A hard smack on my lips. Then he let me go.
“I’m not sure I like the smart-ass version of Vivienne,” he grumbled as he made his way to the door.
“Sorry,” I shrugged. “She comes with the territory. I told you I was a fighter. When am I going to see you again?”
“When I’m ready!” he barked then slammed the door behind him. Which he was allowed to do this time because there was no sleeping Sam.
“I’m not sure,” I said to the empty room. “But I think I just scored a point.”
14
Cal
I shouldn’t have been in such a bad mood. I’d gotten laid for the first time in seven years. I should have been fucking skipping around camp. Except as I sat behind my office desk not concentrating on getting caught up after days of being gone, I couldn’t get over what’d she’d said to me that morning.
She’d compared me to the kid’s…Sam’s…deadbeat biological father! A man who’d taken her virginity, had unprotected sex with her and had abandoned her when she found out she was pregnant.
I was not someone who didn’t take responsibility for my actions. I always,alwayshad the backs of the people in my life or on the job.
Except for that one fucking time when I said the wrong thing to my wife, and it cost her and my daughter their lives.
Or what if it hadn’t had anything to do with me? What if Sarah had planned to surprise me with a visit all along, regardless of what I’d said?
“You have to forgive yourself, Caleb.”
For seven years that hadn’t happened. I didn’t see how or why that would change now. Unless I wanted to change it.
Which I didn’t. Not just because the self-imposed chains of guilt felt like a suitable punishment. It went beyond whatever I felt I did or did not deserve. I didn’t want to have responsibility for anyone ever again. Not for Vivienne. Not for the kid.
The sex I would take, because I couldn’t resist it. But that was all. It had to be for my own sanity. Didn’t it?
But Vivienne had been the one thing I hadn’t seen coming. The person I couldn’t have predicted, with a fucking kid in tow, no less.Help me, Caleb. Save me, Caleb. I need you, Caleb.
She was everything I wanted to avoid and nothing I could because she needed so much damn help.
I should end it now. I should call her up, tell her I was done and that she could move on. Date Ty, date whoever. It just couldn’t be me.
Someone else would have to smack her ass.
And of course, just the thought of someone else smacking her had me seeing red. That ass was mine!
“Damnit!” I barked to an empty office.
Only not so empty in that moment as there was a sharp knock on the door.
