Dare Me

“Don’t do this to me.”

“Just answer me.”

“I won’t.”

My heart twisted at the bite with which he enunciated his words. It started sinking slowly under my shrinking ribs, getting sucked into that bitter quicksand. Still, I tried to fight the pull. My wet eyes flicked back and forth between Callum and Ana as she came up behind him, leaning in the doorframe, cocking an eyebrow at me and tapping the platinum watch on her wrist. Tick tock. I could almost hear her saying it. Drawling it.

Tick tock.

The words brought me suddenly back to Sunstone – flashed images of my stepfather before my eyes. They asked me if I’d fought and clawed and come back for nothing. If I was wrong to think I belonged anywhere else but there. “Callum.” I hated that my tears were spilling in front of everyone and most of all, that woman. I tried to lower my voice so she couldn’t hear me. “Just tell me, Callum,” I demanded under my breath. “Tell me if you mean it. If you think I’m poison.”

“Lake – Christ.” He released my wrists and I stumbled back. I could feel the shock and hurt in my face as he glared at me, an inferno of white-hot flames blazing behind those wolfish blue eyes. “You’re demanding answers?” Callum’s growl was low, from his chest. “Go ahead. Demand them. But then so will I. I’ve waited too goddamned long, Lake, so if you wanna play this game, let’s play it. But you’re going to give me the truth first. Tell me the fucking secret – whatever it is – right here, right now. Tell me what you’re so fucking certain I can’t get past.”

Silence hung in the air till Ana lilted.

“Please do.”

“Shut up,” Callum snarled at her without tearing his eyes from me. “Go, Lake. Say it. Tell me now.”

I couldn’t breathe. I looked at her and then him. I had no idea where to start and all I could see was the horrific end I’d caused to be able to come back. Something escaped my lips. I wasn’t sure if it was a word and suddenly, Ana was marching forward and reaching for Callum.

“I can’t watch another second of this bullshit,” she hissed. “We need to start, Callum. She’s wasting your time and she’s never even going to be your girlfriend, you said it yourself.”

Her bombshell stung my skin. Every inch of it. My eyes flickered to Callum and I stared at him, pleading a silent question but he didn’t answer me, and he didn’t refute her. Only then did I realize how many more awful and humiliating things he could’ve told her. Ana read the shock on my face and cooed.

“Unless I recall incorrectly. But didn’t you say that, Callum?” She asked him but tilted her head at me. “That she’d never be your girlfriend?” My eyes returned to Callum just in time for his cold answer.

“Yes.”

It was all I needed to hear to walk – no, run out the door.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lake

It was green hills, blue sky and clock towers before me but I couldn’t see anything but the dirt road leading into Sunstone. And it had nothing to do with the wall of tears clouding my eyes. It was just that my feet were carrying me away from the hotel and my mind was carrying me away from sanity, bringing me right back to the trailer park on the day I left New York for Trish.

I took a cab from the airport to the address she gave me. I didn’t know a lot about Virginia. I’d never been there. When I lived with Trish as a kid, we were in Texas, where she had met my dad. The sight of palm trees surprised and actually excited me because they reminded me of the vacations Caroline would take me and Callum and my grandma on. I passed by several places that made me look out the window till we drove out of sight. I liked a lot of what I saw. But that all changed the closer we got to Sunstone.

Trish had said it was a mobile home park not a trailer park because the latter made it sound like she lived in a trashy place, which she didn’t. She insisted Sunstone Communities was opened to be “one of those classy parks” and I actually saw on the website that it didn’t look like what I thought of when I heard the term trailer park. It looked new and almost nice.

But then I saw it and it was exactly what I had imagined before searching pictures online. None of the trailers looked new like they did on the website. They were all old, tattered and some of them were completely boarded up. When I walked past them, they stank like people or animals had died in there and someone figured they’d rather nail planks to the windows than clean it up. I couldn’t believe I had the audacity to judge a house with a sunken porch on the way over. That place was luxury compared to this. The floor here was just dirt and gravel and random piles of cement blocks. There were rusty wires hanging loose from phone poles. They dangled at me like they wanted to touch my shoulder.

Ten seconds in, I wanted to turn and run. I couldn’t do it. I actually hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. I told myself that it might actually be interesting and I could maybe feel freer, like I didn’t have to worry about what the other kids and parents would be saying all the time. Three years removed from high school and the Mercer crowd was still so interconnected that everyone still knew everyone’s business. I knew Theo Spencer had transferred schools, everyone knew that Callum had been hired out of his internship, they all rolled their eyes at the fact that I went to FIT. The only bright side I could think of leaving New York was leaving those snooty-ass people.

But I missed them the second I saw my new neighbors. There were so many of them outside their trailers doing nothing and they all stared at me. Every last one of them. I reeked of being different and they sized me up in their lawn chairs. A lady with a toothless smile flat-out pointed at me and hacked a laugh while smoking. Everything felt different to the point of being bizarre. No one thought twice of watching me and even following a bit so they could gawk and squint for longer. The adults wore less clothes than I’d ever seen adults wear in public and the kids ran around half to fully naked.

I jumped when someone tickled the back of my palm to get my attention. I turned to see a rail-thin stranger with a scraggly beard who laughed, said I was from Hollywood and then asked if I had a cigarette. When I said I didn’t, he took me in from head to toe and muttered like it was a threat, “You’re too pretty, girl.”

He and a friend followed three steps behind me for a good minute till I swallowed my pride and started running to Trish’s home.

By the time I got there, I prayed she’d see me, cry my name and throw her arms around me with the kind of hug every mom knew how to give her scared baby. But she wasn’t even there.

“She went for beers.”

I turned to see a sweaty, shirtless boy sitting in the passenger seat of the truck parked across from Trish’s trailer. He had the door open and a leg dangling out. It had a big, shitty tattoo of a giant squid down the calf. The only part that was done right wa

s the shiny, massive eye just staring at me. I know it took too long for me to look away.