What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) (2 page)

You never know from one day to the next if you’re even going to make it to the next sunrise, much less the next week, month or even year.

It was living on pins and needles and walking on egg shells right from the word go when it came to the way things were behind closed doors. We always managed to act like the typical family whenever we were out and about, at least until Mom took off and Dean went off the deep end, but behind closed doors, if you went to bed without a bruise it was considered a day well spent.

One of the good ones.

That’s not to say it was all bad, because it wasn’t. There were these moments when my mom was around in the beginning where things actually felt kind of normal. When Dean was nicer, my Dad wasn’t attempting to kill us, and shades of a real family were evident.

You know what I’m getting at, right?

A knock on your door signaling time to get up, and when you do there being breakfast on the table with the milk just waiting to be poured, along with a kiss or two and a smile.

I had moments like that. Just in my house, it was more of a holiday type situation. It was something that if you were a good boy and didn’t piss your parents or your brother off to the point where they wanted to lay you out cold, you were rewarded with. 

My mom isn’t exactly going to win any mother of the year awards, but when she was in it with me, when it was us against the world—before she took off like a bat out of hell—it felt right.

Which is probably why when she took off with some guy from the strip club I’ve since learned she was working out of, everything changed.

Bitterness, resentment, hatred, all fueled by the Walker anger that my DNA had afforded me thanks to my piece of shit father. I had them all. I lived by them. And in the end, innocent people, some of them who I didn’t even know, paid the price for it.

All of this, it’s why this book is so important.

Why it’s so important that Belle read it.

It’s not an excuse for the years I made her life miserable, pushed her away and acted like she wasn’t the single most important person in my life at one time. I can’t give excuses for that. I know this.

What it is, is a way for her to see that even during those years where I called her names, tripped her in the hall, tortured her along with people I mistakenly thought were my actual friends, she was always there.

The one piece of my history that I wanted to keep safe. Even when I was the one that she needed to be kept safe from.

My time with her when we were kids, minus the times I really didn’t understand what the hell was going on with her, I couldn’t let my home life taint.

Couldn’t let those stupid assholes I called friends at the time destroy.

Backwards thinking, I know. Especially after what happened in our senior year.

What probably never would have happened at all if I hadn’t put that damn book in storage three years earlier.

The first entry says it all, and as I watch her curl her legs up on the sofa, her eyes lingering on lines that I know have to be making her feel things, I figure it’s only a matter of time before she realizes the same thing I have. 

That if I had just kept at what my seven year old self had done, what I had spent years doing, actually finding some measure of comfort in it, maybe I really could have been the best friend I always wanted to be to her.

Look forward.

Those two damn words again.

Niggling at my brain and tapping the way a hammer does on a nail when you’re trying to hang a picture. A never ending tap that just gets louder the longer she remains completely silent.

I know I gave her the book to read.

I also know she’s got to be given time to do that without me hovering, but I can’t help wishing that she would pull her eyes away from the messy scrawl on the page, turn to me and really look at me the way she has in the past. Eyes soft and spilling over with the love I know she has for me. Letting me know in that silent way of hers that everything is okay.

Looking forward was supposed to be easy now that the book is in her possession, but now, as I stand at the corner of the sofa and wait for some kind of sign from her, I’m afraid it’s made me do the opposite.

Go back.

Back to the terror, the anger, the sadness and the emptiness that comes when you suffer a loss and don’t have the proper tools and coaching in order to cope with it. Back to the nightmare that was my life before that day in the parking lot changed everything.

I haven’t succeeded in making my life better. All I’ve really done is let the demons that we’ve both spent years trying to let go of, right back in again.

“I still have that journal. The pen too.” Belle laughs softly as she closes the notebook and turns to me. “Even when the ink ran out and my mom told me she’d get me another one, I couldn’t let it go.”

She doesn’t realize it, but she’s like that with a lot of things. Not just possessions.

If it wasn’t for her inability to let go, I wouldn’t be standing where I am now. I’m also pretty sure given the status of my life at the time, I wouldn’t be standing at all.

Just like Belle couldn’t give up on her empty pen, she couldn’t give up on me either.

Have I mentioned I’m the luckiest fucking bastard on the planet yet?

Patting the sofa cushion beside her, she releases the tight hold of her legs and lets them fall over the side, curving her body into mine once I’ve done what she’s asked and taken the spot beside her. The feel of her hair brushing across my chest as her head comes to rest over my heart managing to settle the unease inside.

“Did she get you a new one?” I ask, keeping things light even though my brain is screaming at me to ask what it really wants to know.

What she thought about what she just read.

“She did get me a new pen, but the next one was blue and instead of a puff ball, it had a slinky monster thing on the top. Bounced every time I wrote anything down. It bugged me so much.”

“Did you tell her?”

“She saw me writing with it once when she came into the room to tell me dinner was ready. Her face lit up like fireworks on Canada Day. So even though I planned on telling her I hated it, I couldn’t. She was happy. I wanted to keep her that way for as long as I could.”

Another thing she does that even though I don’t quite get it, I love about her.

Where I spent years making people miserable and getting some level of sick enjoyment out of it because in the moment it was happening, I felt less empty, Belle was the opposite.

She would do just about anything to make sure the people around her were happy.

A few months after we got together, she’d even tried explaining it to me.

Emotions. Reading them, feeling them, and expressing them, it always came harder to her than it did other people. She says it was all part of her diagnosis. A diagnosis that even after years of being with her, I’m still learning new things about.

But…there I go again, getting off track.

