What Lies Beneath (Count On Me Series Book 7)

by Melyssa Winchester

  Chapter Eighteen

  October 29, 2010

  Whoever came up with this stupid holiday needs the shit kicked out of them.

  No, wait. I don’t mean that.

  What I meant to say is, whoever thought up the idea to get a bunch of kids to dress up and parade around like cattle on display on the last school day before the holiday, needs their asses handed to them.

  I thought we were over that shit when we got out of junior high. Apparently when you live in Wexfield, it never goes away.

  Ever.

  So not only did I start my day on the opposite end of inebriated Dean’s fist, requiring two showers to rid myself of the blood—his and mine—that I ended up bathed in, but I also had to put up with my girlfriend and about seventy-five percent of the school dressed up like a bunch of freaks.

  The biggest freak of all being her.

  For someone that I clearly remember being scared of her own shadow half the fucking time, let alone on the one day of the year that the entire town donned masks and pretended to be the things nightmares are made of, I never expected to walk through the hall and be slammed with the sight of her joining in.

  With the hell me and my friends have made of her life since she got here almost two months ago, I didn’t think she’d ever join in something again.

  I’d made sure of it.

  Securing my place as the monster of her story early on.

  But there she was, princess crown on the blonde hair flowing in waves down her back. Strapless yellow dress that from the top looked tight, but that once it reached her stomach seemed to pop out. A matching yellow jacket thing covering her arms—per school regulations—and when her eyes finally turn and meet mine when she catches me looking, makeup on her face.

  She was Beauty. She was Belle.

  And me?

  Well, in my lack of giving a shit, dressed in my normal jeans and form fitting shirt with the familiar scowl on my face, I was the beast.

  For a split second after I noticed the changes in her, I wasn’t though.

  I wasn’t the monster I’d made her believe I was. I wasn’t the piece of shit asshole that enjoyed making people’s lives as miserable as mine.

  For one damn second in time while I stood there, feet firmly stuck to the floor staring, I could see myself being the hero.

  Her hero.

  The prince to her princess.

  How pathetic is that?

  The girl that just last week, I told Amy belonged in kindergarten. The girl that despite the way her eyes seemed to lighten and lift when our eyes met, I’d told Tim the day before, was nothing more than a stain on humanity. A mistake that her mother should have aborted.

  A girl that with just one fucking look, can see something more.

  Sees me.

  I should have been happy when she backed up like a skittish mouse when I moved toward her. When the strangled squeak slipped past her lips when I kept coming. Her fear and the tremors her body made when she attempted to get away and was met with a locked classroom door instead. The way her head sounded when it connected with the wood of the door as she started banging it, starting to break down because like the asshole I am, I was in her personal space and she couldn’t speak.

  It all should have made me happy.

  I was scaring the shit out of her, but this time, happy was the last thing I felt.

  Which is why, like a fucking idiot, I reached out to her. My hand finding her arm, but instead of gripping it the way I had in the past when I’d shoved her out of my way in the hall, I just rested it against her skin and began to stroke gently. The softness of her skin under my callused fingers offering a different kind of feeling altogether.

  Comfort.

  One that for the last four years I’d done everything to distance myself from.

  What I can never allow myself to feel again with the way she betrayed me five years ago.

  She froze and then tensed up, which I expected considering the way it’s been between us since she started going to school, but when she finally finds the strength inside herself to look up and meet my eyes, its then she does the unexpected.

  Searching my eyes, she studies me before those pretty pink lips of hers part and she speaks.

  The first time I’ve heard her in four years. Since the day I left her house when I was ten and never looked back.

  “Kay-Kay.”

  Her name for me.

  The name that after my mom heard it, had taken from her and used it. A name that with everything that happened after the first time Belle said it, I never want to hear again.

  A name that in that moment though, I needed her to repeat.

  “Belle…”

  My voice had a mind of its own. Speaking to her when the most I’d done was talk about her for weeks.

  “Kay-Kay.” She’d said again as she pulled her arm out from under my touch and rested it over mine.

  The feel of her so god damned familiar.

  “I’m sorry.” I blurted out and with a quick look around me, making sure the coast was clear, I moved in closer. This time, her body seeming to melt into mine when I pulled her into me. That’s when I quickly brushed my lips against the top of her head, whispered another apology and got my head on straight. Turning and walking away before she had the chance to react.

  Feeling her eyes on me even after I’d pushed through the door and headed up the stairs. A look that even though I never turned back to witness firsthand, I’m still feeling on me now, hours after it happened.

  Seeing her in that fucking dress, looking the prettiest I think she’s ever been, I forgot about all of the reasons we can’t be friends.

  I forgot about my mom, the lies and secrets between us, the bullshit at home with Dean, and all of the weird and gross shit she does.

  For those few seconds in the hall, I just saw her.

  Isabelle Reagan.

  My best friend.

