“Not the time, man. Whatever you think I lied about has nothing to do with this.”
“It does. You fucking lied to me. You have a thing for my girlfriend.”
Yep, I was right. He’s lost his fucking mind.
“You wanna tell me why you think that?”
“Whose idea was it to surprise her on campus today? It sure as hell wasn’t mine. I was content waiting until she got home from class, but no, you said it would be better this way. You wanted me to see them together.”
It’s not the time for it, but with everything he’s saying, I can’t hold back. I laugh. This isn’t the Kayden I’ve been living with for the last few months. Hell, it’s not even the one I went to high school with. This is a whole other beast. The one that jealousy took and twisted until it made him its bitch.
“Do you hear yourself right now? You’re delusional!”
“No. For once I’m thinking pretty damn clear. I should have remembered what kind of person you were with the shit you pulled last year. You wanted her then. It wasn’t about playing a game.”
“Kayden, stop. Listen to yourself! I don’t want Belle.”
“Why not, huh? She not good enough for you or something?”
The way he switches gears from attacking me for wanting his girlfriend to thinking that I don’t want her because she’s not good enough, it’s even more proof that what happened has broken him down. He’s not making any sense.
“Man, think about what you’re saying. You don’t wanna go down this road.”
“How long have you had a thing for Belle, Dill?”
“I don’t have a thing for your girlfriend. Fuck, K.” I groan before grabbing on to his shirt and shaking him. “Snap out of this. What happened to her, it’s fucking with your head. You’re seeing shit that’s not there.”
With everything I said, I expect him to finally wake the hell up and see the insanity he’s spewing, but that’s not at all what happens. His arms come up quick, shoving into me until I’m pushed completely away from him.
He’s gonna take a swing at me in the middle of a busy emergency room.
Kayden has completely lost his mind.
“You wanna take a fucking swing at me? Fight me over something that’s not even real, you’re not doing it here.” I snap lowering my voice before moving in and grabbing him by the shirt and dragging him to the door. “You wanna hit me so bad, do it outside.”
He falls silent as I continue to pull him along, not giving a shit anymore what he’s going to do next, but not wanting it in the middle of a hospital full of people. For whatever reason, he’s got it in his head that not only does Isaac want his girl, but so do I, and if the only way for him to get a reality check is to let him beat on me, then that’s what I’ll do.
Kayden needs to snap out of this before he ruins the very real thing he has. If he hasn’t done it already.
It’s no secret that last fall I had these momentary lapses in my plan to bring Kayden back into the group. Ones where I started to see what he saw in Belle and even liked her myself. I’ve never once lied about that when it’s been thrown in my face, but that’s all they were. Seconds in time where I was attempting to break away from the monster I had become and be something better.
A change that didn’t stick until Cadence and if Kayden would just wake up, he would see that. Belle was always meant to be his the same way Caddy was for me.
Any other way is just wrong and now, I’m gonna make him see it.
Kayden
I can’t get it out of my head.
Dillon running for her the minute my fist made contact. He didn’t run forward to try and stop me, no. He ran to try and prevent Belle from falling.
Watching him hold her, pull her into him the way I’ve done so many times when we’ve been alone together, ripped me apart.
He was doing what I needed to but couldn’t. I was locked in place watching him hold her, whispering and stroking her face, trying to keep her awake. All of the things someone that’s in love does when this kind of thing happens.
Who am I kidding? This kind of thing doesn’t happen to people that are in love because they trust each other. They have enough faith in each other to know that nothing can tear them apart. I thought I had that with Belle, but seeing her arms around Isaac, something in me just snapped.
I don’t have that. For all the love I claim to have for this girl, the minute I see her interact with another guy that isn’t me, it’s like all the blood rushes to my head and all I can see is her leaving, being swept off her feet by someone much more deserving of her than I can ever be.
Belle leaving me for Isaac was all I could see. The one guy she’s met since she started college that’s just like her. Someone who understands what it’s like to be her. Something that no matter how hard I try, I can never do. I can never understand autism completely because I don’t suffer with it.
The problem is, Isaac isn’t here now. Dillon is and instead of letting him be the friend I know he’s trying to be, I’m losing my shit on him because the way he was with her is too intimate. He’s gonna try and steal Belle from me, same as he tried to do at homecoming. I can’t let him do it. She’s mine. She’s always going to be mine even after what just happened. I can’t let her go. I can’t let her leave, especially not with him.
“You want to hit something so bad, here I am! Hit me, K. Get it the fuck out!”
“You have a girlfriend. Why the fuck do you need to mess with mine?”
Asking him the question, I don’t even wait for a response. I don’t want to hear any more lies come out of his mouth. He’s the king of lies. He can make just about anyone believe in him, so chances are anything he says is just bullshit anyway.
The grin on his face the second I’m up in it, I don’t expect. What the fuck does he have to grin about? My girlfriend is in some room unconscious with her head cracked open. There’s not a damn thing funny about this.
