Текст книги "Dare Me"

Автор книги: Stella Rhys

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Two

Lake

I could feel the tears coming and for what would sound like the most idiotic reason when I finally told Isabel.  She was hustling me out of the dining room and into the hallway for one of her signature pep talks, picking up right where our friendship left off, as if I hadn’t ditched her six years ago, right before our trip to Paris.  She had, in distinct Isabel fashion, written out a sixteen-paged itinerary for the eight-day trip and bought an entirely new wardrobe.  I disappeared the day before the flight and yet she was still pulling me aside tonight and saving me because she could still tell when I was two seconds from crying – and in front of a dozen people I hadn’t seen in ages, whom I really didn’t know that well.  I’d lost most of my friends from high school before even disappearing, and it looked to me like Caroline had just invited people who she deemed the “nice” boys and girls.

“It’s stupid,” I warned Isabel when she asked what was wrong.

“I know what it is.  The way he pushed your hand away.”  She smirked when I looked at her with surprise for nailing it like that.  “Lake, you act like I didn’t date Callum in high school.  He can be rude without even realizing it.  I remember.  And you should remember, too.  We used to sit in the kitchen with Caroline and bitch about it, just us girls.”

“And she’d pour us a little bit of wine and pretend we were all drowning our sorrows.”

“I don’t think she was pretending, girl.”  Isabel cupped my cheeks when I frowned.  “Oh, that was such a bad joke, Lake.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“It’s okay, it’s not you,” I murmured, still thinking about how much Caroline had been hurting even before I left her.  “It’s just everything coming back to me at once.”

“I know, girl.  Just keep the waterworks to a minimal or I’m going to cry and I got my mascara so friggin perfect today.”

I laughed.  “Oh God, not the mascara.”

Isabel wiped my tears and gave me something that was partly pout but mostly smile.  “Seriously, Lake.  You knew this was going to take time.  You haven’t been back more than two hours and you’re already expecting Callum to get over the fact that you ever went away? I told you, girl.  I don’t know if you read any of the emails I sent after you left but he was in bad shape for awhile.  Really bad.  Both him and Caroline.  They missed you worse than any of us did and I missed you bad.”  She stuck out her lip.  “You’re my Buxom Buddy.”

We both snorted.  I had first bonded with Isabel in high school when she took it upon herself to fix my bra strap and tell me that I didn’t have to wear those “chunky-ass bras” just because I had “big tatas.”  Our boob comparison had been a completely genuine conversation full of good advice about well-fitted bras, but it had fascinated the boys at the lunch table so much that Isabel instantly recognized our power that day as a titillating twosome.  We were juniors in high school and not yet immune to the lure of constant attention so from that moment forward, to Callum’s chagrin, we became inseparable.

Sighing, Isabel pushed my hair back.  “Pretty girl.  It got even wavier.”

“It did?”

“Like beach hair.  I pay like, thirty dollars for Bumble’s surf spray and you have this naturally? Fuck you.”  I tried to crack a smile, knowing that Isabel was trying to get me to laugh.  She shook my shoulders.  “Lake.  It’s day one.  Give it time with him, okay? It’s gonna take awhile.”

“I know.  It’ll just hurt in the meantime.”

“I say this with all the love in the world, babe, but you deserve to know some of that hurt.”

I breathed out hard.  “I know.”  Whatever rejection I felt now was nothing compared to what I hit everyone else with that Sunday morning I left.  But it hadn’t been some painless decision for me.  I hadn’t wanted to leave Callum or Caroline.  I just didn’t want them to get hurt.  After my grandmother died, they were the only two people left in the world that I loved – Callum especially.  We had a complicated relationship but no matter what, he was always there for me.  He could tease me and argue with me, but no one else was allowed to.  Growing up, he never took anyone’s side but mine.  For all the times my biological mom tried to bring me down and remind me that I was nothing, Callum unknowingly confirmed my worth.  I’d grown up strong because of him.

Twisted but strong.

And from the looks of it, he’d gotten strong too.  In every kind of way.  Callum was under six feet tall when I left him but now he looked about six-foot-two.  He’d always been lean and defined but his body was now carved with beautiful lines that deepened with every move he made.  His muscles were unreal.  I’d felt them in the split second that I touched his leg and I could see them pulling his sleeve tight around his bicep when he reached for his whisky.  But most of all, I could see in his face that he’d gotten harder.  Colder.  He used to be mischievous and at least smirk if not laugh, but now I didn’t even see that.  His expression was severe, intimidating, and the angles of his face had changed to match that.  His cheekbones were striking and his jaw was sharper than a weapon.  I had forgotten how to breathe when he first walked into the room.

