Love Me If You Dare (Safe Haven) (4 page)

I
knew exactly how that dog felt.

“Poose?”
I asked, slightly amused. “Where did you find that name?”

“She’s
a rescue dog. It’s the name she came with.” He looked up at me, and I saw that
there was a softness around his eyes that hadn’t been there years ago. “I tried
changing it, but she won’t respond to anything else.”

I
liked that softness. It made me want him all the more.

The
silence stretched out between us. I looked down at the ground, at the smooth
expanse of wet sand, mosaics of pebbles splashed out here and there.

When
I looked back up, I found him watching me with a hint of a smirk on his lips,
like he knew exactly where my thoughts had wandered. It took a lot to tease
that smile out, but when it appeared, it caused my stomach to do funny little
flip-flops.

“What?”
I said, finally breaking down our verbal staring match.

Those
lips quirked up a bit more. “You’re not a Gemini.”

My
brow furrowed.
What the hell was he talking about?

Then
it hit me, and a felt a flush spread over my skin, melting the chill bumps.

“You
saw that, huh?” I tried to use wryness to cover the embarrassment. There was no
point in trying to hide the tattoo now that he’d seen it, though my fingers
itched to rub the skin where the ink was etched.

“I
did,” he said. Was I imagining it, or had the timbre of his voice become husky?

I
looked up through my eyelashes. No, I wasn’t imagining the heat in his look.

Acting
on that heat would be the stupidest idea ever.

“So
why the symbol for Gemini? You’re an Aquarius.” He spoke like a man who knew he
was right.

I
would have been stunned at the fact that he knew my birthday... except that I
had shared the day with Ella. The turn in the conversation had thrown cold
water over the attraction that had begun to simmer in my belly.

“Gemini
is the sign of twins.” I’d gotten the tattoo in the horrible months after
Ella’s death, when I’d felt like I was drowning, like all sense of my own
identity had been buried along with my twin.

I’d
wanted something that would forever mark the fact that the one person I was had
once been two. And the very act of getting a tattoo was something that Ella
would have done.

Ella,
not me.

“You
smell like licorice,” he said abruptly, and I looked at him, startled.

“I
just ate some.” I could still taste it on my lips, sweet yet somehow bitter at
the same time.

“You’re
the only person I’ve ever known who likes it.” His stare traced over my lips
and, as if pulled with his line of sight, my tongue reached over to trace the
same path.

It
was so strange, being around someone who knew me well enough to know what kind
of candy I liked... someone who was nevertheless like a stranger.

“No
school for you?” I asked, not caring that it was obvious that I was changing
the subject.

“Nope.”
He pinned me with those amazing eyes, the sunlight highlighting the golden
threads hidden amongst the dark lashes. “School was never really my thing.”

I
nodded. I’d already known that, though I’d never understood it. He had always
struggled with his grades, but I’d never known if it was because he’d been too
busy partying, or because he’d had trouble, but I had assumed it was the
former.

He
was bright. But I also knew he wouldn’t welcome any questions on the subject,
so I didn’t push.

“What
about you?” he asked. The words were casual, but I sensed that he wanted to
know. “What are you doing?”

Once
he would have known, because he’d spent so much time at our house.

No
more.

“I
haven’t declared yet,” I mumbled. I saw the surprise on his face, and repressed
a surge of irritation. Yes, once upon a time I’d been studious, and had my
future planned out to the last detail. But that wasn’t who I was anymore.

“Too
busy partying?” He looked at me in a way that told me he was thinking of the
red bikini that I wore beneath his t-shirt.

The
words felt like a challenge.

“Maybe.”
I narrowed my eyes in response. “So what?”

I
really didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the irritation that I
saw when he stood and dusted his hands on the thighs of his running shorts.

“I
thought you wanted to go to grad school.” He looked at me accusingly as he
spoke. Yes, that was definitely a challenge, and I had no idea what to do in
the face of it. “I thought you wanted to be a psychiatrist.”

