Dare Me

I knew the answer but Lake went silent for so long that I had to ask her.  “What did you do?”

“I went to my car.”  Darkness filled her eyes as she looked at me.  “And then I drove away.”

Chapter Thirty

Lake

The flight home from Scotland was a haze.

I remembered how Callum held me when I broke down.  I didn’t think he would ever want to hold me again but he did and he held me tight in that bed for an hour, maybe two or three.  I was physically and emotionally drained and at that point, tracking time was a foreign concept.  So was thinking of any sort, if it had nothing to do with what I’d done and how I could see it affecting Callum.

I remembered hearing Oz’s voice in the jet, on the way home.  He was trying to be hushed, I could tell, because I was sleeping.  I think.  I was something.  It felt like I’d taken a sleeping pill that got me ninety percent of the way to slumber and kept me awake just enough to have the most vague awareness of my surroundings.

But awake or asleep, I couldn’t erase the horror in Callum’s face.  I saw it when I told him that I let my mother die in agony.  I hadn’t explained to him the fog I was in the second my feet hit the grass and dirt of the ditch the truck rolled into.  But I wasn’t sure if that was even a valid excuse for what I’d done.  I tried telling myself some days that it was but in my heart, I knew I was hoping for it.

I was hoping to see them dead.

Slow or fast, I just needed it to happen.

Callum carried me straight to his bed when we got into the apartment.  I was hardly in my right mind but I was just conscious enough to ache for his kiss in my hair or a sweet murmur in my ear.  But I got neither and I drifted with exhaustion into a slumber where my heart was free but at once heavy.  Because I knew Callum couldn’t bear the truth of what I’d done and even though it splintered my heart to a million pieces, I wasn’t surprised to wake up the next morning to find him packing my bags, throwing clothes into my suitcase and tossing my phone and wallet on top before zipping it up.  I couldn’t read the expression on his face but I didn’t need to when he said, “Get up.  You have a flight to catch.”

He only stared at me as I nodded and cried in silent resignation.

I felt like an idiot because I went halfway through the car ride before realizing that wherever I was going, he was coming with me.  To make conversation, the driver had asked, “Where ya heading?”

Callum’s answer took me by surprise.  “We’re going to Virginia.”

* * *

Before we boarded the plane, Callum stopped me with a fiery look in his eye.

“I’ve never lied to you before, Lake,” he said.  His tone was so harsh, so stern that shame dragged my shoulders all the way down.  I was ready for him to give me the reaction I’d been waiting so long for.  I killed Hunt.  I killed my mother.  There was no way he wouldn’t react.

But his speech didn’t go down the path I expected.

“I said awhile ago that you were worth it to me,” Callum muttered. “That you always would be, Lake. I told you a long time ago in my bed, after I came back from the hospital, that you were the most important thing in my life and I’d have your back no matter what because I loved you.  You knew it.  You said you believed me.”  His words hissed between his teeth as he held me tight, with an angry passion that stole all my breath away.  When he kissed me suddenly, the other passengers who swarmed around us fell away into a world that wasn’t ours.  Ours existed just for us and it wrapped me up in warmth and safety as Callum pulled away to whisper an inch from my lips.  “This is the last time I’ll ever tell you because you will never question me again, Lake.  But I love you.  You need to know that for the last time.  I would’ve loved you through this without thinking twice about it and I plan to love you through everything else that comes from this day forward, so don’t you do this to me,” he said with his distinct love and fury.  “Don’t make me miss you like that ever again.”

I agreed.  And then we went to see Sunstone together.

We walked into the dirt lot parked with all the same trailers, including Trish and Hunt’s.  But like many of the ones I’d passed the first time I stepped foot in there, it was boarded up and empty.  Callum predicted every time I felt like I couldn’t breathe and always squeezed my hand at the right moment.  When I wasn’t staring around me, I watched him take everything in, wearing just a white T-shirt and jeans but still looking so very out of place.  The brisk temperatures had most people inside that day but we still got our fair share of gaping.  I was bundled up and wasn’t sure if no one recognized me or if, man or woman, all eyes were just flying to Callum.

He had said I would never fully bury Sunstone till I knew that he’d seen it, known it and still loved me through it.  By the time he said that, we could’ve turned around and gone back to New York. I was convinced of his love.  I finally was.  But I still took him through the park and as my old neighbors started to recognize me, introduced him to them – the ones I liked, anyway.

“You’re the one who’s been waiting for her this whole time?” Sha

Callum laughed.  “That would’ve been good.  But you’ve done more than Lake and I could ever ask for.”  He was holding both Sha

It was an oddly good time.  We sat for most of the day.  Sha

“Trust me, I will.”  I looked at her and she laughed when I tipped her chin to finally face away from Callum and at me.  “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being my only real friend here.  That alone meant the world to me.”  I laughed.  “But then you went and gave me your car.”

“Hell, I was just dumping it on you so I didn’t have to watch it die myself.”

We laughed but I could feel the slightest tension at the mention of any sort of death.  There hadn’t been a single mention of Trish or Hunt since I came – not from anyone.  I wasn’t sure if it was a decision – if Sha

“Don’t let it haunt’cha,” Sha