Dare Me

I dared him to cut in the second Theo went crazy on me when I ended it. I was scared about how he’d react – he could get mean in a way I didn’t know how to handle. Callum was often brusque and blunt but Theo’s brand of anger had him falling still and quiet and lashing out when I least expected it. He’d gone crazy on me that day for not having sex with him so I had no idea what kind of reaction he’d have to being dumped. As far as I knew, he’d never been before. So we devised a signal. If Theo got in any way threatening, I’d look at Callum, tuck my hair behind my ear, and he’d come right to me.

And that was exactly what happened that night. I told Theo it was over and he lost it. He was the one who always broke up with me. The fact that it was me this time seemed to make it more of a reality for him so he immediately got in my face and said every awful thing under the sun. It made me wish I’d never told him about Trish’s existence. I never even talked to Callum about her but Theo saw me messaging her on Facebook one day – I never did it at home – and looked through her photos. He was delighted to know that I’d come from “trailer park trash.” It was the only thing he had on me that no one else knew about. He saw her provocative pictures and guilted me into taking some for him.

“It feels bizarre bringing it up now,” Theo said as we sat in the café, almost a decade removed from the three big incidents in high school. The fight, the posts online, and then that other horrible thing. I didn’t know what to call it but it was way too lopsided to be labeled a fight. When I thought about it, I hated Theo all over again and wondered what the hell I was even doing there with him. He could see it in my face so his apology came hastily, all at once. “I’m sorry about everything, Lake. About the way I treated you, about making you take the pictures and then fucking… posting them. For Christ’s sake, I can’t even believe I ever did it.”

Callum came between us when my breakup with Theo got predictably hostile. Theo had thrown the first punch but after Callum pinned him easily to the wall, he begged for a truce – only to slam Callum into a big frame or mirror or something made of glass that ended up slicing up his back. I tried to pull Theo off but the back of his hand smacked me sufficiently away and for that, Callum knocked him out. He took one look at the blood on my face and then beat Theo so endlessly that none of us could tell exactly when he fell unconscious.

Our families fell out after that night. Caroline stopped going to as many charity functions. She was already losing her place post-divorce but this was the nail in the coffin. Her son had sent a Spencer boy to the hospital, and all because of “that Lake girl.” I was liked until I had the gall to break up with Theo Spencer and get him beat up. After that, I was “trash.” Theo had seen the way I smarted at the word. He’d seen the message Trish sent me where she called me “worthless,” a “burden.” He knew it would hurt so he spread it around. And to really sell his point, he posted the naked pictures I’d taken for him the year before – online, for all to see.

I was humiliated. Obviously. I felt dirty. But the worst part about that situation was seeing how embarrassed Caroline was. She distanced herself from me for a couple days but it felt like an eternity. I knew she didn’t want to think of me as anything but her perfect girl and I felt like the biggest disappointment to her. I imagined that she was sitting in the dark on her bed and regretting the fact that I ever came into her life. She gave up so much for me. She should’ve sent me away when my grandma got sick. She was just too good of a person to start something and quit halfway. That was the only reason she kept me around. I tried tallying up how much money she’d spent on me over the years and figuring out how long it would take me to pay it back. But it was impossible and I was so filled with true shame that I couldn’t leave my room. I spent the weekend shut in and skipped Monday at school. I wouldn’t even let Callum in. If I had, I’d have stopped him from seeing Theo before school that morning. He was through with him but agreed to meet because he wanted the pictures taken down. Tears still burned my eyes shut when I thought about what happened that day.

Damn it. I stared into my drink, drowning once again in that guilt and shame. My trip down memory lane had been so nice before Theo showed up.

“It still weighs on me, Lake. I can’t stand for you to think that I treat women like that. I was just a teenager then and what I did was… classless, to say the least. So I wanted to get this apology off my chest. We should’ve never ended that way.” I was barely listening. His words floated meaninglessly through my head as I realized something. When I looked up suddenly from my coffee, my stare big and unblinking, Theo cocked his head and smiled at me. “What is it, Lake?” he asked, looking charmed.

“I just realized it was never the pictures that bothered me.”

“What do you mean? Of course it was.”

“No. I didn’t care about me. I only cared about him. What you did to him that morning.”

“Lake.” He chuckled tensely. “I was still in the hospital. Where he sent me, by the way.”