“I
changed my mind.” I couldn’t help the waspishness of my tone. He’d stuck the
blade right where I was the most tender.

“Marks
were always so important to you.” He took a step towards me, and my belly
clenched as desire entwined with my irritation.

“How
did you know that?” I felt the need to step back, to put some space between us,
but I refused to back down. I planted my feet in the sand and looked up. When
my brown eyes met his greenish ones I felt my heart clench.

“Ella
told me that.” Unlike me, he didn’t flinch at the mention of my sister.

I
wondered how on earth that topic would ever have come up. Not that it really
mattered. He couldn’t possibly care that I’d once wanted to be a psychiatrist
because I’d had dreams of fixing my family.

That
was a lost cause.

I
opened my mouth to tell him just that, but his words cut me off.

“What
the fuck, Kaylee?” The stare from those gorgeous eyes burned right into me. My
mouth fell open as he swore. What the hell was he yelling at me for?

“Don’t
you care anymore? Aren’t you even trying?”

Something
inside of me snapped. I stomped forward across the sand, poked my finger into
his chest, and opened my mouth to tell him that how I lived now was absolutely
none of his business. I may not have been the girl that he remembered, but that
didn’t mean I was any less.

“You
listen—” I gasped when, lightning quick, Dylan grabbed my wrists, circled them
with his own hands. He pulled me to him, his grip firm, and I was forced to
rise up onto my toes.

And
then his lips were a whisper away from my own. One tiny movement from either of
us, and we’d be kissing. I’d be able to see if the moment that I’d replayed in
my head for three years was as iconic as I’d remembered.

My
breath was coming in pants when, just as abruptly as he had grabbed me, he let
me go without his lips ever touching mine. I stared at him, my fingers pressing
against lips that felt bruised despite the fact that he hadn’t touched them

“Go
home, Kaylee.” Those eyes raked over me, and in that moment I felt like Dylan
saw right through to the very core of me—saw the quiet girl who was still in
there, saw the traits that I’d gathered over the last few years that were
nonetheless a part of me now.

I
felt like he saw it all... saw it and wanted it.

“Go
home,” he said again, and that intimate stare froze into stoicism. He turned
away from me, looking down the beach, and I knew that I’d been dismissed.

Anger
warred with the need that had flooded me, and was ultimately drowned.

How
could I be mad at him for judging me?  It was my fault that the twin he had
really wanted was gone.

Wordlessly
I started to pull his t-shirt off, but he held out a hand and shook his head.

“Keep
it.”

I
was furious at myself for the gushy little surge of emotion that I felt.
Squelching it, I released the hem of the shirt and let it flop back down around
my thighs. His eyes flicked in that direction, then flicked away like he didn’t
want me to see where he’d looked.

It
was infuriating. He wanted me too, no matter how upset he was with me

“Goodbye,
Dylan,” I spat as I stooped to pick up my tank top and shorts, which were still
lying in the sand. He moved, just the slightest bit, a twitch that told me he
wanted to say something.

I
didn’t want to hear it.

I
felt his eyes on me as I stomped across the sand to the small concrete lot
where I’d left my car, a spot of heat on the back of my neck. Part of me wanted
to turn and run back to him, to claim the kiss that I could almost feel on my
lips.

Instead
I continued on, climbing into my car. When I looked back at the beach, he was
gone, and I was relieved.

Whether
it was justified or not, his judgment hurt. And I had no idea what to do about
that.

T
here
was an extra car in the driveway when I got back to the house. I blinked at it
for a second, having trouble placing it out of context.

“Maddy.”
Panic began to percolate in the depths of my belly, radiating outward until the
very tips of my fingers tingled.

Normally
I would have been excited to see one of my friends, would have immediately
started planning parties and any other crazy adventure that I could think of.

But
this was the one place I didn’t want to see anyone from my ‘other’ life. The
whole reason that I’d chosen a school all the way across the country was to
avoid this exact situation.

