Текст книги "Dare Me"

Автор книги: Stella Rhys

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Callum

 

Lake never returned to the hotel last night.

I called her but there was never an answer.  I asked around the hotel, the front desk.  No leads.  But I shut off my insides the second I felt the panic.  I didn’t need that shit.  I was hollow for the next ten hours I looked for her.  Oz held onto the suspicion that she’d gone drinking to blow off steam.  He’d keep a lookout for her.  He was taking Ana on a pub crawl to do damage control and get her in good enough spirits to keep our article positive.

By sunrise, he stumbled in from wherever they’d been at all night, carrying a pair of heels and a giggling blonde on his back.  But his smile fell fast when he saw me in the lobby.  I don’t know how I looked.  Not great, probably.  I told him that I hadn’t found Lake and he immediately put the girl down.  He covered his drunk eyes with his hands, dragged them hard down his face and then sobered right up.  It was like a fucking magic trick.  “Alright, so what’s the next step?” he asked as the blonde moaned that she couldn’t walk anymore in her heels.  He tossed her the keys to his room without looking.  It was at this point that Ana came in behind them with the camera crew.  She looked fairly drunk but walked perfectly straight.  “Where have you already looked for her?” Oz asked.

“Everywhere.  I mean it.  Everywhere.  I had everyone here on the lookout for me, bunch of bar and shop owners doing the same.  But I don’t know when she left and we were doing the shoot for four, five hours.  She could be anywhere at this point.”  My voice was calm despite the fury raising hell on my insides.  It ran around like a madman and clawed everything raw.

“And she’s not answering her phone?” Whatever look I gave Oz made him hold up his hands.  “I know.  Obvious question.  I just had to ask.”

“I don’t know where to look anymore.”

“Then maybe you should stop.”  We both looked at Ana.  Her hair was down, wavy, flipped to the side.  Her eyes were bleary from the drinking but there was ease and confidence in her voice that had me irrationally annoyed.  I needed a break from her so I went off to the bathroom where I thought she wouldn’t follow.

Wrong about that.

“I need a minute.”  I was leaning against the sink when she came in.

“Do you? I don’t see you needing this bathroom at all,” she contested playfully.  “Considering your fly’s still up.  Womp, womp.”  I paused at her speech.  It was the only other sign of her having had a few more drinks than usual.

“Right.  Well, in that vein, I see you needing this bathroom even less.  Women’s is across the hall.”

“Don’t play with me, Callum, you know why I’m here,” she rolled her eyes and fluffed her hair in the mirror.  “Lake’s a grown woman.  She left so let her leave.  She’s finally doing you a favor.”  I met her eyes through the reflection, dazed and glassy from keeping up with Oz but so certain in the words she had to say.  I looked away when she reached into her neckline and pulled her tits up in her bra.  “You should honestly be relieved.”

“I’m not.”

“You will be when you let this all go,” Ana exhaled drunkenly, kicking off her heels and leaning barefoot against the sink.  I grimaced.

“Dirty floor.”

“Dirty girl,” she countered suggestively.  I must’ve rolled my eyes because she groaned and caught me by the arm on my way out the door.  “God, Callum, she’s dead weight.  She.  Is.  Bad for you.  And she made a decision tonight.  Now you make one.  It’s time for you to start making the right decisions again.”  Ana held me in place and cast that sultry look of hers on me.  With three neat snaps of her fingers, she undid the top buttons on her shirt, till I could see her round, pushed-up tits.  “Do you know what to do or do I need to spell it out for you?” She undid my belt in a flash.  Her hand slid into my jeans and palmed my dick till it grew reflexively hard.  She pouted.  “Poor baby.  I know you’re stressed so I don’t mind doing all the work tonight,” she murmured, running her tongue along the contour of her parted lips.  I watched it make a full, wet round before placing my hand over hers.  She moaned, squeezed a handful of my package.

But her eyes flashed at me when I slid her touch firmly off my cock.

“I don’t need it spelled out.  But thanks for the offer.”

I left her in the bathroom.  A muscle twitched in my cheek as suddenly, and might I add, disturbingly, her image fused with that of my father’s.  Christ.  Fuck my memories for doing this to me.  Ana obviously wasn’t him.  She just had the same brand of ruthless determination and the words she’d said reminded me of the ones he had left me with on my twenty-second birthday.

