The Redemption of Callie and Kayden (4 page)

a bit of a daredevil and nod my head. “Yeah, I do. I guess.”

“I got caught doing… something in his class.” He ventures

out onto the rink and dips the toe of the skate down so the blade

cuts the ice. “With a girl.”

Seth and his need to push me out of my comfort zone. I’m

blushing, but I act like it’s just a flush from the frigid temperature, adding a shiver from my body. “By the professor?”

He progresses forward and his knees wobble as he inches

toward the middle of the rink where a girl is spinning in circles with her hands above her head. “No, by Seth.”

I grip onto the wall and edge out onto the ice, deciding it’s

probably best to change the subject before my cheeks ignite. “So

this is what people do to cheer themselves up?” With my hands

out to my side and my palms flat, I try to keep my balance as I

slide my feet across the rink.

Luke has his hands spanned to the side of himself, and his

knees are bent as he skates in a zigzag pattern. “That’s the rumor I

was told,” he says and reaches for the wall when he stumbles.

“By who?” I clutch onto the wall for support as my knees

begin to buckle and remain there briefly to let the poor people

behind me skate by.

He grins as his feet make a circular motion against the ice.

“By this hot chick I hooked up with the other night. She insisted

that we needed to go ice skating.”

I inhale a deep breath and fight back another blush creeping

across my cheeks. “Why didn’t you just bring her here then?”

He snorts a laugh. “What fun would that be? I like hanging

out with you, Callie. It’s relaxing.” He pushes his feet along the ice and attempts to skate backward but trips over his feet and slams

into the wall. His hand shoots out and he clutches onto the edge

of the plastic section.

“Are you okay?” I stifle a laugh as his eyes pop wide open.

“You think that’s funny?” He gets his feet underneath himself

and then, with very little coordination, skates toward me with his

knees knocking together and his arms flinging to the side of him.

I stifle a laugh, moving my feet inward and outward, going

backward to get away from him. “I thought football players were

supposed to be coordinated.”

His lips curve into a grin and he winks at me. “On grass,

Callie. Football player don’t spend much time on ice.”

“How about a ballet studio,” I tease. “I’ve heard you guys

sometimes like to twirl around and point your toes for”—I make air

quotes and smile—“athletic purposes.”

He shakes his head, rolling his tongue into his mouth to

force back a grin. “You know, Kayden’s right about you. You can

get kind of cocky when you want to.”

My heart sinks to my stomach and Luke’s face falls. We both

stand there, immobile, and my thoughts drift to Kayden.

I stumble to the gate to sit down on a bench. “I think I need

a break. I’m not very good at this,” I say, changing the subject.

“Me neither.” Luke skates to the exit and his toe clips against

the rubber threshold as he follows me off the rink. He takes a seat

beside me on the bench and stretches his legs out in front of

himself.

For a while we just stare out at the other skaters, watching

them laugh, smile, fall, and have fun. They look like they’re having

a great time, and I envy them. I want to have fun too, but with

Kayden. I want him here with me.

“So have you heard from him?” Luke asks casually, gazing

across the ice rink.

I look at him, creasing my forehead. “Who? Kayden?”

He nods his head once without making eye contact. “Yeah.”

I blow out a breath and it puffs out in front of my face in a

cloud of grayish smoke. Even though it’s an indoor rink, it’s still as chilly as it is outside. I have my jacket and gloves on, along with

my hood over my head, and I’m still frozen to the bone. Or maybe

the cold’s from the direction the conversation’s heading.

“No,” I mutter, fastening my gaze on a young couple skating

hand in hand. They look happy and if I stare for long enough I can

change their faces into Kayden’s and mine’s. “I haven’t heard

anything except for the latest gossip from my mother.”

Luke hunches over as he reaches for the laces on one of his

skates. “And what’s the latest gossip?”

I swallow the massive lump in my throat. “That Kayden’s in a

facility under surveillance.”

He cocks his head to the side and glances up at me.

“Because they think he did it to himself?” There’s insinuation in his tone. He knows what I know: that Kayden’s dad is an evil monster

who could have stabbed his son.

I tried to talk to my mother about it, but she told me it was

none of our business. She’s angry with the Owens because Kayden

beat up Caleb. I should have told her why… I wanted to, but

sometimes wanting to isn’t enough.

When I’d finally worked the courage to go tell her, it was

right after Kayden’s mom had told me he’d cut himself. My mom

had been sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal as she

read the newspaper.

“Mom, I have to tell you something,” I said, shaking from

head to toe. I’d just walked in from outside, so I pretended it was

from that, but really it had been my nerves.

She glanced up from her cereal, holding the spoon inside the

bowl. “If it’s about Kayden, I already know.”

I sat down at the table across from her. “I know what you’ve

probably heard, but I don’t think he did it to himself.”

She stirred her cereal with the spoon and lines crinkled

around her eyes. “What are you talking about, Callie?”

“I’m talking about… I’m talking about what happened to

Kayden.” I crossed my arms on the table and balled my hands into

fists. “And why he’s in the hospital.”

The lines disappeared from around her eyes as she frowned.

“Oh, I don’t care about that. I’m talking about what he did to

Caleb.”

My heart compressed at the sound of Caleb’s name and I

wanted to scream at her for saying that. “That wasn’t his fault.”

She shook her head and grabbed her bowl as she stood up.

“Look, I know you care about him, Callie, but he’s obviously got a

temper on him.” She walked over to the sink and put the bowl in it.

“You need to stay away from him.”

I pushed back from the table and my knees shook. “No.”

She turned around and the iciness in her eyes reminded me

of why I couldn’t tell her stuff—because she only ever looked at

stuff from her own point of view. “Callie Lawrence, you will not talk to me that way.”

