Page 71 of Deeper

Callen

Rylan looks preoccupied as she leaves the coffee shop with Tatum. I gloat, internally hoping my little stunt at Utopia had the desired effect and that the stressed look on her face is entirely due to me leaving her high and dry…well, wet actually.

Tatum notices me first, and a smirk plays on her face, but Rylan stops in her tracks entirely when her focus lands on me. The girls say a few words to each other before they continue my way.

Rylan, shifting her eyes, stops at the hood of my truck.

“Get in.” I hold open the passenger door for her.

“What are you doing here? How did you even know where I would be?”

“Did you not get the message last night about how serious I am? Get in the fucking truck, Rylan, and for once in your life, don’t be difficult.”

Her head turns from side to side, and then she mumbles, “That freaking coward. She left me here. Some friend she is.”

Tatum split almost immediately. It might be making Rylan cranky, but I’m thankful she took off. Convincing Rylan to fucking listen for once would have been harder if I’d had to talk in code in front of Tatum.

“I won’t ask again, Rylan.”

She concedes and hops into my truck with a scowl on her face. I slam the door and walk around to the driver’s side. The air inside is heavy as we drive to my place with silence sitting between us.

Until it isn’t. Until Rylan breaks through the noiselessness.

“You can’t just fucking show up and order me around. It doesn’t work like that. I’m not someone you can control,” she fumes.

“I just did.” And it worked.

“Fuck you.” She turns in her seat to face me, her eyes ready to kill.

I check my mirrors and then slam on the brakes. “Fuck, Rylan! I’m not trying to control you. I’m trying to fucking talk to you.”

We glare at one another, neither caring that I’m stopped in the middle of the road. My hand goes to her throat, our twisted version of holding hands. I don’t apply pressure but grip her with the full span of my hand. Her eyes soften just a little while she stares back at me.

“I’m not being unreasonable, Rylan. We didn’t have a little misunderstanding we can pretend didn’t happen. I fucking cut up a man in front of you and then fucked you until his heart stopped. You can’t run from that.” I look away from her, take my foot off the brake, press down on the gas, and continue forward. I shake my head at the madness of my words.

Normal people fight about money and bills. I get involved with a girl, and we fight about murder and bloodshed.

“I don’t want to run from it,” she quietly admits.

“You could have fooled me.”

“I ran from the conversation. I never wanted to run from what actually happened.”

I glance at her and am surprised that a hint of fire I have only ever seen at the club is in her eyes. She isn’t ashamed of the mess we made together. She isn’t scared of me. She isn’t remorseful about the death. The conviction in her voice was clear. The passion in her eyes is revealing.

But something tells me she’s running from herself.

My foot is heavy on the gas until we arrive at the neighborhood I’ve been calling home. I pull up beside my land plot and park the truck.

“This trailer park doesn’t look like the ones I’m familiar with,” Rylan comments as she opens the door of the truck.

“An RV park isn’t the same as a trailer park. These places are usually filled with retirees.”

“You don’t fit that description.”

“I don’t, but I travel so much that the RV seemed like the most reasonable choice.”

I get out and meet Rylan around the front of my truck.

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