What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) (6 page)

Besides, he always says she smells when he’s over at her house with us.

Why would she wanna hug someone who does that?

I tried asking Dean about it after I was done washing off, but he just laughed and rolled his eyes a bunch.

He thinks I’m stupid.

Maybe I am stupid, cause only a stupid person would keep thinking about stuff that makes their head hurt.

But I need to make this make sense.

I need her to hug me like that.

She’s
MY
best friend.

Not his.

Stupid Sammy.

Stupid Belle.

Stupid Me.

Groaning painfully when I reach the end of the entry, I chance a look over to where Belle sits beside me, afraid of what I’m going to find.

Her smiling down at the book definitely not the reaction I was expecting.

When she looks up and turns into me, throwing her arms around my neck and bringing me in close for what feels like the tightest hug she’s ever given me, I’m taken even more by surprise.

Did we just read the same thing?

“Not that I’m complaining, but why are you hugging me?”

“
I need her to hug me like that
.” She repeats the words of my younger self back and I relax into her embrace. “I know you said that you detailed a lot of things and that most of it would probably be hard to hear considering the way things went, but Kay, I swear, all these entries seem to do is make me fall even harder.”

Beating up a guy that at one point I considered a friend is making her fall for me?

Again, not complaining. I just don’t get it.

“How does hurting someone make you fall for me?”

“It’s not what you did. It’s
why
you did it.” She wastes no time explaining. “I had no idea.”

That makes two of us.

“No idea?”

“I was more than just your best friend.” she laughs softly. “My mom was right.”

“I’m so lost right now.”

“We’ve talked about this before. You remember what she said about the way you used to look at me. I can remember the way it was then, so I knew she was right, but it’s not just the way you look at me anymore. It’s there in your words too. I wasn’t just your best friend. You liked me.”

“Of course I did.”

“Do you get it now? Why I said I had no idea?”

I do, actually. I also remember what I told her that day in the gym when I recreated homecoming for her. She wasn’t supposed to have any idea of my feelings for her.

They were just for me.

“At the time, I’m not even sure I knew what it was that was going on with me. I mean, look at what I wrote. One minute, I’m jealous. The next I’m calling you stupid and making it seem like Sammy getting hurt was your fault. How are you supposed to know, when I didn’t?”

“Good point.”

“Yeah, sometimes I’m known to have them.”

Slapping me playfully on the arm, she snuggles into my side and pulls the book closer between us, flipping pages. Only stopping when she’s pushed past about ten entries and landed on the one I warned her about when I’d finally gotten up from the table.

Sam’s next appearance.

Three years later.

“Now that we’ve established how in
loooove
with me you were,” she singsongs. “Let’s tackle the other elephant in the room.”

The reason I’m so twisted up with guilt.

Great.

Locking her fingers in mine and squeezing, knowing exactly what I need in order to get through this, she takes the pressure off when she starts to read.

June 8, 2008

Stupid whiny piece of shit.

Should have known he was gonna go and blab to his parents about what Kevin, Mike and I did to him at the park.

Looks like Sammy really grew into his name. With the way he cried and pissed his fucking pants, he was even more of a girl than Belle.

God. Don’t even get me started on that little retard.

I saw her out on the front lawn today, and of course, like every other damn day, the whole front portion of her pants was wet. I don’t get it. Why can’t she just get off her ass like the rest of us and use the bathroom?

It’s like she enjoys sitting in her own filth. It’s disgusting.

She’s disgusting.

“Stop!” I yell, causing Belle’s eyes to fly up from the journal and even though it hasn’t happened in forever, her body to shift away from mine as she jumps back fast.

This was a mistake.

Jumping up off the sofa and making a break for it down the hall, my knees barely hit the tiles of the bathroom floor before the bile that’s been threatening to spill out since the second she began reading the entry finally expels itself.

My body heaving until there’s absolutely nothing left, not even the spit I’d expect after spilling my guts out the way I did. The burn in my throat as I keep heaving only a sliver of what I deserve after what I said about her.

My punishment.

I know I called her names. I know the horrible, sick things I’ve said about her over the years, but with everything that’s happened in the last couple, I thought I was past this. I get all twisted up in knots every time I so much as think about how many times I’ve actually called her retarded over the years, so this shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Yet here I am on the hard, cold and unforgiving floor of our bathroom feeling just that.

Surprised and twisted in knots, with no sign of relief in sight.

I swore I would never call her that again and there it was, in hard blue ink.

I broke my promise.

“Kayden?” she calls through after knocking lightly three times. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah…Yeah. I’m just great.” I mumble before turning my face toward the bowl as another assault takes over and I’m throwing up again.

I am so not great.

“Can I come in?”

How do I explain this? How just seeing one word on a paper caused this? That I hate him. Hate myself.

Jesus.

 With as torn up as I am right now, it’ll be a miracle if I can even string two words together. I’m not even sure I can look her in the eye after what she just had to speak out loud.

My words.

Not waiting for a response, I hear the click of the door and the sound of her feet padding across as she makes her way in and lowers herself down beside me. Her hand instantly coming out and over mine, wrapping around it tightly.

“Belle…”

“No, Kay. I get it. You don’t have to say anything. We can just sit here until it passes.”

She’s too good for an asshole like me.

She deserves better.

“That word,” I manage to choke out and her head just shakes as her grip around my hand gets tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“I figured that’s what caused this.” She motions around us. “You still haven’t forgiven yourself.”

“I have…” I attempt to argue, but her head shaking again has my fight falling away.

“You haven’t, and it’s okay. It just means I get to say this again. Say it as many times as it takes until you finally get it. I forgive you, Kay. For the names you called me then
and
what came later. I forgive you.”

