The Redemption of Callie and Kayden (38 page)

“Who gives a shit?” he says and then scrunches his face at

the librarian, who tsks, tsks him in return. He unfolds the paper and shakes it out, trying to get rid of the creases. “I got fantastic

fucking news.”

I put the book I’d been holding back onto the shelf. “No,

there’s no way you’ve found him yet… Fuck. You have… no…” I’m

kind of stuck on words because it’s unbelievable. It can’t be

possible. But the look on his face says otherwise. “Shit.”

Grinning, he hands me the paper. It’s been printed up from

the computer and has an article beneath it. Above the article is a

face that resembles an older version of the brother who left my

house years ago: dark hair that’s thinned a little, the same green

eyes as me, and a nose still crooked from when he broke it from

getting slammed into a wall. I’m stunned beyond words as I stare

down at the picture of him.

I hadn’t expected this to happen so soon. I’d returned from

the therapist only yesterday evening and told Callie that I think I

was ready to start searching. My therapist, Jerry, an older guy who

wears a lot of Hawaiian-print shirts and loafers, suggested it might

be time for me to start searching for Dylan. I put up a pretty good

argument about why I shouldn’t, including the fact that I’d slipped

up the other night and kind of rammed my fist against the door in

a fit of rage when I got a call from my father’s old boss who was

looking for him. No one knows where they are, why they left, and

it’s surprising how little people care. My dad’s boss was only

looking for him because he said my father had something of his. I

don’t even know how he got my number and the call reminded me

of everything wrong outside my Callie-Seth-Luke-school world. I

messed up, but I told the therapist. And Callie. And somehow Jerry

thought it’d be a good idea to start searching for Dylan, even

though I was worried of what he might be, or what he might not

be.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, chewing on an Altoids, which he

always has on him. “It’ll be good to have someone to talk to about

what you’re going through and maybe he can help the

abandonment issues you’re dealing with.”

“What abandonment issues?” I’d played dumb. “I’m glad they

left.”

“Yeah, I know you are,” he replied and scratched down some

notes on a piece of yellow business paper. “But I think you also feel abandoned. Even if they’ve done terrible stuff to you, they’re still

your family and I think you feel connected to them.”

“Or stuck to them,” I muttered in response, slumping back in

the lumpy leather chair I always had to sit in.

He wrote down something else and then shut the manila

folder and shoved it aside with a stack on the corner of his desk.

“How about this?” He overlapped his hands on top of his desk.

“How about we just try to look for your brother? It doesn’t hurt to

try, right?”

I rolled my wrist until it popped and gave a burning

aftershock, something that’s been happening ever since I cut them

open. “And what if we find him?”

He opened the tin of Altoids on his desk and popped one

into his mouth, leaning back in the chair. “Well, that’s really up to you.”

After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, listening to

the wall clock tick and the traffic rush outside, I’d agreed. When I

went out to dinner that night with Callie, Seth, and Luke, they

decided to take it upon themselves to look for him.

I just didn’t expect Seth to find him so quickly.

“He kind of looks the same,” I note, taking in his green eyes,

which resemble mine in an eerie, uncomfortable kind of way.

“He’s married,” Seth says, tapping his finger on the top of the

paper. “And he’s a teacher.”

I gape at him. “A teacher? Fuck, really?”

Seth’s eyebrows knit. “Why are you so surprised?”

I shrug and then head for the exit, winding around the book

cart blocking the path. “I don’t know… It just seems so fucking

normal.” I slam my palm against the door and push it open. The

area around and underneath my scars aches a little and I massage

my thumb across it as I walk out into the sunlight with the paper in

my hand. The sun is gleaming and melting the snow off the grass

and the sidewalks. It’s nice to see, but it makes everything a

watery, muddy mess. The gutters near the streets are flooding the

sidewalks and the grass looks like a pond.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks, hopping over a

puddle and then he kicks a rock off the sidewalk.

I shake my head and sidestep a large hole in the sidewalk

filled with murky water. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t.”

He doesn’t get it and I don’t expect him to. But there is one

person who will. “Is Callie at her dorm?” I ask.

Seth nods as we veer around the side of the humanities

building and hike diagonally across the lawn toward the sidewalk

that borders the street. The trees are raining down droplets of

water and they land on my shirt and the paper. There’s a light

spring breeze blowing against my back. “She’s working on some

paper that needs to be turned in by the end of the year, but she’s

hit a”—he makes air quotes as he walks backward—“writer’s zone.”

I smile at the thought of her locked in her bedroom,

scribbling away in her journal, naked. Although I’m pretty sure the

last part isn’t true. But if I really wanted it to be, I could probably strip her down and have her write naked for me. She’s trusted me

a lot lately and our relationship has been heating up immensely.

But I never push her—I don’t ever want to.

“I’m going to head over and talk to her.” I swing around a

jogger stretching near a tree. “Are you coming?”

He shakes his head, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his

tan pants. “Nah, I got a date.” He hurries off, with a spring in his

step, toward the parking lot on the opposite side of the main

office, the puddles splashing up beneath him. When he reaches his

car, there’s a guy waiting for him with a big teddy bear in his hand.

It makes me smile, thinking of Callie and the teddy bear at the

carnival.

I pick up the pace, taking as long a stride as possible,

allowing the wind to take me where I need to go.

* * *

I knock on the door several times before her roommate,

Violet, answers. She’s kind of a scary chick, with studs on her

clothes and one in her nose. Her black hair is streaked red and she

has a dragon tattoo on her neck. She wears a lot of black and she

always has this look on her face like she’s about to start a fight.

Violet walked in on us one time when we were having sex.

