Dare Me

She melted into me, her words a sigh in my neck. “I always will be?”

“You know that.”

It was at that point that Oz and Isabel found us and demanded we return to the party. They were hammered and Logan was nowhere in sight, which meant that he was neglected as usual. I wanted to stay where we were but Lake said we couldn’t leave poor Logan alone for much longer, so we went to find him and have a toast the five of us. We downed our shots and Lake immediately suggested another round. I wondered if she was using the alcohol as a bailout but I didn’t press the matter. It was her birthday. So we did a second toast and then a third and a fourth and by now, Oz and I were looking at our own Scotch like it was bottled torture.

“Partied hard after you left me, didn’t you, Callum?” Ana’s question perked Lake’s eyebrows but I knew she had too much pride to show more curiosity than that. I kept my expression unreadable for all.

“We had a good time.”

“I hope you haven’t exhausted yourself too much to give me some good stuff. Of course, I’m used to you refusing me the good stuff these days.” Her voice dripped with the sexual context only we knew. Oz frowned at her, Lake at me. Ana just smiled innocently and cocked her head. “Quick talk with you, Mr. Pike? Itinerary’s back there.”

I followed her to the back of the jet, containing my anger. “Thought you were big on professionalism.”

“And I thought this was a business trip. What is she doing here?”

“It’s her birthday. I’ll be spending time with her when work is over.”

“I don’t need her causing distraction.”

“As of now, that’s entirely your doing.”

Ana simpered. “Well, let’s hope it stays that way because while your company is rising fast, it’s by no means top dog and you won’t settle for anything but the best. At least the Callum I know wouldn’t. Then again, he also wouldn’t bring his fuck buddy to a business trip and make me consider scrapping his piece and writing about his competitors.” She pushed the itinerary in my hands. “Think about what you’re sacrificing here. Look at her and ask yourself if it’s worth it. Because girls like that? With nothing else to focus on? Their drama never stops.” Ana stretched her lips into a grin and straightened my tie before returning to the front of the jet. “And considering the completely generic birthday gift you plan to give her, it doesn’t seem like you’re all that passionate for the girl in the first place.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Lake

There was something about Ana.

She’d seemed simply flirty the last time I saw her at The Pike but the way she spoke to Callum on the jet confirmed that it was something well beyond that. I knew it but I kept my mouth shut because we were all in the same space and I didn’t want to give her the pleasure of looking so much as curious let alone threatened. I just smiled through the tense air, which I knew I didn’t imagine because Oz kept shooting me looks like is something weird? What the hell is going on? I could only shrug and pretend I was unfazed. All I knew was Ana looked smug, Callum looked irritated and neither of them were saying a thing.

Thankfully, Oz went into Oz mode and lightened up the mood with his account of how he and Callum first met in Scotland. He gathered us round for stor

y time and I took more pleasure than usual in sitting on Callum’s lap. “How cute,” Ana remarked. I could tell she didn’t mean it but I returned the saccharine smile she gave me and listened to Oz revisit the birth of the bromance.

They’d been at the same pub in Dufftown and struck up a conversation because the place actually had an old bottle of Pike Single Malt and Oz was drinking it. Callum was surprised because the family distillery had gone under ruin, declared bankruptcy ages ago, had long stopped distributing and had exhausted itself in the fight to recover thousands of perfectly good barrels of whisky from the bank. The company, barely a company anymore, was in shambles until Callum stepped in at the mere age twenty-four, determined to revive it though no one thought he could. He was young. But he did have years of business experience under his young belt thanks to the fact that he skipped college and started a prestigious internship at eighteen.

“Well, I found out about his predicament and I said, ‘Funny I should meet you then, since I come from a bloodline of alcoholics who build distilleries.’ I made a homemade whisky still when I was sixteen. I kept it in my room,” Oz said, knocking back a full two fingers of Scotch like it was water. “I mean it’s a little fucking tragic but I very well may have been nursed on the stuff because my mother reached for the bottle the second those wretched nine months were over. But I turned out okay, I was a strong baby. They tell me I delivered myself.”

“Legend says he walked out of the womb at four feet tall.” Callum’s remark made me spit out my water. Oz nodded seriously as if to say it’s true. I honestly had no idea how Ana was distinguishing the true from the false for her story. I was laughing too hard to even try.

“Now this – this is the part that convinced me that Callum was a good man and I had to hang onto this fellow.”

“Oh God.”

“See, there was this girl at the pub. I was by no means interested in her but eh, I had sex with her last week anyway because, pfft,” he looked in his big hands for an answer, “I don’t know, she was pretty and when she took her shirt off I forgot that she had a history of stalking and breaking and entering, so you know, she was there that day. And she was trying to take me home again even though the last time wasn’t very good. She had this little cunt of a cat that had no hair and it was givin’ me growlers while she was going down on me and I’d been drinking that time since well before noon so I looked in its eyes and I felt… like it was telling me something.”

Callum’s forehead hit my shoulder as he laughed. Even Ana was starting to lose her business poise as she giggled.

“I don’t know. It’s possible I dropped acid that day too but I swear to God that hairless cat was saying, ‘Fucking save me, Osborne. Take me away from this wretched woman. She’s a crazy one.’ I swear I heard it. He said, ‘I can’t live another minute with her, she’s mad. I was happy before I met her. I had hair before I met her and now look at me, I’m a fucking bald headed bastard.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

“Were you hearing it?” Callum objected.

“I couldn’t believe what I imagined I was hearing. I was so horrified and I believed this woman was crazy because I’d seen it with my own two eyes. I knew I had to get out of this situation because I didn’t want to end up a hairless bastard. So I stole the cat and I left.” Ana gasped. Oz laughed and clarified that he did not actually steal the cat. “No, I ran out without the ugly thing but it was one of the worst sexual experiences to date for me and for some reason this girl was still flirting with me the next week so I turned to Callum, I said, ‘Hey, mate, it’s been a pleasure talking to you and I’d like to continue this lovely conversation but I’ve got to escape that pretty girl over there because she’s a wee bit crazy and her bald cat is pure Satan,’ and it made no sense whatsoever to Callum but he said, ‘Say no more,’ and fuckin’ off we went. Hand-in-hand, into the sunset.”

Ana burst out laughing so hard she fell onto Callum’s shoulder. I overlooked it because I had to – we were all dying.

“I need to contest the hand-in-hand part but yeah, it was around sunset.”