What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) (19 page)

So I know he remembers what I’m talking about, even if the look of confusion on his face right now says otherwise.

“Since when do you read?”

“Dill…”

“Fine.” He says, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll stop riding you, even if it is funny seeing the veins in your head pop.”

“Ha-ha. Laugh it up.”

“Well, in that case.” He jokes, backing up when I shift toward him and succeeding in making me laugh. “So you finally pulled it out of the vault, huh?”

“Yeah, and just like I thought, it was a lot.”

“For her or for you?”

“Both.”

“So you needing my help with something now is because of everything she read?”

“Kind of.”

“Stop, Kayden. You’re talking my ear off with all these details you’re giving. Slow down a bit, would ya?”

Nice to see having a daughter hasn’t changed him. He’s just as annoying as always.

“Focus, jackass.”

“Okay. What do you need?”

“Do you remember when you had me waste hours stringing lights up in a public ravine that had I been caught, I could have been arrested for?”

Now it’s his turn to groan. What he did for Cadence is still years later the best possible material I can come up with each and every time I call on him for help.

All things considered, with what I want him to do, he’s still getting off easy.

“Not this again.” He whines. “We were even the day I blew up and held that balloon for you, man. You can’t keep using the same card.”

“Hundreds. Of. Lights.” I remind him.

“Fine. What do I have to do?”

“Play fairy-godmother again.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t possibly be this slow, Dill. I’m sure Cailyn watches Cinderella a dozen times a day.”

“Wrong. Babies don’t care about Disney movies.”

“Maybe other babies don’t, but considering what you used to call Belle, I damn well know it works different in the Murphy house.”

“Do I get a wand at least?”

“If it means you’ll do it, yes. I’ll even sweeten the deal and supply the magic.”

The magic of course being my girl’s reaction to what I have planned.

“You sold me. I’m in. Now tell me exactly what it is the fairy godfather needs to do.”

“Get her to Wexfield Memorial Park and let me handle the rest.”

“What happens then?”

“I take her back to the beginning.”

I thought when I put everything together the day I proposed that we were going back to the start. Especially with the way she gave me her answer, but I was wrong.

After the way we’ve spent the last few days, the only beginning worth going back to is the one that happened at the park that day when we were kids.

The first time I saw her truly happy.

Pulling himself off the car and heading around to the driver’s side, he gives me a nod of acceptance before pulling the door open and attempting to slide in. It’s only when I see him go out of focus that I remember the other thing I’m going to need him to do for me.

“Hey, Dill?” I call out and after a second or two with no response, the passenger side window lowers and he leans across the seat.

“Yeah?”

“Pick up a rake.”

“A rake?” he stares at me incredulously. “What the fuck do I need a rake for?”

“Leaves. Lots of them.”

For one night, we’re going to forget the fact that we’re in our twenties and are supposed to be adults. Just this once, we’re going to do things differently. 

We’re gonna be kids again.

Chapter Twenty

Belle

October 15, 2016

Empty pages are both a blessing and a curse when it comes to this book.

By the time you get this, there will be pages torn out and crumpled into balls all over the house as I try to get the words right and fail every time.

I used to hate empty pages staring back at me. Part of me still does.

What I’m coming to learn though, is that you don’t have to fear the emptiness. Those lines with nothing on them, they’re not daunting or there to throw you off your game.

They exist because they’re for the memories not created yet.

So instead of going back in time, staying there, and reliving not only some of the best moments of my childhood, but the worst ones, I figured for the rest of the pages, I’d fill them with the present.

What I know will be our future.

So…

Isabelle.

My air. My reason. My energy. My forever.

This is my gift to you.

The moment when the past, present and future collide.

Where we make new memories for this book and for the countless books I hope come after it. Books that unlike the journals and diaries before it, we do together.

The way we were always meant to.

So get dressed. Eat the breakfast waiting on the counter (remember…I’ll know if you don’t), and head out front.

Your chariot awaits.

Well, wait. Let me rephrase.

Dillon awaits.

Sorry for the cheap chariot.

I energy you, Isabelle Walker, and I’ll see you soon.

Kayden

PS: I know right now you’re rolling your eyes because I did it again. I called you Isabelle Walker and it hasn’t happened yet. But baby, if there’s one thing I’ve learned since the day I destroyed our garage looking for the journal that would take us back in time, it’s that you were always Isabelle Walker.

Right from the very first day.

And Belle…you always will be.

He’s doing it again.

The boy that even to this day swears that there isn’t a romantic bone in his body, is going out of his way to prove otherwise.

I thought long and hard about my place in this story. Whether or not I would include my own thoughts about the day he made me fall in love with him all over again.

It wasn’t supposed to be about me, you see. This was all Kayden. At least that’s how it started.

His words. His feelings. His deepest thoughts from the moment he was old enough to write them down, straight on into the moment when it stopped. Essentially, the moment that our lives as we knew it stopped.

It was never supposed to be about me because let’s face it. I’ve loved Kayden Walker from the moment his mother walked his freshly diapered butt into our house and put him on the play mat beside me.

Every single day. Every single minute.

It’s always been Kayden.

Even in the moments when I really didn’t want it to be.

The boy he was, the tormentor and even tormented guy he became, and the man that with every single day that passes, I see him growing into.

I love and have loved them all.

Kayden just needed to love them all too.

