Текст книги "The Redemption of Callie and Kayden"

Автор книги: Jessica Sorensen

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

frost on the cement seeping through the backside of my jeans.

Jackson walks up to me with his hands stuffed into his plaid

hooded jacket. His brown hair hangs over his ears and his

sideburns look like they could use a trim. He rocks back on his

heels, appearing apprehensive as he looks at me.

“Look, Callie, I don’t even know what to say,” he starts. “I

guess… I guess I’m sorry.”

I’m a little shocked by his declaration and my gaze darts to

the ground, my forehead creasing. “You don’t need to be sorry. It’s

not your fault.”

He drops down on the steps and stretches out his legs in

front of him and then crosses his ankles. He smells like cigarette

smoke and booze. I didn’t even know he smoked, but then again, I

don’t really know him, not really. Even when we were kids, we were

kind of competitive, and then when the thing with Caleb happened

any hope of a brotherly-sisterly bond shattered.

“I turned him in,” he finally proclaims. His cheeks suck in as

he inhales and then they puff back out as he releases a breath.

“Thank you,” I say. “But the police won’t do anything. They

really can’t. It’s been too long and it’s basically just his word

against mine.”

He shakes his head and rubs his hand across his stubbly jaw.

“Not for that… I already knew that wouldn’t do any good.” His

hand drops to his lap. “I turned him in for growing pot in his

parents’ basement. I even told the police where he keeps his own

stash.”

I’m stunned. Speechless. Unsure. Happy. Amazed. Thankful.

“So he’s… so he’s in jail?”

“No, not yet.” He sighs heavily. “When mom told me about…”

He clears his throat at the uneasiness of the topic. “About what

happened to you, I was at a party with him. As soon as I

confronted him, he totally fucking bailed on me before I could

even get in a good swing. He didn’t even try to deny it.” His eyes

glaze over as he recollects. “Anyway, he’s been dealing for a while,

here and back home, so I thought I’d try to get him in trouble for

something. If he ever shows up, he’ll be in deep shit. On top of

growing, he had, like, five pounds stashed in his floorboards, which

is considered drug trafficking.” A ghost smile rises on his face at

the thought.

“How did you know it was there? The weed?”

“Let’s just say I took a lucky guess.”

“Didn’t the police question you?”

“I called in an anonymous tip.”

I’m grateful, but also really sad. Warm tears force their way

out from my eyes and I turn my head so he won’t see me cry.

Kayden starts to open the door, but I shake my head and then shut

my eyes as the tears stream out. If Caleb ever comes back, he’ll be

in trouble. If not, he’ll roam around free. Regardless, my brother

did this for me and I’ll be eternally grateful.

“Thank you,” I whisper, wiping my tears away with the sleeve

of my coat.

“Don’t thank me,” he mutters and I detect a hint of guilt in

his tone. “It doesn’t fix anything.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say, drying off the last of the tears and

then I look at him. “It’s not.”

He doesn’t respond, instead rising to his feet. “But it kind of

is, you know. I feel like we all kind of saw what we wanted to see

and I blamed you all that time for making everyone in the family

stressed.”

I stand up too and brush the snow off the back of my jeans.

“People generally do see what they want to see, but it doesn’t

make them bad.”

He presses his lips together and then runs his fingers

through his overly long hair. “Yeah, I guess so.” He huffs out a

breath and then blinks as he looks at me, changing the subject. “So

are you headed back to school?”

I nod and walk backward toward the truck, staying in my

footprints to keep from sinking in the snow. “Yeah, school starts on

Monday.”

He gazes at the people in the truck. “Are you driving back

with them?”

Smiling, I nod. “Yes.”

“With a bunch of dudes?”

“Yes.”

“Is that safe?”

My smile expands into a face-consuming grin. “I’m safer in

that truck than I am anywhere else.”

He crooks his eyebrows at me with cynicism. “Well, okay

then.” I wave at him as I start to turn, when he calls out, “I’ll let you know what happens.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I nod again, knowing all I can do

is hope everything will work out, that I’ll get a little bit of justice and Caleb will have to pay. But no matter what happens, I spoke

up, made a voice for myself, freed the haunting memories that

have owned me every day for the last six years. I found my

courage.

Kayden

“I don’t fucking understand” are the first words that leave my

lips when I enter my house. It’s empty. Cleared of all the furniture, pictures, books, plates, and food, and the cars aren’t even in the

driveway. The floor is bare of rugs and the few dressers that are

left have been emptied out as well, including my clothes. My

parents took them too, probably to punish me for existing.

