Unconditional

“Hey, listen about last night…” he starts and I shake my head, not wanting to go down this road again and already feeling the familiar prickle that causes my tears to form.

“Cal…” I interrupt, “can we not?”

He stops and I take a minute to admire his looks. Dark jeans that hug him in all the right places and a Police Academy hoodie makes him look like a young college student and not a thirty-three year old man. His eyes seem to be doing the same to me because when mine find his, they’re glued to my chest. I feel myself getting hot under his gaze and just when I thought I couldn’t get any more turned on, he takes a step forward. “What’s going on with us, huh?”

You mean besides the fact that I’m so desperately in love with you that I can’t fucking see straight? Nothing.

I think about blowing him off. Making him feel like he’s crazy and that nothing had changed between us. I think about sidestepping the question with a joke. But inevitably, I go with the truth.

“I don’t know.” I bite my bottom lip and stare up into his stormy eyes. Eyes that for the first time seem like they may not have all the answers. His hand reaches out and pulls my bottom lip from between my teeth and I gasp. I stare at his hand as he lowers it slowly and I feel his eyes on my face, but I don’t meet his gaze. He takes another step towards me and my heart begins to race. A loud thumping in my chest that matches the one between my legs. He’s right in front of me at this point and he lifts my chin slowly to meet his gaze. His thumb finds my bottom lip again, and he traces the skin so lightly I barely feel it. But I see it.

“Cal.” My voice comes out like a whimper. He must have been in some sort of trance until now, not realizing how dangerously close he was to taking us over a line we couldn’t come back from because a growl leaves his lips and he takes a step back.

He shakes his head. “I need to go in for a little while. Will you be here?”

“I…I was going to go to the grocery store with Margie…since Thanksgiving is next week?” I say weakly, my body fully preparing to give out the second that Cal isn’t in the room. I feel like I’m wound so tight that I’m seconds from shattering into a thousand confused pieces that I have no hope of putting back together.

“Right.” His eyes dart to my necklace, just like they always do when he knows I’ll be away from him. The heart pendant around my neck is actually a tracker that Cal gave to me when I was about nine. There had been a flare up of gangs a few towns over that were crossing into our small peaceful county. Cal didn’t have jurisdiction there, but he was moving up the ranks fast, and there was talk that a man he’d put in prison was the brother of one of the gang members. Within hours of the first threat, I had around the clock protection, and I was told I could never take this necklace off.

“Cal, I’m scared. What if the bad guys get me?”

He kneels in front of me and pulls his sunglasses off, allowing me to see his concerned eyes. Like always, my eyes move to his shiny badge and I touch the metal. “You know I would never let anyone get to you. I would die before I let anything happen to you.”

My eyes widen and I throw my arms around his neck and let the tears flow at the thought of him dying. “You can’t die. If you die, who will take care of me?”

“Hey hey. We’ve talked about this.” He pulls me away and gives me a kiss on my forehead. “Aria and Henry will always take care of you. Or Margie. Okay? You have a family now, Maddie. One that would never turn their back on you or hurt you.” Until Cal, the only experiences I really had with family ended in death, so I wasn’t too big on the term ‘family.’ But I was big on the sweet man that had taken me in and let me turn his life upside down the past two years, so if he said we were family, I was in.

“You’re my family.”

He smiles and taps the necklace he just put around my neck. “This stays on, Maddie. No excuses.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. Sleep. Bathing. Doesn’t come off, ever. Got it?”

“Okay, but why?”

“It has a tracker in it, so if anything ever happens…” He trails off and shakes his head. “If we’re ever separated, this will tell me where you are, okay?”

I hold the magic necklace in my hand and squeeze it. “Ooooh. Do you have one too?”

He chuckles. “No.”

“But how am I supposed to know where you are?”

“For now, I think only you need the tracker, alright?” He raises an eyebrow and I furrow mine.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Language, Madeline!” His eyes widen but I can see the humor in them, and I put my hand over my mouth and giggle.

“Well, it is!”

I finger the necklace and he nods in response, like a language that only we can understand. “Say hey to Mom for me.”

I nod. He turns around and moves out of the room, and just as I’m about to let out a sigh of relief, he stops. His back is to me and, even under the sweatshirt, I can see the tension creeping up his back. “For what it’s worth, I don’t plan to see her again.” My mouth drops open at his statement. “It is your business, Maddie, and for you to be upset…it didn’t sit right with me.”

He doesn’t wait for my response before he’s out the kitchen and heading up the stairs. A part of me, a very large part, urges me to follow him. To confess to him what the last three years have meant for me. What I could potentially want in the future. I’ve taken two steps before I freeze, realizing that an impulsive move like this could have catastrophic results. Cal will flip one way or the other.