Belle went through a phase where all she wanted to watch were videos about emotions. She would pause, stop and repeat these things for hours. Reading the expressions, learning the facial cues and ticks until it all made sense to her. It was during that period, she had an obsession with happy.

Living with her, I have to say the obsession never really went away. Belle is always better when the world around her—the people even—are happy.

And with the smile she gives when they are, it’s safe to say I’m a big fan of happy too.

“So what happened to the pen?”

Shaking her head as she laughs, I catch her eyes and they’re dancing. Lighting up just like her earlier firework reference. Whatever happened obviously a good memory.

I love her good memories. They’re always so strong they completely demolish all of my bad ones.

“Tristan flushed it and clogged the toilet. God,” she takes a breath before laughing again. “It was horrible, but so funny. She wanted to be upset with him, but what was she going to say to a baby? It’s not like he would have listened anyway.”

Bringing up her younger brother, even if it’s a happier memory, makes my stomach twist. Having been there through everything I put her through over the years, even if he might have been too young to understand it all at the time, put a strain on what at first, when Belle and I got together senior year, had looked like a do-over for me in the brother department.

Tristan getting the Kayden that the daily beatings and mistreatment from my own brother Dean couldn’t kill.

The better part of me.

What fell apart the night of the dance and that even though we’ve been on more neutral ground lately, I can still see has a way to go before we can get back to where we were when he was six. The adoration he had for me, the respect, and even love based on the way I was with his sister when he was around.

I miss all of that and I hate that my years of stupidity didn’t just damage Belle, but him too.

“He loves you, Kay.” Belle, obviously sensing where my mind had gone, says as she brings my hand to her lips and kisses the knuckles softly. “He’s just a lot like you. Stubborn and protective.”

“I know that, but you’re not the only one I’ve got to make shit up to. I have to do it with him, and I will. But is it wrong that I hate that there’s no magic fix?”

“No, but if there’s anyone that can fix things, it’s you, Kay.”

“You’re a little bias, don’t you think?”

“Maybe a little.” She laughs. “But I’m also living proof.”

Can’t argue with that.

If I could manage to be the boy she knew when we were kids and do things differently with the second chance I was given, then the possibilities really are endless.

I can right all of my wrongs with everyone.

“So…” I trail off, wanting to get into what she read, but now that we’re in the moment the words sticking like paste to the roof of my mouth.

“Did you really start writing in this book because you saw me do it?” she jumps in, and after releasing the biggest sigh of relief known to man, I nod.

“For like a week straight we’d come over and you had your nose, hell, your entire face, in that diary. It drove me crazy after a while, especially with the way you used to look at me when I’d hover over your shoulder trying to read. God, I hate that look.”

“It’s your own fault. A girl’s diary is supposed to be private.”

“Well, I know that
now
. But at the time, I just wanted your attention to be on me.”

“Nice to know some things never change, huh?”

Pinching her in her side, I pull her back when she swats at me and tries to get away, practically crushing her to my chest before leaning my head down into her hair, inhaling deeply before pressing my lips to the top.

“My obsession with wanting your attention is entirely your fault. I’m powerless against it.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Yeah, I am. But only about you.”

We’re getting off topic, but where I expect it to feel out of sorts, it doesn’t. It’s nice. Being here with her, the way we’ve been for years, its right. I don’t know what I was thinking, believing that in order for us to move forward to what will one day soon be her taking my name and marrying me, I needed to let her see the past.

Maybe she’s right and I
am
crazy.

“What you wrote, what you thought and said…it was wrong, Kay.”

“How so?”

Lifting her head from its resting place over my heart and meeting my eyes, she brings her hand up and over my face, cupping my cheek before shifting her body, lifting it until her face is level with mine. Our foreheads brushing against one another with her lips so close, I can feel the warmth from her breath across my face as she speaks.

“You
were
my best friend. My one and only friend. You didn’t need to write in a journal in order to get it because you already had it. You had me.”

“If I’d written to you that day and asked you if I was your best friend, what would you have written back?”

“The truth. As much of it as I understood at the time anyway.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“That I loved you, even then. Maybe not the way I love you now, because it was different when we were kids, but I definitely loved you. Even when I looked through you, cried because of you, or had no reaction at all. I was happier whenever you were there. Inside. Where it counts.”

Lowering her hand down until it brushes over where my heart beats a little faster below, she gets her words across loud and clear. She may not have been able to show it in an external way when we were little, but there’s no denying that she felt it.

The same way I did.

Inside.

Where the rest of the world and its shit can’t touch it.

“Why did you want me to read this so badly, Kay?” she asks after a few seconds of silence pass. “Why now?”

“Our story didn’t begin senior year. It began a lot earlier than that. And even though there was a whole lot of years where I didn’t exactly show it, before I walk down the aisle and before we start the next chapter of our lives, I needed to fill in the missing parts. I need to show you that even when I acted like you didn’t exist, you did. Inside.” I repeat her words back, meaning every one. “Where it counts.”

“Then I guess now is probably not the best time to say I don’t want to read it.”

There it is.

I knew it was only a matter of time before she said it. Admitted to not wanting to go back. It was stupid of me to assume she could. After everything she’s already had to endure, the last damn thing she should ever have to do is go back. Even if the memories in that book aren’t hers at all, but mine.

“I’m sorry, Belle. It was stupid. I just thought that—”

Pressing her lips to mine, she affectively cuts off my words and my train of thought completely until all I can feel is the taste and scent of her as it covers and pulls me in.

Just her.

Always Belle.

“I was just going to tell you to shut up, but since we’ve both done that before, I figured I’d try something new.”