eye. “Yes, you should have… You should have told me sooner.”

I shake my head, putting my hand onto the small of her back

so she’ll stay close. “Callie, you don’t need to know this kind of

stuff… You’ve got your own problems.”

She looks angry suddenly, her eyes flaring and I lean back,

concerned she’s going to hit me or something. “Kayden… I don’t…”

She can’t find the right words. She shifts her body, bending her

knees so her weight is on my lap. She places her hands on my

shoulders and with a steadfast look in her eye she says, “This is all my fault.” I start to protest, but she puts her hand over my mouth.

“You should have never hit Caleb… I should have never let you find

out about him. If you hadn’t, then none of this would have

happened. We’d be back at the house lying in my bed.”

“That’s not true,” I say, my lips moving against her hand. “It’s

good that you told me. He can’t just go walking around living his

life when he took yours.”

She lowers her hand to her lap and sighs. “That’s what you

father’s doing.” She huffs a frustrated breath. “Does anyone even

know?”

I shake my head and then shrug. “My mom, but she’s known

about everything… about the hitting, the beating, the kicking… She

doesn’t care.”

Her eyes wander out to the ocean. “This isn’t right,” she

mutters and turns her head toward me. “We have to tell someone.”

She starts to get up, but I dig my fingers into her side and hold her in place.

“Callie, there’s no point telling anyone… and you… you need

to stop worrying about me.” My breath starts to tremble from my

lips. God damn it. This is the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to say. But I need to say it. I need to make her understand who I am,

deep on the inside. “I messed up. Big time. What I said at the diner

about… about cutting myself… I’m broken. I don’t know if I’ll ever

really be able to stop… to stop cutting. You need to stay away

from me. Please, walk away.”

Her eyes stay on me as she takes in my face and makes me

feel unsettled on the inside. “No.”

I shake my head. “Callie, you don’t want this—”

“Yes, I do.” She places her hand over my mouth, pressing her

lips together as she slips a finger underneath one of the rubber

bands on my wrist. “Kayden, you think I’m walking blindly into this,

but I’m not. I think I might have known for a while that you… that

you cut yourself, even before you told me.”

My heart shrivels into nothing as she lowers her hand from

my mouth. “How?”

Tears bubble in the corners of her eyes. “That night when

we… when you and I…” Her breathing is unsteady. “When we had

sex, I saw you had all those cuts on your arms, I thought… the

thought crossed my mind that you might have put some of them

there.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Did you cut yourself?’ Besides,

I didn’t want to believe it.”

My shriveled heart has become a fucking pile of nothingness.

“Because it’s too much?”

She quickly shakes her head. “No, because I don’t want to

believe that you have all that pain trapped inside of you… I know

how much pain it takes to go that far… to want to hurt yourself.”

There’s this mind-blowing moment when I realize something.

Someone understands me. Callie understands me. She gets it and

she’s not afraid of me or what’s inside me. And while I don’t

understand it, I want it—I want her. How is it even fucking possible

that I’ve been walking around for years and years and years with

her in the same town—the same school—and I never really saw

her? What would have happened if I had?

“I’m too messed up,” I press again, wanting her to fully

understand. “I hurt myself and let others hurt me and I don’t tell

anyone.”

“But you need to. You need to tell someone about your

father. Even if they think you hurt yourself, people need to know.”

“No one will ever believe me. I just got arrested for beating

Caleb’s ass and then I have my fucking scars that I put on my body

myself. No one will get it.”

“I don’t care,” she responds and her fingers dig into my

shoulders as she clings onto me. “We’ll make them understand.”

I stop and look at her. How can someone like her exist? It’s

impossible, and yet she’s here in front of me, looking as beautiful

as ever beneath the pale glow of the moon. “Callie… but what

about you and Caleb? You haven’t told anyone about that.” I feel

like a jerk for saying it, but it seems like it needs to be said.

“I’m working on it,” she utters and there’s a quiver in her

voice. “You and I, we’re going to work on it… We’re not going to

let other people own us anymore.” She seems to be making the

speech to herself more than to me, but that’s okay. I want her to

tell someone so that piece of shit can stop walking around owning

her.

She looks at me and I can tell she’s about to cry. I don’t want

her to cry. I want her to be happy. “Callie, tell me what you need,” I say and tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“I need the world to stop being such an ugly place full of

hurt.” Tears slip out of her eyes. “I need to wake up and really

believe everything will be okay instead of just hoping it will be. I

want to be one of the lucky ones who has a good life.”

I nod, because that’s what I want for her too. “You can still

get that. Just tell me what you need to make you happy.”

She looks me in the eye with tears streaming down her

cheeks. “You.”

I flinch because she just threw herself out there to a person

who’s hollow and cracked. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if

I can give her what she wants. I don’t understand need or love. I

don’t understand what makes people’s lives whole. My lips part

and I honestly have no idea what’s about to come out of them, but

I never find out because she presses her lips against mine and

silences me.

Maybe she knew it wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear or

maybe she just wanted to kiss me, either way I pull back. Cupping

her cheek, I say, “Callie, you don’t want me. Trust me. I’ll get you

nowhere.”

All she does is shake her head and kiss me again, clutching

onto my shoulders for dear life. This time I can’t help myself. She’s shaking in my arms and I want to make her better, so I kiss her

back, slowly at first, but then this hunger take over and I begin to

kiss her fiercely and with all the passion I’ve kept trapped inside

me.

We fall back into the sand. She’s lying on top of me and our