16. Vex

16

VEX

C alista's lips are so soft against mine, so fucking sweet, that it takes everything I have not to pick her up and take her to bed.

Her mouth opens, letting my tongue reach hers. She tastes like the whiskey we just drank, and suddenly, I couldn't give a fuck about dinner.

She moans softly, and I drop my hands to her butt, bringing her closer to the edge of the vanity. Stiff denim contains an even stiffer cock, and none of it is enough to ease the ache I feel.

So, it takes a sheer herculean will to let go of her without the gratification my body seeks.

When I pull back from her, her cheeks are flushed, and her lips are a deeper reddish pink than they were before. Never was before, but suddenly, I'm a sucker for her eyes. I've looked at the golden ring that shimmers around her pupil a thousand times, but suddenly, I see so much more in them. Honesty. A future.

"Take your time in the shower," I say, my tone gruff as fuck. "It'll take me half an hour to pull food together."

"We just kissed," she says.

I kiss her forehead. "Yeah. Might even do it again later."

"It's not a good idea," Calista says.

"Maybe that's what you and I are. A whole lot of bad ideas, Cal. But I think we owe it to each other to live through the next phase of who we are to each other as honestly as we can."

She swallows deeply, then nods twice.

And with that, I force myself to leave her alone in the bathroom. When I close the door, I adjust my cock beneath my denim.

My mom used to make this dish she'd call the Everything Stew. There was no recipe beyond throwing whatever she had in the fridge into a large pot, adding some black-eyed peas, seasoning, and eventually some rice.

My emotions currently feel like the fucking stew. A melting pot of everything.

I just kissed Calista Moray again, and I really fucking liked it.

And in parallel, I'm grappling with my own guilt and the burning question, how can you kill a dead man?

I contemplate the problem of how I can't get revenge on Cue Ball, seeing he's already in the ground, as I pull a large steak out of the fridge and sit it to rest on the counter.

"Fuck me," I mutter to my reflection in the kitchen window as I turn my phone back on.

The distant whoosh of water in the shower does little to ease the tension in my body. Knowing there's a naked Calista in my house has my cock all kinds of interested. I feel like a firework about to explode, but as my thoughts turn to Camelot and Cue Ball and Wrinkle, someone better be prepared to get fucking hurt.

My phone rings, and King's name pops up on the screen. I should answer it. I always do. But I can't. Intellectually, I know none of this is King's fault. He can't be blamed for what his father might have done. For all I know, this was a Cue Ball operation without Camelot's input. Either way, King was a prospect when all this went down. But the churning in my gut doesn't want to listen to logic.

It wants to throw someone down onto the asphalt and kick the ever-loving shit out of them for laying a hand on Calista.

I nuke some potatoes in the microwave to give them a jump start on baking, then throw them into the oven. I throw seasoning onto the steaks and let them sit for a while. Hope Calista likes peas and corn because that was my veg of choice for today.

My phone screen lights up with a message.

King: Answer your fucking phone.

I place my hands on the counter and study it. I've never ignored a message from the club president before. "It's not his fucking fault," I grumble and pick up the phone and dial.

"‘Bout fucking time," King says when he answers. "Where have you been?"

"I'm sick." I'm not in the mood to chitchat. "What do you need?"

There's a pause, like I caught him off guard. "Some masked little shits tried to break into the strip club office," he says finally. "Need the security cam footage from the lot or area. I want to know their fucking faces, their vehicle registration. I want to know where they live."

"Security at the club can access those files."

"And they'll take all fucking day to figure it out."

I see my reflection in the window again. I'm not the same man I was last week.

"Like I said, I'm really fucking sick. Just threw up. Lying on my bathroom floor as we speak. It'll have to wait until I can move my ass."

"Saint was hurt. Thankfully, not so bad he couldn't raise the alarm."

I feel a curdle of fear for my brother, but I can't make it past everything Calista just told me. Even though I know I'm wrong to hold him accountable for historic club decisions, I'm not ready to be the good soldier just yet. "Understood. But me getting the info to you tomorrow is not going to change that."

"Vex, I really need?—"

"You know what, Prez? I'm the only one available twenty-four seven. And I don't mean in the vague way everyone else is. But I have fucking insomnia because I never get to sleep through the fucking night. And I need tonight, Prez. Maybe even tomorrow too if I still feel like shit. And I'm taking it."

With that, I hang up.

I know it's not wise to hang up on the president of the club, but I meant what I said. I've been at the beck and call of every member. And usually, I tackle everything with a solid fucking heart.

But tonight is not the night. Not when I've just seen Calista cry her eyes out in my bathroom.

I place two of everything on the table. Steak knives and forks, glasses, napkins.

And I'm just plating up the food when Calista walks into the kitchen. I've seen her in my shit a million times. When we were younger, she was always borrowing hoodies when she was over at my place.

But seeing her in them now hits different.

Maybe it's because of the way she fills them out. Maybe it's something to do with what just happened in the bathroom.

Maybe it's because the time in between the last time we saw each other and now is allowing me to reset who Calista is and what she means to me.

I put the two plates down on the table. "Should have asked if you were vegetarian, I suppose."

Calista smiles softly. "Love bacon too much to ever seriously consider it, but I do try to eat non-meat meals a few times a week."

I pull out her chair. Not sure where the fucking dating etiquette is coming from. I haven't properly dated anyone in a really long time. Few years into joining the club, there was a club girl I got a little too invested in. But we had the crew up from the Miami chapter one time, and she left on the back of the enforcer's bike. Guess because I never got an official title patch, she thought she could do better.

I never really thought much about having a titled patch until then. I bank the flicker of resentment I have at the thought.

