--NOW--

I barely have time to fill Cal in with what Marissa said about Mr. Scott, before April and Emy come through the door.

Cal stands up to greet them, and Emy immediately reminds him that he had said he would help her with homework. Why a six year old has homework is beyond me. They probably send her to some overpriced, private school, if the look of their house is any indication.

At least when Cal decided to get married, he was smart enough to marry rich.

"Could you show Em to her room? I didn't get the chance to yet," Cal says to April, just before he swings Emily up into his arms.

Her princess dress twirls around her, and her giggles fill the room, while Cal begins to spin her around in circles.

"Cal, you're going to make her sick," April warns with a laugh in her voice.

Cal stops spinning and dramatically staggers to the side, pretending he is close to falling over.

"Or yourself," April adds with another laugh.

"Again! Again!" Emy shouts, and Cal begins to spin in circles once more.

When he stops, he smirks at April and I, and then mumbles, "Uh oh," and runs to the kitchen with a shrieking Emy still in his arms.

The sounds of obvious fake gagging come next, along with more shrieking laughter from the little girl.

"April! April! Come quick, there's a huge mess in here for you to clean up!" Cal's voice calls from the kitchen.

April pulls a disgusted face, like she is imagining the real thing, and calls back, "Since it was Emy who insisted that you spin her more, I think she can help you clean up!"

"You heard mom," Cal says matter of factly, and a second later Emy is laughing again and sounding close to hysterics.

April grins at me and then walks toward the kitchen. I follow behind her, curious to see what all the laughter is about.

When we walk in, we find Emy on her back on the floor, her arms stretched over her head with her little hands in Cal's. He's bent forward and walking backwards, carefully dragging the little girl across the glossy tiles that make up the kitchen floor.

He looks up at us when we walk into the room, and the beaming smile on his face almost makes my heart stop. "I couldn't find the mop, but it turns out monsters work better," he explains with a twinkle in his eyes.

Emy kicks her feet and shakes her arms like she's attempting to escape, but it's obvious by her open mouth smile and unstoppable giggles that she doesn't really want to get away. "You didn't even look for the mop, Dad!" she accuses, to which Cal simply shrugs.

"Like I said, monsters work better!"

"Alright, alright," April says with another laugh as she claps her hands together, "I hate to be the one breaking up the fun, but it's getting late. You do have homework, Emy, and you're going to need a bath after being used as a mop."

Cal stops dragging Emily and pulls her to her feet.

"He didn't actually barf, Mom," Emy explains with a scowl, causing Cal to laugh under his breath.

April smiles at her. "I know that, dear, but you still need a bath tonight. Go get your workbook from school so dad can help you."

Emy looks at Cal with a small pout, and he shakes his head at her. "Don't give me that look. Listen to your mother. I only get to be the fun one when she's being responsible, remember?"

"She's always responsible," Emy grumbles as she walks back to the front door to get her small bookbag.

"There's worse things for a mother to be!" Cal calls after her. There's a soft laugh in his voice, but I don't miss the seriousness that his statement also carries.

I know all about his mother—well, maybe not all, but enough.

April doesn't seem to miss the very real meaning behind Cal's words either. She moves toward him and lightly touches his hand, and I find myself wondering how much he has told her about the wretched woman.

"I'm going to get Emilia settled in her room, and show her where she can take a shower if she wants one. If you're too spent to help Emy out tonight—" April begins, but Cal cuts her off.

"No, I'm good," he answers. He laces his fingers with hers and pulls her closer to kiss her forehead. He mumbles something low into her ear, that I can't quite catch, then looks at me and smiles. "I won't be long. I'll come find you when I'm done. Unless you want to sleep? No offense, but you look exhausted, Em."

I shake my head, even though I am exhausted. "No, I won't be sleeping any time soon. I'd love to talk to you more."

"Okay, I'll see you soon then," he replies, and I don't miss the excitement in his voice.

He can't get enough of me. He's being a good dad and keeping his promise to his step-kid, but it's obvious that he would rather be spending time with me.