My
heart in my throat, I let the door of my car fall shut behind me and climbed
the steps to the porch. I heard the voices before I was even in—Maddy’s rocker
chick rasp and Serena’s softer, sweeter tone.

I
followed the sound to the living room. They were both kneeling on their heels
on the floor, trying to—I didn’t know what they were trying to do, exactly, but
they were both pretzeled up but good.

“You’re
here for two minutes and you guys are already yoga hippie-ing out on me?” I
forced humor that I didn’t fully feel into my voice as I slouched against the
door jamb, deliberately casual.

My
body was tense as I listened for sounds of my mom. But they must have already
met her, or they wouldn’t be inside the house.

“Hi!”
Serena untwisted herself with far more grace than I could ever hope to have and
launched herself at me with the enthusiasm of a best friend who hadn’t seen me
for... oh, maybe a week.

Maddy,
always a bit more reserved, unfolded her legs and stretched them out in front
of her before leaning back on her hands.

“What
are you doing here?” I felt like a total bitch, and though I wanted to throw
myself into a big group hug, to collapse now that my friends were here, I knew
that I needed to erect a barrier. An impenetrable one. “You shouldn’t have
wasted your money.”

To
someone who didn’t have a tragedy in their past like I did, my need to keep my
school and home lives separate might have seemed silly. But in just the few
hours that I had been back in Fish Lake I could feel the insecurities and
problems that I had worked so hard to work past pulling at me, sucking me in.

If
they touched the part of me that I had compartmentalized for school, I might
not be strong enough to hold back the resultant flood.

“You
weren’t happy about coming home. We wanted to make sure that you were okay.”
Serena pulled back from the hug and studied my face, her pale blue eyes
probing. I did my best to avoid her concerned gaze.

Serena
was the only person I’d come close to sharing my secrets with, and I’d only
been tempted because she had ghosts that haunted her as well.

But
even though she would understand better than most, I couldn’t cross that line.
Couldn’t stand to see the shock and disgust in the faces of the friends who
thought of me the way I wanted them to—Kaylee, the good time girl.

“And
we got the urge for a road trip. Took turns driving, ate a lot of granola bars,
so it just cost us the gas.” Maddy grinned up at me.

My
heart sank. How could I be a bitch when they gone to so much trouble?

“Um.
How did you guys get in?” I avoided Serena’s implied question. Between the mom
who couldn’t take care of herself, the dad who hadn’t bothered to make an
appearance yet, and the ghost of my dead sister, I was anything but okay.

Not
to mention Dylan. Dylan was in a class of stress all by himself.

“Your
mom let us in.” Maddy stood and stretched, tousling her raven dark hair with
one hand. “She’s pretty.”

I
blanched inwardly. My mom was pretty, sure, but she’d been even prettier before
alcohol had begun to ravage her.

“Was
she... ah... coherent?” I couldn’t think of a better way to ask.

Serena
furrowed her brow at me, seeming to sense that something was off about me, in
that way that best friends do.

“Yes,”
she finally answered. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“She’s
not a morning person.” I told myself it wasn’t a lie as the words slid slickly
off my tongue. I just wasn’t about to share the reason
why
my mom wasn’t
at her best in the mornings.

It
was easy to see that I wasn’t fooling Serena. But though she raised an eyebrow
at my glib response, she didn’t press further.

“Is
it okay for us to be here?” Maddy asked carefully. I must have been giving off
super bitch vibes, for her to ask. “I guess we should have told you we were
coming. We can go rent a motel room, or something.”

I
knew why they hadn’t told me they were coming—they thought I needed some
company, and they knew that if they’d told me, I would have found some excuse
for them to stay back in Connecticut.

No
way could I make them stay in a motel, even if it meant that on a hotel room
they would be shielded from the shittiness that was my home. Serena was on
scholarship, and Maddy waitressed during the summer, so neither of them was
exactly rolling in it.

