What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7)

by Melyssa Winchester

  I can’t. There’s no way it will make sense. I’m not even sure it makes sense to me anymore.

  I was ten. I was already angry, but considering the combative relationship I had with Dean at the time, especially since he had his own issues with Mom leaving and being left alone with me, it had reached an all-time high. The only time I can even remember being happy before I blew everything to shit being those days with her.

  Those few hours where like she said, it was like nothing had changed and it was us against the world.

  Belle, until that day when she hugged me, rubbing her hands on my back and called me Kay-Kay like my mom, was the only one I wasn’t mad at.

  Until I was.

  “Grace told you she was sorry, Belle. Sorry she didn’t do more to stop what was happening to me. You nodded. All you did was nod your head and for me, it was like you were admitting to knowing things. The same way she did. I blamed you for taking my mom away and not keeping her here. I blamed you for everything.”

  Even after we got together in high school, I never told her the reason I left. I never sat down and explained why that day happened, and just like I regret bringing this book out and putting her through the memories, I regret not telling her this.

  I can see now that part of the reason why I can’t move on and look forward instead of constantly looking back is because I never told her everything.

  “I wrote that day too, Kay. When you walked out and didn’t look back the way you always did…what I always knew meant you’d be back again tomorrow, it broke something in me. I knew deep down I’d never see you again, at least not the same way I had been. So I did what I always did when things hurt. I wrote.”

  Do I even want to know what she wrote? Am I really ready to face what happened the day I left?

  For all the ways I say I’m making up for eight years apart; that I’m ready to face all of my mistakes, my demons, and other general craziness that came during a good portion of my childhood, the idea of hearing her words from that time has me wanting to admit that I’m too damn weak.

  That this is something I can’t handle.

  For once, looking forward seems easy.

  “Do you want to read what you wrote?”

  “Not really.” She answers weakly. “But since I’m pretty sure you didn’t want to relive that day either, but did anyway, I think maybe we need to.”

  We.

  She didn’t say I the way I would have. She doesn’t look at anything that way anymore. It’s always just the two of us. A team. Partners. Neither one of us having to face anything alone ever again.

  No matter what some journal says.

  Where I expect her to stand and run off to our room for the journal we’d left there the last time we read from it, she doesn’t. Turning even more into me instead, her lips part and the words slowly begin to fall.

  Jesus. She memorized her words.

  “There are a lot of people that express their feelings through their eyes because they don’t have the means or ability to be able to do it in speech or even with words being written down. Kayden is a lot like that, though if you ever asked him, I’m sure he’d tell you that you’re full of it and don’t know what you’re talking about. I saw the effect of those expressive eyes today when after walking back into the room after running off to get a drink from the kitchen, he caught my mom talking to me. His entire affect changed. Most days there’s a light in his eyes, especially when he’s looking at me. He’s really pretty when he looks at me and his green orbs flicker and dance from one part of me to the other. Sometimes even going deeper onto his face when he changes shades of color from pale peach to a light shade of red. That did happen today, it changed, but not in the familiar way I’ve spent years getting used to and memorizing so I never forget. Today it was cold. Distant. I watched in frozen silence as the air was sucked from his lungs first after hearing his mom’s name, and then the flicker evaporating altogether as his body went hard and ice cold.”

  “Belle…” I interrupt, for the first time since we reconnected, hating the descriptive power of her words. Both spoken and written. I can actually visualize the ways in which I changed that day and it’s beginning to turn me inside out.

  “He cursed, which he hardly ever does when anyone is around to hear, using the f word so easily. Aiming his venom at my mom first, and then, when I thought he was done, doing the same to me. Saving the best for last when mom finally left the room and he told me that he hated my stupid guts. Grabbing his bag and his coat and running from the room before I could find some way to respond. Running from me. I begged him to turn around, screamed it, but the sound didn’t come. It was all in my head. Kayden, though, he’s always heard me before so I knew he could hear me this time. He’s the only one that can. But he didn’t turn. He didn’t look back. His lips didn’t lift crooked like always, and he didn’t so much as breathe in my direction. He was just there one minute, gone the next. Kay-Kay is just gone.”

  Pulling back from her on the sofa and putting some distance between us, I groan and run a hand down hard over my face before finally shifting my attention back to hers.

  “Enough, Belle. I’ve heard enough.” Except, it’s not. Not really. “Why did you memorize this? Why not memorize the good entries? Why one of the worst ones?”

  “Because it wasn’t one of the worst, Kayden.”

  Stomach meet floor.

  I already knew this, but shit. Having it shoved in my face like this? Not a fan.

  “I memorized it because I spent years trying to figure it out. I needed to make sense of what happened that day and I couldn’t let it go until I did.”

  And until now, she never had.

  “How much more?” I choke out, needing to know how much longer the torture is going to last.

  “Not much.” She gives up easily, bridging the space between us as she pulls herself over to my end of the sofa and does exactly what I’d just planned on when it was over.