I shook my head, backing toward the door. “I’ll talk to you

like this when you’re wrong.”

Her eyes widened, shocked. I’d never talked to her like that

before. “What is wrong with you? Is it because you’ve been

hanging around Kayden? I bet it is.”

“A few weeks ago you were so happy we were together,” I

said, gripping the doorknob.

“That’s before I knew what he was capable of,” she said. “I

don’t want you hanging out with him. And besides, you should be

on Caleb’s side in all of this. He’s been part of this family for

longer.”

A cold, yet hot wave of anger ripped from my toes and

rushed to my mouth. “You don’t even know the whole story! And

you don’t care enough to ask!” I wasn’t sure what I was referring to

anymore but I didn’t stay long enough to find out. I jerked the

back door open and ran outside into the snow.

She didn’t follow me and I wasn’t surprised. I’d never expect

anything more from her.

“Earth to Callie.” Luke waves a hand in front of my face and I

flinch. “Did you hear what I asked? About Kayden?”

“Yeah.” I press my lips together, thread my finger through

the laces, and begin to unfasten them. “That’s what everyone’s

saying—that he cut himself.”

Grabbing the gap between the blade and the bottom of the

skate, he slips off his skate, tosses it to the side, and stretches out his toes. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

Part of me does, whenever I think about that night when

Kayden and I had sex and there were all those fresh wounds on his

arms. I didn’t think about it at the time, but they could have been

track marks from self-inflicted injuries. But I don’t believe that he stabbed himself.

“I think it might have been his dad.” Saying it aloud changes

everything, makes it real, true. I’m breathless, not just because of

the idea of Kayden’s father stabbing him, but because Kayden

hasn’t said anything and it aches to think about what his silence

could mean. I know the pain that causes that kind of silence way

too well.

Luke kicks off his other skate, then relaxes back in the bench

and crosses his arms. “You know, I remember when we were kids

and Kayden used to sleep over at my house all the time. I always

thought it was weird because he wanted to stay at my house and

not his. Mine was a fucking shithole and my mother’s fucking

crazy. I didn’t get it, until the first time I stayed over at his house.”

I want to know why he thinks his mother is crazy, but the

tension in his jawline is an indicator not to ask. “What happened?”

He pulls off his gloves, balls them up, and puts them into the

pocket of his jacket. The intensity in his liquid brown eyes carries

the severity of what he’s about to tell me. “I broke a cup. Not on

purpose, but still the fucking cup was broken and that’s all that

mattered. I remember when it happened, Kayden flipped out. We

were like ten and I didn’t get it. It was a fucking cup, right?” He

exhales loudly and I notice that his hands have a slight tremble to

them. “Anyway, Kayden’s panicking and yelling at me to get the

broom from the storage closet. So I go to get it, but it’s not in the storage closet. So I start looking everywhere and finally find it in

the hallway closet. At this point, I can hear all this yelling coming from the kitchen.” He pauses and his throat muscles move as he

swallows hard.

I realize my own hands are shaking and my heart’s

hammering inside my chest. “What happened? When you went

back into the kitchen?”

He stares at the other side of the rink. “Kayden was on the

floor and his father was standing above him, with his knee bent,

like he was getting ready to kick him. Kayden had blood all over

his hands because he was crawling through the shards trying to

pick them all up. He had this huge cut on his face and there was a

piece of the cup in his dad’s hand.” He pauses. “Kayden denied his

father did anything to him, but I can put two and two together.”

I breathe through my nose over and over again, fighting

back the tears. “Did he ever tell you the truth?”

“About that day?” He shakes his head. “But there was one

time I was over there and he got into this huge argument with his

father and his father hit him right in front of me, so after that the cat was kind of out of the bag.”

I wiggle my foot out of the skate, shut my eyes, and let my

lungs expand as cold air fills them. “Do you ever feel guilty for not saying anything?”

He’s quiet for a very long time, and when I open my eyes,

he’s watching me. “All the God damn time,” he says with fire in his

eyes.

There’s a moment when Luke and I are connected by a piece

of thread that’s frayed and thin and very breakable. Then it’s over

and he gets to his feet, collects his skates by the laces, and heads

for the locker that’s holding our shoes. I follow him, grabbing my

skates before rounding the bench. We put on our shoes and walk

to his truck, not speaking and allowing the guilt to seep into our

already chilled bodies. He starts up his old battered truck but

dithers when he’s about to shove the shifter into gear.

“Maybe we should go see him,” he says and pushes the stick

shift forward into drive. He cranks the wheel to the right and turns

up the heater before pressing the gas and pulling out of the

parking spot. “I’ve got only one more class before Christmas break,

but I can blow it off. I already took the final.”

“But they’re not letting anyone see him except for family,” I

remind him as I bend my arm and reach behind me for the seat

belt. “At least that’s what my mom told me yesterday when I called

her. She said that Maci told her he wasn’t allowed visitors except

for her and that he can’t even talk on the phone.”

His gaze cuts to me as he stops the truck at the exit and

looks both ways at the empty street. “You believe her?”

I pull the seat belt down and buckle it, and then my

shoulders lift and slump. “I don’t know. Maci Owens is a lot of

things, but why would she lie about that?”

“To cover up what really happened.” The truck fishtails as he

pulls out onto the main road that’s slippery with snow. It’s late, the sky is gray, and the lampposts lining the street highlight the flakes falling from the sky.

I’m about to tell him yes, let’s drive down the highway and

fly toward Afton. I was planning on heading back in a few days

anyway, but then my phone starts playing “Hate Me,” by Blue

October.

I frown. “It’s my mom.” I take my phone out of my pocket

and stare at the glowing screen. I briefly consider letting it go to