Page 67 of Heat Clickbait
The words settled something in me, something that had been tense and uncertain since the moment we met. I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing her in.
"Love you," I said, the words coming easier than they ever had before. "Not just the bond talking. I love you, Callie Odette Cross."
Her breath hitched. "Eli Wolfgang Reyes," she said, her voice thick with emotion, "I love you too. Now take me to bed before I decide to ride you again right here on your gym floor."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Crash
I stood on the roof of the pack house, toes hanging over the edge like some kind of deranged gargoyle, staring down at the pool that looked impossibly small from three stories up. The distance stretched before me like a chasm, twenty feet of empty air that might as well have been a mile. The GoPro strapped to my chest blinked its malevolent red eye, recording everything for the stream I'd titled "EXTREME POOL DIVE OR HOSPITAL VISIT???" with exactly seventeen question marks because subtlety was for people who didn't need ten thousand viewers to validate their existence.
My hands shook like I'd mainlined espresso directly into my jugular, but not from fear of the jump. Fear was easy. Fear was clean. This was something messier, more complicated, the kind of feeling that made my skin crawl and my teeth ache like they were trying to escape my skull.
It had been two days since Blitz claimed Callie. Forty-eight hours, seventeen minutes, and counting since I'd watched her stumble out of his room wearing his shirt and that dazed, bonded look that made my chest feel like someone was performing amateur surgery with a rusty spoon. Two days ofwatching her walk around the pack house with three bites decorating her neck like some kind of twisted jewelry collection. Milo. Nova. Blitz.
Mine wasn't there.
The absence of it gnawed at me worse than the time I'd accidentally eaten Ghost's ghost pepper ramen and spent six hours convinced my mouth was staging a revolution. Two days of my teeth aching so bad I'd chewed through four packs of gum, started gnawing on pen caps like some kind of feral animal, and seriously considered just biting myself to make it stop.
"Alright chat," I said to the camera, forcing my usual manic energy into my voice until it sounded almost natural. The performance came easier than breathing now, ten thousand hours of practice hiding the chaos behind caffeine-fueled enthusiasm. "Today we're testing if I can make this jump without dying, becoming a cautionary tale, or providing Ghost with content for his true crime streams."
I held up a napkin covered in what might generously be called mathematics but looked more like the scribblings of someone having a very specific type of breakdown. "According to my definitely accurate calculations. And by accurate, I mean I asked Siri how gravity works and then got distracted by a compilation of cats falling off thing. Anyway, according to my calculations the trajectory should be perfect."
My phone, precariously balanced on the roof's edge, showed 45K viewers already. The chat scrolled past like digital locusts, too fast to read individual messages but I caught glimpses.
CRASH NO
someone call 911 preemptively
this is how streamers die
WHERE IS CALLIE???
The last one hit different, made my chest tight in ways that had nothing to do with the three-story drop beneath my feet.
Where was Callie? Probably doing something normal and functional with one of the others. Something that didn't involve potentially becoming street pizza because I couldn't figure out how to ask for what I needed like a functioning adult member of society.
Maybe she was in the kitchen with Milo, letting him feed her bites of whatever he was cooking while she laughed at his terrible jokes. Or curled up with Nova in his office, listening to him read contract clauses in that ridiculous posh accent while she painted her nails. Or in the gym with Blitz, watching him lift things and put them down while flexing muscles that belonged in a Renaissance sculpture. Or tucked away with Ghost in his gaming cave, the two of them communicating in the comfortable silence that I'd never mastered.
All perfectly normal pack activities that didn't require emergency medical intervention.
The pool was definitely too far. Even with my caffeine-enhanced optimism and complete disregard for basic physics, the distance was wrong. The angle was worse. Best case scenario, I'd hit the edge and provide the internet with some truly spectacular fail footage. Worst case... well, Ghost would have content for his true crime channel, and the pack would have one less chaotic disaster to manage.
"The secret," I told the camera, backing up for a running start while my bare feet scraped against the rough roofing material that felt like sandpaper against my skin, "is committing fully. No hesitation, no fear, no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. Just pure, unfiltered?—"
"Tanner Luis Bailey, if you jump off that roof, I will personally ensure your streaming career ends with me deleting every single one of your accounts, burning your equipment, and telling your mother exactly what you've been doing for 'work.'"
I spun around so fast I nearly fell backward into the very death I'd been planning, arms windmilling like a demented scarecrow. Callie stood by the roof access door, arms crossed over her chest, wearing one of Milo's oversized shirts that hit her mid-thigh and looked absolutely furious. Her bubblegum pink hair whipped in the late afternoon wind like cotton candy in a hurricane, and even from here, even with the distance and my own psychological mess, I could see the three distinct marks on her neck. Dark against her pale skin, already healed enough to look permanent.
Milo's, Nova's, and Blitz's.
Not mine.
Never mine.
"Callie!" I tried for casual, like standing on the edge of a roof was totally normal Tuesday behavior. "Just making content! The viewers love danger! Risk equals engagement, and engagement equals?—"
She stalked toward me with the kind of determined energy that made my hindbrain both terrified and inappropriately turned on. Her scent hit me when she got closer, that spun sugar and chili pepper combination that always made my mouth water, now layered with honey and whiskey and mint from the others. Claimed. Bonded. Taken.
