“Time is everything,” I protested tearfully.

“You are,” he corrected straightaway.  “You are my everything, Lake.  You’ve always been.”

I shook my head, refusing all of it even though I knew it was true.  “Your life was supposed to be something else.  I changed who you became.”

“I like who I became,” he said between his teeth, dogged and adamant.  “Why can’t you believe that, Lake? How could you let anyone tell you that you meant nothing to me? She knew nothing.  She wasn’t a part of our life.  She was nobody.”

She was my mother.  She was the only blood I had left.

I thought it but I didn’t say it because Callum had no idea how much of Trish I’d let into my life.  He still had no idea that I’d ever let her play such a big role in my adolescence.  I was too ashamed to tell him about her and her situation.  That, out of curiosity, I’d ever let her find me online, talk to me regularly and spread her poison gradually into me.  She was the only reason I stole from him and Caroline and the stealing was something I was still too ashamed to ever bring up.  My biological mother was the dark hole I spiraled into every once in awhile depending on what she’d messaged me that week – what her husband, Dean, had done to her this time or how much money she needed from me.  The secret conversations I had with her all took place on Theo’s computer at the Spencer’s home.  I kept Trish a secret from Callum, Caroline and even Isabel because they were the ones who truly loved me and so I knew they’d try to intervene.  But that would only cause for trouble so my heart told me it was best to keep Trish and Dean and Hunt a secret.  Callum and Caroline had saved me from having to live with them after my grandma passed and I was endlessly grateful.  The Pikes were my real family.  I loved them and I’d do whatever I needed to protect them from these psychopaths.

“Do you hear me, Lake?” Callum caught my chin and forced me to look in his eyes.  “Let go of that guilt.  I gave up a lot for you.  You’re right – my life changed for you.  But I never regretted a second of it because I’ve never cared about anything more than you.  You were my goal.  You were what I lived and breathed for and that’s how it’s going to be, always.  Do you hear me?”

My lips gave a short gasp for breath.  “I hear you.”  I held onto him, letting myself melt into the familiar comfort of his body.  I was crying too much, too wound with emotion to distinguish what I was feeling but I did feel lighter, as if the weight on my chest had been eased – by only a little, but it was enough to make a little more room in my heart.  Once upon a time, when my life was nothing but love, my heart was filled with only that.  There were dark patches all over it now, parts that hadn’t been able to breathe in ages.  But I could feel Callum reversing that, the tiniest bit at a time.

I trembled in his arms but he reached for a throw and wrapped it around us.  “Pretend we’re on the fire escape,” he whispered with a smile in his voice.  I managed a laugh as I remembered the day he was referring to.  I remembered the reply he whispered to my question after we had sex for the first time – my first time ever.  They were the words I remembered forever but told myself weren’t true till he confirmed them for me now.  I closed my eyes and let them ring in my head.

“You are and you always will be.”

Chapter Sixteen

Lake

You are and you always will be.

Callum’s words had eased every fiber of my nineteen-year-old soul.  A year removed from what had happened to him in the park and I wasn’t quite over it.  How could I be? He’d just recently made a full recovery and that was only in terms of broken bones and open wounds.  In terms of who he was and where he was going, it wasn’t quite so simple.  After hearing that his wrestling scholarship had been put on hold, Callum decided not to attend Hodgson at all.

“Why should I? I was only going for wrestling.  I didn’t even have a major declared yet.  I don’t actually know what I want to do.  Wrestling just tricked me into thinking I did.”  That had been his argument to Caroline, who’d legitimately lost her mind over it.  She’d been shunned by her society friends at this point but their values still weighed heavily on her and the idea of her child skipping out on college made her want to tear her hair out.

Callum had first said it in the hospital, after the four men attacked him.  She didn’t believe him then and neither did I.  He was hopped up on pain meds and saying all sorts of crazy shit, most of it to calm me down.  I was still a mess of snot and tears over what I’d brought upon him.  It wasn’t a pretty sight.  But Callum seemed to think so.

His surfer hair was all over the place as he woke up from a deep, drug-induced nap, settling his heavy gaze on me and spreading his lips into an easy smile.  “Hey, pretty.”

I looked at him almost in horror.  Had he forgotten where he was? Did I have to explain to him all over again that he’d broken almost a dozen bones and was definitely missing the Junior Olympics in seven weeks? “What?” I said harshly, frozen, hugging my knees to my chest on the chair next to his bed.  Caroline had gone to get me food but when she took too long, I went out looking for her and found her passed out on a random chair with her head resting on some strange old woman’s shoulder-slash-massive bosom, so I let her be and went back to Callum’s room, hungry, miserable and filled to the brim with self-loathing.  He looked so sad when he was asleep, covered in bandages that seeped through with fresh blood no matter how many times the nurses changed them.  Watching him alone in silence was the purest torture because he looked beautiful as always but for once, pathetic as well, and it crushed the living hell out of my heart.  The fact that he was smiling cluelessly at me now made it feel like it was ripping right in half.  “Callum, do you know where you are right now?” I asked with hesitance.

“At home?”

My heart sunk to my stomach.  “No.”  I exhaled, my shoulders heaving.  “You’re in the hospital, Callum.  You got beat up yesterday.  Real bad.”

“I know that, Lake, I was just fucking with you.”

I stiffened, suppressing the urge to smack him.  Not today.  He laughed.  “As pretty as you are when you cry, don’t do it.”

“Oh, okay,” I rolled my eyes, as if I could just shut off the tears like a shower faucet.

“I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t get to decide that.”  I hugged my knees tighter to my chest as I listened to the steady beeping of all the machines he was hooked up to.  I shuddered, unaccustomed to seeing Callum any kind of helpless or dependent. Even as kids, he’d been the one taking care of Caroline.  His dad was never home so he and Elena took care of Caroline and me.  We were the girly girls who pitched fits and got moody.  They were the rocks.  Our anchors.  It was quiet for another few minutes as I avoided Callum’s stare.  Then, once again:

“Hey, pretty.”

“What, Callum? Are you still high right now?”

“I think so.  I want to talk to you though.”

“Then talk to me.”

He frowned.  “Why are you being so mean right now?”

“What?” His question was so innocent it jolted me.  I blinked, thought about it and then realized I was in fact being sour with him.  But it just felt like the balance we needed.  I’d been riddled with guilt and waiting for him to blow up at me since the minute I stepped into his room for the first time but he hadn’t.  Well, because he was unconscious.  But even when he woke up, his first words to me were a light, joking question – “Do I look as shitty as I feel?” So I waited for the drugs to wear off and felt brittle, on edge as I braced myself for Callum to come to and finally realize the severity of what happened.  That everything he worked so hard for had been suddenly and brutally ripped away from him.  Because of me.