Dare Me

*

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.

Naked, perfect, Callum sat up in bed, the muscles in his back flat against the headboard as I gripped the top, straddling him but letting him take control the way he needed. I lifted myself higher so he could trace his breath over the swell of my heavy breasts. They strained to feel him, his tongue and the sweet, hot warmth of his mouth. I moaned when he caught my nipple and sucked with urgency. I tightened on his tongue, closing my eyes as I let my head fall back, my hair spilling over the sheets and on his lap.

My eyes were wet. It felt like they hadn’t stopped tearing up since the field of bluebells. But while they’d yet to dry, I could feel the pain in them drifting slowly elsewhere as Callum moved in me. His hips pumped in a deep, maddeningly languorous roll. I pulled myself higher and higher on the headboard to make room for his upward thrusts, his cut abs tightening as his smooth, hard dick parted and pierced me, pushing and pulling and rocking away all the hurt – everything that ever haunted me, that I was sure would never stop until now because Callum was perfectly gentle and firm as he coaxed it all away.

His murmurs were soft but his touch was strong, dominant as he filled me completely. He challenged me, stretched me just enough to give me the most powerful but pleasurable sense of fulfillment my body could possibly contain. I let him move, kiss, lick me as he pleased because everything he wanted, I wanted. Everything he felt, I felt. With a look in my eyes, he relinquished control and I rode him. I gripped the headboard, framed his beautiful face with my forearms and breathed him, my mouth brushing against his, our kiss on and off as my thighs pumped me slowly up and down his spearing length. He grew in me as I drowned in him, releasing pressure, anguish and heartbreak into my every stroke over his every inch. We were back to us. Finally. I felt his unwavering love in his grasp of my hips, in his worshipping stare, refusing to break. Our years of struggle manifested in his touch as his fingers dug into me, owning me, refusing to ever let go.

We didn’t lose each other for a second. Callum pulsed inside me as he moved me onto my back, laid his hard body on mine. Our gaze unbroken, he pulled my leg to his waist and sunk deeper inside, his blue eyes blazing as my mouth parted wider with his every solid ridge inside me. I felt filled and so incredibly good. But his words took me even higher.

“I’m never going to let go of you, Lake. Never again.” Callum’s whisper pierced the air of the strange room. He gnashed his teeth as he pumped harder, deeper into me, staking his final claim. “You’re mine, Lake. You always have been and you always will be. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” I managed in my pleasure. “I hear you.”

“Say my name when you tell me.”

“I’m yours, Callum.” My breaths were desperate, hasty.