“It’s work.”

His generic answer peaked my rage.  “You know you’re ignoring what I’m really asking you about, Callum.  At least give me an explanation here.  I understand that work happens but I’m not stupid – I know every part of you and the way you’re speaking to me right now is you making an active decision to shut me out and let me know that you’re doing it.  I am not asking you why you have to go to Scotland, I’m asking you why this… this flip suddenly switched!”

“You can demand answers but I can’t?”

I dropped my knife with a clack.  “That’s separate.”

“No, it’s fucking not,” Callum fumed, his enraged eyes paralyzing me from across the kitchen counter.  “I tried, Lake.  I did.  I keep trying to get us back to where we were but it’s really hard without an answer to the six years that you were gone.  I can’t fully enjoy what I have with you because I’m actively pushing away the shit that’s nagging me at the back of my head and you refuse to free me from that prison by doing the most obvious thing in the world.  You owe me an explanation at this point.  I can’t overlook the impossible, Lake! Put yourself in my shoes – it would eat at you too and you know it.”

The tears spilled without warning because I did know it.  I had known before even coming back that I’d be asking far too much of Callum.  The realization had me thinking of Colorado, California, all these great but starkly different places from New York – cities in which I could start my life over for the last time, because I couldn’t imagine Callum accepting the terms to my homecoming.  Yes, I disappeared on you and Caroline without warning and made no attempts at contact for six years but do you think you can let all that go and take me back without question because I can’t stop loving you? It sounded stupid every way I tried to put it so I looked up Denver, Boulder, San Francisco.  I knew I would eventually find work, friends, some sort of love despite knowing I’d never stop comparing every man I met to Callum and my imagination of what he’d become since I’d gone.  I had a flight booked to Denver International, a hotel room paid for and a job interview lined up for the following morning.  I was at my gate at the airport when I went back on my decision to forget New York because I couldn’t muster up the courage to ask an impossible favor of Callum.  There was no one else in the world that I’d ever love more than him.  That much I knew.  So I’d be shameless, audacious and downright insulting before I gave up on him without even trying.

“Tell me, Lake!” Callum’s hands were on me now.  Tears were clouding my vision but I could feel the urgency in his touch as he demanded the question a thousand times.  “Why won’t you tell me? Just start with that – don’t even tell me where you went, tell me why you refuse to let me know!”

“Because I promise you will never want me again if you do!” I was a mess.  Done for.  I needed air but when I turned away but he jerked me back.

“You know that’s a lie,” he seethed, gripping me, his blue eye smoldering.  “I want you, Lake.  I wanted you the second I laid eyes on you and I haven’t stopped once, not even when I fucking hated you.  You should know that.  You should know that well because you went away when I’d never been more in love with you in my life and now you’re back without telling me a word about where you went and I still can’t stop protecting you.  I am never going to stop.  You’re safe with me, Lake – you always will be – so just start slow and tell me why you won’t let me in.  Tell me why you won’t give me the truth.”

I didn’t remember when he’d gotten me to the living room and plopped me at the edge of the table, but that was where I sat as he knelt pleadingly in front of me.  He stared at me with as much hot love as he did burning fury and I couldn’t deny him this time.

“I ruined enough of your life, Callum,” I whispered.  He was already shaking his head so I spoke over him.  “You know it’s true.  Your mom knows it’s true.  I screwed up so much for both of you and the only reason you don’t see it is because you both love me so much.  And I’m so blessed to know that and to have that and to love you back because my heart feels good and full and right when it’s just you and Caroline in there.  I owe everything to you both.  And with you, Callum, after what happened that morning with Theo – ”

“Don’t – ”

“You can’t keep saying that,” I protested, my face in his hands.  “You can’t tell me not to bring that up when it would’ve never happened without me! It was all because of me, Callum – everything always was and I know you hated protecting me but you couldn’t help it.  If you hadn’t gone to protect me that last time, you would’ve been a different Callum and your mom would still have your dad and all her friends and your lives would’ve been everything they were supposed to be before I came and turned it into… into – ” Trash.  I choked on the word and Callum pulled me onto him.

“No, Lake.  You have it wrong.”  He knelt on the floor, holding me on top of him, kissing my forehead and my tears between his low growls about how I fucking wrong I was.  But I couldn’t help what I thought.  He had come to save me after I broke up with Theo and he’d wound up beating his best friend so brutally that the Spencers resolved to retaliate.  From the whispers that came after the incident, relayed to me by Isabel, the plot was Nick’s idea.  He’d convinced Theo to post my naked pictures and he’d convinced him that with his ex taken care of, it was time to set sights on the one who sent him to the hospital.

I had been locked so shamefully in my room after the naked picture fiasco that I didn’t even realize Theo had contacted Callum – that Callum had actually agreed to meet him before wrestling practice before school.  It was just before six in the morning.  Callum was waiting at the park near Mercer School when four guys jumped him.  One had a stick of some sort – a witness said an aluminum bat.  They beat him for ten minutes, dragged him around mercilessly.  Theo never showed.  Surprise, surprise.  He made it well on time to practice.  As he wrestled, the four men in the park had Callum saying goodbye to the sport.  That morning, they snapped his right arm in two places, broke three ribs, cracked his jaw and split his head.  We never got to know how long he was bleeding there alone for.  A jogger found him unconscious in a pool of his own blood and that was when Caroline got the call at home.

I cried every last tear out of my body.  I couldn’t bear to visit him the first day.  He was hardly awake anyway so Caroline stayed with Callum at the hospital and I spent the entire day in his room, hiding all his wrestling trophies and medals, ripping through his closet for his uniforms and shoving them into a garbage bag before crying myself to sleep in his bed.  He had been two months from the junior Olympics and three from his freshman year at Hodgson.  He’d been accepted on a full ride for wrestling, just like his dad, but now that was all going down the drain.  Because of me.  He lost his future because of me.  He lost the mother that he knew because of me and she lost her husband because of me.  Everything was all because of me.  All those hateful messages Trish sent me had been right after all.  I leeched off this family and eventually, I’d leech off of them enough to become a plague.  I was worthless without sucking out someone else’s soul.

I unloaded all that onto Callum as he held me tighter than ever.

“You know that’s not true.”  He cupped my face and whispered urgently, his thumbs moving fast to dry my tears.  “Look at me – I have everything I never knew I wanted, Lake.  I spent my life wrestling because my dad did.  I liked having a direction then.  I liked practicing discipline and working toward a goal but wrestling itself meant nothing to me beyond the time I put into it.”