Dare Me

I breathed out hard. “I know.” Whatever rejection I felt now was nothing compared to what I hit everyone else with that Sunday morning I left. But it hadn’t been some painless decision for me. I hadn’t wanted to leave Callum or Caroline. I just didn’t want them to get hurt. After my grandmother died, they were the only two people left in the world that I loved – Callum especially. We had a complicated relationship but no matter what, he was always there for me. He could tease me and argue with me, but no one else was allowed to. Growing up, he never took anyone’s side but mine. For all the times my biological mom tried to bring me down and remind me that I was nothing, Callum unknowingly confirmed my worth. I’d grown up strong because of him.

Twisted but strong.

And from the looks of it, he’d gotten strong too. In every kind of way. Callum was under six feet tall when I left him but now he looked about six-foot-two. He’d always been lean and defined but his body was now carved with beautiful lines that deepened with every move he made. His muscles were unreal. I’d felt them in the split second that I touched his leg and I could see them pulling his sleeve tight around his bicep when he reached for his whisky. But most of all, I could see in his face that he’d gotten harder. Colder. He used to be mischievous and at least smirk if not laugh, but now I didn’t even see that. His expression was severe, intimidating, and the angles of his face had changed to match that. His cheekbones were striking and his jaw was sharper than a weapon. I had forgotten how to breathe when he first walked into the room.

But I wasn’t surprised. Of course he’d grown up to be devastatingly handsome. The kind of man who didn’t need to say a single word to convince a girl that they’d just had a full conversation. Callum had always been gorgeous. When we were younger, he’d been that all-American jock who wrestled, played football and looked way too cute in a backwards cap. His hair was dark blonde and long, grown out past his ears. Despite Mercer School rules, he’d worn it messy, surfer-like, and it drove the girls crazy.

That boyish look was gone now. His hair was the same length, maybe an inch shorter, but now he wore it slicked back. It was a neat, clean look but to me, it made him look mean. Ruthless. Irresistibly sexy, too, but that might have also been thanks to the perfect amount of scruff on his sculpted jaw. That was definitely new. I couldn’t pinpoint which of the changes were best. But what I did know was that Callum looked painfully good and it was about to make my long fight back to his heart a million times harder.

“Incoming,” Isabel murmured when we heard a door fly open. I spun around to see Cass Vaughn running out, her hair a mess and her makeup smeared. She stormed past us before we could so much as open our mouths to ask if she was alright. “I wonder what the hell that was abou – ”

Isabel’s mouth snapped shut the second Callum came out of the same bathroom Cass had run from. My jaw dropped and tightened in a matter of seconds. Couldn’t wait till the end of dinner. Of course not. I had to shake my head. He was unapologetic, casually looping his belt when his eyes met mine. His stare was blank, remorseless and he kept it pinned so hard to me that even Isabel stammered.

“I… I’ll let you guys, um. Yeah.”

She disappeared back into the greenhouse. I crossed my arms when he slowed to a stop a good two yards from me. “Really, Callum.”

“What.”

“You’re acting like I’m the walking plague.” I bristled when he didn’t reply. “Why did you even come here tonight if you didn’t want to see me?”

Callum’s blue eyes hardened like a layer of ice. He took his time to reply, as if I weren’t worth the effort of his words. A least that was how it felt. “What do you think?” Another long pause. “I came here for her.”

Caroline. I’d always loved the respect he had for his mother’s wishes. Of course tonight, it stung like hell to know that he wouldn’t have even come to say hi if it weren’t for her insistence. “So, what, we’re just never going to talk? We’re going to just ignore each other like we never knew each other?”

“What’s the point in talking?” Callum asked, his tone cold. “I don’t know you. Not anymore. And I don’t care to know who you’ve become since you left.” His words carried an easy confidence that dug deep into my heart. My lip trembled and I could’ve broken down right then and there – Callum could never take it when I cried – but I fought the emotions wringing inside me because I didn’t want my first time back with him to be like this. I didn’t want to force his affection by bursting into tears. I wanted to earn it back. I wanted Callum to touch me because he missed me, because he remembered that he once loved me. Not because he couldn’t stand to hear me cry.

“So you don’t care to speak to me at all.”

