Push Me Away : Book 2 of the Teeth Series

19

"There she is!" Calum's roommate, Roy, teased with a playful smirk as Fallon appeared from the guest room for the first time since that morning and joined him and Calum in the kitchen. "Cal and I were just about to send out a search party."

Fallon felt the sides of her lips quirk up in a shy half-smile. "This the search party?" She asked, stooping down to pet Duke who was happily wagging his tail and tapping his front paws against her leg seeking her attention.

"The food lured me out. It smells delicious. What is it?" She asked, redirecting her attention to Calum who was standing next to the stove in a fitted black shirt and light grey gym shorts, a kitchen towel was thrown over his shoulder.

"Kept it simple tonight." He told her.

A snort cut through the silence as Fallon laughed. "As opposed to your usual five-star worthy dishes."

"Hey now, that's enough out of you." He spun to face her, brown eyes swimming with amusement as he pointed to her with the spoon he held in his hand. " I let you into my home, allow you access to my cute as shit dog, and make you dinner and you have the nerve to make fun of me."

"Yeah, yeah, so really, what are we having?"

"I'm not going to tell you now. You'll have to wait and see." The look on his face was smug.

"Oh come onnnnn..."

"Fine, it's spaghetti. There's a salad waiting in the fridge and bread in the oven, I just thought with the move and all you would be stressed and I know how much you love pasta. Plus, it isn't very difficult, even for someone with only mundane cooking skills such as myself."

"That sounds perfect. Think my biggest source of stress today however was my sister."

Calum lifted his eyes to meet Fallon's as he turned the stove burners off and began to assemble their dinner plates. Fallon took a seat to his left on one of the bar stools that lined a portion of the countertops where Roy had already been sitting. "You spoke to her today?"

"Yeah." The woman nodded, her faded blue strands of hair falling in front of her face. "I was on the phone with my whole band and she and I kind of got into it and decided it was time to clear the air."

"How'd that go?" Calum said tentatively, clearly aware he was walking on thin ice and Fallon responded with silence as he pushed her plate across the bar to her and she twirled her fork into her spaghetti. "That bad, huh?." Calum mumbled to himself.

Calum shot Roy a look as he gestured towards Fallon, silently asking if he minded giving the two of them a bit of space. Under other circumstances, Calum would have offered to continue their talk in the privacy of one of their rooms but given that the living conditions were still incredibly new he didn't want to risk making Fallon uncomfortable by forcing her into a small space alone with him.

"I think I'm going to eat in my room tonight, maybe I'll facetime with my mother."

"Sounds good, mate. Tell her I said hello." Calum responded with a grateful smile as Roy retreated to his room.

Two sets of eyes followed behind Roy until he had disappeared from view before finding their way back to each other.

Calum rolled his lower lip into his mouth, his tongue poking out for a brief second to run across the curve of his top lip before he opened his mouth to speak. "Do you want to talk about it?"

An internal battle raged within Fallon's head and heart. Truthfully she probably needed to talk about everything that had transpired during her and Erin's conversation but on the other hand she wasn't exactly sure that she was ready to talk about it or if Calum was the right person to talk about it with. Given the current state of the world though, she didn't have many other options.

She took a shaky breath and stared past Calum out the kitchen window that looked out into the backyard. "I think in her head she thought she was protecting me."

"Protecting you? By ignoring you?" He scoffed. "Okay, yeah sure. And how exactly did you arrive at that conclusion?"

"She just...she told me some things that my mom confided in her when she was drunk and it was information that she knew would hurt me and make me less secure in the decisions I made."

"Wait what?"

Fallon sighed. "She said that I guess things were bad between my parents already when they got pregnant with me and money was tight and my mom apparently contemplated not following through with the pregnancy. Not following through with me."

"Surely Erin's not trying to make you feel like you chose wrong."

"No, not...it's not like that. She just got in her head about what life would have been like if I was never born and she didn't want to put the weight of what our mom said on me but she knew she wouldn't be able to keep it from me if she saw me face to face. She really was just trying to do what she thought was best."

"And how are you feeling now with this information?"

"Honestly, a bit relieved. I've spent months thinking my relationship with my sister was irreparable when really I should have known that for all her faults Erin has always had my best interests at heart."

"Yes, I really felt that the numerous times she made her opinions on me so clearly known," Calum said, his voice was teasing but Fallon knew by his uneasy demeanor and the way his vision shifted downwards that there was a lot of hurt still harbored by him where Erin was concerned.

"You know she doesn't hate you. Maybe I used to think that but I've had a lot of time to consider things and the more I think about her personality I think it's just her protective instincts. With our parent's divorce and us moving out to pursue the band and eighteen she's been more of a mother figure to me than an older sister. When we first got together I think it was a shock to her system that I wasn't a baby. It probably didn't help either that for the most part it had just been her and I against the world at that point and then we met and you took up all of my free time. Maybe things would be different if..."

"If what?" He asked, his eyes snapping up and not bothering to hide his curiosity.

"If maybe things ever panned out for us."

"You still hoping they might?" His adam's apple bobbed obviously in his throat.

Fallon's throat dried and she found herself unable to admit the truth with her words but the glassy look in her eyes seemed to say it all and she didn't miss the smallest of smiles as it appeared on Calum's face.

An: Hello! Look! An on time update! *gasp*

I'm doing my best y'all!

So what do you think about eveything that's happened recently?

Next up is the CALM release (and the stupid drama that came with it) it's still fuck billboard.

Anywho, I'll see yall on Wednesday!

ILY,

Sav