Calista sits, and I help push the chair in. "Don't have any wine, but I've got beer and liquor."

"I'll just take a water," she says. "I think I've had enough alcohol for today, and the doctor is coming to see Mom tomorrow. Could do without a hangover."

I grab her a glass and get myself a beer from out of the fridge. "There you go."

"If you feel up to it, tell me what happened after you left," I say as I sit down and we start to eat. "How did you end up CEO of a big company?"

"One of the best ways to get lost in the US is to buy a bus ticket with cash," she says. "So that's what I did. I'd sleep on them overnight, then change direction by day. During the hours I was awake, I'd think about what I was going to do next. I wanted to do something untraceable, at first. So, I used your money to buy a new laptop during one of the stops I made. I wasn't sure if you had a way to trace the old one you gave me, so I turned it off. I couch surfed. Pulled off some fast freelance shit. Used a fake name. Realized there is no better cybersecurity expert than someone who hacked the shit out of companies."

I cut into my steak. It's cooked to perfection. Just pink enough in the middle, the way I like it. "So, you used my money to start a hugely successful company. Feel like I should be asking for shares."

Her eyes narrow as she chews on a mouthful of food and points her fork in my direction. "Over my dead body."

I put my hands up in the universal sign of surrender. "Relax, Cal. I'm just messing with you. Don't need a share of anything. I've managed to build up my own thing."

"I'm glad, because I didn't want a legal hearing where I have to explain why I had your money in the first place. Although, some of my clients might believe it adds to my credibility."

"So, you left, you got a new laptop, you raised a bit of money freelancing. How did you parlay that into the business you built?"

She takes a sip of her water, and I try not to fixate on the way her lips look on the glass. In fact, I try not to fixate on the way she looks right now at all, because it will lead us somewhere I'm not sure we're ready for.

"It wasn't intentional. But clients started to recommend clients. My rates started to rise. And so, I talked to an accountant after a while. A man called Adam. Rumor had it that he used to help cook the books for the Mafia before he went legit. That's probably too big an exaggeration, but he was very comfortable discussing the things that skirt the law. He just turned seventy-five, and he's still my accountant. I'm his only client, and some days I have to go to the golf course to find him. Every time I see him, he tells me he's retired, and I tell him he can't."

I chuckle at the image of some former white-haired mobster dude on the golf course, with Calista hunting him down in a cart. "The business was Adam's idea."

She nods as she chews. "He told me I should go legit. Put as much as I could above board. I was making enough. He helped me file back taxes, helped me set up my business, and created washing processes for any cash I brought in. Introduced me to some of his clients. And then, suddenly, I was wealthy."

My baked potato steams as I cut into it. "You don't just, poof, become wealthy."

"Meh. I love what I do. I love what I've built. There are days I miss being on the front line. My superpower is finding weaknesses in systems. Being the CEO of a big company looks and feels a lot different to working with clients. It's more people management and issue resolution. But occasionally, I step in. That's why you saw me at the bank. The client needed me, then they saw my rates and balked, so I hacked my way into their business, found my way to the CEO's office on a day that I knew he was going to be there, just to make a point."

"I'm impressed, Cal. So, you still hack?" It's a loaded question. I can't help but think of the Sicilians. I want to know how she might have done it.

She puts another forkful of food into her mouth instead of answering, and I guess that's an answer in and of itself.

If I want to gain her trust, I need to not push too hard. "I built a life with the Outlaws. Mom was disappointed I didn't go to college. Lectured me about it just the other day that what I do doesn't bring the family good standing. But she doesn't complain when I pay off her mortgage or give my brothers and sister a shit ton of cash to buy their own homes."

"How is Mrs. Williams?" Calista asks finally.

"You hurt Mom when you left." Shit. So much for gaining her trust. "I'm sorry. That was unnecessary."

Calista sighs and puts her knife and fork down. "There's a lot about back then I would change if I could. Maybe I should have told you. Maybe I should have stayed. Maybe you shouldn't have become an Outlaw. Maybe you and I would have amounted to something else in our lives, or maybe we'd both be in prison for some petty crime."

I glance out the window. There's a flurry of snow falling, and I see it swirl in the brightness of one of my outside lights. "If you could go back and do it all again, would you?"

It's a question that haunts me sometimes. In the quiet of the night when I'm half asleep, when I've been out for the club and one of us got hurt or arrested or we have to lie low.

She shakes her head. "You know, I've thought about that, and I would. Everything that's happened in the last ten, fifteen, years? It happened for a reason. It brought me to where I am today. That doesn't mean I'm proud of every decision I ever made. I'm not. But, on the whole, I'd keep things the way they are."

"You mentioned hacking to invest money in things I cared about."

She looks at me, chewing a mouthful of food. Her eyes are wide, hopeful. I never noticed it before, but Calista is waiting for praise. I'm sure of it. "I did."

I see the little hitch in her breath, and it's fucking cute. "You did good. Taking that money and doing something good with it. I'm sure the organizations you gave it to really benefitted."

Her cheeks go a little pink. She looks back down at her plate and cuts some potato. "Thank you."

"No man in your life?"

Calista glances my way. "You're asking now?"

I get what she means. When I've already pinned her up against the wall, when I've already kissed her. When I've already jerked off to the thought of her. "Yeah. I'm asking now."

"I've had boyfriends, but they've never lasted."

I finish my steak. "Why not?"

She shrugs. "I suppose the easiest answer is they've never meant more to me than my work. And none of the men I've dated have been able to see past a woman who earned more than they did. Eventually, they run out of steam trying to figure out how to be with a woman more accomplished and capable than they are. And I get fed up with being with someone who resents me."

And I realize now, as we eat food together, that I don't want to beat her.

I want to see just how far she can go.