But I wasn’t surprised.  Of course he’d grown up to be devastatingly handsome.  The kind of man who didn’t need to say a single word to convince a girl that they’d just had a full conversation.  Callum had always been gorgeous.  When we were younger, he’d been that all-American jock who wrestled, played football and looked way too cute in a backwards cap.  His hair was dark blonde and long, grown out past his ears.  Despite Mercer School rules, he’d worn it messy, surfer-like, and it drove the girls crazy.

That boyish look was gone now.  His hair was the same length, maybe an inch shorter, but now he wore it slicked back.  It was a neat, clean look but to me, it made him look mean.  Ruthless.  Irresistibly sexy, too, but that might have also been thanks to the perfect amount of scruff on his sculpted jaw.  That was definitely new.  I couldn’t pinpoint which of the changes were best.  But what I did know was that Callum looked painfully good and it was about to make my long fight back to his heart a million times harder.

“Incoming,” Isabel murmured when we heard a door fly open.  I spun around to see Cass Vaughn running out, her hair a mess and her makeup smeared.  She stormed past us before we could so much as open our mouths to ask if she was alright.  “I wonder what the hell that was abou – ”

Isabel’s mouth snapped shut the second Callum came out of the same bathroom Cass had run from.  My jaw dropped and tightened in a matter of seconds.  Couldn’t wait till the end of dinner.  Of course not.  I had to shake my head.  He was unapologetic, casually looping his belt when his eyes met mine.  His stare was blank, remorseless and he kept it pinned so hard to me that even Isabel stammered.

“I… I’ll let you guys, um.  Yeah.”

She disappeared back into the greenhouse.  I crossed my arms when he slowed to a stop a good two yards from me.  “Really, Callum.”

“What.”

“You’re acting like I’m the walking plague.”  I bristled when he didn’t reply.  “Why did you even come here tonight if you didn’t want to see me?”

Callum’s blue eyes hardened like a layer of ice.  He took his time to reply, as if I weren’t worth the effort of his words.  A least that was how it felt.  “What do you think?” Another long pause.  “I came here for her.”

Caroline.  I’d always loved the respect he had for his mother’s wishes.  Of course tonight, it stung like hell to know that he wouldn’t have even come to say hi if it weren’t for her insistence.  “So, what, we’re just never going to talk? We’re going to just ignore each other like we never knew each other?”

“What’s the point in talking?” Callum asked, his tone cold.  “I don’t know you.  Not anymore.  And I don’t care to know who you’ve become since you left.”  His words carried an easy confidence that dug deep into my heart.  My lip trembled and I could’ve broken down right then and there – Callum could never take it when I cried – but I fought the emotions wringing inside me because I didn’t want my first time back with him to be like this.  I didn’t want to force his affection by bursting into tears.  I wanted to earn it back.  I wanted Callum to touch me because he missed me, because he remembered that he once loved me.  Not because he couldn’t stand to hear me cry.

“So you don’t care to speak to me at all.”

“No.  I haven’t thought of you in six years.  I don’t intend on starting again now.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat.  I hated that he had to look so grown up, so handsome and sure of himself as we had this conversation.  I tried to give the night a last shot.  “I came back to see you,” I murmured.  “You don’t know how much I missed you, Callum.  I don’t think I went a day since I left without thinking about you.  I still dream about you.  Always.”  I cupped my elbows.  The words felt pathetic leaving my lips, but I needed to get them off my chest and I could see them shaking him.  Nothing in his expression showed it but there was the briefest waver in his frosty glare and I knew Callum well enough to know that it meant something.  “You had to have known that I didn’t want to leave.  I loved my life with you.  Every day, I felt like the luckiest girl.  I woke up and you were always the first thing I thought of.  You were my world, Callum.”

“You were mine.”

His low mutter shocked me.  I looked up to see him standing closer.  I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch him.  My hands were trembling.  They ached to calm themselves by pressing against his chest, brushing down every section of his abs and tracing the deep lines the way they used to.  But I stopped myself.  I wanted him to touch me first and I felt like he actually might.  I could finally see some sort of life in his expression.  He was wearing the faintest, most handsome frown between his eyebrows and it made me wish he’d just go ahead and let it all out – unload six years of anger and fury on me so I could at least know that he still felt something and we could finally start cleaning up the mess.

But he threw me a curveball.

“Tell me right now where you went,” Callum challenged me.  “What you did, why you left.  Why you came back now.  Every detail.  I know exactly what you look like when you lie so don’t try it.  Tell me everything right here, Lake.  Right now.”