“No
way.” I said firmly, bending and shouldering a bag that had a neon green yoga
mat strapped onto it. “Let’s get your stuff upstairs. You can crash with me.”

We
had an extra room, complete with its own bathroom, the setup identical to that
in my own—our parents had renovated the rooms for a fourteenth birthday present
for Ella and I.

I
hadn’t been able to bring myself to peer inside Ella’s old bedroom in the last
couple of days, but I was certain that it would be just how I remembered it,
with the addition of a thick coating of dust.

Until
I was able to go through her room myself, I couldn’t offer it to Maddy and
Serena, no matter how squishy we would be in my room.

Until
...
I snorted to myself as I carried a bag up the stairs.

More
like if.

***

“S
o
this is your hometown, huh?” Serena linked her arm through mine as we walked
through what constituted as downtown in Fish Creek. “How did the glamorous
Kaylee Sawyer come from here?”

She
wasn’t being snotty, I knew. The fact was, the actual town of Fish Creek wasn’t
much to look at. It was one of those towns that seemed like time had moved on
without it, with a distinctly old fashioned, slightly run down feel.

My
family was one of the wealthier ones in town, and we sure weren’t rich.

“Says
the girl from Podunk, New Hampshire,” I quipped back, allowing her to swing my
arm as we walked. Maddy watched us with amusement—she wasn’t much of a toucher.

We
could have driven into town, but I’d suggested that we walk in to get coffee at
Twin Peaks. The small diner was owned by an elderly couple who had named their
little cafe after the Cascade mountain range that could be seen from anywhere
in town. They had no idea that it was a double entendre that caused visitors to
snicker.

The
longer we were out of the house, the better. I planned to keep us out until
after I thought my mom would have left for the bar.

Maybe
I could maneuver it so that my friends missed her entirely for the remainder of
their trip. Of course, that meant that we had to be somewhere else, where
anyone with loose lips could spill my secrets.

The
stress weighed more with every step.

“What’s
that noise?” Maddy squinched her face up as the shrill scream of some kind of
machinery rent the air in two. Serena covered her ears with her hands.

I,
however, felt adrenaline begin to pump through my veins. I recognized that
sound from the times I’d accidentally on purpose done something to my car so
that I had to bring it into Automovation, the mechanic shop owned by Jax
Kennedy, one of Dylan’s good friends.

Dylan
had worked at Automovation for years. He’d said he didn’t work there anymore,
but I was like one of Pavlov’s dogs, trained to salivate at the ringing of the
bell.

“It’s
the town’s mechanic,” I explained, and I was already hurrying my steps up. Once
I would have had to have a reason to stick my head in, but I’d come out of my
shell more since the last time I’d been here.

I
didn’t think Dylan would be there—two chance meetings in one day weren’t
likely. But it would be nice to see Jax. He’d always treated me like I was a
part of their group, even when I could bring myself to do no more than hover on
the fringes.

A
tall figure with a tight butt covered in navy coveralls was bent over the
innards of a monstrous truck. When he straightened and ruffled hands covered in
engine grease through tufts of hair the color of toast I stepped forward into
the garage, gesturing with my hands for Maddy and Serena to follow me.

“Hey,
Jax.” Tentativeness colored my voice at the very last minute. It seemed like a
miracle that Dylan was willing to even talk to me, after what had happened with
Ella.

What
would one of his best friends think?

Jax
cocked his head, and I braced myself for yet another person who either didn’t
recognize me or, worse, thought I was the ghost of Ella.

“Is
everyone in Fish Creek gorgeous?” Serena whispered in my ear.

“You’re
taken. Hands off.” Maddy poked Serena in the ribs.

“I
can look!” Serena replied.

I
ignored them both as Jax’s rough looking expression broke into a grin so big it
threatened to split his face in two.

“Kaylee
Sawyer!” Grabbing a rag that already looked filthy, he scrubbed some of the
grease off of his hands and strode across the cement floor of the garage. “Hope
you don’t care about those clothes, because I’m giving you a big hug.”