  The reason I started this fucking book in the first place.

  The girl that no matter how badly I treated her, still has hope in her eyes when she looks at me.

  Can see what lies beneath the monster.

  The part of me that after Tim knocked me into her when we were all heading down the stairs later, I made damn sure she’ll never see again. Laughing along with the others when she tumbled and fell. Smirking when as we all started passing her, she met my eyes, searching for something that despite my earlier move in the hall, I could never give her.

  Belle might have chosen the perfect costume for us—her the beauty and me the beast—but where even now I’m sure she’s still hoping for the prince to appear, it’s not meant to be.

  This beast isn’t good. He’s a nightmare.

  Her worst one.

  “Say something please.”

  I don’t know what I expect her to say. I mean, what do you say after something like we just read? Sure, it was one of the safer entries, especially with all of my back and forth, but it’s also another day in a string of them after she came to Wexfield High where I was determined to make her life hell.

  What do you say to something like that?

  Nothing is what.

  “I read this last night, Kay.”

  She did what?

  “When?”

  “After you passed out.”

  “I don’t understand. You fell asleep first. I watched you.”

  Nodding in agreement, she burrows herself tighter into me, releasing a soft sigh as she starts to fill in the missing pieces.

  “I did, but I woke up at around one and snuck out to read. I’m sorry. I needed to know what was there.”

  “I’m the one that’s sorry, Belle. I should have just gotten it over with last night. Been there when you read it instead of talking myself into bed. Hell, I’m sorry for everything that happened last night.”

  Shifting her body, she slips her legs over mine, holding me in place on the bed as she looks up and meets my eyes head on. The pained expression or worse, the pit
ied one I expect to see, nowhere in sight. Only the shimmering blue I’m used to.

  No sign of any damage done from what she read while I was blissfully unaware.

  “When you told me that you wanted me to read the journal, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, Kayden. I knew what I was signing on for, so last night, well, if it didn’t happen that way I would have been surprised. You’ve spent eleven years holding onto all of this. I had my mom, Tristan, and people at school like Ms. Taylor to talk to. You had no one. It makes sense that under pressure, you lose control.”

  “Is that what you’re calling me yelling at you? Losing control?”

  “No.” she grins, throwing me off. “I’m calling that me breaking down your final wall. The one thing that stood between us and happily ever after.”

  “Was this a mistake? Pulling the book out after having reasons for putting it away in the first place. Did I mess things up?”

  “How do you feel after what you just read?” she asks, resting back on the weight of her legs waiting patiently for an answer.

  “Different. No, that’s not right. I feel better. Is that crazy?”

  Bopping me on the nose with her finger she laughs and shakes her head.

  “Just like you need a lesson in what’s weird, you also need one in what’s crazy, Kay. I’d be worried if you didn’t feel better after reading what you did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was the end. I checked to make sure. You didn’t write again after that day. So, even if you didn’t feel better, I’d expect you to at least feel relieved.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “Lucky.”

  Surprised by her answer, I inhale deeply and cough when it gets stuck. After hitting my chest a few times and then rubbing the rawness away, I ask her again, believing that in my surprise I’d heard her wrong.

  “Did you say you felt lucky?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I said.”

  “Why lucky?”

  “You mean, besides the fact that the only reason we even have these moments to look back on so vividly is because you caught me writing in my diary, got jealous and did it too?”

  Well, can’t exactly argue that.

  “Jokes aside, why do you feel lucky?”

  “Because not only did I get to know my best friend again, maybe even better than I did the first time, but through his own words, his dreams, memories and everything we’ve talked about since, I’ve gotten to fall in love with him all over again. How many people can say they get to do that? I’m lucky.”

  “I think with the way you’re reacting to all this, I’m the lucky one.”

  “Who wanted to kiss who in the rain and then locked me out of the house in order to do it?” she asks playfully, wiggling her eyebrows until I break and give her the laugh she’s obviously after.

  “Some crazy dude?”

  “Mmhmm, sounds about right.” she murmurs before leaning in and kissing me. “But I really love that crazy dude.”

  Waiting until she pulls back, taking the familiar scent of fruit with her and giving me the chance to think clearly, I ask her the only question that matters now. What I really need her to tell me the truth about.

  “It wasn’t too much for you?”

  “Nothing, no matter how bad it looks or how awful it may read or feel, will ever be too much for me as long as I’m doing it with you, Kay. Life with you, loving you, it’s worth every fight.”

  It’s those words that completely null and void her earlier ones. It’s that answer that makes me lucky.

  The luckiest son of a bitch in the world.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I need a favor.”

  This is not the first time he’s heard me say those words over the last couple of years. It’s also not going to be the last. But given how often I do it, I should be prepared for the response I get once I’ve said it, yet I never am.

  “What’d you do now?”

  That one’s new.

  Usually when I ask my best friend for a favor, I’m met with a gigantic ball of resistance and then a boatload of pissing and moaning.