I tried.  My lips stumbled over themselves.  I tried to think of a version of the story that I could tell.  I tried to make up a new one.  But I knew that lying would get me into deeper trouble than I was already in so I breathed out nervously and shook my head.  “Callum, I can’t tell you but it’s purely out of – ”

“Bullshit.”  Enraged, he stormed two steps forward but stopped himself short.  The breath he sucked in was short and sharp and it cut like a knife through the thick air between us.  “If you’re not going to tell me now then I’m done with your bullshit, Lake.  I am.  I was productive without you, I did good shit without you, so why don’t you take a page from my book and just forget me now? Erase me.  Pretend I never existed and none of the shit between us ever happened.”  I trembled from the heat of his body so close to mine.  I finally got a smile out of him but it was cruel.  “It’s hard at first but I can’t even tell you how damned good it feels when you finally get rid of the poison in your life.”

Chapter Three

Lake

“Another round?”

Nick Spencer didn’t wait for my reply before rapping his knuckles on the bar and signaling for another round.  He tossed his black card onto the counter, letting it skid across the marble surface and onto the floor for the bartender to pick up.  God, I hated him.  Everything about him, from his cheesy smile with neon-white veneers to the way he treated the waitstaff.  I had bartended for a little after running from Sunstone – right before getting caught and dragged back – but even if I hadn’t, I’d know not to treat another human being the way Nick Spencer felt entitled to.  But I wasn’t too surprised, considering who his brother was and what those two had done to me and Callum in high school.  There was never proof, but I didn’t need that to know it was them.

“Theo still thinks about you, you know,” Nick said of his brother, handing me a shot of something amber-colored.  I wasn’t sure what it was but I downed it.  Isabel narrowed her eyes at me from afar but she let me be, giving Nick the time for a “private apology,” as he’d requested.  Several of us had gone straight from dinner in the greenhouse to drinks at the bar and to my chagrin, someone had taken it upon him or herself to invite more of my former classmates.  It was becoming the high school reunion I’d never asked for.  But I sat there and drank because what else did I have to do? For once, I had nothing but time and I had to find ways to kill it.

Besides, I was kind of amazed that Nick Spencer even had the nerve to speak to me after everything he and his brother did to humiliate me, posting every last one of those horrible pictures that I had never wanted to take for him anyway.  I wished I could just look at it as high school drama but I couldn’t because the whole thing wound up changing the course of Callum’s life forever.  He was on a good path.  He’d won two Junior Olympic medals by senior year and he was beyond set to follow his father’s Team USA footsteps.  But I set him on a different one.  My chest still got tight when I thought about it and I’d fantasized so many times about punching Nick or Theo in the face if I ever got the chance again.  But now that I had it, I forced myself to hold it together because I was kind of curious as to what Nick had to say, and of course, Isabel had gone and married the oldest Spencer, Alec, so I had to show at least an ounce of respect, if only for the fact that this insane jerk was now my best friend’s brother-in-law.

I managed to give him a look of amusement.  “Theo still thinks about me?”

“Yeah.  I mean everyone thinks about their high school sweetheart but with the way you guys ended… you know.  He’s grown up.  He feels bad about it.  He always wanted to reach out and apologize to you but you went and disappeared on all of us,” Nick laughed.  “Which sucked ‘cause, you know… we always kind of wondered what you’d look like when you got older.”

Oh, I remember.  The boys used to bet during lunch on whether or not Isabel and my boobs would get any bigger as we got older.  Advantage Isabel on that one.  Mine had stayed the same but on the bright side, they still sat about as high on my chest as they did when I was eighteen.  I caught Nick observing that.

“Sorry,” he grinned.  “Couldn’t help it.  Never could.  But you remember.”

I smiled though he was bordering quickly on creepy.  As usual.

Nick had been a senior when I first entered Mercer School as a junior.  I remembered the way he looked at me on my first day, wandering through the dining hall and doing my best to find a table to eat at since Callum, the night before, had banned me from sitting with him and his friends.  I had spent five minutes floating around and being stared at until Nick’s hand shot out and grabbed my thigh for my attention.  I spun around to see him grinning at me with a table full of senior boys, their bodies hunched over the table too small for their height and size.  I agreed to sit with them only because I could feel the heat of Callum’s stare from across the room.  I knew he had imagined me sitting with some table of harmless girls, fellow virgins perhaps, and I found it funny.  But even if I didn’t feel like pissing him off, those girls didn’t want to sit with me anyway.

“Hope you don’t mind the giant sausagefest,” Nick said when he had me sit between him and his friend, neither of them giving me much space on the bench.  “And when I say giant, I’m talking about myself.  Can’t speak for these guys.”

Nick Spencer had a talent for turning everything into a dick-swinging contest.  All the Spencer boys did.  I’d find that out later, though.  Nick was asking which school I’d transferred from when Callum finally came, looking thoroughly annoyed.  He muttered something to them and then dragged me off to his table at the other end of the room.