I
had changed into tiny cutoffs and a spaghetti strapped purple tank top before
leaving the house—cute, but nothing that couldn’t be replaced. I opened my arms
to accept the hug, and was startled by the wave of emotion that had tears
prickling at the back of my eyes when I inhaled the scents of engine oil and
sweat.

I
wondered if Fish Lake was exactly as I remembered it, or if my time away had
skewed my thoughts. First Caroline, now Jax... even Dylan.

They’d
all welcomed me home, when I’d expected nothing but whispers and rumours.

“Glad
you’re back, Kaylee.” Jax grinned down at me, a devastating smile that had set
more hearts aflutter that he could probably count. He and Dylan, and another
friend named Nick had wreaked havoc in Fish Lake in their younger years, all of
them gorgeous with a badass swagger that girls hadn’t been able to resist.

I
wondered if Ella had resisted. I wanted to pinch myself black and blue for the
thought.

“You’re
looking sexy, girl.” Jax pulled back and looked me up and down. No matter how
sexy his crooked grin was, I just didn’t feel the tug towards him that I did
with Dylan.

I
wished I did. Jax would have been easier on my heart.

“Thanks.”
Here, I felt comfortable relaxing into the habits I’d developed while at
school. I cast him a saucy smile back, gesturing Serena and Maddy forward.

“We
were walking by and I wanted to say hi. And introduce you to my prettiest
friends.”

Serena
flushed at my words. Maddy grinned at Jax like he was prey, and I felt a little
spark of triumph.

Just
because my love life was a hopeless mess, didn’t mean that Maddy couldn’t have
some fun while she was here.

“You
trio are a sight for sore eyes.” Jax whistled as he grinned at the three of us.
I was a bit disappointed that his eyes didn’t linger on Maddy, but that was
Jax. There had always been rumors about him, but I couldn’t have named a single
person he’d actually had a relationship with.

“Thanks
Jax.” I looked around the shop with curious eyes. The workbench that had once
belonged to Dylan was occupied, but the tool box on it was strange to me. “Can
we bring you a coffee or something on our way back? Or do you want to come?”
The last was offered with a strange surge of trust.

I
felt certain that Jax wouldn’t say anything I didn’t want him to.

“I’m
good here, sweetie.” Jax reached out and ruffled his fingers through the long
tail of my scarlet curls. “And nothing for Dylan either, cause he doesn’t work
here anymore. Don’t know if you knew that.”

“Who’s
Dylan?” Maddy asked.

“I...
ah... I did know that. Actually.” I froze at the sound of Dylan’s name,
swallowing hard.

“You’ve
run into him already, then? How long have you been back?” The assessing look
that Jax gave me told me suddenly, certainly, that my feelings for Dylan hadn’t
been nearly the secret I’d thought they were.

Or
maybe Dylan had told him what had happened that night—
all
of what had
happened.

“Two
days.” I managed. Questions about Jax’s friend crowded on the tip of my tongue,
ones I couldn’t bring myself to ask Dylan himself.

I
couldn’t spit them out to Jax either. I looked into his eyes as I widened my
own, sure my feelings were running riot on my face.

After
a long moment he turned back to the truck he was working on, picking up a
wrench casually and leaning under the hood.

“He
works for Rap Attack now. Did he tell you tell you that?”

I
cast an uneasy look at my friends, who were pretending to look around at the
shop but who I knew were listening to every last word. I cleared my throat.

“No,
we never got that far. He just told me he wasn’t here anymore.” I tried to
sound casual. “What’s Rap Attack?”

“They’re
firefighter adrenaline junkies.” Jax poked his up out of the truck long enough
to grin at me. “They’re flame eaters. But instead of riding around in a red
truck, they use helicopters to rappel into remote areas to fight forest fires.
He works for the state, works away for a week or two at a time.”