“It wasn’t just some random crime. Don’t deny it,” I said hotly. And suddenly, the air shifted. Theo’s smile started to sag. It melted like candle wax into a smirk. He studied the anger on my face and from the way he finally rolled his eyes, I could tell he’d given up on his gentleman act for the afternoon. Glaring, I remembered exactly why I hated this man. I could’ve forgiven him in some way if he’d just come clean but nearly a decade later, he was still denying it. “Everyone knows you were behind it, they just don’t talk about it because of who you are. But you know it yourself. You, your brother and whoever was there that day – you guys did that to Callum. Even if you weren’t one of the ones who hurt him, I know you planned it. You made it happen. You changed the course of his life forever.”

“Oh, Christ,” Theo laughed. His whole demeanor transformed before my eyes as he leaned back and took his time to speak. “If anything, Lake, you did that.” He gave a little sniff of a smirk when I failed to come back. “Callum had a path laid out for him since he was born. You were the one who screwed that up for him. For Caroline, too. Everything was going fine for them before you came along. But then boom, Grandma gets sick, you move in and suddenly, there’s divorce and fights and all this humiliation. I didn’t have the power to spring all that on them, Lake, you did. And to top it all off, you said thank you by bailing on them just like that.” He shook his head and clucked at me like I was an amusingly disobedient child. “I can only imagine what kind of trouble you got yourself into these past six years. Shameful stuff, I’m sure. So don’t talk to me about denying my past, Lake. You’re in no place to judge anyone when you are and have always been the worst offender when it comes to keeping secrets and ruining lives.”

Chapter Thirteen

Lake

There was an uneasy quiet about the apartment when I got home. The lights were on but I couldn’t detect movement anywhere in the house. When I called out Callum’s name and heard nothing, I went to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. My throat had been dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth since leaving Theo. But no matter how much I drank, I couldn’t get rid of the nasty taste he left. His words had cut right through me. I couldn’t tell if I hated him or myself right now. All I knew was that I needed to calm myself down before seeing Callum. I didn’t want to be greeted with his sweet kiss and gorgeous smile only to return with a weak laugh and a shitty mood. I’d waited forever to enjoy him again. I wasn’t going to let Theo Spencer ruin it. I just wasn’t.

“Lake.”

I jumped and spun around when I heard Callum. “You’re home.” I tried to make my voice sound light, breezy. I hadn’t come close to fixing my mood yet but from the looks of it, Callum wasn’t in the best one either. I could tell he was freshly showered, shirtless, his hair still dripping, flecks of water on his crisp blue jeans. He looked so damned good but the dark expression on his face was hard to ignore. What happened? We had left each other on cloud nine this morning and now this. I wet my lips nervously as he came near me. “Are you okay?” I asked, giving him a little smile that wavered at the corners.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “What about you?” He stood so close my back pushed into the counter. I didn’t realize I was leaning gradually away till he tilted his head at me, a silent repetition of his question.

“I’m fine.” I pulled my stare from his chest to his face. I avoided eye contact when lying and he knew that. His stare bore into mine but then he nodded, accepting my answer. For now. I knew he didn’t believe it but I hoped he’d let it go. I didn’t want to talk about Theo Spencer tonight, especially not with him. I couldn’t predict his reactions when it came to Theo and they tended to scare me.

“Good.”

I gave him a tight smile, trying to pass myself off as normal. But it fell from my lips as he came toward me, closing the gap between us with a predatory roll in his broad shoulders. “Callum,” I frowned when I felt him lean forward on me, pressing my body between the counter and his steel chest. I was pinned. “Callum, what are you doing?” I breathed. But his gaze was silent, heavy and I felt my panic rising when he put more and more of his weight on my chest. “Callum!” My voice rose when I tried moving but couldn’t.

I exhaled when he finally fell back with the glass bottle he’d been reaching for behind me. Oh. His brow furrowed. He looked at me as he stepped back to pour himself water.

“You’re nervous about something.”

“No.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

Callum leaned on the island across from me, studying my face. He stood far from me but now my chest felt crushed by the pressure of his stare. A thousand different suspicions lived behind it and while I knew I was guilty of several things, I wasn’t sure which one he was thinking about.

“You spent all afternoon shopping and came back without any bags. Now you’re acting off so just tell me what happened today.” His tone wasn’t angry but it was firm, hard in a way that scared me just as much. But I realized that he was right – I was acting beyond strange. He was worried about me as usual and his unreadable mood had me misinterpreting his every word and motion. I kept silent as I reasoned that I probably should tell him about Theo. I’d already refused to tell him about why I disappeared six years ago – I really needed to pick and choose my battles.

“I…” My mouth went dry again. Callum’s eyes were smoldering, intense, his attention so rapt on me that in a span of five seconds, I went back and forth on my decision to come clean before just blurting it out. “I saw Theo today.”