Callie was absolutely mortified, although I thought it was kind of

funny. Violet didn’t think so though, and she chewed us out, saying

we needed to hang a scarf on the doorknob next time. I was a little

surprised by her reaction. Violet has a reputation around the

campus and it seemed a little unfitting for her to get so worked up

over sex.

“You’re not Jesse,” she says, with her hand on the doorknob,

frowning. She takes me in with her eyes and then she fiddles with

the diamond stud above her upper lip. “Do you two ever take a

break?”

I roll the paper in my hand, making a cylinder as I shake my

head and shrug. “Nope, not really.”

She rolls her eyes and then steps back to let me in. I wipe my

wet boots on the rug in front of the door and then stand in the

center of the narrow room between their beds. Instead of closing

the door behind us, Violets leans over and grabs her jacket and

bag off the chair next to her bed and then heads out the door.

“You don’t have to leave.” I turn to her. “I just need to talk to

her.”

She raises an eyebrow, looking at me and then at Callie,

who’s sleeping on her bed. “Yes, I do… You two are a little too

much for me.” She walks out and slams the door. The whiteboard

on it falls to the carpet and I pick it up. It’s Callie and Seth’s list of things they have to do before they die.

I’m surprised at how many have been crossed off, especially

number eleven: do a dance in your underwear. Laughing

underneath my breath, I hook the board back onto the door and

then stand next to Callie’s bed. She’s lying on her back, with her

arm draped over her stomach and her shirt folding up at the hem

so I can see a sliver of her soft pale skin. She’s wearing the

necklace I gave her—she always wears it—and it makes me smile

every time I see it because it makes me feel like she’s mine. Her

journal lays open beside her head and there’s box of chocolates

next to her. Somehow she’s managed to fall asleep with a

chocolate in her hand. She’s put on a little weight since Christmas

break and seems to me to be doing better. I think it might be her

therapist. She’s always a little happier when she comes back from

her sessions. It hurts, though, sometimes, thinking about what was

done to her and all those years she spent in solitude. It’s probably

the biggest regret of my life. That I didn’t see who she really was

back when we were kids. Maybe if I had, then her life wouldn’t

have been so hard.

I drum my fingers on the side of my leg, deciding the best

way to wake her up. There are tons of ways, from using my fingers

to my tongue, but I know I have to be careful. She sometimes still

has nightmares and if I surprise her in her sleep, it could upset her.

Kneeling down on the bed, the mattress caves beneath me. I

set the paper down on the nightstand beside the bed and the lean

over her, resting one of my arms next to her head. With my other

hand, I trace her temple, the one with her birthmark, a small brown

spot beside her eye that makes her even more perfect.

Her eyelids flutter and she lets out this cute little moan that

gets me a little too excited. Grinning, I slant closer to her and

brush my lips across her forehead.

“Kayden,” she murmurs, not fully awake, and yet somehow

she knows it’s me.

I’m enjoying this way, way too fucking much, my cock

instantly getting hard. But oh well. Moving my lips down to her

temple, I lightly kiss the birthmark I’d just been tracing with my

finger, and then I move to the side and place a gentle kiss on her

fluttering eyelids. Her body shivers beneath me and she lifts her

chest and presses it against mine. My mouth travels down her

nose to her mouth, where I part her lips with my tongue, delving it

into her mouth and licking a path to the inside. Her eyelids lift up

and her massive blue eyes catch in the light flowing into the room

and they sparkle. She sucks in a sharp breath through her nose

and I straighten my arm, putting a little distance between our

bodies so she can regain her breath.

She glances around the room and then directs her attention

back at me and the sleepiness in her eyes starts to dissipate as she

blinks up at me. “How did you get in here?”

“Violet let me in,” I say and lean down to kiss her. She

responds instantly, opening her jaw and letting my tongue deep

into her mouth. She taste like chocolate and smells like

strawberries as my tongue explores every inch of her mouth.

By the time I pull away, we’re both panting, with fire

scorching in our eyes, and I’ve got my hand up her shirt. Keeping

my fingers near the bottom of her bra, I roll off her and lie beside

her on my hip. She glances down in her hand at the piece of

chocolate melting in her palm and then her face contorts with

disgust. She puts it on the nightstand and then wipes her palm on

the side of her jeans.

“Okay, that’s embarrassing,” she says with a timid smile. She

reaches for the box of half-eaten chocolates and starts to set them

aside.

I grab her arm and stop her, glancing at each piece that has

a bite taken out of it. “Okay, I have to ask. Did you eat an entire

piece or just taste them all?”

She sighs and throws the box next to her lamp and then

presses her body down on my chest, with her chin above my heart.

“I don’t like any of the flavors except for the strawberry.”

“I guess that works then.” I grin at her. “Who gave them to

you, though, by the way? It’s making me look bad.”

Her eyes glimmer with a slight bit of haughtiness that comes

out only on extremely rare occasions. “What if I said it was some

guy? Would you be jealous?”

“Yes,” I say truthfully. “In fact, I think I’d have to kick some

ass.”

“No kicking ass.”

“All right, but only because you said so.”

She smiles and then her tongue slips out of her mouth to

wet her lips. “Greyson gave them to me last night.”

I stare at her luscious lips, shimmering from the afterglow of

her tongue and so they’re fucking enticing it’s driving my body

crazy. “Seth’s Greyson?”

She nods. “The three of us went out last night. He’s really

nice.”

I frown, remembering why I came here in the first place. “I

actually just ran into Seth.”

“Where?” she asks. “I thought he had a date.”

Sighing, I reach for the paper on the nightstand. Unrolling it,