Текст книги "Dare Me"
Автор книги: Stella Rhys
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
But swirling through the air were a million words unsaid.
He wanted to ask me something, I could feel it. I sensed it hanging in the deep silence and I knew it was about me. I knew it was about what he still didn’t know. I could ease Callum’s every physical ache and he could addict me to his passion, but we were still incomplete. And it was because of me. Because of the secret I insisted on keeping.
Closing my eyes, I rest my head on his shoulder, relishing his gentle stroke of my hair. I thanked God he didn’t break the silence or ask me a thing but at the same time, I felt a weight pulling at my heart. Because no matter how much I filled his need, whatever I gave was sucked right back out but what I refused to tell.
Chapter Fourteen
Callum
I was in my office at The Pike when Ana Hale called from the Times with “good news, bad news and an idea.” Our piece in their magazine was going to run later than expected. Apparently, she’d shown what she had to her editor and it’d been good enough to warrant a single positive concern: that readers would want more.
“They want it to be longer. More detail – specifically on you, which I don’t blame them for.” Her flirtatious voice on speaker lifted Oz’s eyebrows. He’d come in halfway through the hall and when she said that, mouthed what the fuck while jabbing a thumb at himself.
“Really? What about Oz?”
“Him too, of course. Both of you handsome men.” Oz and I exchanged smirks. “My editors were suddenly much more interested in this article after they saw your portraits from the photo shoot.” Her giggle was surprisingly girlish. “What can I say. Sex sells.”
Oz pumped his fist and I laughed. “Glad for that. So I’ve heard the bad news and the good news at this point. What’s the idea?”
“You, me and your Viking friend going to Scotland.”
I lifted an eyebrow. Oz mirrored my expression. We both nodded at each other, slow at first but with increasing excitement as Ana detailed the plan.
“They want pictures of you two at the actual home of your barrels. Maybe a shot of the pub you met at. We know all about the Scotch and the brand but we don’t know enough about the team behind it, so you two are going to reminisce for us in front of the scenic backdrop of Dufftown – which, of course, will boost tourism and visits to Pike Distillery. Sound good to you?”
“Yes would be an understatement.”
“Great. I think we’re going to have a really good time, Callum,” she said, a sultry roll in her voice. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Same.”
Oz laughed hard when I hung up. “She’s not one for subtlety. I’m sure you’ll have her bent over a barrel on the first day.” When I didn’t give him much of a response, he grinned. “Unless, of course, you’ve got a special thing going on with the River girl.”
“Lake.”
“Is it official? Am I gonna be fighting Logan for best man duties?”
“Doubtful.”
“What? Trouble in paradise already?”
The phrase made me snort. My paradise with Lake was defined by trouble. It thrived on it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“Nothing.” Lake and I were unexplainable. There was a universe of context behind every move we made and every word we spoke. It was pointless to try to get any outside party to understand whatever entity we were on our own. “No trouble in paradise. We’ve been having a good time together,” I said to shut Oz up.
It wasn’t a lie. I’d been enjoying myself with Lake. I forced myself to forget the shitty dreams that had been plaguing me since she left. I made myself bury the dark thoughts. They still lingered in my head and told me she refused to reveal where she went because she had plans to go back. But I stifled them by just being with her, watching her, taking a million notes in my head about the new things she liked. The little habits she’d either developed while she was gone or I’d never gotten the chance to know. They reminded me that she was real, present and right there with me. They brought me closer to her again, connected me back in a way that made me confident that I’d feel it in the air next time – feel it in her body if she was thinking about disappearing.
I watched her sleep the way I used to. The sound of her breathing was still exactly the same. But in the night, she always found her way to the very edge of the bed, till she was almost falling off. She’d stay asleep but sigh with relief when I pulled her back and bury herself straight into my chest. In the morning, she wandered aimlessly all over the house while brushing her teeth. A new habit. She sometimes started the coffee machine or flipped through a magazine with her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. I told her to stop because I loathed the idea of toothpaste existing outside the bathroom but I eventually started following her, mostly because I was curious to see where the hell she was going, what she was even up to. Only she could be so fucking annoying and cute in one shot.
They were small things that shouldn’t have been a story but I’d been without Lake for long enough to recognize that simply watching her was a privilege. Her every move around the house was something I took in with pure fascination.
