Mind Blowing, page 10
Packing the rest of her belongings hadn’t taken much time. Her dorm room was small, and she shared it with a girl she’d never really taken the time to connect with. Her roommate had moved out as soon as she’d finished her last final, throwing a “see you next semester” over her shoulder on her way out.
Jasper divided her clothes into two separate suitcases. One she’d take with her to Haxton, and one she’d leave stored at Jasper’s house until they got back. He told her he talked to his family last night and gotten everything squared away. He said they told everyone she was a friend of Blake’s to take the weight of the family’s pressure off, and that his sister Maddi was excited to have the help at the clinic.
Having a plan made her feel marginally better. One foot in front of the other. One day at a time. She knew she needed to figure out what to do about the baby, but it wasn’t going to come to her overnight. She needed time to think of all possible outcomes, time to decide what would be best for them and the baby. The baby. She put her hand on her stomach, and for the first time, noticing how hard it was. It was like overnight abs.
“You okay?” Jasper’s eyes moved to her hand, then back to meet her gaze. “You feel okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She was embarrassed she kept touching her stomach today, and that he kept catching her do it. “Nerves.” She sighed, dropping her hand to her side, her fingers brushing her thigh where her shorts stopped.
Her father hated those shorts, he said they were too trashy, showed too much skin. Ugh. Her father. “I need to call my parents.” She’d been dreading this moment from the moment Jasper had told her the test was positive. Speaking to her dad, hearing his voice, and lying to him… If Jasper was larger than life, her dad was his own galaxy and he demanded everyone rotate in the particular orbit he assigned. His expectations were higher than high, and his morals were etched in granite.
“Do you want me to wait in the hall? I can go load the truck, give you some privacy.” He picked up two boxes in one hand and then used the other to sling her duffle over her shoulder.
Her breath left her in an audible sigh. He was perfection, his t-shirt stretched tight around his biceps, his muscles working overtime to help her.
Was there anything more appealing? Were these observations no more than pregnancy hormones? She couldn’t remember ever feeling so physically attracted to another human in her life.
This wasn’t her. This drooling, wanton mess.
“Uh, yes, um sure. That would be good, thank you.” She grabbed her phone from her now-empty desk, smashing it in between her palms and twisting them nervously.
Jasper crossed her room in three strides, using his foot to pull the door all the way open. “I’ll be right outside if you need me, okay?” He waited for her to nod. “Callahan, this has nothing to do with them, remember that. We can handle this. We’ve got this. They don’t get to tell us what to choose.”
She nodded again, her stomach turning over with worry and guilt.
She waited for him to step into the hall, his parting words giving her the strength and push she needed to make the call.
“Good morning, Callahan.”
Her worry turned to actual dread at the sound of her father’s stern voice. Her momentary strength entirely fleeting, like a hummingbird darting away so fast you almost missed it. “Morning, Dad.”
“Are you all packed? I have some things to do at the office, but I should be in Greenly by five.”
She took a deep breath, steeling herself, filling her lungs to capacity. “Actually, I was calling to see how you felt about a mission opportunity I was given yesterday.” She covered half the phone, letting out that big breath.
“Mission?”
Mission. A beautiful word to parents like hers. Serving others while preaching about the lord: the perfect activity for a young girl. Heaven forbid she help others simply to help, no attempt at conversion necessary. “Yes. A friend of mine, Blake—”
“A boy?”
She closed her eyes, shaking her head at the instant thread of disdain in his tone. He said boy like it was a curse word. “No, Blake is a girl.” She licked her lips, hoping she could sell this the way she needed to. “Her family puts on a free health clinic for kids during the summer. She’s invited me to come and help for a month or so. I would love the opportunity, of course, but I wanted to see what you thought.”
In order to get her father to agree to anything that wasn’t his idea, she had to approach it carefully. Slipping it in from the side in a way that made him feel fully in control of the situation and her life. She and her mother were living in the universe he’d created for them and his parishioners. She wasn’t deceitful; she’d simply learned how to survive as her father’s child.
“Where will you stay? How long?”
At least he didn’t ask if Blake’s parents would be there to make sure she went to bed at the correct time. Her father’s leash was short.
“I’ll stay with her family, and it’s for the whole summer. They’ve offered to store my things for me. I can ride home with her today. The clinic starts on Monday. She’s from Haxton. A small town.”
“I know Haxton.” He paused. “There’s a boys’ school there.”
Was he worried she’d spend the summer getting into trouble with high school boys? If only he knew of the lust-filled thoughts she was currently having about a boy who was becoming a man before her eyes.
She stepped to her window, peeking between the blinds to watch Jasper rearrange her stuff in the bed of his truck. He leapt up on the tailgate in one smooth motion, those biceps pushing at the confinement of his sleeves.
“Callahan, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, sir.” She stepped away, letting the blinds audibly snap back into place. “There is a boys’ school there, but they’re out for the summer, of course.”
“Your mother will be disappointed she won’t see you. She’s been looking forward to you coming home.” Her father’s tone softened when he mentioned her mother. He loved her, that was clear as day. He was a better husband than he was a father. It was almost like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with a daughter. “It sounds like a great opportunity though, a great way to spend your free months.”
