What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) (17 page)

Just another day in the Walker house.

“Take her home, but I’m not coming. I’ll fucking walk.”

“In the car now, Kayden!” He rages, slamming his hand down around the thickness of my arm and forcing me up against the door. Hard. The impact to my body knocking the breath and argument straight out of me.

Pulling the door open with his free hand, he tightens his grip as he yanks me around it, throwing my body in and slamming the door shut with a cut off curse before making his way around to the driver’s side and sliding in. The strangest thing happening when he gets in and settles his seatbelt across his midsection.

My demon of a brother turns to the girl in the seat beside him and he smiles. A genuine fucking smile. Familiar to me only in that I’ve seen him give the same look to his girlfriends over the years. Girls that until he got bored with them, he actually seemed to give a shit about. A smile he hasn’t given me since I was six.

“How you holding up?” he asks her, and that’s when I cut in. It’s been years since I’ve spent more than two seconds around this girl, but I still know more than his stupid ass. She’s mute. Probably deaf now too. He’s shit out luck if an answer is what he’s after.

“She won’t answer.”

“Was I talking to you?” Dean swings around glaring. “No. I didn’t think so. Mind your business.”

“Whatever.”

Turning his attention back to Belle, I watch as he smiles at her again, only this time, there’s a slip of paper held out between them. `

Reading whatever is on the page, Dean winks before turning his attention to the car. Bringing it to life and pulling away from the curb so fast, Belle’s not the only one reaching out and hanging on the door to keep steady.

Stretching my legs out as much as I can from my position behind Belle’s seat, the one now shifted all the way back and leaving me shit for room, I hit the back of her chair and catch her gasp before her head flies around and stares me down.

“What?” I snap, and that’s all it takes for the fear I’m used to seeing to come back. For her head to swing back around until she’s staring straight ahead.

“Kayden, you wanna be pissed, be fucking pissed, but stop taking your shit out on her. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She was born, wasn’t she?” I shoot back and even from my position a few feet away I can see the anger building in him. The ass kicking I’m going to get the second Belle is home safe and he’s got me alone.

Good.

“I’m gonna explain something to you, you ignorant little shit. I know the way you and all your little friends see Belle, but if you pulled your head out of your ass long enough and actually paid attention or remembered shit from when the two of you were actually fucking friends, you’d know none of this is her fault. She didn’t ask for it, and she damn sure doesn’t want it. She’s just forced to live with it. It’s hard enough to do that without having a bunch of pricks breathing down your neck and calling you retarded and deaf. So lay the fuck off.”

“You done?” I egg him on, and after he grunts and curses under his breath, he inhales deeply and starts again. Only this time, his attention and voice are lower and he’s not talking to me.

What the hell is it about this girl that has my normally violent brother turning into a gigantic teddy bear? He’s acting like a completely different person. I don’t know whether to be confused or angry. Why does Belle get this attentiveness and I don’t? What the fuck did I ever do to only be on the receiving end of his hatred?

“Has he been like this the entire time?” He asks, and when Belle nods slowly, he continues. “I’m sorry for that. It’s my fault.”

Holy shit! Does the way his face sinks in right now mean what I think it does? Does he actually feel bad for the monster he turned me into?

What fucking universe is this?

“The reason she has accidents, why I have to bring her home, and why she smashes her head off shit and ‘freaks out’ as you say at school, it’s because she’s autistic, jackass. She can’t control any of it. Body functions, reactions to stimulation, and certain situations. It’s out of her control. Grace explained it, and if you’d paid attention back when she told me, you’d know it too. Or at the very least, you’d remember.”

I remember all too well. I know way more than Dean does, but since I’m just a piece of shit jackass that needs to be schooled like I’m five years old again, I’m not even gonna argue. I’ll sit here and take the shit he’s dishing out. It’s worked well so far.

Four years and counting.

“I. Don’t. Care.”

“You better start caring.”

Yeah right.
Look where caring got me before. I’m not fucking doing that shit ever again. The cost is too damn high.

It’s much easier to not give a shit.

“Dean, just shut up and drive.”

Thankfully, that’s exactly what he does, after huffing out the world’s most annoyed breath. Just further proof of what I’ve got coming when we finally get home. My open defiance right now just making a bad situation worse.

After a few minutes of silence, I’m gripping the door as he’s turning again as we pull into Belle’s driveway. Laying on the horn until three short blasts hit, the door opens, and Grace comes flying down off the steps toward the car. Not stopping until she’s got the passenger side door open and she’s practically yanking her daughter from the seat.

“Thank you.” She mumbles to Dean, and with a quick nod in response, the door is again slamming on us.

Just like that, the safety net Belle provided being in the car is going, and I’m left alone with the last person in the world I want to be.

“Dean—” I go to speak and his glare when he spins around stops me cold.

“No, Kayden. It’s time to shut the fuck up now.”

“Like hell I will.”

“I know, Kayden. I know what you, that idiot you call a best friend, Tim, and your stupid bitch of a girlfriend did to that girl. If you’re not going to smarten the fuck up with the punishment the school gives you, you’ll damn sure do it when I’m finished with you.”

Shivering from the impact of his words, what I know is coming when we get in the house, I do what he says and for the next two minutes—the time it takes for him to pull out of their drive and across the street into ours—I do what he wants.

My only thought when I unbuckle the belt and slide out, dragging my feet slowly behind him as we walk toward the front door, one that just adds fuel to the fire in my chest when I so much as think of the girl across the street.

I’ve never hated her more.

She’s the reason for everything.