I loved it. But in our fashion, of course, it all came with a downside.
Whenever I asked where the new habits came from, Lake gave a strained smile and some generic answer that I knew was a cover-up. A complete lie. I tried not to let that ruin it for me because for all the thrills and success that I’d achieved in recent years from building a business from just about the ground up, I was somehow finding the most satisfaction in living with Lake. Just existing with her again. I looked at her and knew I didn’t want anyone else. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever see in my life and the best feeling I could ever wish for. There was only one thing left to want with her but obviously, it was an important one – the security of knowing that she was here to stay.
* * *
I tossed hard in bed. I felt it yet I didn’t stir or wake and with that, with the first chords of the song, I knew what was coming.
I’d been having the dreams of Lake for so long that even in my sleep, I knew where I was – at home, in bed, simply enduring the bullshit my sick brain still insisted on putting me through. It started the same every time, with an achingly accurate flashback to the day she left. The memories were still vivid. It was a Sunday and rainy. I was twenty-one, Lake some months from the same age. She lived in a dorm and I had my own apartment but we spent a couple weeks out of every summer living with my mom at the townhouse because it made her happy. She needed the company.
In my dream, I always carried the context of the night before. We’d been having dinner when my mother had asked Lake if they could do brunch the way they used to when she first moved in – big and theatric, a dazzling event complete with Ella Fitzgerald blaring on the speakers and cheek-to-cheek tangos down the hall. Lake cringed at the childish memory but said yes – as long as my mother made Liège waffles. “Deal. And don’t you back out on it, girly, because I have a surprise for you.”
I rolled my eyes. I knew what it was. I was there when my mother came home laughing to herself because she’d seen and randomly bought a full-on tango dress complete with a flower hairpiece and dramatic ruffles at the bottom. “Remember when Lake and I used to dance down the hall to the kitchen? Wouldn’t it be funny if I wore this to wake her up one day?”
“If she was five.”
“Oh – you,” she huffed. She wagged an accusing finger at me. “You, Callum Pike, are never any fun at all.” But then she came to the couch, grabbed my head and planted a kiss on it because she was unflappable in her Lake-inspired moods.
The next morning, I woke up before anyone else. My internal clock hadn’t kicked the early bird habit from high school, when I had an hour of wrestling practice before class even started. I was having my first breakfast when my mother came downstairs to ask me how she looked in her ridiculous dress. I told her she looked like an extra in a low-budget movie. She knew it wasn’t a compliment but she decided to take it as one and that made me laugh enough to follow her and go witness the stupid dance.
The dream started every time with a flurry of red – my mother’s dress as she rushed to the hall after the speakers finished the first song. She always let a different one play out first – a way of guaranteeing that Lake had already stirred enough to realize that there was music and music meant she should get up and get ready to dance. Her end of it generally started with groaning and calling out from behind her door. “No! Please! I don’t want to do this anymore!” Pretty much every time, she wailed something to the like but it never actually stopped her from laughing her ass off when my mother burst into her room with some deliberately shitty interpretation of a Latin dance move. It made no sense considering the Fifties jazz on the speakers but it didn’t have to because it had them both cackling like it was the funniest thing in the world.
“Heaven… I’m in Heaven…”
Their song wafted in my ears. I saw the red ruffles moving, heard my mother’s laugh as she delighted herself down the hall. “You better be awake by now, Sleeping Beauty,” she called when we didn’t hear Lake’s usual protesting. I shouted something about her hurrying up because I was hungry. The food always smelled too good to wait for but everything we did in that house hung on her approval, so I stood there, vaguely entertained but still thoroughly annoyed. I was planted square at the end of the hall when my mom burst into Lake’s room with a laugh and a “ha!” and a big cha-cha move. Her arms were high in the air, reaching straight for the sky.
I remembered the sound when they fell straight to her sides.
“And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak…”
I remembered the twisting in my stomach because while I didn’t have a view of her face, I knew from the way she stood that something was wrong. I was a prideful, eye-rolling kid. But urgency paced my every step down the hall that morning because my mom was standing there as if the world had just ended and for some reason, my heart knew that for once, she wasn’t being dramatic. I could feel the moment was real without even seeing her eyes. The air had decidedly shifted. Joyous just before, it filled suddenly with shadowy gloom and now their gleeful song was grating on me.