I need you to start making the right decisions.

It played before my eyes again.

It was my first birthday without Lake since I was six years old.  I had just quit the job I’d been hired to out of my first internship.  I had Logan, work friends, other friends hounding me to go out but I stayed in my apartment and chose my night’s company from all the flirty texts I’d gotten from girls.  The one I picked who came over had my zipper down and her mouth open when the doorbell rang.

My dad.

I saw him increasingly less with every year following the divorce.  Partially because he always kept trying to explain himself and his explanations always mentioned Lake.  I wasn’t in the place where I was looking to hear her name, ever, and I’d never forget how cruelly he left my mom, so I gladly cut him out of my life.

Unfortunately, Logan didn’t.  Our fathers were best friends.  It was the only reason I’d ever thought to befriend Logan in the first place.  We were polar opposites.  A thousand differences set us apart but the most relevant one that night was the fact that he worshipped his father.  Didn’t make a single move in his life until it was approved by Logan Senior.  I wavered between relief that I didn’t have that relationship with my dad and vague envy over never knowing the feeling of needing to repay for the warmth and support provided since childhood.  There was none of that with my dad when I was growing up.

But he made an attempt at it on that birthday.  I didn’t answer his text about what my plans were, so he asked Logan’s father to ask Logan and was given the reply that I was staying home.

“I’m sorry.”  He apologized to the girl when I opened the door and he saw her.  She gave a tight-lipped smile, wiped her mouth and grabbed her purse before slipping out the door.  In the hall, she flashed a call me sign behind my dad before tiptoeing for the elevators.  “For you,” my dad said, handing over a small, black bag from the same store that he’d been buying me three hundred dollar ties every year.  I reached into it.  Another tie.

“Would you like a drink?” They were my first words to him as he walked in and looked around, feigning interest in what I’d done with the space.

“Whatever Scotch.  Neat’s fine.”

I had no ice anyway.  I drank my Scotch neat just like he did.  It was no point of pride for me.  I handed my dad the lowball as he took a seat on the leather couch.

“You asked Logan where I was?”

“The older one, yes.  That friend of yours is trained like a dog by his father,” he said with, unless I was mistaken, a fond laugh.

“That’s a good thing?”

“Not a bad thing when your father knows what’s best for you.”

I was about to sit on the chair next to the couch but that remark kept me on my feet.  I said nothing in reply, only drank.

“Don’t take offense, Callum.  I’m here to offer you help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You can feel free to.”

His eyes were ice but he forced a smile.  He cleared his throat.  “There’s a position at my old company, Callum.  I’ve been asking around.  It just opened up and I think if we pulled some strings, you could start over.  You could do well there.”

My father worked at a hedge fund.  He, his friends and all their sons did.  “I’m not interested and I’m certain I’m not qualified.”

“You’re harder-working than any of the kids you went to school with, Cal.  You can do this if you put your mind to it.  I know it.  You can get your life back together.”

“I’m doing that.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t do it for you to see.”

He lost his patience all in one shot.  “For Christ’s sake, Callum.  Logan and all your friends from Mercer just graduated from their respective universities – business schools, Ivies.  They’re getting their MBAs and you’re just sitting on your ass here in your apartment without a single direction.  What happened to the son of mine who rose above everyone’s kid without trying? You’ve got the natural ability to do whatever you want.  Where did that drive, that determination go?” He sat forward, stared at me with an intensity that faded into smug disbelief.  “You really did let that girl ruin you.”