“They even took the blinds down,” I say, astounded, turning

in a circle in the living room. “Why would they do that? I mean,

there’s no for-sale sign, no nothing.”

Callie steps up beside me beneath the chandelier and right

in front of the bulky marble fireplace and she threads her fingers

through mine, giving my hand a squeeze. “They never mentioned

they were moving?”

I shake my head slowly, her hand feeling so diminutive in

mine, yet enormously comforting. “I haven’t even seen my dad

since he beat the shit out of me.” I think about the itinerary papers in the trash bin. “Did they just bail?”

“What about your brother?” she asks. “Could he still be here?

Maybe he knows where they went.”

Shaking my head, I tug her with me as I rush toward the

open front door. I trot down the stairs and round the corner of the

house to the basement. Kicking the snow out of the way from the

front door, I grab the doorknob.

It’s not like I’m upset I’ll never see them again. I’m pissed off

because I was starting to warm up to the idea of pressing charges

and now… “I have no idea what’s going on,” I mutter as I open the

basement door and find that that room is empty too. The leather

sofa Callie, Luke, and I played truth on is the only thing that

remains. The mini fridge, the television, and the futon are missing. I walk in, still clinging onto Callie’s hand and it soothes the

loneliness and feelings of abandonment rising up in my body.

I stand in the entryway with my jaw hanging open, just

staring at the room I spent countless days hiding out in. “What the

fuck?” I don’t move or breathe. I can’t even think straight as my

thoughts become jumbled. There’s a crack in the wall just outside

the farthest corner where my dad rammed my head through the

Sheetrock and then didn’t patch it up correctly. I had a concussion

from a “collision with another player on my baseball team” my

mom had told the doctors. There’s a hole in the carpet that was

once hidden by a recliner. Tyler had dropped his lighter when he

was smoking weed and it had burned a hole. To cover it up from

my dad, we’d moved the recliner over it.

“Can you try and call them?” Callie asks. “Maybe not your

parents, but you could try your brother.”

I shake my head in disbelief. How can this be happening?

How can he walk away to Puerto Rico or Paris or wherever he

ended up? And why? It’s not like he’d definitely be in trouble if I

spoke up. He could easily deny it.

“I don’t get it,” I mutter, turning back to Callie. Her hair is

twisted in a clip at the back of her head and pieces of her bangs

frame her face. Her lips are turning purple because the low

temperature in the room almost matches the winter air outside.

“We should go,” I say, shaking my head as I attempt to sort

through my rapid, disorganized thoughts.

She tightens her grip on my hand and holds me in place.

“Are you sure? We could look around and see if we could find

some clues or something.”

I sigh. “Callie, this is real life. There won’t be any clues, and

even if there are, none of it matters. To anyone. It’s better if I just walk away from it… move on.” I feel the hole inside my chest

developing again and the need for infliction is surfacing. “I really

just need to go.”

She quickly nods, understanding what’s going on inside me,

and she leads me outside. I stop to shut the door, watching the

room slowly disappear, inch by inch by inch until the lock latches

into place and the room vanishes.

We walk back to the truck and climb in. Callie sits on my lap,

and even though everything seems about as shitty as it can get, I

know it’s not. Because I’m not lying on the floor bleeding to death,

giving up my will to live. I’m here, sitting with her, and she’s

amazing and keeps my heart beating. She gives me a reason to

live without pain, without sadness. And she gives me hope that

maybe this will work out somehow.

Chapter 20

One month later…

#6 Take a leap of faith

#38 Finish Get somewhere with a major project

#44 Eat chocolates, have a lot of sex, and enjoy Valentine’s

Day, the day of LOVE!

Kayden

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Seth comes running

up to me shrieking like a psychopath. The library is pretty empty,

but the librarian, a younger woman with square-framed glasses

and fluffy brown hair, scowls at us from behind the counter. There

are paper hearts all over the shelves and walls and even hanging

from the ceiling. Valentine’s Day is in a few days and I’m still trying to figure out what to get Callie, because I want it to be something

special, something perfect, something that will represent her.

“Seth.” Angling my chin up, I nod my head at the counter.

“Watch the shrieking.”

He’s holding a crinkled paper in his hand. I’ve been searching

the library for about an hour for a book on Darwinism. Usually, I’d

use a computer, by Professor Milany is totally old-school and

always requires one book reference.

“Who gives a shit?” he says and then scrunches his face at

the librarian, who tsks, tsks him in return. He unfolds the paper and shakes it out, trying to get rid of the creases. “I got fantastic

fucking news.”

