Page 112 of Panther's Magpie
She doesn’t want you here.
Calloway clocks the move and steps forward. He pulls me into a hug before lightly kissing my lips. “Told you I would come back, Magpie.”
I hug him, needing his comfort.
“Boss, we had a little run-in here. I need to talk to you about it,” Meek tells Calloway.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells me, kissing me once more before leaving me alone with Aspen.
She is full-on glaring at me now.
“I see you had a nice little vacation while I was gone. How long did it take you to seduce my brother?” she hisses at me.
Her accusation hits me hard.
“It wasn’t like that. I came here because it was the only place I could think of to go. That man, Asher, told me to go somewhere I trusted. What did you want me to do?” I ask her.
“I don’t know, but not this. Calloway is my brother. You aren’t supposed to be with my brother. Friends don’t do that. We are supposed to be friends.”
I take a deep breath. I’m trying to remember she has been through something, but her words are so selfish. She doesn’tcare about the fact that I came here for her. All she sees is the betrayal.
It has my heart hurting. I don’t want to let Calloway go, but I always wondered if what we were doing was wrong. If I should have stuck to girl code. I can’t give him up now. I’m his, and he is mine.
If she asks me to choose between them, I’m not sure what I will do.
“Aspen, you have been through something traumatic. I don’t think we should talk about this now,” I inform her.
She sneers at me. “Oh, now you are telling me what I went through, huh? You know that the whole time I was there, the leader only talked about you. He wanted your gold-plated pussy. Maybe you should have let me run away while you took my place.”
It’s an arrow to the heart. I wanted to take her place. She has no idea the turmoil I went through knowing I left her behind.
“I would have,” I tell her softly. “I would have taken your place in a heartbeat. I didn’t want to leave you in that bar, Aspen. I wanted to stay.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she screams, getting everyone’s attention.
“Because if I stayed, we would both be dead. No one knew where we were or what we were doing. Calloway wasn’t expecting us. What did you want me to do?” I ask her.
“I wanted to not be alone. I wanted to not have to go through that.”
“And I wanted to not stop in the first place.”
It’s so silent you could hear a pin drop at my words.
She lets out a small, humorless laugh. “That’s what this is about then, huh? You didn’t get your way?”
“No, Aspen. This is about you taking some responsibility for your actions. You are sitting here blaming me for everything youwent through. I will never understand what you have faced, but it wasn’t my fault. I tried to save you that night and again when I went back. I have done everything I can to find you. I felt a lot of guilt when you first went missing. I blamed myself too, but the truth is, this wasn’t either of our faults. We should have been able to stop at a bar and get a drink without worrying about our lives. We can’t, though. What happened, happened. I can’t do anything to change that, and if I need to be the villain in your story to help you cope, then so be it. I will still love you,” I tell her, tears pouring down my face.
“Calloway is supposed to be mine,” she whispers, her own tears on her face.
I know what she’s saying. She doesn’t mean romantically. He was her brother. It was something she had that I didn’t. Now she has to share, and she doesn’t know how. I love her to death, but she’s never been good at sharing. What’s hers is hers and only hers. Add in everything she went through, and well, she is going through it.
My heart hurts for her.
“I know he is, but now he is mine too. I hope you can learn to accept it, but if you can’t, I won’t leave him. I love him.” I try to plead with her, even though I know it’s useless.
If there’s one thing I know about Aspen, it’s that she’s hardheaded and won’t listen to reason.
She shakes her head, the anger building up.