My bones went brittle.  I refused to show it.  “I’m not going to have this conversation with you.  I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like I’m some stranger.”  He hissed at me, on his feet again.  “Despite what you may think because of how I may have treated your mom, I’m your father, Callum.  I love you.  I am all the worthy qualities you have.  I look out for you from afar because Caroline isn’t going to.  I have your best interests in mind while she wastes her energy on the girl.”  He sniffed a bitter laugh, clearing the whisky from his glass with a sharp toss down his throat.  Every word he spoke after was singed with fire.  “Look at you, Callum.  You sacrificed everything for a stranger who clearly didn’t think much of you anyway.”  He held his arms out as if to ask where is she now? I only stared back, a storm in my chest but a vacant look on my face.  “It fucking kills me.  To see what you gave up.  Now I could let your mother do that – she’s a grown woman and she made her choice to indulge whatever childish trauma got her so obsessed with raising a girl.  That was her problem.  It should have stayed her problem.  It should have never become yours.  I will never forgive her for how she took from you to give to that girl.  Before you were born, I told her if I agreed to have a child, I was going to have a brilliant one.  And you were that, Callum.  You were everything I wished for.  You were smarter than everyone else, you were stronger than everyone else and you took care of your mother in ways I couldn’t.  I admired that.  You never made a single mistake until you let that girl into your heart because she was pretty.  Yeah, really pretty.  But she was nothing more than that and you were.”

“You know nothing about her,” I countered through my clenched jaw.  “You were never around and when you were, you just hated that you looked at her too.  You were like everyone else when it came to her.  You had no power.  And you had a day where you finally hung out with her from morning to night and couldn’t get enough of her.  I remember.  You spent the next week fucking showering her with love and affection and presents and taking her around till some asshole friend made some shitty comment and then you just shut down.  Didn’t want to ruin your image.”

“Sue me, Callum for realizing what was important to me,” my father snarled.  “I enjoy my life as it is.  I like my reputation among my friends.  What don’t I like? Embarrassment.  Scandal.  Humiliation.  And you know what, I’m more than happy to shut off certain needs and emotions because those don’t rise above my desire for success and admiration and power.”

“There’s nothing powerful about living for what others think.”

He had nothing to come back with and it sent him over the edge.  “For fuck’s sake, Callum,” he growled, stalking off and sliding his empty glass across my kitchen counter.  It skidded into the sink and shattered to pieces.  “Enjoy cleaning that up.  If only the maid’s kid were here to help you.”

“Fuck youself.”

“Christ, son.”  He stopped and took a good look at me before walking out the door.  His eyes were filled with rage and hurt.  “I’ll never give up on you.  I want you to know that.  You can always come to me when you decide to turn it around.  But I’m going to need you to start making the right decisions.  I’m going to need you to let go of the girl and come back to who you were born to be.  You are and always have been worth infinitely more than her.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lake

 

I was being laid off my job at the liquor store.  Seven dollars an hour, off the books and barely enough to get by but I was still devastated.

Aggie said it was because they were closing down soon.  The landlord raised the rent for the sole purpose of getting rid of her.  She felt bad about it, so on my last shift, we sat in the closed store and had a drink.  “They say they’re opening some nice bar here,” she said, pouring me a plastic cup of something watery brown.  “So, here’s to hoping they don’t get none of those pretty girls in little shorts or you folks are gonna have a hard time next door.”

I heaved a sigh.  I couldn’t even plan to work at the new bar because it wasn’t opening for awhile and when it did, the shifts would conflict with the ones I had at the place I was already working.

“Maybe it’s time to start stripping,” Aggie cackled.  I handed her a preemptive napkin.  Every time she laughed, she hacked up a lung.

“No.  I think I’d rather not.”

For the money, I had started considering going from waitress to stripper.  But I never found the nerve to merely ask anyone about it at the club.  I didn’t judge the girls that did it.  I had fantasies of being one of them the few times I went to strip clubs with Callum and his friends.  But here, the idea of stripping lived in the same place in my heart where I was a shitty person.  A fraud.  It lived in a place that told me I never belonged in New York with Callum and I’d die in Sunstone.  None of the people who once loved me would be happy to see me if I went home.  I had already morphed into someone none of them would ever recognize.  They’d feel dirty and disgusting for having ever associated with me and I’d be their burden to overcome.