Shifting across the floor she nuzzles her face into my back, her breath running hot against the back of my neck before she lifts her hands and begins rubbing my back soothingly.

“I forgive you.”

“I can’t read any more of that entry. I know I said I wanted to deal with it, but Belle, I just can’t. I promised you I would make up for everything I did and making you read those words,” I pause. “Those fucking names…it’s not making things right. It’s turning it wrong.”

“Did you write a lot back then?”

“A few. Not much. None of it is pretty though. There’s probably worse names. I don’t want you to go through that again. Once was enough.”

Even if it’s from me, I will protect her.

“As ugly as it gets, we have to face it, Kayden. Nothing is going to change if you don’t. I can handle it. We’re not those people anymore.”

She’s right. I know she is, but it still doesn’t make it any easier. Making her read my hatred from back then isn’t fair.

“What if I just tell you what I did to Sammy? What we did that day at the park?”

Sighing, I feel her head move against my back as she concedes.

“If that’s what you need.” She whispers and shifting from my position facing the toilet, I twist around until I’m facing her. Uncomfortable as hell on the floor, but needing to do it more than I need my next breath, I pull her into me and kiss the top of her head lightly.

“All I need is you.”

“You’ve got me, Kay. Forever.”

Something about the finality in her tone when she promises me forever has the story spilling out. Every sick and twisted bit.

“Mike stole his mom’s smokes. We were gonna head to the park, hang out and smoke a few. At the time, we didn’t know we were followed, but then Sammy came out of nowhere and caught me right as I lit one. He started yelling that he was going to tell and the next thing I know, Kevin is pulling back off the tree and tackling him to the ground. Holding him down while Mike and I looked on. I don’t even know what made me get off that tree, but I did. I followed Mike over and when he got down on the knees and started going off on him, Kev pulled back enough and I started beating on him. I knew he meant what he said and he was going to end up telling my mom about me smoking. I couldn’t let it happen so I wailed on him.”

With her hands still stroking my back, she lifts her head up and presses her lips against my dampened cheek. “What happened next?”

“He started crying real hard. Snot pouring out of his nose and everything. Then he pissed himself. Mike started laughing. Kevin too. We all did. I should have stopped then but I was so mad, Belle. I kept hearing him telling my mom, and then Dean kicking my ass for it that I didn’t stop. I just kept stomping on him. Dean used to say that as long as I stayed away from the face, I was good. So that’s what I did. At some point, Mike and Kev got him up and they went at his face, and I remember pulling back, but it was basically the same as me hitting him. I just stood there laughing while they hurt him.”

“His parents called the police.” She says and the way it’s not a question makes me think she remembers more than she’s letting on. I always knew she was aware of all of my secrets, at least when it came to the shit going down at home, but this is proof that it extended a lot further than just what happened there.

She knew just how big of a bully I was to everyone else too.

“Yeah. He ratted us out and the cops showed up. Dean beat the shit out of me with the belt that night. He asked how many times I kicked Sammy and when I told him, he hit me twice as hard with the belt the same amount of times.”

Twisting my arm around my back and running it across my spine, remembering the look of fiery rage in my brothers eyes that day after the cops talked to my mom and left, I stop when my fingers brush against where Belle’s hand is resting.

“How many times?” she whispers and there’s no missing the emotion threatening to spill out as she asks it.

“Thirty-five.”

“Kay…”

“No. I deserved it, Belle. God, with how he looked back then, I deserved a lot worse than the lashes and welts I got. I should have burned for what I did to him.”

“What you did was wrong, Kay, but responding to that with more violence is worse. What Dean did to you wasn’t the right way to handle it.”

I don’t know if it’s her words or my own guilt over what happened with Sammy, but it’s like the walls are closing in around us. The bathroom feels even smaller than it is and I’m struggling to breathe.

I need to get out of here before it swallows me whole.

It’s even worse because, it’s there too. Just like it was then.

The smell of bleach.

Shifting away from Belle, I look toward the door and back behind me. My eyes darting everywhere they can in the few seconds after it hits, just waiting for the moment when Dean is going to jump out and tell me that the only way to disinfect the lashes that are now bleeding is to pour bleach on them.

Fuck, it stings.

Burns.

Scratching at my arms and reaching around to my back again, I start to attack the skin until Belle’s hand lands over mine and gently pulls them away.

“Where are you right now, Kay?”

“It hurts.”

“What does?”

“The bleach. God. Get it off me. Please.”

I feel the wetness on my face before my brain fully registers what’s happening and where there had once been warmth, everything has suddenly become deathly cold.

That was it. Her limit. She’s gone.

Feeling a pull on my hand, I turn and look toward it and that’s when I see her. She’s not gone. She’s still there, attempting to use what little body weight she has to pull me and all of mine up. Pulling me away from the abyss I just dived into.

“Belle…”

“If your brother wasn’t already rotting in prison, I would have half a mind to find him and bury him under it for what he did to you. I never knew. I knew things were bad, Kay, I did. I saw the cops showing up, I saw the marks on you even when you weren’t with me anymore, but I didn’t know it was that bad. I…” her voice fades out and my brain begins to scream, begging and pleading with her to speak again so that I can find my way out of this.

This fucking nightmare I created.

“I should have done something sooner.” She rasps, the familiar delicateness of her tone completely stripped away until there’s nothing but emptiness left.

A way I know all too well.

Rising to my feet, slipping my fingers through hers and tightening the hold, I force myself to take control of the situation. The thought of her being pulled into this with me is too much to bear. I need to do what she tried to and get us out of here.