Dillon is a fucking asshole.
“Hit me, Kayden. Get it the fuck out.”
“You really want me to beat the shit out of you, don’t you?” I ask before pulling my arm back, more than ready to pound on his stupid face. He’s right. I need to get this out. He deserves to be beat on for the shit he caused.
I’m so fucking tired of doing things the right way. Being the good guy. Especially when it just means I get my girlfriend stolen right out from under me.
“I want you to do whatever the hell you need to so you can get your head screwed on straight.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re in shock! What just happened to Belle, it’s fucking with your head. So, beat the hell out of me if it makes you feel better!”
Will taking Dillon down make me feel better? Is he really the problem here?
No, he’s not. I am. I’m always the one at fault. Fuck, he’s right. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m screwed up. I was jealous.
The way she was hugging him, the way she feels about him, I spent the last year thinking that it was all for me. I was the only one she would ever be that close to even though I know she does the same damn thing with Eric. She always has. She’s being a friend to the people that are like her and all I can see is them touching.
I’m losing it.
She wasn’t cheating on me. She wasn’t going to leave me. She loves me.
“It’s happening isn’t it? You’re finally waking the fuck up.”
I can hear him speaking, but I can’t respond. Not when my head is flooded with every single thing that’s happened since that day in the parking lot last fall.
The rage I felt seeing Dillon talking to her at the dance, seeing her dance with him, smile at him as if he wasn’t the monster I knew him to be. The way she clung to Eric, held his hand and talked to him so easily when I got back after being in the hospital. The way she held hands with Isaac the day I came down to see her and got there early. The way she looked hugging him.
I’ve never given t
wo shits about people before. I didn’t love anyone and no one loved me. I floated by without ever having to acknowledge that it could be an issue of mine. I just assumed when I got with her that it was me and her against the world and nothing could get in the middle of it. Living through the bullying was supposed to be as bad as things got for us.
It should have been, but of course, I had to go and ruin it the same way I ruin everything I touch.
“I did this…”
“Yeah, you did, but you can still fix it. It was an accident.”
“No. I can’t. Dill, I hurt her. I fucking hurt the only person who ever really loved me.”
“Accidentally.” He repeats and I just shake my head. It might not have been intentional but it still happened and I deserved to burn for it. I swore to her that I would never hurt her again and I did it in the worst way possible.
I physically hurt her. I can never make up for that.
“I need to get out of here.” I choke out as I finally look up and catch Dillon’s face. He’s concerned. He doesn’t understand what the fuck I’m saying. I’m not even sure I do. I just know this is the last place I should be.
I’m the reason all of this happened. I need to be as far away from here as possible right now. Her mom is gonna be here soon, Dillon is here and I know he cares about her. She’ll have the right people with her.
“You’re still not thinking clear. Leaving isn’t gonna make this right.”
“Don’t you get it?” I yell. “Leaving is the only thing that’s gonna make this right. As long as she’s far away from me, she won’t get hurt.”
“K—”
“No. I need to go before her mom finds out what I did. I don’t want to be here when she realizes that I’m the reason Belle is—”
“Your place is by her side.” He explains and I shake my head again. He’s wrong. I might have thought it was the right place before. That there was no other place in this world I fit more than with the special girl in the hospital room fighting for her life, but I was wrong. She deserves more than to be stuck with someone like me.
She always has.
“Dill, stay with her. Don’t leave. Be there when she wakes up.”
“You know I’d do that anyway, but man, it isn’t me she’s gonna want to see.”
I know that too. Belle will wake up and want me because she loves me. She might be happy to see Dillon because they’re friends, but her heart will call out to mine. I just can’t answer that call. Not knowing the damage I caused just by loving her in the first place.
“I know, but you’re the one she needs. You, Eric and her mom. I can’t be here, I don’t deserve to be here. I lost that right…”
He wants to say something I can tell, but I turn my back before he can. I start taking slow steps away, turned so inside out that even if I wanted to force my legs to move faster, I can’t. It’s only when I’m about ten feet away that I finally succumb to what’s building in me.
Falling to my knees in the middle of the parking lot, locked in tightly between two random cars, I do something I haven’t allowed myself to do since I caught my mom coming out of that motel room.
I cry.
Grace
I’ve gotten a lot of calls over the years, especially since Belle told me that it was time for her to go to regular school. Some of them were more severe than others. Her having difficulties and needing to come home, ones about accidents, panic attacks and such, but there has never been one quite like this.
This is a call no parent wants to get.
Belle, my sweet girl. The one that sometimes I have a hard time believing is actually a young woman now, has been in an accident. She’s at the hospital and when I asked the lady on the phone who had brought her in, I’ve never been more shocked by her response.
Dillon Murphy.
It doesn’t take long when I finally run through the doors of the emergency room for me to see him. He’s sitting in the chair, his back to me with his head in his hands. At first sight, knowing that he was the one to bring her here, I want to yell at him. Rip him apart for somehow hurting her again. Hit him and make him pay for taking another piece of my daughter and destroying her.