The paranoia was strong.  Relentless.  I had nothing else to think of so I imagined all sorts of humiliating scenarios, like someone from Callum or his father’s circle having their car break down on the highway, maybe during a business trip in Virginia.  They’d find a place to kill time and walk into a strip club for shits and giggles.  It would be novel for them to see what Bumblefuck tits and ass looked like compared to the bodies they admired at gentleman’s clubs in Hell’s Kitchen.  They’d wrinkle their noses upon walking in, declare the need for a strong drink and then laugh at the girls on the stage.  And then they’d see me.  I could imagine their faces when they did and it made me cringe so hard every time it felt like it had actually happened.  I imagined them getting over their shock, joking that they weren’t all that surprised and then sneaking pictures till images of me undressing for sweaty men and toothless truckers had spread like wildfire to reach Callum and Caroline.  And then they’d die of shame all over again.

“Hey, sweetie.  I got some news for you.”

I was surprised to see Shanna outside when I got home that evening.  She’d been in the midst of one of those weeks where she just shut herself in her trailer and didn’t come out.  They happened every once in awhile and when she finally emerged from her funk, I’d be sitting there waiting for her, my figurative tail wagging like a dog whose owner went away for too long.  She’d give me the forceful hugs against her giant bosom that I honestly loved and we’d pick up right where we left off, making margaritas, watching TV and acting like nothing ever happened.  I never asked why she holed up sometimes because she never asked about my problems either.  And I was already pretty sure that her tick had to do with her hoarding addiction.  I wished I could be a truer friend and actually help one day – had spent countless nights Googling the first steps of trying to get into a hoarder’s home to clean the space.  But I always chickened out.  What I read was discouraging and I didn’t want to piss Shanna off.  I needed the reliable joy of our friendship more than I needed to save her, which was horrible.  I tried not to think of what an awful, unfeeling survivalist I’d become but sometimes, out of nowhere, the bell rang in my head and screamed that I was shit – that I was losing my good parts and becoming head-to-toe, good-for-nothing useless.

“Baby, your momma hurt herself today,” Shanna said.

“What? What happened?”

“I don’t know but I heard her scream and then Hunt drove her to the hospital.  I came out to see if she was okay when she came back and she seemed fine, she was walking, but she had one of these on her arm.”  She bent her arm to mime a sling.

“Oh.”  I breathed out.  “So she’s fine.”

“I don’t know.  I been hearing her wailing all day.”

My mood soured further when I went into the trailer because I knew that Trish was about to be an uncontrollable nightmare for at least the night.  I didn’t know how badly she was hurt but she was definitely going to milk her injury with me and Hunt till making a full recovery.  The second I got in, I saw Hunt taking care of her.  He turned with exhaustion to the door and shot me a look that said you should just walk back out.  But I didn’t do it and soon enough, Trish was crying at me.

“Baby!” She was on the stool in the kitchen, a sling on her right arm.  “You spilled water in here before you went to work this morning!” she accused me.  I didn’t argue despite the fact that I hadn’t been in the kitchen all day.  “I slipped and I shattered my whole fuckin’ elbow!” I went through the motions and apologized.  I asked what I could do and offered to make her dinner, get her a beer, buy some painkillers.  She sniffled pathetically for ten minutes and finally moaned, “No, no, no.  It doesn’t hurt that bad, baby.  That’s the worst part.  It doesn’t even hurt that bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“It… it just…”

“What? Is it Dean? You’re afraid he’ll get mad?” I came home to new holes in the wall yesterday and thanked God that he’d stormed back to his office before I even saw him.

“No… no… I just…” Trish couldn’t speak.  I was losing patience so Hunt took the reigns.

“ER bullshit.  It cost way too much money.”

No.  My heart sank.  “How much?”

Trish wailed dramatically.  “We got nothin’.  We’re fucked, Lake.  We’re fucked, fucked, fucked!”

The last I counted the money she had stashed, it was close to a thousand again.  Now, apparently, it was back to zero.  “How?” I demanded.  “Let me see the bill! How did you even get a bill so fast?” In college, I didn’t get a bill for the stitches in my foot till at least several weeks after going to the ER.  They sent it to the townhouse and Caroline called Callum in tears, asking why I hadn’t told her that I’d gone to the hospital.  He said it was because we didn’t want to make her cry over nothing the way she was doing that very second.  According to Callum, Caroline got quickly indignant and forced herself to swallow her sobs and brightly ask how he was doing at work, though the occasional hiccup escaped her throat since she was clearly still emotional that I’d been in some sort of pain without her knowing.  Thinking about that story made me want to die as I sat in front of Trish and her frenzied bawling.  I missed Caroline so much it made my chest burn.