“You think so?” This was the key to dealing with her father. This was the pivotal moment where she turned it around to make it sound like his idea. “I don’t know though. I do miss Mom and—”
“No, Callahan. There is no better way to spend your free time than serving others and spreading the word of Christ. You have a whole summer off, and idle hands are the devil’s workshop, you know that.” He paused again, the sound of papers shuffling coming across the line. “You need to do this. I insist.” She couldn’t help rolling her eyes at how predictable he was. “I’ll make sure there is enough money in your account to get you through the summer. Your mother and I will come visit as soon as you get back to Greenly.”
They said their good-byes and she had all her tears wiped away by the time Jasper stepped back into her tiny empty dorm room.
Their lies were in order. Each family fooled into thinking something that wasn’t entirely true. Guilt gnawed at her gut, but their deceit was necessary.
She didn’t know how she felt about the pregnancy, and she didn’t know how to handle the way she felt about Jasper.
Callahan had never felt so unsettled before, and the tears kept threatening to fall.
Chapter Nineteen
Jasper
They took two separate cars to Haxton, Riley and Blake in one, and him driving Callahan in his truck. Jasper wanted the option to leave any time they needed. He wasn’t sure how this would go, how Callahan would handle any of it. His family, his pack, it was large and growing all the time. It was hard to curb the otherworldliness of it all, which had been blaringly evident when Riley was forced to bring Blake into the fold a few months ago.
Jasper wanted to be able to whisk Callahan away, take her back to his place in Greenly where it would only be the two of them. The two of them and the tiny baby she wasn’t sure she wanted to raise.
Did he want to be a dad? He knew he fathered the baby, and that knowledge would be with him every day, whether they chose adoption or anything else.
Being a dad was more than biology though. Did he want to be the one who was up all night? The one who took the kid to the doctor and taught him how to throw a wicked curveball? Fuck. He had no clue.
He’d lived a life wilder than most. Hell, he’d shot and killed his own old man. Still. At the core of it all, he was a nineteen-year-old kid with apparently too much testosterone for anyone’s good.
When they’d stopped for gas, he leaned against his truck and asked, “You feeling okay? Carsick?” He found it was much easier to focus on Callahan in the present than it was to think about their future together.
She stood crunching on the crackers he’d bought in the mini-mart. Once, Maddi threw up in Linc’s lap on a road trip. Jasper wanted Callahan to avoid doing that if at all possible.
“I feel okay, the crackers help, thank you.” He noticed her putting her hand to her stomach, something she’d been doing more and more often.
“Can you tell? Do you feel any different? Aside from the puking, I mean.” He wanted to touch her stomach too, to see if he could tell the baby was causing even more changes to the petite redhead’s body other than her expanding boobs, at which he paid way too much attention.
“It’s hard, like rock hard.” She laughed lightly, a sound he hadn’t heard since their ill-fated night together. “I think my abs might be harder than yours right now.”
He patted his own stomach. “No one’s abs are harder than mine.”
“Oh yeah?” She reached over and took his hand, pulling it across her body and placing his palm on her skin. She was warm. He swallowed past the new ever-present lump in his throat. Her stomach was hard, like stone. He applied a little pressure, focusing on the faint sound of the baby’s heartbeat. He rubbed his hand in a small circle, wanting in that moment to reassure them all.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Reluctantly, he took back his hand. “I didn’t, fuck, I didn’t mean—”
“To get me pregnant?” She scoffed, showing him her profile as she looked across the gas station’s parking lot. “I assumed you didn’t do this on purpose, Jasper.” She shrugged, her fingers knotting together at her waist. “We weren’t careless.”
No, that they weren’t. In fact, he’d been more careful with her than he’d ever been. He’d gone slow, he’d made sure she was okay every step of the way. He let her stay the night, he’d pretty much demanded it. He wanted her to know she mattered, that her trust mattered to him. Look where that trust had gotten her though.
“We’re going to get through this, Callie. We’re all going to be okay. One way or another.” He glanced over at her, smiling when she met his gaze. “I promise.”
Her chin dropped to her chest, breaking their connection. “Well, for what it’s worth, I won’t hold you to that promise.”
He wanted to protest. He wanted her to hold him accountable for every stupid word he ever uttered.
He wanted her to ask that he keep his promise, that he swoop in and take care of the three of them.
Jasper wanted someone in his life to require more from him. His twin was a force all on his own, taking the world in his capable hands and reshaping it to fit his demands.
Riley existed with Blake, breathing the same air, maintaining the same heartbeat. Maddi, Linc, and Allison were a family, a perfect unit that was thriving as were all the other mates.
Callahan was his responsibility. and she should want more from him.
“Will you tell me about your family? Please.” Callahan put her hand back to her stomach. “I don’t think I can take any more surprises at the moment. Don’t leave anything out. I need to know what I’m walking into.”