“And I seem to find the happiness I seek…”
It echoed loud, flared with distortion in my ear. I memorized the tune with those famous lines sandwiching my mother’s piercing cry.
“When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lake
Three mornings in a row, I woke up in Callum’s apartment alone. I didn’t take it personally because he had work and we still spoke normally later in the day. He still smiled and tipped my chin up to kiss my lips. Little things still bothered me slightly. I caught him looking at me several times when I turned around, and without a hint of warmth in his eye, but I forced myself to dismiss it because it likely meant nothing. Callum always had a serious look to him, even as a kid. It wasn’t till the fourth morning that I confirmed something was wrong. We were making breakfast and he’d been quiet, giving short answers to all my questions.
When he finally gave a full sentence, I wished right away that he hadn’t.
“I’m going to Scotland on Friday.”
My head snapped up. I stopped chopping the basil. “You’re – what?”
“For the Times article. They want to extend it so Oz and I are going to fly there and give Ana a tour of Dufftown and the distillery.”
“I…” My voice drifted off because I realized my question – “How long will you be there?” – was pointless. He wasn’t going to fly there for less than day and come back. I stared with pure awe at his blank expression. “You’re leaving the day before my birthday.”
“Yes.”
“You remembered that?” I would’ve preferred that he’d forgotten and made the plans by mistake. But he confirmed it wasn’t the case.
“I remember your birthday, Lake.”
My heart beat fast. I could’ve sworn there was something accusing in his tone. I remember your birthday, Lake. I’ve remembered six September Fourteenths since you left and every single one has ripped me to fucking shreds. He might not have been implying those words exactly but it was probably something similar because those words were mine. I’d spent every July Eighth for the past six years tearing myself apart. I agonized by midnight of each birthday, my mind starting with the image of Callum’s shirt splashed in champagne as he had drunk, celebratory sex. By night, I’d be tired but sleepless, wondering what changes this year had brought the boy I’d grown up loving – the boy who was now, unquestioningly, a man. I imagined how his looks, his mind, his heart had changed and I was convinced, no matter what new Callum my brain conjured up, that I’d still love him like I always did.
And that was exactly how it ended up happening, even despite what he said – that he hadn’t thought once about me after I left. It hurt but it was for his sake that I hoped he was lying. Because I’d thought about him every day in the two thousand or so that I was gone, readying my heart gradually, piece by piece for the moment I would return to him and be face to face with the pain and passion that was us. But since coming back, I still was rocked with daily guilts and regrets and memories both wretched and beautiful that stole the air straight from my lungs. Even when I’d been preparing myself for it.
If it was all coming back to Callum at once, I could only imagine that he was silently, stoically warring through the most jagged tempest of emotions.
Still, I couldn’t quite forgive him for this.
“You said we had plans for my birthday. I thought you said we were doing something special.” Hurt quivered in my voice but I could feel the anger creeping in to overwhelm it as Callum stared back at me, vacant. Unfeeling.
“Our flight had been for another day but we had to reschedule. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
He was using his business voice on me. On top of that, I knew he was lying. I was as well versed with his lies as he was with mine. But what bothered me most was the fact that he knew. He knew I knew but he didn’t so much as care to sound convincing or apologetic to lessen the blow. I was visibly wounded and he didn’t bat an eye. The attitude was nothing like the Callum I’d been living with for the past month or so and I could tell, with all the fury in my racing heart, that it was deliberate.
“What’s going on with you?” I demanded straight to the point. I kept my cool but I knew I was fighting a losing battle.
“It’s work.”
His generic answer peaked my rage. “You know you’re ignoring what I’m really asking you about, Callum. At least give me an explanation here. I understand that work happens but I’m not stupid – I know every part of you and the way you’re speaking to me right now is you making an active decision to shut me out and let me know that you’re doing it. I am not asking you why you have to go to Scotland, I’m asking you why this… this flip suddenly switched!”
“You can demand answers but I can’t?”
I dropped my knife with a clack. “That’s separate.”