I put the book I’d been holding back onto the shelf. “No,

there’s no way you’ve found him yet… Fuck. You have… no…” I’m

kind of stuck on words because it’s unbelievable. It can’t be

possible. But the look on his face says otherwise. “Shit.”

Grinning, he hands me the paper. It’s been printed up from

the computer and has an article beneath it. Above the article is a

face that resembles an older version of the brother who left my

house years ago: dark hair that’s thinned a little, the same green

eyes as me, and a nose still crooked from when he broke it from

getting slammed into a wall. I’m stunned beyond words as I stare

down at the picture of him.

I hadn’t expected this to happen so soon. I’d returned from

the therapist only yesterday evening and told Callie that I think I

was ready to start searching. My therapist, Jerry, an older guy who

wears a lot of Hawaiian-print shirts and loafers, suggested it might

be time for me to start searching for Dylan. I put up a pretty good

argument about why I shouldn’t, including the fact that I’d slipped

up the other night and kind of rammed my fist against the door in

a fit of rage when I got a call from my father’s old boss who was

looking for him. No one knows where they are, why they left, and

it’s surprising how little people care. My dad’s boss was only

looking for him because he said my father had something of his. I

don’t even know how he got my number and the call reminded me

of everything wrong outside my Callie-Seth-Luke-school world. I

messed up, but I told the therapist. And Callie. And somehow Jerry

thought it’d be a good idea to start searching for Dylan, even

though I was worried of what he might be, or what he might not

be.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, chewing on an Altoids, which he

always has on him. “It’ll be good to have someone to talk to about

what you’re going through and maybe he can help the

abandonment issues you’re dealing with.”

“What abandonment issues?” I’d played dumb. “I’m glad they

left.”

“Yeah, I know you are,” he replied and scratched down some

notes on a piece of yellow business paper. “But I think you also feel abandoned. Even if they’ve done terrible stuff to you, they’re still

your family and I think you feel connected to them.”

“Or stuck to them,” I muttered in response, slumping back in

the lumpy leather chair I always had to sit in.

He wrote down something else and then shut the manila

folder and shoved it aside with a stack on the corner of his desk.

“How about this?” He overlapped his hands on top of his desk.

“How about we just try to look for your brother? It doesn’t hurt to

try, right?”

I rolled my wrist until it popped and gave a burning

aftershock, something that’s been happening ever since I cut them

open. “And what if we find him?”

He opened the tin of Altoids on his desk and popped one

into his mouth, leaning back in the chair. “Well, that’s really up to you.”

After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, listening to

the wall clock tick and the traffic rush outside, I’d agreed. When I

went out to dinner that night with Callie, Seth, and Luke, they

decided to take it upon themselves to look for him.

I just didn’t expect Seth to find him so quickly.

“He kind of looks the same,” I note, taking in his green eyes,

which resemble mine in an eerie, uncomfortable kind of way.

“He’s married,” Seth says, tapping his finger on the top of the

paper. “And he’s a teacher.”

I gape at him. “A teacher? Fuck, really?”

Seth’s eyebrows knit. “Why are you so surprised?”

I shrug and then head for the exit, winding around the book

cart blocking the path. “I don’t know… It just seems so fucking

normal.” I slam my palm against the door and push it open. The

area around and underneath my scars aches a little and I massage

my thumb across it as I walk out into the sunlight with the paper in

my hand. The sun is gleaming and melting the snow off the grass

and the sidewalks. It’s nice to see, but it makes everything a

watery, muddy mess. The gutters near the streets are flooding the

sidewalks and the grass looks like a pond.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks, hopping over a

puddle and then he kicks a rock off the sidewalk.

I shake my head and sidestep a large hole in the sidewalk

filled with murky water. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t.”

He doesn’t get it and I don’t expect him to. But there is one

person who will. “Is Callie at her dorm?” I ask.

Seth nods as we veer around the side of the humanities

building and hike diagonally across the lawn toward the sidewalk

that borders the street. The trees are raining down droplets of

water and they land on my shirt and the paper. There’s a light

spring breeze blowing against my back. “She’s working on some

paper that needs to be turned in by the end of the year, but she’s

hit a”—he makes air quotes as he walks backward—“writer’s zone.”

I smile at the thought of her locked in her bedroom,

scribbling away in her journal, naked. Although I’m pretty sure the

last part isn’t true. But if I really wanted it to be, I could probably strip her down and have her write naked for me. She’s trusted me

a lot lately and our relationship has been heating up immensely.