Well fuck him running. He sent up a silent prayer her next surprise wasn’t Riley shifting in the damn dining room. “Uh, you know, we’re your run-of-the-mill boarding school family formed out of loneliness and necessity.”
That wasn’t a total lie. He understood now Riley’s desire to tell Blake as close to the truth as possible before she was able to see the whole picture. Jasper didn’t want to lie to Callahan; it didn’t sit right with him, turned his gut.
She wasn’t his forever, but she was carrying his child, which could definitely account for his feelings.
“Jace is my twin. We met Riley our freshman year at St. Leasing. We were separated from our families, stuck in this small mountain town with no one but each other, you know? Baseball was life, so we spent the most time with our coaches.”
He cleared his throat, wetting his lips before he continued to weave their tale into something that made sense to her human ears. “Eventually our coaches all got married and started popping out kids left and right. They brought us into the fold, and before we knew it, we were honorary big brothers celebrating every milestone together.”
“Jace is engaged to Axie?”
He nodded, keeping his eyes on his feet, avoiding the setting sun. “Yeah, engaged and living together. Blake and Riley you already know. Then there’s Linc, Maddi, and Allison. They’re the ones I’m closest with.
“Keller and Molly have twin boys, Bhodi and Riot, Dom and Corey have Hadley, who Riley calls his little sister. Then Pen and Baze have Oliver.”
Jasper couldn’t help his gaze as it slid to Callahan’s stomach. Would their baby join the pack? They weren’t mated. If Callahan decided to keep it, they’d be co-parenting. Which meant joint custody and two separate homes. At most, their baby would spend every other week with him, and maybe school breaks and summer months with his cousins.
They stood in silence again for a few moments. He missed his pack, but he was nervous to see them. Scared they’d take one look at Callahan and know the tiny heartbeat inside her belong to him.
“They won’t know that you’re the father.”
She said those words like a statement, but he couldn’t help but hear a question in her soft tone as she seemed to pull his thoughts right out of his brain.
“Callie, I uh, I want you to be able to make up your mind all on your own, okay? I don’t want my family giving their opinion or trying to sway you in any way.” He reached over, putting his hand on her arm. “This isn’t me being an asshole or a coward. This is me wanting to give you want you need.”
“What if what I need is for you to tell me what I should do?” Her voice was getting quieter with every word she uttered, slowly breaking his heart and stealing the air from his lungs.
“Is that really what you want? Me to make this decision for all of us?” He’d do it if that was what she actually wanted. He’d hole himself inside his twin’s mountain mansion and wrack his brain day and night. Weigh the pros and cons, ask his brother his opinion, drink and consult with his best friend. He’d do it if she asked him to.
“No.” She sighed, the sound once again coming out like it was painful. “But I would like to know what you want to do. You said it was my choice.” She put her hand on her stomach. “This affects both of us though, doesn’t it?”
That was the million-dollar question.
What did he want to do?
He wanted to do right by Callahan. And if she didn’t choose the abortion option, then he also needed to do right by that baby they never meant to make.
He wanted to save them all; he wanted to have no regrets. He wanted to make the right choice. “Honestly, I don’t know. I want our kid to have a good life, a great life. I have money, lots of it. I have support. I could raise our baby, and it would be wrapped in love and family and acceptance.”
“But?”
“But.” He licked his lips, glancing her way to catch her bottom lip trembling. “We’re so fucking young. Your parents don’t seem like they’d ever be on board with being grandparents under these circumstances, and we barely know each other, Callie.”
He couldn’t give her his full answer because he couldn’t give her the whole truth. She wasn’t his forever. She wasn’t his mate.
He liked her, he lusted after her, and then he’d fucked her.
That was where that was supposed to end.
He wasn’t in love.
He wasn’t growling at anyone who dared to get close to her.
He wasn’t enamored.
His shifter wasn’t clawing at his soul, demanding he claim the petite beauty standing next to him.
He’d made a mistake.
He’d tainted someone who was never meant to belong to him.
Chapter Twenty
Callahan
She had Jasper tell her all about the people in his family, the people she would be meeting. As aspens gave way to pine, signaling they were getting closer and closer to the place and people he called home, she thought, she should’ve asked him more about where they were heading. Driving through the massive iron gates of his twin’s house was surreal. It was like driving into an alternate universe where everything was big and imposing. The estate was huge, cut into the side of a mountain. There was fencing and cameras everywhere. Everything seemed to be totally high tech. She watched Jasper lean out his truck to an eye scanner to access the gate and then enter a long passcode to open the garage. Jasper parked his truck, shadowing them in darkness.
“What does your brother do for a living?” She wasn’t sure the Pentagon would be any less secure.
“He’s, um, in charge of stuff.”
“In charge of stuff?” She blinked, her eyes trying to adjust. “That’s vague.”
Jasper stood at the back of his truck. “He has investments and companies, and he’s just, I don’t know, in charge of stuff and people.” He waved his hand around, like he was knocking away his ambiguous answer and her wanting more clarity. “To be honest, I don’t really know what he does all day.”
He grabbed a few of their bags and hoisted them over this shoulder. Three bags, one shoulder and one rippling bicep.