I don’t do any of those things because the look he gives me when I call his name tells me he had nothing to do with what happened and he’s just as petrified in this moment as I am.
“What happened?”
“Something went down at school earlier. I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. I’m sorry.”
Dillon has always been one thing when it comes to me. A monster, but seeing him now as he apologizes for not being able to get to Belle in time, it breaks my heart.
“Tell me everything.”
“Kayden wanted to come home and surprise her. We got word that our transfer went through and we’d be able to start back here a week early. He was so fucking—um, freaking excited.” He says. “When we got there, she came out with Isaac.”
“Dillon, how did my daughter end up here?” I plead, knowing that I asked for everything, but more interested in what got her to this point than anything leading up to it.
“We saw them hugging. Kayden, I don’t know. Something snapped when he saw them. He ran from the car and I wasn’t fast enough to catch him. He started fighting with Belle, yelling at her then he started fighting with Isaac. Ms. R, she stepped in between them. She wanted them to stop and they wouldn’t listen to her so she stepped in and Kayden, he hit her. She stumbled, tripped over her bag and fell.”
“She fell and then what happened?”
“Her head hit the pavement. Kayden tried to grab her before she tripped, but when that happened it threw her farther away from him. I was closer so I jumped out but I—”
He doesn’t need to say anymore. I can put together the rest of what he’s telling me.
“Has anyone come out and explained where she is? How she is? Anything?”
“No.”
It occurs to me that with everything he told me, he hasn’t said a word about where Kayden is.
“Where’s Kayden?”
“He’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“What happened twisted him up so bad that he thought he needed to leave. That you wouldn’t want him here when you learned why she got hurt.”
I might not agree with the way things happened, violence never being acceptable, but from everything Dillon has admitted to, he didn’t intentionally hurt Belle. She got in between them in the hopes that seeing her would stop anything more from happening and had been caught in the crossfire.
I’m not pleased with the way Kayden handled himself, but I definitely wouldn’t keep him away from her. If there is anyone in the world that loves Belle as much as Tristan and I do, it’s him. Not only that, but since they reconnected again he’s been good for her.
She’s changed, but in so many good ways. They’ve been good for each other.
“He really thinks I wouldn’t want him here?”
Dillon nods and I sigh. I should have seen this being the way he would react. He may have changed, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is that Kayden still believes himself to be unworthy. It’s something we’ve spoken about before, but I didn’t realize it had gotten to this extreme.
There is nowhere in this world that he needs to be right now more than here. He’s family.
“Do you know where he went?”
“No. We were both in the ambulance with Belle, so his car is back at the school. I don’t know where he went, but nothing I said was getting through. He was all twisted up, Ms. R. I’ve seen him pretty screwed up before, but this was different.”
“I’m going to go see what I can find out about my daughter. Please try and reach him. He needs to know that I want him here. It’s where he belongs. If you don’t mind, could you also do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Call Eric. She said something about having plans with him tonight when I talked to her earlier. I don’t want h
im worrying and he’s going to want to be here.”
He nods again and immediately heads for the door, pulling his cell phone out as he goes, preparing to do exactly as I’ve asked. It occurs to me as I head toward the nurse’s station that Kayden and Belle aren’t the only people that have changed and grown over the last year. He has too.
“Excuse me,” I ask, tapping my fingers on the large blue counter. “I received a call that my daughter was in an accident and that she was brought here for treatment. Her name is Isabelle Reagan. Please tell me that my daughter is okay.”
She has to be okay. I don’t know how I’m going to go on if she isn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kayden
Bang. Bang. Bang.
I can hear the relentless banging on the door, but I can’t be bothered answering it. I’ve got Jim, Jack and Jose by my side, there’s nothing else I need.
Except her. You need her, you stupid dumbass.
No. I won’t think about her. She’s too good for my thoughts. If she enters my mind, I’ll taint her and she should never be tainted or twisted in any way.
She’s safe where she is. Belle won’t ever be tainted by my stupidity, insane jealousy or the fucking darkness that runs through my veins. Never again. It’s better this way. No matter how much it feels like someone carved a hole in my chest and left me to bleed out, cold and alone.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Go away!” I holler as loud as I can, my voice hoarse and ripped from the breakdown the night before and the after effects of my attempt at blocking it all out.
When did I become this person? What happened to the guy that was supposed to be different? The one that deserved to have that special girl by his side because he was determined to change the past?
How did it get this far? When did my jealousy override what I know to be the truth? When did jealousy even become a problem?
Oh, that’s right. The minute I opened my heart wide enough to care about someone. Not just any someone either. The only someone.
Isabelle. My air. My reason.
The incessant banging comes again, only this time it’s louder and it repeats on a loop until no amount of blocking it out can help.
All My Heart (Count On Me Book 4) Page 22
