Page 20 of The Damaged Hearts Bargain

“Cal.”

“Jesus, you sound far away.”

Cal sat up straighter. Of all the voices she’d thought she might hear, Syd’s was not one of them. Syd had been fun, generous, funny. But she’d also been logical and not sentimental at all. Of all the people Cal would have thought might have begged her to come back, Syd wasn’t one of them.

“I am far away,” Cal said.

Syd chuckled. “And you think I’m calling to beg you to come back, don’t you?”

“No!”

Syd laughed a full-throated laugh this time. “Well, that’s a good thing. You’ve been replaced, Callan Roberts.”

Cal grinned. “I have?”

“A nice young boy took over your position, both in the bar and the bedroom. His name’s Cameron. You’d hate him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He rides a Suzuki.”

Cal grunted. “Fair. I already want to puncture his tires. So if you’re not ringing to throw yourself at me, why are you ringing?”

There was a quiet, crackling pause. “To check up on you, I suppose.”

“On me?” Cal wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. No one had checked up on her for a long time.

“Yeah, on you. You left because your mother died, remember? And you might not have been close, but that can do things to a person. Plus, you don’t seem like the kind of woman who’s going to let it all out and cry. More the kind that’s going to snap one day and strap a bomb to their chest before walking into a shopping center.”

Cal took this in for a second. “So you called to check on me.”

“For the safety of shoppers everywhere.”

“Right.”

“So, how are you?”

“Fine,” Cal said automatically.

Syd sucked in a breath. “Let’s try that again, shall we? How are you?”

Cal looked around the living room, tried again to imagine throwing the familiar old couch into a skip and watching it being taken away and felt her arms and legs go heavy. “Overwhelmed?” she tried.

“Where are you?”

“In my mother’s house. My house. Looking at everything and trying to decide what I’m going to do with it all and thinking that it’d probably be easier just to burn the place down.”

“It’s alright for things to be hard, you know.”

“Like things have ever been easy,” Cal said, putting her feet up on the coffee table.

“Yes, but you handle the easy stuff. You leave before the actual hard stuff starts, Cal. I’m not saying you deserve all this, but it’s a good life lesson. Sometimes you can’t run away from things. Isn’t there someone there who can help you?”

“Like who?” Cal asked. “I’m an only child.”

“You grew up there,” Syd said. “You must have had friends. I can’t believe that the great and seductive Cal Roberts could have been a loner.”

Cal thought about this. She had had friends. Most of whom had moved on to careers in London or Birmingham or Manchester. A handful were still around, though she doubted any would be pleased to see her. The ones that stayed were the ones that had the biggest attachment to the town.

---