So this journey that we went on over the course of those few days, where I got to meet the boy that for so very long he kept hidden from me and the rest of the world, it was about that.

About Kayden finding his way.

It really was like he said. It was the past, present and what I know will be our future coming together.

The best and the worst parts of our time together and apart joining to tell the complete story of us. 

He was also right about another thing.

I’ve always been Isabelle Walker.

I don’t need a piece of paper or a ring spun from the finest gold or silver on my finger to know that. It just is. We just are. In a world that often times doesn’t make sense, and trust me, with everything I’ve been through and still face, it really doesn’t make sense. We do.

We make sense.

So before I go ahead and do what he told me to do forever ago and shut up, be quiet and let him show you the way he took us back to the beginning again, I think it’s time that I do the other thing he mentioned in the above journal entry.

Write him back.

Chapter Twenty-One

It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit anal about this whole thing. Perfection doesn’t exactly exist, but sue me. I still want it to be exactly right.

When it comes to Belle, nothing but the best will do.

Dillon came through and considering the time of year I chose to do this in, it actually worked out even better than I hoped. Not only did he manage to put together one gigantic pile of leaves, but he had enough to work with to do it three times over.

Add that to the blanket I found packed away in our garage, and the picnic basket I talked Grace into pulling out of storage for the purpose of this re-creation and it really is damn near perfect.

The funniest part had to be the damn soccer ball I was kicking around back then. I still had it. Thing was flatter than a pancake at IHOP, but it was like even back then, I didn’t want to forget a damn thing about that day and kept it.

Bringing with it all of the memories. I could smell the air the way it was then, the dampness in it because of the rain that had fallen the day before. The green of the trees, and the grass even more vibrant years later than it was the day it happened.

I’m positive I can even smell the faint trace of my mom’s perfume from back then, that’s how deep into this memory I’ve gone.

Belle’s smile, the sound of her laughter and the way her skin felt when I touched her, along with the way the wet leaves felt against my skin. The slight tingle on my arms now creating goose bumps that weren’t there prior to me getting here, all just further proof of everything coming together the way I predicted it when I wrote her this morning.

For so damn long, all I wanted was to get the hell out of this town. Wexfield brought nothing but painful memories and wounds that I swore would never heal over until I left. But standing here now, surrounded by the work Dillon did, and everything I’ve brought to add to it, well, I don’t think I ever want to leave.

This place. This park. It’s been the backdrop for every good memory I can remember. I can’t imagine leaving it behind.

I want it to be here for every memory that comes next.

I want to marry Belle here.

Bring our kids here to play.

I want to take the soccer ball I had that day, inflate it and kick it around the grass with my son the same way that I did then. Then I want his sister to interrupt and throw him into a pile of leaves, giggling like her mother did to me.

I want all of that because it’s in those moments I’ll be reminded of what true love really is.

What it has the power to overcome. Change.

I’m a lot like that soccer ball.

Flattened, drained and done until she breathed new life into me.

Until she brought me home.

Home isn’t a house. It’s not a bunch of material possessions, like the furniture and things we bought to make what was already there better.

It’s none of those things.

Home is the strong beat of a heart when you open your eyes in the morning. It’s the wistful smile across the room, or the reddened cheeks of a blush when something sweet is said. It’s dancing like no one is watching. It’s the full feeling you experience when you’re caught in an embrace. The tingle and warmth of two sets of lips touching.

Belle is home.

She’s where I want to stay forever.

It was never Wexfield. It was Belle.

“Kayden,” a gasp falls, and turning toward it, I’m met with the startled eyes of not only Grace, but my mom. Both of them taking in their surroundings and exactly what it means.

Their reason for being here now made clear.

“How does it look?”

“Like we went back in time.” My mom says, waving her hand around. “She’s going to love it.”

“You think?”

Where I expect my mom to answer, Grace does instead. Stepping forward, her hand finding my shoulder and squeezing, she gives me everything I need.

“I don’t think, Kayden. I
know
she will.”

Looking away and wiping at her eye, I hear her sniffle lightly before she lifts her eyes again. “I always knew it would be you.”

“What do you mean?”

“People were tolerant of Belle when she was younger. They wouldn’t have gotten past the threshold of the house if they weren’t, but it was harder with kids because what an adult might understand after a bit of explanation, you couldn’t expect with a child. So whenever children besides Tristan would come over to the house, it was always a worry whether they could handle her differences. With you, I never had that worry. From the moment you were old enough to comprehend the most basic things, you were with her. By her side. Caring for her almost as much as I did. Even a time or two helping me when things were especially rough. So Kayden, what I mean when I say that I always knew it would be you, is exactly that. I always knew that you would be her soft place to land. Even when you didn’t.”

Grace and I have had our issues, a lot of them stemming from the years I was so lost in my own shit I stopped caring about the girl I loved, but now, with the softened yet serious look in her eyes, what she’s saying, I know she means every word of. She really does believe just like Belle does that it was always meant to be us and I’m honored.

Honored that she trusted me with Belle, even when I didn’t trust myself. And if I could just get past this stupid ass lump in my throat that hearing her words has caused, I would tell her exactly that.

But I can’t.

With her next words, though, I start to believe I don’t have to. Maybe she already knows.

“Thank you for making all of her dreams come true.”

*****

What is this?

Why is she walking toward me not dressed in her normal way, but like she just stepped out of a magazine?