But I never push her—I don’t ever want to.

“I’m going to head over and talk to her.” I swing around a

jogger stretching near a tree. “Are you coming?”

He shakes his head, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his

tan pants. “Nah, I got a date.” He hurries off, with a spring in his

step, toward the parking lot on the opposite side of the main

office, the puddles splashing up beneath him. When he reaches his

car, there’s a guy waiting for him with a big teddy bear in his hand.

It makes me smile, thinking of Callie and the teddy bear at the

carnival.

I pick up the pace, taking as long a stride as possible,

allowing the wind to take me where I need to go.

* * *

I knock on the door several times before her roommate,

Violet, answers. She’s kind of a scary chick, with studs on her

clothes and one in her nose. Her black hair is streaked red and she

has a dragon tattoo on her neck. She wears a lot of black and she

always has this look on her face like she’s about to start a fight.

Violet walked in on us one time when we were having sex.

Callie was absolutely mortified, although I thought it was kind of

funny. Violet didn’t think so though, and she chewed us out, saying

we needed to hang a scarf on the doorknob next time. I was a little

surprised by her reaction. Violet has a reputation around the

campus and it seemed a little unfitting for her to get so worked up

over sex.

“You’re not Jesse,” she says, with her hand on the doorknob,

frowning. She takes me in with her eyes and then she fiddles with

the diamond stud above her upper lip. “Do you two ever take a

break?”

I roll the paper in my hand, making a cylinder as I shake my

head and shrug. “Nope, not really.”

She rolls her eyes and then steps back to let me in. I wipe my

wet boots on the rug in front of the door and then stand in the

center of the narrow room between their beds. Instead of closing

the door behind us, Violets leans over and grabs her jacket and

bag off the chair next to her bed and then heads out the door.

“You don’t have to leave.” I turn to her. “I just need to talk to

her.”

She raises an eyebrow, looking at me and then at Callie,

who’s sleeping on her bed. “Yes, I do… You two are a little too

much for me.” She walks out and slams the door. The whiteboard

on it falls to the carpet and I pick it up. It’s Callie and Seth’s list of things they have to do before they die.

I’m surprised at how many have been crossed off, especially

number eleven: do a dance in your underwear. Laughing

underneath my breath, I hook the board back onto the door and

then stand next to Callie’s bed. She’s lying on her back, with her

arm draped over her stomach and her shirt folding up at the hem

so I can see a sliver of her soft pale skin. She’s wearing the

necklace I gave her—she always wears it—and it makes me smile

every time I see it because it makes me feel like she’s mine. Her

journal lays open beside her head and there’s box of chocolates

next to her. Somehow she’s managed to fall asleep with a

chocolate in her hand. She’s put on a little weight since Christmas

break and seems to me to be doing better. I think it might be her

therapist. She’s always a little happier when she comes back from

her sessions. It hurts, though, sometimes, thinking about what was

done to her and all those years she spent in solitude. It’s probably

the biggest regret of my life. That I didn’t see who she really was

back when we were kids. Maybe if I had, then her life wouldn’t

have been so hard.

I drum my fingers on the side of my leg, deciding the best

way to wake her up. There are tons of ways, from using my fingers

to my tongue, but I know I have to be careful. She sometimes still

has nightmares and if I surprise her in her sleep, it could upset her.

Kneeling down on the bed, the mattress caves beneath me. I

set the paper down on the nightstand beside the bed and the lean

over her, resting one of my arms next to her head. With my other

hand, I trace her temple, the one with her birthmark, a small brown

spot beside her eye that makes her even more perfect.

Her eyelids flutter and she lets out this cute little moan that

gets me a little too excited. Grinning, I slant closer to her and

brush my lips across her forehead.

“Kayden,” she murmurs, not fully awake, and yet somehow

she knows it’s me.

I’m enjoying this way, way too fucking much, my cock

instantly getting hard. But oh well. Moving my lips down to her

temple, I lightly kiss the birthmark I’d just been tracing with my

finger, and then I move to the side and place a gentle kiss on her

fluttering eyelids. Her body shivers beneath me and she lifts her

chest and presses it against mine. My mouth travels down her

nose to her mouth, where I part her lips with my tongue, delving it

into her mouth and licking a path to the inside. Her eyelids lift up

and her massive blue eyes catch in the light flowing into the room

and they sparkle. She sucks in a sharp breath through her nose

and I straighten my arm, putting a little distance between our

bodies so she can regain her breath.