“No, it’s fucking not,” Callum fumed, his enraged eyes paralyzing me from across the kitchen counter. “I tried, Lake. I did. I keep trying to get us back to where we were but it’s really hard without an answer to the six years that you were gone. I can’t fully enjoy what I have with you because I’m actively pushing away the shit that’s nagging me at the back of my head and you refuse to free me from that prison by doing the most obvious thing in the world. You owe me an explanation at this point. I can’t overlook the impossible, Lake! Put yourself in my shoes – it would eat at you too and you know it.”
The tears spilled without warning because I did know it. I had known before even coming back that I’d be asking far too much of Callum. The realization had me thinking of Colorado, California, all these great but starkly different places from New York – cities in which I could start my life over for the last time, because I couldn’t imagine Callum accepting the terms to my homecoming. Yes, I disappeared on you and Caroline without warning and made no attempts at contact for six years but do you think you can let all that go and take me back without question because I can’t stop loving you? It sounded stupid every way I tried to put it so I looked up Denver, Boulder, San Francisco. I knew I would eventually find work, friends, some sort of love despite knowing I’d never stop comparing every man I met to Callum and my imagination of what he’d become since I’d gone. I had a flight booked to Denver International, a hotel room paid for and a job interview lined up for the following morning. I was at my gate at the airport when I went back on my decision to forget New York because I couldn’t muster up the courage to ask an impossible favor of Callum. There was no one else in the world that I’d ever love more than him. That much I knew. So I’d be shameless, audacious and downright insulting before I gave up on him without even trying.
“Tell me, Lake!” Callum’s hands were on me now. Tears were clouding my vision but I could feel the urgency in his touch as he demanded the question a thousand times. “Why won’t you tell me? Just start with that – don’t even tell me where you went, tell me why you refuse to let me know!”
“Because I promise you will never want me again if you do!” I was a mess. Done for. I needed air but when I turned away but he jerked me back.
“You know that’s a lie,” he seethed, gripping me, his blue eye smoldering. “I want you, Lake. I wanted you the second I laid eyes on you and I haven’t stopped once, not even when I fucking hated you. You should know that. You should know that well because you went away when I’d never been more in love with you in my life and now you’re back without telling me a word about where you went and I still can’t stop protecting you. I am never going to stop. You’re safe with me, Lake – you always will be – so just start slow and tell me why you won’t let me in. Tell me why you won’t give me the truth.”
I didn’t remember when he’d gotten me to the living room and plopped me at the edge of the table, but that was where I sat as he knelt pleadingly in front of me. He stared at me with as much hot love as he did burning fury and I couldn’t deny him this time.
“I ruined enough of your life, Callum,” I whispered. He was already shaking his head so I spoke over him. “You know it’s true. Your mom knows it’s true. I screwed up so much for both of you and the only reason you don’t see it is because you both love me so much. And I’m so blessed to know that and to have that and to love you back because my heart feels good and full and right when it’s just you and Caroline in there. I owe everything to you both. And with you, Callum, after what happened that morning with Theo – ”
“Don’t – ”
“You can’t keep saying that,” I protested, my face in his hands. “You can’t tell me not to bring that up when it would’ve never happened without me! It was all because of me, Callum – everything always was and I know you hated protecting me but you couldn’t help it. If you hadn’t gone to protect me that last time, you would’ve been a different Callum and your mom would still have your dad and all her friends and your lives would’ve been everything they were supposed to be before I came and turned it into… into – ” Trash. I choked on the word and Callum pulled me onto him.
“No, Lake. You have it wrong.” He knelt on the floor, holding me on top of him, kissing my forehead and my tears between his low growls about how I fucking wrong I was. But I couldn’t help what I thought. He had come to save me after I broke up with Theo and he’d wound up beating his best friend so brutally that the Spencers resolved to retaliate. From the whispers that came after the incident, relayed to me by Isabel, the plot was Nick’s idea. He’d convinced Theo to post my naked pictures and he’d convinced him that with his ex taken care of, it was time to set sights on the one who sent him to the hospital.
I had been locked so shamefully in my room after the naked picture fiasco that I didn’t even realize Theo had contacted Callum – that Callum had actually agreed to meet him before wrestling practice before school. It was just before six in the morning. Callum was waiting at the park near Mercer School when four guys jumped him. One had a stick of some sort – a witness said an aluminum bat. They beat him for ten minutes, dragged him around mercilessly. Theo never showed. Surprise, surprise. He made it well on time to practice. As he wrestled, the four men in the park had Callum saying goodbye to the sport. That morning, they snapped his right arm in two places, broke three ribs, cracked his jaw and split his head. We never got to know how long he was bleeding there alone for. A jogger found him unconscious in a pool of his own blood and that was when Caroline got the call at home.
