Page 85 of Inseverable (Carolina Beach)

“Callahan,please.”

I whip around. “Pleasewhat? When I told you I loved you, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say because I was saying forever, and wanting it, and meaning it?even though I didn’t think I deserved it. But you made me think I could. You made me mean it just for you!”

She stands inching toward me with her palms out. “I mean it, too.”

“No.” I pitch her with a cold stare. “Your idea of forever stops in two weeks. Then you move on to the next person you have to save. Your next charity case.”

Tears flow in streams down her face. “That’s not what you are to me.”

“Aren’t I? Come on, Trin. It’s the reason you were drawn to me in the first place. You saw someone you thought needed saving. So you swooped right in didn’t you?”

“Callahan, don’t do this,” she chokes out.

“Don’t do what? Tell you the truth? One of has to.” My stomach is in knots. I should be curled over in agony. But my voice stays even and cold. “You were put on this planet to help others. You’ve said so yourself. And you have. You helped me. But your work here’s done and you can go.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” her face is blotchy, and swelling with how hard she’s crying. I should hug her because I love her. But I can’t because no matter what she thinks she feels, she never meant it to last.

“You don’t want to go,” I say. “But you will. Just don’t look back because I won’t be here.”

I storm off into the house and slam the door, my head pounding so hard I can barely think straight. Somehow, I manage to grab my car keys and remember my wallet.

This isn’t love, I tell myself. Love’s supposed to be forever, good, and gentle. It’s not supposed to drive a stake through my Goddamn chest. It’s not supposed to feel like my soul is breaking away in pieces.

I rush out the door and into my truck, cranking the engine, not bothering with a seatbelt.

My foot stomps on the gas as I peel away. The last image I catch in my rearview mirror is of my house . . . and Trin leaning over the railing, sobbing.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Callahan

“What’s her name?”

I look up from drinking my coffee.

My mother rolls her eyes and takes another drag from her cigarette, while my sister’s son sucks his thumb on her lap. “Come on, Callahan,” she says, blowing the smoke over her shoulder, and thankfully away from the kid. “I haven’t seen you in two Goddamn years. You show up here, looking like shit, working at a job you can’t stand. If this ain’t about a girl, I don’t know what is.”

I don’t remind her that the reason she hasn’t seen me before now is because two years ago, when I beat up her boyfriend for beatingherup, she told me not to come back. Her new boyfriend, Perry, sits in front of the TV drinking a beer. He doesn’t say much, mostly because he knows I help pay the bills, and because he’s probably already drunk. To his credit, he’s not a mean drunk, not like the last few men in my mother’s life.

“Her name’s Trinity,” I answer.

“That’s a pretty name,” my niece Cassie says. She’s all of fourteen, dressing like she’s twenty, and typing away on a smart phone she shouldn’t be able to afford. Like her mother, and my mother, she’ll probably be pregnant by the time she’s fifteen. She looks up. “What’s her last name?”

“Summers,” I mumble.

“Is she pregnant?” Momma asks, taking another drag.

“No.” The question shouldn’t upset me because Trinity isn’t pregnant, but it bothers me because in a way, I wish she was.

I wasn’t ready to be a father. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have stepped up and married her. Not just because she was pregnant, but because I really love her, and it would have been my excuse to love her forever.

Instead, I find out her idea of love and commitment didn’t extend past the summer.

I left Kiawah and drove all the way back to Linden, Texas, stopping only for gas and the occasional bite of food. I think I was almost to Arkansas when I realized I didn’t have my phone. But it was too late to turn around, and by then, I didn’t see the need. Who the hell am I going to call anyway?

So now I’m here, working as a bouncer because there’s not much else, and living at a motel because it’s better than living with the only blood I know.

I lean back in the chair and look around the shabby double wide trailer. With the exception of the warped peel and stick tiles, this is almost the exact replica of the house I grew up in, and the one I lived in during high school. Nothing’s really changed for Momma. But for change to happen, you have to want it.

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