Kaleidoscope (Colorado Mountain #6)(45)

“You’ll be fine. Deck will be fine. Krys is just a little cynical,” Lauren told me. “Don’t worry, Emme.”

Too late. I was worried.

So worried, I was immensely relieved when I heard my cell phone ring in the kitchen and that meant I had an excuse to mumble my apologies and hurry out of the room.

Unfortunately, I was so intent on taking the call I took it even though the display said “Unidentified Number.”

“Hello?”

“Em.”

Oh no. It was Dane.

I said nothing.

“I… Em… do you know where I am?”

“I know where you are,” I whispered.

“I figured you did. They said they have your ring.”

My ring?

It wasn’t my ring. I didn’t even want it to be my ring when I didn’t know it was a stolen ring. But it being a stolen ring, it was never my ring.

I again said nothing but I did start fuming.

He said something.

“This is my one call. I’ve been waiting to make it so I didn’t wake you or something. I… things aren’t good and I f**ked up with that ring. I f**ked up with a lot. I know you’re probably freaked but I need to talk to you. Babe, please, can you come down to the station? I can have visitors.”

He wanted me to come to the police station where he was incarcerated and have a chat?

Was he insane?

“Today, I was going to break up with you,” I informed him.

“Shit,” he whispered.

He knew it.

He didn’t like it.

And, I guessed, if he wasn’t currently residing in lockup, he would have tried to talk me out of it.

“So, no. I can’t come down to the station because we were done and now we are so totally done, we’ve redefined the word done.”

“Em, this is f**ked up. They don’t have it right. I mean they do, parts of it, but other parts—”

I interrupted him, “Please don’t call me again, Dane.”

“Emme, honey—”

“Ever.”

Then I hung up.

I stood there staring at my phone in my hand trying to figure out what I was feeling.

Outside of feeling totally stupid that I said yes to a date, continued to date and let that man in my bed, I realized I didn’t feel much of anything else. Other than the fact I was relieved I didn’t have to break up with him face-to-face and could do it over the phone during his one phone call after being arrested.

That was weird, insane and made me feel creepy.

But at least it was done.

“Emme?”

I turned my head and saw Faye standing there, watching me closely.

“Hey,” I replied. “You need more tea?”

“Who was that?” she asked, still watching me closely.

“No one,” I answered. “Tea?” I dipped my head to the mug she was still carrying.

She got closer. “Chace can’t say much but I kinda know what’s going on.”

I didn’t speak.

She continued, “That, well, we all, since the kitchen is right off the living room, we all heard it so I know that wasn’t no one.”

They all heard it because they were all listening. Not a surprise or annoying. I figured that was law for girl posses.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s over. I’m good.”

She got even closer and her crystal blue eyes (that were seriously pretty) didn’t leave mine.

“He’s calling,” she said quietly, maybe so the other girls wouldn’t hear, maybe seeing to my state of mind. “You should tell Deck.”

No way. Jacob got bossily serious about Dane and didn’t want to discuss him anymore. I was just getting to know him as Jacob, the man who gave me orgasms during sex, but I knew enough to know he’d lose his mind if he knew Dane used his one phone call to call me.

Not to mention, Krystal was right. I was my own woman who’d taken care of myself for a long time. This wasn’t a big deal. I could deal with the little deal it was, and I didn’t need to drag Jacob into an issue with my recently ex-boyfriend he didn’t like to talk about.

“Really, Faye,” I told her. “It’s all good.”

She got even closer, reached out and took my hand.

“Okay, this is going to seem weird. I don’t know you, but those women in there, I know their stories and I have my own. I know that things happen. And some of them aren’t good things. And I know the men attached to those women, what kind of men they are, having one myself. And last, I know Deck. I know the way I saw him holding you and looking at you when we walked up to your house. I know in the time I’ve known him I’ve never seen him look or hold another woman like that.”

That felt really, really good. Like, blow my mind, make me want to run around singing and dancing, or better, finding Jacob and kissing him hard kind of good.

She kept talking.

“So I know two things. One, it’s important he knows everything that might be going down around you just on the off chance it might turn bad so he can stop it from doing that before it starts. And two, a man calls his woman, it is not good to keep it from him, because that’s sure to turn bad.”

It was then I was seeing the wisdom of doing what I could to amass a girl posse who knew how to deal with “uber-alphas” because they could share their wisdom.