Dare Me

by Stella Rhys

  She nodded, let out a breath that told me she was awake again, back on Earth with me.

  “She asked if I’d ever call you my girlfriend, I said no.” I breathed hard, my heart pounding. “I said no because that label would never in a million years do justice to whatever we are and whatever we have. We’ve never been anything but us, Lake. They can’t describe us – they never could and you know that.”

  Her eyes flickered with life as she gazed with the bluebells at the floor. I reached for whatever I could say to bring her back to me.

  “Lake, I love you.” I fought off the knot in my throat. “I always have, I’ve never stopped and I never will.” I held her cheeks. Her eyes tried to meet mine but they struggled, downcast as fresh tears poured in silence and ripped my heart out my chest. “Listen to me.” My voice was hoarse as I wrestled out every ounce of conviction in my soul to bring her back to me. “This is it. You need to know that I’ll never leave you, Lake. No matter what. So tell me everything now. Tell me so we can end this and you can be fucking free, Lake, please.”

  She gasped for breath, every sound she swallowed crying out at once. She finally lifted her wet eyes to me, hanging desperate hands on my wrists as I held her face tight. The tearful words she breathed out came in a whisper just as I rest my forehead to hers. “I made sure they stayed there.”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  “Hunt. My mom.” A different air escaped her lungs as she said it. “I made sure they would die. I killed them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Callum

  We sat amid a sea of sheets in bed. She dared me to stay still, to say nothing until she was finished. She didn’t want me to touch her until I knew for sure I still wanted to. I hated the reason but I accepted and it took every fiber of my being to honor the promise as she detailed the misery – of what was only her first time at the trailer park with Trish. Hunt and Dean. The tears never stopped but her voice eventually found a hollow, eerie calm.

  “The bar I worked at in Daytona was in a mall. I shouldn’t have parked in the same spot every night. That last night, there were no other cars but Hunt’s truck. I ran before he even got out but he had me on the floor fast. Blade to my throat. He took my money for gas and we drove from midnight to morning. I was so dead inside I didn’t react to anything. Nothing fazed me. Dean didn’t live at the park anymore. He finally left Trish. Trish was waiting outside for me, shaking her head, cursing, calling me worthless and ungrateful and every name under the sun as I got out of the car. But the next morning, she was all smiles and she said she had news that was going to make me love her again. Make us a real family.” Lake shook her head. She stared out in space but I knew she was seeing something vivid. “That look on her face. She really thought this would be some quick fix. And I thought it was so unfair,” she whispered. “She was pregnant. Ten weeks along. She didn’t even want it. I was so angry, I thought about your mom. I thought Caroline should’ve gotten a baby. Not Trish. She had no love in her body. She had nothing but drugs and hate and bitterness and yet she got the baby. She got that chance your mom wanted so bad.

  I only stayed to make sure she’d do right by the baby and get clean. Eat well. Even though I didn’t fully believe she was pregnant till she started showing. I was surprised though. She did good. The baby came out healthy. Little boy named Matthew. She said it meant ‘gift’ and that was what he was for us – a second start. A blank slate and new beginning. It was twisted though. She said he wasn’t but I knew Matthew was Hunt’s because he had the same green eyes I never saw on anyone else in my life. But he was still the most beautiful, peaceful boy. I loved him with all my heart. I wanted to raise him right and give him everything he deserved.”

  Lake closed her eyes and rested her chin in the dip between her knees. She took a break for air. When she went on, it was with a frown that didn’t go away. It only deepened with every word.

  “I wound up his sole caretaker. Trish tried for a little but she was back on the drugs fast and Hunt hated the baby from day one. He hated when Matthew wasn’t asleep – hated that he was hungry, that he needed to be changed. He didn’t look at him, never touched him once. When Matthew cried at night, I went to him because Trish wouldn’t wake up. I don’t know if she was strung out or if she didn’t want to, she just didn’t do it. But she wouldn’t let me put the crib outside either, so I slept in her bed with her at night and I made sure to stay as close to the baby as possible. Right at the edge of the bed. When he cried, I held him and I couldn’t sing but I sang to him because he liked it,” she laughed at herself, letting the tears fall. “And I imagined Caroline would be proud of me for being his mom. He wasn’t my baby but I wasn’t hers. She still loved me and I still loved him.”

  The knife twisted my heart. There was nothing but pain and misery in the air but at the same time, I could so vividly see the life I wanted with Lake as she thought of baby Matthew. I wanted so bad to speak, to touch her, but I kept to what she dared me – to wait till everything was out.

  “Matthew was crying one morning and Hunt took him in his arms. I thought he was going to try to comfort him but he shook him. I went ballistic and threw every punch I had till I was getting choked out on the floor and Trish was pulling Hunt off of me. She slapped me. Said this wasn’t what family did. I was exhausted and I fell asleep too hard that night. I only woke up because I was dreaming that Matthew was crying. But he wasn’t. I didn’t hear a peep from him that night and when I woke up on the edge of the bed, his crib was empty. I saw the needles on Trish’s nightstand. I went to the bathroom because I heard the shower running. And I saw her holding Matthew under the water in the tub.”

  I couldn’t stand another second without holding her. I grabbed Lake in my arms and buried my lips in her hair as she resisted. But then she clung to me, holding on tight as she tried to go on, ragged sobs breaking her every sentence.