She glances around the room and then directs her attention

back at me and the sleepiness in her eyes starts to dissipate as she

blinks up at me. “How did you get in here?”

“Violet let me in,” I say and lean down to kiss her. She

responds instantly, opening her jaw and letting my tongue deep

into her mouth. She taste like chocolate and smells like

strawberries as my tongue explores every inch of her mouth.

By the time I pull away, we’re both panting, with fire

scorching in our eyes, and I’ve got my hand up her shirt. Keeping

my fingers near the bottom of her bra, I roll off her and lie beside

her on my hip. She glances down in her hand at the piece of

chocolate melting in her palm and then her face contorts with

disgust. She puts it on the nightstand and then wipes her palm on

the side of her jeans.

“Okay, that’s embarrassing,” she says with a timid smile. She

reaches for the box of half-eaten chocolates and starts to set them

aside.

I grab her arm and stop her, glancing at each piece that has

a bite taken out of it. “Okay, I have to ask. Did you eat an entire

piece or just taste them all?”

She sighs and throws the box next to her lamp and then

presses her body down on my chest, with her chin above my heart.

“I don’t like any of the flavors except for the strawberry.”

“I guess that works then.” I grin at her. “Who gave them to

you, though, by the way? It’s making me look bad.”

Her eyes glimmer with a slight bit of haughtiness that comes

out only on extremely rare occasions. “What if I said it was some

guy? Would you be jealous?”

“Yes,” I say truthfully. “In fact, I think I’d have to kick some

ass.”

“No kicking ass.”

“All right, but only because you said so.”

She smiles and then her tongue slips out of her mouth to

wet her lips. “Greyson gave them to me last night.”

I stare at her luscious lips, shimmering from the afterglow of

her tongue and so they’re fucking enticing it’s driving my body

crazy. “Seth’s Greyson?”

She nods. “The three of us went out last night. He’s really

nice.”

I frown, remembering why I came here in the first place. “I

actually just ran into Seth.”

“Where?” she asks. “I thought he had a date.”

Sighing, I reach for the paper on the nightstand. Unrolling it,

I hand it to her. There must be a very close resemblance because

she knows right away who he is.

“Where did you get this?” she asks, sitting up and reading

the paper.

I push up and sit in front of her, crossing my legs. “Seth came

running into the library today like a lunatic with it. I guess he was pretty easy to find, which makes me wonder if my mom or dad

ever really went looking for him.”

She bites her lip as she meticulously studies the paper. “It

says he lives in Virginia.”

I nod, tracing the whitish scars on my wrist. They’re fading

rapidly, but they are still there as little reminders of everything that happened. “I know.”

“That’s far.”

“I know.”

She lowers the paper onto her lap and studies me for a

moment. “Are you going to try to get ahold of him?”

I shake my head and shrug my shoulders, thinking about the

past. I’d never had a stellar relationship with Dylan, and besides, he ran away and never tried to get ahold of me. “What if he doesn’t

want me to get ahold of him? I mean, there’s a reason I haven’t

talked to or seen him in years. And it looks like he has a family and everything. At least that’s what the article says.”

Callie’s silent for a while and then she reaches her hand over

and fixes her finger underneath my chin, titling my chin up so I’m

looking at her. “But what if… what if he does want to see you?

What if he was just staying away from your parents and the house?

Or what if he tried to get ahold of you and your parents wouldn’t

let him?”

I remember when Dylan left the house. He’d just graduated

and gave up a football scholarship, partially to spite my dad and

partially because he didn’t want to play football. My dad was

fucking pissed and had told him to never come back. Ever.

“Yeah, maybe.” I’m still not fully convinced, but if I were to

talk to my therapist right now, he’d say that I was doubting myself

more than Dylan. He says that a lot. He says I have low

self-esteem. It makes me feel weak and like a fucking pussy and

kind of proves his point.

“I’ll call him for you,” Callie says, scooting closer on her knees

toward me. “If you want me to.”

I spread my fingers on top of her legs and frown at her.

“You’d do that for me? Call a complete stranger?”

“I’d do anything for you.” She positions her hands on top of

mine. “Because I love you.”

“I know you would,” I reply, both hating and loving that she

said she loves me. I still haven’t said it to her yet. I don’t know why.

I’ve tried a thousand fucking times, but I can’t get the words to

come out of my mouth. She never says anything about it either,

which makes me feel like an even shittier person. She’s so happy

having it one-sided. “I should be the one to call him.”

Her shoulders elevate with her eagerness. “So you’re going

to call then?”