“No. I haven’t thought of you in six years. I don’t intend on starting again now.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. I hated that he had to look so grown up, so handsome and sure of himself as we had this conversation. I tried to give the night a last shot. “I came back to see you,” I murmured. “You don’t know how much I missed you, Callum. I don’t think I went a day since I left without thinking about you. I still dream about you. Always.” I cupped my elbows. The words felt pathetic leaving my lips, but I needed to get them off my chest and I could see them shaking him. Nothing in his expression showed it but there was the briefest waver in his frosty glare and I knew Callum well enough to know that it meant something. “You had to have known that I didn’t want to leave. I loved my life with you. Every day, I felt like the luckiest girl. I woke up and you were always the first thing I thought of. You were my world, Callum.”

“You were mine.”

His low mutter shocked me. I looked up to see him standing closer. I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch him. My hands were trembling. They ached to calm themselves by pressing against his chest, brushing down every section of his abs and tracing the deep lines the way they used to. But I stopped myself. I wanted him to touch me first and I felt like he actually might. I could finally see some sort of life in his expression. He was wearing the faintest, most handsome frown between his eyebrows and it made me wish he’d just go ahead and let it all out – unload six years of anger and fury on me so I could at least know that he still felt something and we could finally start cleaning up the mess.

But he threw me a curveball.

“Tell me right now where you went,” Callum challenged me. “What you did, why you left. Why you came back now. Every detail. I know exactly what you look like when you lie so don’t try it. Tell me everything right here, Lake. Right now.”

I tried. My lips stumbled over themselves. I tried to think of a version of the story that I could tell. I tried to make up a new one. But I knew that lying would get me into deeper trouble than I was already in so I breathed out nervously and shook my head. “Callum, I can’t tell you but it’s purely out of – ”

“Bullshit.” Enraged, he stormed two steps forward but stopped himself short. The breath he sucked in was short and sharp and it cut like a knife through the thick air between us. “If you’re not going to tell me now then I’m done with your bullshit, Lake. I am. I was productive without you, I did good shit without you, so why don’t you take a page from my book and just forget me now? Erase me. Pretend I never existed and none of the shit between us ever happened.” I trembled from the heat of his body so close to mine. I finally got a smile out of him but it was cruel. “It’s hard at first but I can’t even tell you how damned good it feels when you finally get rid of the poison in your life.”

Chapter Three

Lake

“Another round?”

Nick Spencer didn’t wait for my reply before rapping his knuckles on the bar and signaling for another round. He tossed his black card onto the counter, letting it skid across the marble surface and onto the floor for the bartender to pick up. God, I hated him. Everything about him, from his cheesy smile with neon-white veneers to the way he treated the waitstaff. I had bartended for a little after running from Sunstone – right before getting caught and dragged back – but even if I hadn’t, I’d know not to treat another human being the way Nick Spencer felt entitled to. But I wasn’t too surprised, considering who his brother was and what those two had done to me and Callum in high school. There was never proof, but I didn’t need that to know it was them.

“Theo still thinks about you, you know,” Nick said of his brother, handing me a shot of something amber-colored. I wasn’t sure what it was but I downed it. Isabel narrowed her eyes at me from afar but she let me be, giving Nick the time for a “private apology,” as he’d requested. Several of us had gone straight from dinner in the greenhouse to drinks at the bar and to my chagrin, someone had taken it upon him or herself to invite more of my former classmates. It was becoming the high school reunion I’d never asked for. But I sat there and drank because what else did I have to do? For once, I had nothing but time and I had to find ways to kill it.

Besides, I was kind of amazed that Nick Spencer even had the nerve to speak to me after everything he and his brother did to humiliate me, posting every last one of those horrible pictures that I had never wanted to take for him anyway. I wished I could just look at it as high school drama but I couldn’t because the whole thing wound up changing the course of Callum’s life forever. He was on a good path. He’d won two Junior Olympic medals by senior year and he was beyond set to follow his father’s Team USA footsteps. But I set him on a different one. My chest still got tight when I thought about it and I’d fantasized so many times about punching Nick or Theo in the face if I ever got the chance again. But now that I had it, I forced myself to hold it together because I was kind of curious as to what Nick had to say, and of course, Isabel had gone and married the oldest Spencer, Alec, so I had to show at least an ounce of respect, if only for the fact that this insane jerk was now my best friend’s brother-in-law.

I managed to give him a look of amusement. “Theo still thinks about me?”