Lucio was punishing Cal because he had lost his fight. He had also paired him with a professional, and just a little over two weeks after he had almost lost. He didn’t have a great range of motion and that hurt him severely, but did Lucio take that into consideration?

Fuck no. I felt like breaking something because that fucking rat bastard was getting more and more unhinged. He could have killed Nathan, and that was eating me up. I looked again in the rear-view mirror and Cal was looking down at Nathan.

“Good thing our girl wasn’t with us,” I heard Nathan murmur.

“That was the only good part of the evening,” Cal responded, staring out the window again, looking broken. I knew this whole night was destroying Cal. He felt responsible for this whole thing, and it wasn’t even his fault.

“I’m glad she was working, but I know when she gets off, she’s going to be mad. We didn’t text her,” I said, thinking about Jane and her fiery attitude when we withheld information from her.

“I’ll take her anger any day if it means I get to wake up next to her,” Cal said, with a voice full of emotion. “I need to check on Kelsey and the baby too, just in case he decides he wants to watch her, too.”

I nodded at him in the mirror, letting him know we would go check on Kelsey soon.

“Her anger might be what drives her away, though. You heard her and we’ve also said it too. We all want honesty,” Nathan said, the voice of reason.

“We didn’t lie to her. We thought we were going into a fight that was going to be easy,” Cal said.

“Is this relationship shit always this hard?” Nathan asked.

“No, but you have to remember this is a relationship with four people. Quadruple the emotions, needs, and baggage. Shit is bound to be hard but, I think if we took Lucio out of the equation it would be much easier.” I was the one with the most relationship experience, and it wasn’t much because none of us had ever been in a relationship like this.

“I think she needs to go to Dallas for a few weeks. I’m afraid Lucio might do something stupid to remind me again.” Cal looked at me through the mirror.

“She said she wanted to go visit Madie, and her new baby,” Nathan mumbled.

“Hey man, stay awake.” Cal called out to him. “We need you to stay awake.”

“I’m fucking exhausted. I just got my ass kicked and my hand hurts like crazy. Let me sleep.” Nathan’s voice was sounding like he was drunk. I hope he didn’t have a serious concussion.