Page 47 of Then and Now (The Edge of Retaliation 3)
“She didn’t have to leave without sayin’ goodbye.”
“No,” I say, steadying my hand to do the outline, “she didn’t. But she was scared. Her whole world was spinning. Imagine, please, for one second, that you’re her. She wanted to be with you, but she knew your family would never accept her. She knew you would never accept her. She was afraid and she was confused. She ran, and she shouldn’t have done that, but if you can honestly say you don’t understand it, then you’re lying to yourself.”
He goes silent for a moment, then says, “It fuckin’ broke me. Do you understand? It broke me when I realized she was gone. Everythin’ that had happened, and she left it all hanging, with no closure. I know what I did to her, I know what she lived through, I just didn’t expect her to leave without telling me.”
“She made a mistake, Tanner. We’re humans, we all make them. She just needed to breathe again, to have fun, to live. God, the girl has never even been on a real date with someone she loves, she’s never been on a vacation, never ridden on a horse or surfed waves, she’s never been hiking or to a drive in. Don’t you understand? She has never been free. Never.”
“Is she free now?” Tanner asks.
I shake my head. “No, she’s not. She was finally getting somewhere, but now this has come along. She still doesn’t know how to breathe, and she deserves to.”
“She’s got a boyfriend?”
“Jake? No. He’s not. She’s seeing him, but …”
I trail off, not sure I should go on. Callie trusts me, and I don’t want to break her trust, but at the same time I don’t want her ruining the rest of her life by not being honest with herself, or those around her. She’s in love with Tanner, every single time she looks at him, her eyes change, her face changes, and I know her heart belongs to him, even if it is complicated.
“But what?” Tanner urges, when I don’t go on.
“But her heart doesn’t belong to him. She’s dated a few men, but none of them last. That’s because she only has space for one person and that person just brought another woman into her home and is flaunting it in her face just to get back at her. She doesn’t deserve that.”
He goes silent, for so long I wonder if I’ve really gone and put my foot in it.
“I never brought Madeline in to hurt her. I didn’t …”
“You didn’t realize she is still in love with you? Surely, you’re not that simple, Tanner.”
“She left me, Jo. Would you think someone loved you if they just upped and left?”
He makes a point. I wouldn’t. I get where he’s coming from.
“No, you’re right, I wouldn’t. But Callie … She’s different. She was so scared of her love for you, I mean seriously, sit back and look at it. She killed your sister, even if it wasn’t intentional, she is scared of living every day with that hanging over her head.”
“I don’t blame her, not anymore.”
“But your family have an issue with it, and like you told her, deep down, you are always going to see her as the girl who killed Celia. She’s never going to escape that. She deserves to.”
“I don’t see her like that, not anymore,” he tells me. “I’ve thought a lot about it, more than you could begin to imagine, and accidents happen. They do. Every single fuckin’ day. What happened to Callie was bad timing, but if it wasn’t her, it would have been someone else. It wasn’t her fault.”
“You should have told her that,” I tell him, wiping the ink from his skin and then continuing.
“I did.”
“Well, maybe you should have made her believe it.”
He doesn’t say anything, he just turns his head to the side and stares at the pictures again, zoning out.
I know the conversation is over, so I busy myself working on his tattoo. An hour and a half into it, Callie comes into the shop. She’s nervous about the whole thing, even though it was her idea. She’s scared and unsure how to approach Tanner, or what to do to make him feel better on this day, but the fact that she’s made an effort says everything.
“How’s it going?” she asks, stopping by the table and glancing down at Tanner, who turns his head to look up at her.
“It’s going well,” I tell her. “It looks great.”
She peers down at the tattoo, and her eyes go red, filling with unshed tears. “It’s beautiful,” she says, her voice thick. “Wow, Jo, it’s utterly perfect.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty proud of it.” I grin at her.
“If she was here, she would love it,” Callie says, more to herself than anything.
“We had a tradition,” Tanner says, suddenly speaking out of the blue. Callie looks over to him, and he keeps talking. “Every birthday she insisted we go to the homeless shelters with cupcakes. She wanted to share her joy with those less fortunate. She was a giver like that. So we’d spend an entire day baking all these cupcakes, and then we’d go and hand them out. They loved her for it, and that made her so fuckin’ special.”