“Don’t,” Hunt said when I was on the couch that night crying silent, angry tears.  He handed me a wad of toilet paper.  “I’ll get a second job and we’ll get the money back.”

“It’s time to sell the rings,” I said bitterly.  He had agreed with Trish to hold onto some of Caroline’s jewelry because the closest pawn shops had given unsatisfactory offers.  They were too lazy to drive a long way to better locations and Trish wouldn’t tell me where she hid them from Dean.  “I got laid off from the liquor store.  There’s going to be a nice bar next door and they’re going to take business from us.  I’m going on two job interviews tomorrow but I don’t think we can just keep hoping that what little money we’re making is going to pile up to be enough soon.  Especially not with all these emergencies.”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“Say what?”

“Like you don’t believe we’re having emergencies.  We believed you when you came home without any money because you needed to fix the car.  I didn’t see no problem with the car.  All I heard was that you made it home just fine but you told Trish the car needed work.  And then you were gone the next morning to fix it and took a big chunk of our cash with you.”

“That car definitely broke down, Hunt,” I argued hotly.  “I even – ” I cut off, realizing what I was about to say.  I even withdrew money from my secret bank account to cover half the cost.  Hunt lifted an eyebrow.

“You even what?”

“Nothing.”

He sneered.  “And you think she’s the one who lies,” he muttered before going into his room.

But at night, he came back outside and sat on the edge of the couch while I stared at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

I gave him a weird look.  “Okay.”  He sat there for another minute.  He sighed deeply and then finally spoke again.

“It feels bad when you’re mad at me.  And I feel bad about the way Trish treats you.  But I stick by her because I seen what she’s been through with my dad and I just want things to be okay.  For all of us.”

“I know.  We’re trying.”  We’re trying.  Our go-to line when everything felt wasteful and hopeless and we had nothing else to say.  Never had words felt more empty.

“I just want to say I’m sorry, Lake.”

“You already did, Hunt.”

“Not just for today.  For everything.  In the past, the present and in the future,” he said.  I frowned.  Before I could ask what he meant, he ruffled my hair and left.  And again, I was left with that shameful, lonely feeling of craving Hunt and wishing he would come back and say more.  I sat up on the couch and watched his sunburned back walk away from me till it disappeared into the darkness.  I lay there analyzing his words for twenty minutes before caving and knocking on his door.

He gave the “yeah” to come in and I went in to find him standing in his boxers in front of the fan, his crazy hair blowing with a life of its own around his head.  “Too hot to fuckin’ sleep,” he smirked.  I barely paid attention to his words.

“What did you mean before?”

“What?”

“Sorry for the past the present and the future.”

“Exactly what it sounds like it means.”

“There’s nothing more to it?”

“Like what?” He turned and held his stare at me over his shoulder.  He gave me a weird look and then cracked a laugh.  “No, little girl.  There ain’t.  Now you better get out of here so I can air out my big, sweaty balls.”

I rolled my eyes but by the time I reached the door, he came after me and caught me hand.

“You know what, I can explain it, actually.”  Hunt pulled me closer.  I stiffened when he held my cheek, unfamiliar with that kind of tenderness from him.  “I just meant I care for you.  And even though I do bad things, I don’t mean them.  I wish I never had to make you feel bad.  Sometimes I wish I could change the person I was, the decisions I made.  You know I like you, Lake,” he said.  “A lot.”

And then he jerked my forehead to his lips and pushed me out the door.

* * *

“You got a little crush, don’t you?” Shanna asked me as we sat outside her trailer with the puppies.  She laughed at the look I gave her.  “What? It’s okay.  He ain’t blood.  And he’s skinny but every girl here’s crushed on Hunt at some point.  He’s a man’s man.  I liked the way he got in Ricky’s face for you yesterday.”

He had finally defended me in front of one of his friends.  Ricky, after drinking all day with Hunt in his room, came out of the trailer and a yard from where I was standing, started swaying as he took a piss.  I reacted accordingly and he looked at me with glassy eyes, said, “You don’t like it?” and then turned enough to pee on my feet.  Hunt had come out just in time to see it and sock Ricky in the face.

