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.”
His blue eyes flashed with electric shock. I almost heard the sizzle. There was a beat of awful silence as Callum stared at me. He raised his eyebrows.
“You what?”
“Callum, he followed me from here and I only agreed to meet with him because – ” I broke off. Because I was just relieved it wasn’t my stepbrother. I shut myself up when I realized that a full explanation would dip into the story I vowed to never tell Callum. I fumbled with my words. “It was… I only agreed to meet him because – ” I stopped trying to explain when he turned and walked away. His back facing me promptly ripped my heart in two. “Wait,” I followed with emotion wringing in my voice. “Callum. Callum, please.”
When I caught his arm, it felt like I’d grabbed stone. I stared down at it in shock. I froze, my eyes following the thick vein throbbing under his inked skin, from the Roman numerals on his wrist up to the passage written in cursive on his forearm. I lost track of the vein just under the black and white clock on his bicep. My eyes were still on his body, traveling over every tattoo when I felt Callum turn harshly to me. He was still tense, fuming, but he watched in silence as I studied him. I had to do it – to be finally brave enough to get a good look at his new skin and all the marks on his body that he’d accumulated since I left. I had imagined him so much while I was away. I’d gotten so much right and so much wrong but either way, Callum was impossibly beautiful. So grown up and different yet exactly the same. Emotion glazed over my eyes. Our hot breaths swirled through the air. I felt them thawing him and trying to soothe me as I lamented the many different worlds of pain I’d caused him throughout our lives, together and apart. His skin was always thick though, and it had thickened so much more in the time I was gone.