My mom leaving, my brother picking up where my old man left off and beating the hell out of me, and now this.

She’s the reason for it all.

Fuck protecting her. Fuck keeping her safe. It’s open season.

I’m going to destroy Isabelle Reagan.

Flinging myself up in bed, the sound of my own screaming out enough to bring me out of the obvious nightmare I’ve found myself stuck in, the last thing I’m expecting is to be surrounded by not only Belle, but our mothers too.

Hell, with the way the dream was going, the way the memory of that day ends, I half expected to wake up in the corner of my room with busted ribs, a split lip and two black eyes.

“Kayden,” My mom calls out. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” I cough out, my dry throat burning with the force used to get the words out. “I’m good. Bad dream.”

The sad look in our mother’s eyes tells me they know a whole lot about my bad dreams.

Shit.

Of course Belle went to them.

In between the really sweet moments we’ve had, the ones where we’ve gotten even closer than we were, there’s also been a hell of a lot of bad.

Moments where I’m clearly losing whatever touch I had with reality. Being driven more into the past and who I was then ever before.

“W—what are you doing here?”

“Today is my first day at the bank. Since I don’t have a ride, Grace offered to take me. She just had to make a pit stop here first.”

Looking away when I see Belle begin to move, I take the glass of water she’s now holding out to me and draining it dry as she takes it back and slips onto bed beside me. Smiling weakly turning back and zeroing in on what my mom said.

“A pit stop for what?”

“I had to drop something off for Belle. Nothing important.” Grace interjects. “And now that I’ve done that, and we’ve figured out you’re okay and not being murdered, we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Belle says, and with a soft smile and an even gentler goodbye from the both of them, they’re turning on their heels and heading out, leaving the two of us alone.

“You wanna talk about it?” She asks, pulling her legs up onto the bed and stretching out before turning over toward me.

“What’s to talk about? It’s just more of the same.”

“You dream about your mom leaving again?”

“No. It was you this time.”

“What about me?”

“The day your mom got Dean to pick you up from school.”

“Oh,” she says, realization flooding her features and changing the color of her cheeks. This time embarrassment causing the change and twisting me up inside in the process.

The only time her cheeks are allowed to change shades is when I’m saying something sweet. Not because I’ve brought up something better left buried.

Damnit.

“He was clean. Sober. Still a raging lunatic, but I mean, that day he was decent. To you anyway.”

“I tried to talk that day. When he was going off on you in the car, I wanted to smile so badly I thought my brain was going to explode with the force I was putting into making it happen.” She laughs at the memory. “He was doing what I wanted to do.”

“Tell me off?”

Nodding, she laughs and I groan loudly. I remember how snotty I was. What I put into action at school every day after that one, and it makes every part of me hurt.

“You really are over it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely over what happened, but it doesn’t bother me the way it used to anymore, no. We’ve both come a long way since freshman year, Kay. Learned. Grown up.”

“Don’t you mean I have? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re handling it the same way you did then.”

She laughs softly again and it stumps me as to why.

What is she seeing that I’m not?

“You seem to remember things a lot differently than I do. I wasn’t all that well put together, Kayden. I just handled it differently than you. It hurt like hell and I held a lot of it against you. For a long time too.”

“Yet you still fell in love with me.”

“Well, truthfully, I fell in love with you way before all that, but since I didn’t know that at the time, yes. I fell in love with you despite it.”

“I did everything in my power to bury everything that happened between us as kids. The good times, the very real feelings that were developing. I held things against you that you didn’t even know about, blamed you for things that you had no control over and it made it easier to keep it all down. It was also easier to do because I never really had to see you. I could pretend. That got harder to do when you came to school. You were always there, just right on the fringe. The memories right there with you. I walked a tightrope every fucking day. I acted one way to your face and another behind closed doors. It was terrible. I struggled with wanting to keep you safe from my shit, and wanting to hate your guts because you knew so much and could expose me anytime you wanted.”

“This is about that last entry, isn’t it? The one that you passed out before I could read?”

“Yeah. A lot of the entries I wrote about, it was like after I wrote about them, they faded to make room for other one,  so I went into them as blind as you unless I snuck a peek at the book beforehand. This last one though, I remember the day and the reason I wrote it, along with the basic gist of what I talked about. I guess in preparation for what we’re going to end up reading, I’m dragging other memories along for the ride. Not so good ones.”

“Nothing we read changes anything.”

“I know.” I say, even though I’m still on the fence whether I believe it or not. “I just need you to know that the conflict I was talking about, my need to be close to you, yet as far away as possible, is there.”

“And now?” she asks softly, turning her body even more into mine and brushing her lips along the thin layer of hair resting over my heart, making me shiver before finally pressing them down so deep on my skin I’m sure they’re leaving behind a permanent mark.

A mark I want more than anything.

One that will match the one she’s already tattooed on my heart.

“There’s no struggle anymore, Belle. No tight rope I have to walk with my feelings. I love you. I’m
in love
with you, and I’m determined to be that way forever. You’re the one that I want. The one I’ve always wanted.”

“Good.” She kisses my chest again before lifting her head, smiling and doing the same to my lips before pulling away, turning over to her side of the bed and grabbing what I see when she turns back over is the notebook. Taking her time opening it to where I know the last entry rests.

“Now close your eyes, focus on that, and let me finish this chapter of our story.”

“This chapter?”

“Yes, this chapter. Because Kayden, the rest of our story is still unwritten. So, let’s end this chapter. Once and for all.”

Chapter Eighteen

October 29, 2010