  Holds me.

  Keeps me close.

  Never let’s go.

  “I don’t understand why he had to leave. I know that things at home are really hard right now and that he misses his mom so much. I’ve caught him crying a couple of times when he doesn’t think anyone else is around. I know he wants her back, and I wish more than anything I could sneak away and go find her for him. Bring her home just so I could see him smile again. But I can’t, and it hurts. I can’t tell him how much because he’d just feel even worse and I only ever want Kayden happy. I’m weird enough for the both of us.”

  “You’re not weird.”

  “Says you. You’re bias.”

  “If bias means, in love, then yes. Very, very bias.”

  In a moment that is drenched in history and pain, it’s a sound I wasn’t expecting to hear, but one that lifts my spirits and gives me just the right jolt of strength in order to get through it.

  Her laugh enough to break through even the darkest haze.

  How many years did I live without that sound? How many years am I going to spend now making sure I never lose it again?

  “I want him to come back.” She begins again after patting my hand. “I want him to realize what he left behind, come back and let me do what I should have been doing all this time. The thing that I only ever want to do with him. No one else. I want him to come back so I can hold him, tell him that he’s always going to be my Kay-Kay, and we’ll get through it the same way we get through everything else. Together. I don’t think this time he is coming back, though. I just hope he realizes that when he left, he didn’t do it empty handed. He took my heart with him. Maybe one day when we’re bigger and he’s not so mad at me anymore, he’ll give it back.”

  “Belle,” I swipe at my eye before the bubble of emotion bursts and makes itself apparent on my face. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what, Kayden?”

  “Don’t ever ask me to give it back.”

  “I won’t.” she smiles before pressing her lips to the edge o
f mine. “But only if you promise me that you’ll never ask me to return yours.”

  “It’s stupid,” I start, and when she shakes her head, I laugh. “Okay, maybe not stupid, but silly, I guess. When I walked out on you that day, when I swore that I was done and I wanted nothing to do with you ever again because you were no better than anyone else…I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I knew it would be safe with you. Which is why I left it behind.”

  The more I let it sink in, the less silly it seems. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s right. I walked out on her that day, but I left my heart behind. Never loving another person after her. Not girlfriends, not friends. Nothing and nobody. And I did it because if there was anyone in the world that would protect it, keep it safe and secure, I knew it was her. Even if ten year old Kayden needed a few kicks in the head for not realizing it sooner.

  She held onto it until I could come back years later and give it to her all over again.

  The right way this time.

  There’s something else I’m realizing though.

  Something bigger and more important than the end result of that day years ago.

  “It was never my mom, Belle.”

  Running a finger down across my face and along my jaw until I give into the feel of her touch and turn toward her, she smiles up at me, questions filling her eyes.

  “Why I couldn’t stand anyone calling me Kay or even Kay-Kay. It was never her. I made myself believe that because it was easier somehow, but it wasn’t her at all. I should have realized it senior year when you called me Kay, but I couldn’t stand anyone else doing it and like an idiot I didn’t. It was you.”

  “Kay…”

  “Only you, Belle. I only ever want to be Kay for you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “September first, two thousand nine.”

  Doing a quick scan of the first couple of lines to the entry, I feel the walls beginning to close in. For every mention of Belle, there’s just as much mention of Dean. None of it good. Each entry worse than the last.

  Looks like Dean is taking another shot at bat.

  “Uh, Belle. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  Glancing quickly from me down to the book, she frowns once she takes in the same couple of lines I did.

  “Would it make it easier if I took over for you? Maybe read it silently?”

  I love her for wanting to make things easier, but now that I know what’s there, I don’t think I’m going to be able to settle at all until it’s done.

  Just like I haven’t been able to with the other entries.

  Shifting the book more into my lap than hers, I silently tell her with a shake of my head that I’ve got this. Looking down at the page, I swallow hard, take a deep breath and start.

  “I should have known when I got home and he was ten fucking sheets to the wind that the night was going to end badly. He may as well have flashed a high beam in my eyes with the gigantic sign of things to come there when he told me to drink up. It was an idiotic move, but I did it just like he wanted me to. I always do what he tells me. I keep hoping if I do everything he wants without complaining about it, he’ll stop hurting me. Hasn’t happened yet though.”

  “Breathe, Kay.” Belle whispers, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “You’re already halfway there.”

  Really? What entry is she reading along with? All I see is a blur of lines on the page filled with my ramblings. Ones that even with the cloud that’s taking over my vision, are filled with nothing but pain and heartbreak.

  Lack of understanding for why things had to be the way they were.

  “I got in a fight today at school. Smashed some idiots MP3 player and laughed when he cried. I expected them to call Dean. I even expected to get home and be forced under the scalding spray of the shower again or maybe some bleach in any open cuts I still had from the last time he attacked me. Not him telling me to drink shot after shot of some of the strongest vodka I’ve ever had. Stealing a sip here and there from the bottle he keeps stashed under his bed is one thing, but ten shots in a row with the promise of more after he goes out and gets another bottle? It’s sick. Wrong.”