  “I don’t know how long he was feeling that pain for. I hate imagining it. I just thank God I got there in time. She wouldn’t let go of him and he was limp and I wasn’t sure if he was breathing but I fought her and I got him and I brought him to Shanna’s. I wanted to save him on my own and I couldn’t bear to leave him but I knew I couldn’t guarantee he’d be safe. I said I’d protect him no matter what but I didn’t know if I really could and Shanna said we couldn’t chance his life, we just couldn’t. CPS took him away. He was just sleeping so peacefully in my arms when they came. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t do it but they made me. And I got it so bad from Trish after that.

  She went crazy. She said I never gave her a chance to be better. That I thought she was worthless. She punched me, pulled out my hair. We fell on the table and broke Hunt’s bong, and that was the only reason he stepped in. But he was in some other kind of state. I’d never seen him like that. I don’t know what he took that night but he was choking me so hard my feet didn’t touch the ground. Trish went off, she didn’t care. She went to shoot up, do something, I don’t know. But I couldn’t even scream and Hunt was smiling, saying he was going to kill me like he promised all those years ago. I thought it was it for me so I started letting go and it felt kind of… nice. I figured I’d at least get to see my grandma.”

  I held onto her, my kiss on her temple and her cheek to my chest. She stopped crying abruptly. Out of nowhere, her voice was light as a feather.

  “But then he let go of me. Maybe he thought I was dead. I couldn’t move or see but I could hear my pulse screaming in my ears and I took it as a sign to keep fighting. They were zombies again that night and I went to leave forever. But Hunt slept with the keys to his truck and Trish’s car wouldn’t start, so I went to Shanna’s and I don’t remember what I was crying to her, I probably didn’t make any sense. I shoved money in her hands and she wouldn’t take it. But she gave me the keys to her car and said it was on its last breath but if she’d let it die with anyone but her, it was going to be me. I was peeling out when I saw the lights turn on in Hunt’s room. He was be
hind me in his truck in a minute.”

  Lake pulled away from me and I knew from the look in her eye that we were closing in on the end of the story. She was looking at me like she was bracing herself. Waiting for me to change my mind about her.

  “He was so high he was already swerving. I made the sharpest turns I could to lose him. It was probably 4AM and the road was empty and I sped like I had nothing to lose because I didn’t. I didn’t even stop when I saw his truck crash. I only did when it flipped over and over and down into this ditch. Upside down. Wheels just spinning. I was so scared but I went to see, I don’t know why. I only realized Hunt wasn’t alone in there because I heard my mom crying and that put me in shock. I didn’t know she was there. I could’ve died when I got close enough to see them.” She cried and hugged the white blanket to her chest in agony I could feel as much as I could see. But she kept her voice steady and she kept her glassy eyes on me. “Hunt was gone,” she murmured. “I could only see the side of his face and one eye but it was open and he was dead, I knew that already. They were hanging upside down and Trish was so covered in blood I didn’t know what was bleeding. I felt like I could hear it in her lungs. I’d never seen so much of it in my life. I couldn’t believe she could even see me but she was saying, ‘It hurts so bad, baby. Help me. Call somebody, please.’ I could feel the pain she was in and she kept asking me, ‘What are you doing? Tell me I’m going to be okay, baby, tell me what you’re going to do.’”

  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?” Shanna asked when she finally met Callum. She had come out of her trailer and screamed at the top of her lungs when she saw me, but after meeting Callum, I was briefly invisible, which I absolutely understood. His dark blonde hair was messy, undone this morning and the shirt he wore stretched over his broad frame in a way that was hard not to look at. “I’da told her to run off earlier if I knew you looked like this.”

  Callum laughed. “That would’ve been good. But you’ve done more than Lake and I could ever ask for.” He was holding both Shanna’s hands in his and she was for once completely speechless as he thanked her, but the moment was perfectly ruined when Kip Schroeder cluelessly interrupted with a beer for Callum and Shanna screeched, “I was having a fuckin’ moment here, Schroeder!”

  It was an oddly good time. We sat for most of the day. Shanna made us margaritas without the watermelon because buying the watermelon had always been my job. We sat away from everyone and watched Callum talk baseball with some of the guys. “That’s a prince right there,” she said after some silence. “Beauty aside, he’s a prince. You hold onto that one.”

  “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.”

  W
e 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 Shanna had briefed everyone before my arrival. But it worked. It reminded me that other people had existed at Sunstone. It made me realize what a feat it was for them to ever help me forget about Trish and Hunt, if only for seconds at a time. They were the people I should remember. Maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could forget that Trish and Hunt had ever existed. Then again, they were always so high, so vacant that they may as well have been ghosts.

  “Don’t let it haunt’cha,” Shanna said out of nowhere, as if reading my mind. She hugged me to her chest and didn’t elaborate but she didn’t need to, and those were the words we left off on before Callum crushed his third can of Bud Light, said goodbye to the guys and joined me in saying goodbye to Shanna. He murmured some words in her ear just as we left. I didn’t hear them, but they left a brighter smile on Shanna’s face than I’d ever seen.

  We were driving to the airport when he decided he was tired and we should sleep till morning. We stopped at a motel. I couldn’t imagine Callum Pike in cheap, fluorescent-lit highway motel with paint-chipped walls and long-broken vending machines. But he didn’t so much as bat an eye.

  And in our room, simply because I was with him, I finally felt like I was home.

  *

  My sweater, scarf and leggings were strewn in a path that led to our bed in the motel room, the window cracked open enough to let in moonlight. My hot breaths filled the room, my lips parted and still swollen from the never-ending kiss up the stairs.