“Good thing Cal changed his mind.  I was about to beat his ass if you wound up sitting with my brother’s friends.”  Theo and his twinkling brown eyes smiled at me the second I took the seat across from him at Callum’s table.  “You don’t want to sit with those guys.  They’re all a bunch of pervert assholes.”

“Isn’t that all guys?”

“No.  We’re all perverts but we’re not all assholes.”

Callum had clarified that statement for me that night at home.  “Yeah, Theo’s an asshole too,” he warned me, since I’d spent our entire lunch period talking to him.  “He’s been the horniest bastard since we were like, ten, and he’s… demanding with girls.  But if you’re going to date someone, you might as well keep it in the circle.”

“Why? So you can keep an eye on me?” I had been so smug because it was obvious that Callum was fiercely protective of me.  He just never acknowledged it.

“I’m telling you, your proud Christian virgin thing isn’t going to fly with Theo if you end up with him.  He’s a good guy but he’s also… a guy.  Period.  If you think I need sex all the time, just wait till you get to know him.”

He had warned me, I had to give him that.  And I knew I should have known the lack of sex would be a problem but Theo was so cute and I liked him enough.  I liked Callum more but back in high school, everyone considered him my brother, so I couldn’t have him like that.  Not that I didn’t have him anyway.  We were in a relationship of our own and we’d always been – it just wasn’t the kind that was normal enough to have a name, or be something that you could tell other people about.  I tried explaining it once to my roommate in college but came up empty.  She sniffed and said that if Callum and I were anything real, we would know what to call each other.  How to categorize each other.  Boyfriend, girlfriend, friends with benefits.  I disagreed but I didn’t argue.  There was no point.  I never thought to put Callum in words because he was just so natural to me.  Like air.  There was no need to describe it, it just was and we just were.

“You know Theo’s turning twenty-eight this Saturday.  I’m throwing him a surprise party at XIII in Chelsea,” Nick murmured, his gaze drawing a straight line up my thighs.  “You should come.  You’d be the biggest surprise of all.”

“Thank you… but I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Nick frowned.  “We’re all grown up and you’re both single.  It’s time to bury the hatchet.”

“Nick, I know we’re adults now but some things that happened in the past are still hard pills to swallow.”

“Well you can’t just leave it in your throat, right? This is our chance to put all the bad shit behind us.  Life’s too short to hold onto grudges.  Everyone deserves a second chance, am I wrong?”

My gaze fell as I considered his words.  After leaving New York, I’d spent so many sleepless nights telling myself that I didn’t deserve a second chance with Callum.  But that was mostly thanks to the hate and vitriol spewed at me on a daily basis.  “Trash.  That’s what you are,” that awful woman loved to tell me.  But as much as my surroundings confirmed it, I refused to let the idea sink into me.  I told myself I was worthy.  It was a mental battle I mustered the strength to fight every day because while I lived waist-deep in misery, I refused to sink all the way in.  I had a life I loved at some point and I was determined to find it again someday.

“What, am I wrong?” Nick read the change of heart drifting onto my face.

“You’re not wrong but – ”

“Then pay it forward, Lake.  You left two days before your best friend’s twenty-first birthday – before you guys were gonna go on this big trip together.  And she forgave you because you were basically sisters since you were sixteen years old and the fact that you disappeared didn’t erase that.  It’s not like you never had any good memories with Theo.  It’s not like Theo didn’t spend a decade having Callum’s back and bailing him out of trouble before all that shit went down.  There’s good and bad to every relationship.  And the ones that have a lot more of the bad to get past only end up being more rewarding.  Tell me I’m not right about that.”

He was.  Shockingly so.  I thrust my hand through my hair, Nick Spencer somehow saying all the right words to rip my heart right open.  Of course, Theo wasn’t the one it was bleeding for.

“Okay, I’ll go to the party,” I finally blurted.

“Shit – yeah?” Nick pumped two fists in the air.  “Yeah!”

I stared into space as he burst out of his chair and celebrated by gathering everyone and ordering a giant round of shots.  I went with the toast and knocked it all back but underneath my smile, I entertained a bad thought.  A slightly evil thought.  I had agreed to go in earnest because I believed in second chances.  I lived on the idea of them.  But even if I didn’t, seeing Theo Spencer still might not be the worst idea.

Because all those years ago in the dining hall, Callum hadn’t brought me to his table till I’d lit a fire under his ass by sitting with Nick.  A decade later, I wondered if Theo’s party might have him feeling the heat once again.  It was a call to his bluff.  I needed to know if I was fighting for anything – if second chances did exist.  So I clinked my glass to Nick’s.

“Cheers to a new beginning, Lake DePalma,” he grinned.

I did like the sound of that.