  “I’ve thrown up twice already.” I continue, the familiar feel of acid lifting in my chest a healthy reminder of the day. “I didn’t even make it to the toilet the second time. It’s all over the carpet in the hall, and no matter how much I take sponges and the mop to it so it’s clean when he gets back, it won’t go away. I can smell it. See the chunks. Feel the burn of another round as it threatens to come back up again for round three.”

  A brush of air as it passes by alerts me to the change in the room. Belle no longer sitting beside me, but instead rushing down the hall faster than I think she’s moved in years. The bathroom door slamming off the wall as she pushes her way into the room with the sound of her retching following quickly after.

  This is exactly why I didn’t want to do this with her. I knew she was going to react to what I’d been through.

  Moving the book off my lap, I stand, but before I can even get a step or two away from the sofa, she’s coming back down the hall, her expression grim, wiping at her lips and refusing to meet my eyes.

  The same way she used to when I tortured her at school.

  Great.

  Instead of making her way over to me, she makes a beeline for the closet and after a bit of shuffling around, pulls her boots out, yanking her jacket off the hanger and slipping it on before turning back and doing the same to mine. Tossing it over to me and going back to grab my shoes. Finally meeting my eyes when I’ve taken them from her and slipped them on.

  “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  “I’m pressing pause, Kayden.”

  “What does that mean? And why are you putting your jacket on?”

  “This isn’t finished, but when you read the rest of whatever is in there, you’re going to do it in front of the person that deserves to hear it.”

  Person that deserves to hear it.

  Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize she’s talking about Dean.

  “Baby, we can’t just show up there. We’ve got to plan ahead.”

  Slipping her cell phone out of the back of her jeans, she tosses it to me with an indifferent expression on her face. At least there’s indifference until I can see her eyes. The pools of blue sadness completely giving away her real feelings.

  “Then call Tom and set it up. We’re going there.”

  Turning her back, she takes the couple of steps to the door and pulls it open, stepping out and making sure to slam it closed behind her. Following her to the window, I see her kneeling on the grass outside, curling into herself and again, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she’s doing or why.

  The entry I was reading, it got the best of her, and now she’s getting the result of the overload of emotion out. It’s only when her hands come up to her head and she begins hitting that I’ve got the door open and I’m running toward her. Grabbing a hold of her and blocking her hands from reaching their target for round two.

  It’s been months since she fell apart like this. When loss of control of her emotions made her deviate back to the way she’d done things in the past. Even longer since my touch alone wasn’t enough to bring her out of it.

  “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you.” I whisper soothingly and as she fights against the grip I’ve got on her, I just hold on tighter. Refusing to let her hurt herself over something I’d already hurt enough over for the both of us. Unable to live with being the cause of her injuring herself if one of the hits she wanted to do actually hit its mark.

  “I’ll call Tom, Belle. We’ll go right now. We’ll end this, I swear to you.”

  As her body collapses against mine after a few more minutes of struggling, I release the breaths I’ve been holding in. Falling to the ground and cradling her to me and rubbing her back until I can not only feel her breathing begin to even out, but hear it as well.

 
“He—He needs to k-know, Kayden.”

  “And he will. I promise you. He will.” I assure her, even though the idea of going back to Donwood Correctional isn’t at all appealing. Seeing Dean again, especially right now when the wound is raw and exposed again, the last thing I want to do.

  Wiping at her face, ridding herself of the tears that despite the level of calm that’s seemed to take over the moment, are still falling, she sniffles before looking up.

  “How many shots, Kayden?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And what happened after the last one?”

  “Rick called an ambulance because I passed out in my own puke.”

  “Dean didn’t do it?”

  Son of a bitch. I don’t want to answer this. I know it’s only going to make a bad situation worse.

  Fuck!

  Sometimes I really wish I could lie to her.

  “No. He just went off and drank more. Rachel, Rick’s wife, rode with me to the hospital.”

  “I think I’m gonna be sick again.” She moans, pulling out of my arms and crawling across the grass, dry heaving and making the guilt pooling in the pit of my stomach even heavier.

  I did this to her.

  Again.

  “Kay?”

  “Yeah?”

  Wiping at her knees, she stands and walks back over to where I’m still sitting, the sheer level of hatred I have for what I’ve caused tonight making it impossible to move even if I wanted to.

  What Belle is having no part of when she holds her hand out between us for me to take, not so much as twitching until I’ve done what she wants and slipped mine in and pulled myself up.

  “This, the nightmare he’s been holding over you. It ends tonight. Even if I have to be the one to do it.”

  *****

  After a call to Tom that consisted of me basically begging him to do this, and the time it took for the man to put together the gateway needed to get us into the prison to see Dean, we were off.