Emy comes back into the kitchen with her homework, and Cal pulls out a chair for her at the kitchen table. He smiles at April and I one more time, almost looking nervous, and then pulls out a chair for himself.

"Right this way," April says to me.

She leads me upstairs to the last room in the hallway. "There's a bathroom right here if you want to take a shower," she offers and points to the door across from the room we had entered.

I simply nod.

"There's towels and washcloths in the hall closet. Help yourself to any of the shampoos and soaps in the bathroom. Do you need anything else?"

Just your husband, and then I'll be on my way.

I shake my head, and April smiles again. She steps toward the door to leave me to it, but then hesitates and turns back to me. "Believe it or not, I am really glad that you're here, Emilia," she tells me with another one of her kind smiles. "I know how much you mean to Cal. I always hoped that he'd see you again. I really hope we can get to know each other some more. Please don't hesitate to ask if you need anything, and you're welcome to stay with us as long as you'd like. What's ours is yours, however long you're here."

When I only stare back at her, she turns around and leaves the room.

Fucking bitch. I didn't miss the way she had thrown in that subtle reminder that Cal currently belongs to her.

Damn, is she ever going to be surprised when the time comes for me to leave and he comes with me.

----------

Cal finds me sitting up in bed after I have showered and gotten dressed in some comfortable clothes.

He lightly raps his knuckles against the door, and makes his way into the room when I tell him, "Come in," leaving the door open behind him. In his hand is a plate full of onion rings and french fries.

"Nice shirt," he comments softly. He grips the back of the light grey accent chair in the corner of the room and pulls it to the bed. "I brought a snack, since you didn't get a chance to eat very much of your pancakes."

I look down at the large black tee I'm wearing. It's one of the ones he had left behind. I regret my earlier decision of putting my legs under the covers. It might have worked to my advantage to let Cal see my bare legs.

"You always wore black so well," I tell him with a smile, "I never imagined I would see you in a black suit though. What was that all about, anyway? Did you become a business man or something?"

Cal laughs and shakes his head. "No, I only have a suit 'cause I got one when I got married. I figured it would sit in the closet and collect dust, but Monster had some father-daughter dance thing after school today, so I pulled it out for the occasion. We went to the park after to meet up with Theo. He was doing me a favour and had gotten off work early to get Emy home and fed 'cause I was a little pressed for time, and April had plans."

"Oh," I answer. My heart somehow feels both warm and empty at the image of Cal dancing with his daughter. "That makes more sense than you being a business man, I guess." What I don't say, is that him being a father doesn't actually make any sense in my head.

He didn't want kids. Is having a step-kid somehow different?

I look at the plate when he holds it out toward me. "Onion rings and fries? You spoil me."

"The fries are mine," he replies, but then picks one off of the plate and holds it toward me. "I guess I can share though. I'm not going to lie, I already ate double this amount while I waited for your onion rings to finish, so these are mostly for you."

I smile at him and take it from his hand. "I guess I can share my onion rings then."

Cal scrunches up his nose, and I laugh out loud.

"You still don't like onions, huh?"

"If Monster wasn't such a fan, I wouldn't even allow them in this house," he claims with a serious expression, followed by a smirk. "Honestly, I didn't even realize we had onion rings, but I noticed them in the freezer when I took out the bag of fries, and I remembered how you could never decide between the two."

I smile and take an onion ring off the plate. "I'm surprised you remembered that."

"I remember everything about you, Emy," he replies. His eyes hold mine and I can't look away. "For awhile, I tried to forget. I tried to drown you out, but you just wouldn't leave me alone. You've always been with me."

I bite my lip to keep myself from crying. "I had the same problem with you."

Cal smiles and then sets the plate down on top of the comforter that covers the bed so that it's closer to me.

There's a comfortable silence between us while I continue to eat the onion rings and fries.

"I'm a mechanic now," he explains, turning back to our conversation about how he isn't a business man. "Well, working on becoming one. I've been doing an apprenticeship with a guy who has a garage in town. He's a friend of Theo's."

"Wow, Cal, that's perfect! You always seemed really interested in working on the cars back home."