I cried every last tear out of my body. I couldn’t bear to visit him the first day. He was hardly awake anyway so Caroline stayed with Callum at the hospital and I spent the entire day in his room, hiding all his wrestling trophies and medals, ripping through his closet for his uniforms and shoving them into a garbage bag before crying myself to sleep in his bed. He had been two months from the junior Olympics and three from his freshman year at Hodgson. He’d been accepted on a full ride for wrestling, just like his dad, but now that was all going down the drain. Because of me. He lost his future because of me. He lost the mother that he knew because of me and she lost her husband because of me. Everything was all because of me. All those hateful messages Trish sent me had been right after all. I leeched off this family and eventually, I’d leech off of them enough to become a plague. I was worthless without sucking out someone else’s soul.
I unloaded all that onto Callum as he held me tighter than ever.
“You know that’s not true.” He cupped my face and whispered urgently, his thumbs moving fast to dry my tears. “Look at me – I have everything I never knew I wanted, Lake. I spent my life wrestling because my dad did. I liked having a direction then. I liked practicing discipline and working toward a goal but wrestling itself meant nothing to me beyond the time I put into it.”
“Time is everything,” I protested tearfully.
“You are,” he corrected straightaway. “You are my everything, Lake. You’ve always been.”
I shook my head, refusing all of it even though I knew it was true. “Your life was supposed to be something else. I changed who you became.”
“I like who I became,” he said between his teeth, dogged and adamant. “Why can’t you believe that, Lake? How could you let anyone tell you that you meant nothing to me? She knew nothing. She wasn’t a part of our life. She was nobody.”
She was my mother. She was the only blood I had left.
I thought it but I didn’t say it because Callum had no idea how much of Trish I’d let into my life. He still had no idea that I’d ever let her play such a big role in my adolescence. I was too ashamed to tell him about her and her situation. That, out of curiosity, I’d ever let her find me online, talk to me regularly and spread her poison gradually into me. She was the only reason I stole from him and Caroline and the stealing was something I was still too ashamed to ever bring up. My biological mother was the dark hole I spiraled into every once in awhile depending on what she’d messaged me that week – what her husband, Dean, had done to her this time or how much money she needed from me. The secret conversations I had with her all took place on Theo’s computer at the Spencer’s home. I kept Trish a secret from Callum, Caroline and even Isabel because they were the ones who truly loved me and so I knew they’d try to intervene. But that would only cause for trouble so my heart told me it was best to keep Trish and Dean and Hunt a secret. Callum and Caroline had saved me from having to live with them after my grandma passed and I was endlessly grateful. The Pikes were my real family. I loved them and I’d do whatever I needed to protect them from these psychopaths.
“Do you hear me, Lake?” Callum caught my chin and forced me to look in his eyes. “Let go of that guilt. I gave up a lot for you. You’re right – my life changed for you. But I never regretted a second of it because I’ve never cared about anything more than you. You were my goal. You were what I lived and breathed for and that’s how it’s going to be, always. Do you hear me?”
My lips gave a short gasp for breath. “I hear you.” I held onto him, letting myself melt into the familiar comfort of his body. I was crying too much, too wound with emotion to distinguish what I was feeling but I did feel lighter, as if the weight on my chest had been eased – by only a little, but it was enough to make a little more room in my heart. Once upon a time, when my life was nothing but love, my heart was filled with only that. There were dark patches all over it now, parts that hadn’t been able to breathe in ages. But I could feel Callum reversing that, the tiniest bit at a time.
I trembled in his arms but he reached for a throw and wrapped it around us. “Pretend we’re on the fire escape,” he whispered with a smile in his voice. I managed a laugh as I remembered the day he was referring to. I remembered the reply he whispered to my question after we had sex for the first time – my first time ever. They were the words I remembered forever but told myself weren’t true till he confirmed them for me now. I closed my eyes and let them ring in my head.
“You are and you always will be.”