“That was appreciated,” I said.

“Mm-hm.  He don’t do that for just any girl.  He’s a good man for you.  And he’s got those pretty eyes.”

I winced.  I found Hunt’s celery green eyes kind of terrifying.  They made him look all the more like a zombie when he was high and staggering around the house in slow motion.

“You don’t like his eyes?”

“They’re fine,” I lied.  “But I can tell you honestly I don’t have a crush,” I said, wishing I hadn’t gone on and on to Shanna about how much I hated Hunt’s drug use.  She rarely heard me talk about one thing for more than a couple minutes and I was running on ten with this subject, which drew her to the conclusion that I even paid attention to Hunt because I had a crush.  To my own relief, I could comfortably tell myself that it wasn’t true.  I didn’t have a crush on Hunt.  There wasn’t a sexual attraction.  I just needed his company and his one-liners in ways I wished I didn’t.  They convinced me that somewhere in there, he was good.  The excuses I constantly gave Hunt for his drug use took energy and I didn’t want to believe it was given in vain.  I wanted to believe he was worthy and deserving of a new start.  So I adjusted my thoughts and morals and did what I mentally could.  “I hope you don’t actually think that, Shanna.”

She paused, stared into space and then suddenly burst out laughing.  “Oh, Christ! Jesus Christ, of course you don’t have a crush on him,” she said, waving her hand in the air to shoo away her assumption.  “Not with… you know.”

“With what?” I didn’t know what she referred to that had her doing a one-eighty.  I knew it wasn’t the fact that Hunt was my stepbrother because she’d already acknowledged that and been unfazed by it.

Shanna shut up, looked in my eyes of pure wonder and backtracked.  “What? Oh, nothing.”

“What were you…” My question trailed off because I could see Shanna decidedly moving on, focusing her attention on a bag of dog food.  So I shut up.  Maybe I didn’t want to know anyway.  Glancing at my face, Shanna dropped a puppy into my arms to distract me from whatever thought she could see me having.

“Hey, you wanna make those margaritas?”

“It’s a little early.”

“Really? Feels like I’ve been with you all day.”

I laughed.  “You have.  But that’s because I’ve been here forever.”  I seemed to be the only person in the park who couldn’t sleep through dog barking.  I forgave it when it was Shanna’s dogs though.  She explained to neighbors that they were simply “chatty” and that made their late-night yapping a little more endearing to me.  “Yeah, it’s only,” I glanced at my phone, “noon, actually.”

“Well.  It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“True.”

“I got the booze.  You got the fruit.”  She laughed as I got right up to go next door for the watermelon I bought that week.  It was one of few things I could buy and know would stay uneaten till I needed it because Trish hated watermelon and Hunt actually never touched my things.

I’d just opened the fridge when I heard a crash, a shatter and Trish’s reedy “shiiiit!” though it was her dribbling, “fuck it” kind of laugh that made me realize she’d shot up since I’d gone over to Shanna’s.  I paused in front of the fridge, trying to decide if I wanted to go take care of whatever happened or just not deal with it at all.  But then I imagined her rolling around in broken glass and being a bigger mess for me to clean up later, so I heaved a sigh, closed the door and went to her room.  When I opened the door, I stopped in my tracks.  She was in bed with just a sweaty, stained bra on, nothing else.  My eyes traveled to the man humming deliriously next to her, completely naked with a condom on his flaccid dick.

It was Hunt.

My stomach reeled as the smell of sex wafted up my nose.  There was a broken bong on the floor.  No other paraphernalia but I knew they were both in other worlds, sprawled on the sheets, fingers intertwined as they laughed and moaned at the ceiling.  I was nauseous, ready to heave bile on the floor.  When Trish finally saw me, she lifted her head an inch off the pillow and gave me a big, lazy grin with those little, worn down teeth.  “Hi, baby, hi,” she cooed excitedly.  She was in another galaxy but still processed the blood-drained look on my face with delight.  Her laugh crackled in my ears.  “See it? Like mother, like daughter, baby girl.  You and me, baby girl.  Two peas in a pod.”