  “What makes you think I did anything?” I ask, shoving him in the arm and grinning when he flinches.

  “I don’t know. Let’s play your greatest hits and see why I would think that.” He jokes as he rights himself, leaning back against the hood of the car again. “First, there was your anniversary. You remember that night, right? I’m assuming you do since it’s the night Belle swiped your V card.”

  Great. Exactly what I wanted to deal with after the way the last few days have gone.

  My greatest hits or as I like to call them, my attempts to pull my head out of my ass.

  Definitely don’t need the reminder of just how often I’ve relied on the idiot beside me.

  “Yeah, I get it. I screwed up a lot before.”

  “Before as in last week, you mean?”

  Groaning and shaking my head, I reach out and belt him upside of his head when he starts laughing.

  “I didn’t screw up last week. I just wanted to surprise her.”

  “Right.” He snickers before finally ceasing to ride me. “What do you need?”

  Here goes nothing.

  “I showed her the book.”

  Right after I met Dill, before the both of us floored the gas on our asshole transformation, or in other words, back when I still had the tiniest bit of a conscience even if I didn’t show it to many people, I told him about the journaling I did when my mom left.

  Given the way his family was, I figured he’d understand my need to unload all of the bullshit in my head.

  Long story short, he ripped on me about it for weeks. Turning almost as bad as Dean when he sucker punched me for just asking if guys could write down their thoughts. He didn’t get it, but he also didn’t forget it.

  So I know he remembers what I’m talking about, even if the look of confusion on his face right now says otherwise.

  “Since when do you read?”

  “Dill…”

  “Fine.” He says, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll stop riding you, even if it is funny seeing the veins in your head pop.”

  “Ha-ha. Laugh it up.”

  “Well, in that case.” He jokes, backing up when I shift toward him and succeeding in making me laugh. “So you finally pulled it out of the vault, huh?”

  “Yeah, and just like I thought, it was a lot.”

  “For her or for you?”

  “Both.”

  “So you needing my help with something now is because of everything she read?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Stop, Kayden. You’re talking my ear off with all these details you’re giving. Slow down a bit, would ya?”

  Nice to see having a daughter hasn’t changed him. He’s just as annoying as always.

  “Focus, jackass.”

  “Okay. What do you need?”

  “Do you remember when you had me waste hours stringing lights up in a public ravine that had I been caught, I could have been arrested for?”

  Now it’s his turn to groan. What he did for Cadence is still years later the best possible material I can come up with each and every time I call on him for help.

  All things considered, with what I want him to do, he’s still getting off easy.

  “Not this again.” He whines. “We were even the day I blew up and held that balloon for you, man. You can’t keep using the same card.”

  “Hundreds. Of. Lights.” I remind him.

  “Fine. What do I have to do?”

  “Play fairy-godmother again.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t possibly be this slow, Dill. I’m sure Cailyn watches Cinderella a dozen times a day.”

  “Wrong. Babies don’t care about Disney movies.”

  “Maybe other babies don’t, but considering what you used to call Belle, I damn well know it works different in the Murphy house.”

  “Do I get a
wand at least?”

  “If it means you’ll do it, yes. I’ll even sweeten the deal and supply the magic.”

  The magic of course being my girl’s reaction to what I have planned.

  “You sold me. I’m in. Now tell me exactly what it is the fairy godfather needs to do.”

  “Get her to Wexfield Memorial Park and let me handle the rest.”

  “What happens then?”

  “I take her back to the beginning.”

  I thought when I put everything together the day I proposed that we were going back to the start. Especially with the way she gave me her answer, but I was wrong.

  After the way we’ve spent the last few days, the only beginning worth going back to is the one that happened at the park that day when we were kids.

  The first time I saw her truly happy.

  Pulling himself off the car and heading around to the driver’s side, he gives me a nod of acceptance before pulling the door open and attempting to slide in. It’s only when I see him go out of focus that I remember the other thing I’m going to need him to do for me.

  “Hey, Dill?” I call out and after a second or two with no response, the passenger side window lowers and he leans across the seat.

  “Yeah?”

  “Pick up a rake.”

  “A rake?” he stares at me incredulously. “What the fuck do I need a rake for?”

  “Leaves. Lots of them.”

  For one night, we’re going to forget the fact that we’re in our twenties and are supposed to be adults. Just this once, we’re going to do things differently.

  We’re gonna be kids again.

  Chapter Twenty

  Belle

  October 15, 2016

  Empty pages are both a blessing and a curse when it comes to this book.

  By the time you get this, there will be pages torn out and crumpled into balls all over the house as I try to get the words right and fail every time.

  I used to hate empty pages staring back at me. Part of me still does.

  What I’m coming to learn though, is that you don’t have to fear the emptiness. Those lines with nothing on them, they’re not daunting or there to throw you off your game.