I nod, deciding to take a leap of faith and see what happens.

“Yeah, I’ll call him tonight after I’m done with you.”

She brings her bottom lip in between her teeth, biting it

nervously. “When you’re done with me?”

Nodding, I lean in for her mouth, but then veer left and

breathe hotly on her neck. “Yeah, I really want to work on number

forty-six on your list.”

“Forty… six…” She’s breathing profusely as my mouth makes

a wet trail down the side of her neck. With each sweep of my

tongue, I gently nibble on her skin, bringing it into my teeth and

then licking it.

“Eat chocolates… have a lot of sex,” I say, reminding her what

it says as I arrive at her collarbone and glide my hand up beneath

her bra.

She lets out a breathy moan. “That one’s for Valentine’s

Day…”

I run my thumb across her nipple and it instantly perks.

Giving it a gentle pinch, I start massaging her breast. “So what?

We’ll celebrate it early…” I trail off as her head falls back and she becomes consumed by my touch. I slip my arm around her waist

and guide us down to the bed, laying her beneath me. “And then

we’ll celebrate it again on Valentine’s Day.”

“Okay,” she says with a look of ecstasy on her face, and then

her eyes shut. “Whatever you want.”

And she means it. She would do anything for me—she

already has. She gave up her secret, she gave me herself, she gave

me her love. And even though I can’t tell her yet, I feel the same

way about her. She owns me completely, uncontrollably,

irreversibly.

Callie

I’m so happy for him, and yet scared for him at the same

time. He’s found his brother and I just pray to God it goes well for

him—that his brother is a better person than the rest of the family.

Things have been going pretty well for the both of us. We’ve

both been seeing a therapist and I haven’t thrown up since before

the incident at the hospital over three months ago. I’m happy. And

the feeling is wonderful and amazing and scary.

It’s not always easy. Sometimes I have nightmares, especially

when the therapist makes me dig really deep into my hidden

thoughts. There was also one instant when I flipped out when

Kayden decided to try something new on me while we were having

sex and it momentarily threw my thoughts back to that horrible

day. He was great about it though and he held me while I cried it

off.

I’ve also been talking to my mom more, which hasn’t been

too bad. My dad and Jackson even call me. Caleb’s still missing

and I have a feeling he may be missing forever. I’m still not sure

how I feel about that. There’s a lot of confliction. Part of me wants him to suffer in prison, but part of me is glad he’s not in my life

anymore.

After Kayden tells me about his brother, we talk a little bit

about what he’s going to do, and then he starts to undress me.

After he runs his tongue over almost every spot of my body while I

cling onto him, he slips inside me and rocks his hips against mine.

“I love you,” I keep whispering through my moans as I knot

my fingers in his soft hair.

He nibbles at my neck and massages my breast with his hand

as he thrusts inside of me. “I know.”

It’s all he ever says. Or sometimes he doesn’t say anything.

It’s a one-sided conversation for now, but I keep saying it because

he needs to hear it—needs to know that he is loved. I hear it from

my parents, my grandparents, Seth, and sometimes even Jackson.

I’m lucky and I want him to feel lucky too.

Our hips writhe harmoniously together until we’re falling

over the edge. We both moan and I let out a whimper, which

always gets him excited. After we’re done, he lays inside of me,

with his arms resting to the side of my head. Our sweaty bodies

are pressed together and our hearts race with lingering adrenaline.

Eventually he lowers his head to my chest and rests his cheek

against my breast while I trace the back of his neck with my finger.

“What were you writing about?” he asks, staring at my journal

shoved to the side of the bed.

“Nothing,” I say. “Well, nothing fantastic. I was actually

writing a paper for the creative writing club. It’s supposed to be

nonfiction and I’m not very good at it.”

He pushes up off me and pulls himself out of me. Flopping

to his side, he extends his fingers for the notebook. I quickly sit up and snatch it from his hand, hugging it against my bare chest. “No

way. It’s private.”

He sits up, his skin glistening with sweat. His bare chest is

covered with jagged scars, small and big, dark and light.

Sometimes I stare at them while he’s sleeping, wondering where

each one came from. It’s kind of like a horrible painting of his

memories that will always exist, no matter what happens.

He crosses his arms over his chest, his muscles flexing, and

he frowns. “Oh come on, Callie. Just let me read one page. I’m

curious to see what you write about all the time.”

“It’s private. Some of the stuff… you might think I’m crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy,” he jokes, lowering his arms

onto his lap. He slides across the bed toward me until he’s right in