Cal nods his head. "Yeah, I'm really thankful. I learned a lot with the guys, so James, my boss, was impressed and hired me on with minimal conditions. I got my GED, and I've been working under James and doing some classes to get my red seal, which is like a diploma in the trades."

"Conditions?" I ask warily. I've experienced the type of "conditions" Cal has worked under before, and none of them were good ones.

Cal smirks. "Yeah, they're reasonable conditions though. The type that are good for me."

"Such as?"

"Well, I had to get my driver's license for one. Other than that, it's mostly just normal job requirements. Showing up on time, working overtime when it's needed, staying sober..." He looks away and rubs the back of his neck.

"I, uh, fucked that one up a couple of months ago. I think James took pity on me though, because when I came home from rehab, I somehow still had a job. It kind of fucking sucks that it's out of pity, but that's on me. I just need to prove I'm worth it now, and catch up on the schooling I missed out on."

I frown at him. "I thought you got married a couple of months ago?"

Cal sighs and nods. "Yeah, and barely a week later I was so high I couldn't see straight." He runs his hands over his face and looks down at the floor. "Some, uh, stuff came up, and I didn't know how to deal, so I fell back on old habits and just about fucked up my entire life in the process. Again. I've always been good at that, huh?" He chuckles, but it sounds forced and sad.

I reach for his hand and give it a tight squeeze. "You've been through a lot, Cal. It's okay if you need to push it down sometimes with whatever way you know how."

Cal shakes his head, and continues looking at the floor. "No, it's really not. I just have to keep learning that the hard way though... I was sure I was going to come home to divorce papers. I don't know, I think a part of me got high thinking April would leave me. It was like I was testing her or something."

He stops talking and takes his eyes off the floor to look at my face. "That doesn't sound like me, right? Trying to push people away who love me?" The sarcasm in his voice is obvious.

I smile at him and shake my head. "That doesn't sound like Cal Jones at all. Very out of character."

He smirks at my joke and shrugs his shoulders, but then his expression turns serious again. "The thing is though, I found out just how much April does love me. She welcomed me back with open arms, but she also wasn't afraid to be honest with me about how much I had hurt her and Monster."

"That's not fair!" I defend him, "It's not like you meant to hurt them."

Cal grimaces. "I sort of did. Not because I wanted them to be in pain, but because I was trying to test them. April had every right to be upset with me, not just for what I did to her, but for what I did to her daughter. Our daughter."

I shake my head again and open my mouth to interject, but Cal keeps talking.

"In the beginning... Well, after she didn't totally despise me, April had been really cautious about giving me a chance. She was terrified to let anyone in. Not because she didn't want to get hurt, though I'm sure that was part of it, but because she didn't want to give anyone the power to hurt Emily. It took a lot of convincing on my part to get her to give me a shot, and even after we were together for awhile, she turned down two of my proposals before she agreed to marry me."

He laughs at the expression on my face. "I didn't take it too personally. She had good reasons each time. But anyway, once I had officially been sober for a year, she proposed to me." He grins at the memory. "It shocked the hell out of me and almost had me crying." He laughs, but his expression makes it impossible to know whether he's joking or not.

"She wasn't a fool. She knew I could relapse. But I guess in her mind, 365 days was enough proof that I could be reliable for Monster. So when I ended up showing up at her mother-in-law's birthday party higher than a kite, barely a week after our wedding, it was a serious let down. When she had to explain to her six year old that her new dad was going to go away for a few weeks, it was really painful. So yeah, Emy, it was very fair of her to tell me off for hurting them. What I did to them, that was the unfair part."

"You've been sober for over a year?" I ask, trying to hide the surprise in my voice.

"I had been. Now it's been 87 days. When I use, the count starts over, otherwise I'd be onto year two by now. I, uh, had a couple of slip ups before the last one. And a lot of them early on, when Theo first took me in, but I've been working on it for a little more than two years now."

When he first told me he was trying to be sober, I hadn't realized he had been working on it for so long. I feel awful for the way I had tried to convince him to do lines with me in Theo's truck.

"Fuck Cal, I put blow right in front of you. In your hands! I'm so sorry!"

He shrugs his shoulders. "It's okay, you didn't know. I turned you down, didn't I? I'm actually feeling pretty good about that. Maybe I should thank you."

"Maybe you should," I tease, which earns me a frown.

"No, fuck that. I wanted to kill you, Emy," he says in a quiet voice, "Which was very confusing for me, since I also wanted to wrap you in my arms and never let you go. I can't go down that road again. I won't."

"I'm sorry," I apologize again.

I do feel terrible, but hearing Cal admit that he wanted to hold me and never let me go?

Well, that feels incredible.

Cal sighs again. "No, like I said, you don't need to be sorry, just... You need to promise me that as long as you're here, you're not going to do drugs. You said you aren't addicted, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? I just really can't have that shit around me, Emy. I know if I fuck up, that's only ever on me, but I can't be stupid and allow it around me when I know that it still tempts me. So you need to promise—"

"I promise, Cal. I wouldn't do that to you," I tell him, and I mean it.

He smiles. "Thank you. Now, enough about me. What about you? Tell me everything. How's Justin? Is Mack still an asshole? Is Joe still making schemes to steal from the rich to keep himself from being poor?"

My stomach drops and twists, while my heart feels like it's trying to beat out of my chest. "I don't want to talk about them, Cal," I mumble. I look away from him. "I'm tired."

"Oh, okay," he answers. He stands up from the chair. "I'll, uh, let you sleep, okay?"

I can tell he doesn't want to leave, and I don't want him to. But I know that if I let him stick around, he will ask questions. Questions that I'm not ready to answer. So I say, "Okay," and pull the covers up to my chin.

"I'm so happy you're here, Emy," he says with a wide smile. He starts reaching a hand toward me, but then seems to catch himself and pulls his hand back. He picks up the empty plate from the bed instead. "Have a great sleep."

He walks to the door and flicks the light off.

I sit up straight and cry out his name. "Cal!"

He quickly turns the light back on and looks at me with concern. "What's wrong?"

"Uhm," I hesitate, "Could you keep the light on? I don't... I don't sleep well without it."

He studies me carefully with his eyebrows drawn together. "Since when?"

I shake my head. "Don't worry about it."

He crosses the room and sits down in the chair again. He sets the plate on the nightstand and perches on the edge of the chair to get closer to me. "What aren't you telling me, Emilia? You've never been afraid of the dark."

I stare up at him, trying to calm my racing heart. "It's nothing, Cal. I've just realized I like the light on better."

"Bullshit. You've got bags under your eyes, you've lost weight, you were wandering around a park with a bag of blow in your bag, though you claim that's a recent thing you've only just picked up doing again... What's going on, Emy?"

"I've just been stressed out," I fib, "Finding out Adam lied to you, and that you were out there thinking I left you... It's been really hard on me."

Cal narrows his eyes. "Yeah, of course, but that doesn't explain why you want the light on."

I let out a frustrated sound and roll away to have my back toward him. "Good night, Cal."

"Good night, Emy."

I wait to hear his footsteps leaving the room, but it doesn't happen. I roll back to face him again. "Are you just going to sit there all night?"

He shakes his head. "Not all night. Just until you fall asleep. Is that okay?"

I nod and a tear slides down my cheek.

Cal reaches for it and brushes it away with his thumb. "You're safe here, Emy. And I'm here if you want to talk. Or even April, if you'd prefer. She's a really good listener."

Over my dead body.

"Thanks Cal. I just want to sleep though."

He nods and leans back in the chair.

I wish he would curl up next to me and stroke my hair, but I know that would be asking too much. Just having him watch over me helps me feel safer though. For now, I'll just have to accept whatever I can get.

Author's Note: I originally wrote this chapter as Emilia recalling the events of the night before, but I changed my mind and made a ton of revisions.

Please let me know if you see anything written in past tense, or sentences that come out sounding awkward. I tried to switch it all to present tense but I may have missed something along the way.