Love Me If You Dare (Safe Haven) (11 page)

But
I wanted to go, damn it. Why should I care what other people thought, or if
Dylan would want me there or not?

Jax
had invited me. I wanted to go. It was that simple.

“I
never miss a party.” I affected a voice as I spoke, holding out the hand with
the untarnished polish and pretending to snootily inspect my nails.

Silence
sounded through the garage. I looked up to find Jax studying me intently.

“What?”
I asked, shifting on the bench and feeling like nothing so much as a bug under
a microscope.

“Are
you really like that now?” He finally asked.

“Like
what?” I narrowed my eyes, not liking where the conversation had turned. Damn
it, couldn’t anyone just accept that I was who I was now, end of story?

“You
know. A party girl. Like your sister was.” I thought I saw a hint of worry in
his bright blue eyes, and I understood that he, too, had seen how far down Ella
had fallen before she died.

God
damn it, so many of us had seen it, me most of all. So why hadn’t I been able
to fix it? To fix her?

“So
what if I am?” I fired back, more attitude in the words than I’d intended. Jax
held up his hands, offering peace.

“It’s
just a question, babe. No offense meant.” Picking up the mug of coffee that I’d
barely touched, he drained the contents. “You’re a big girl. I’m sure you know
what you’re doing.”

Stung,
though I wasn’t sure I was entirely entitled to be, I sat still for a long
moment, frozen on the work bench.

Before
I’d come back to Fish Lake, I’d thought I was returning to a town where no one
gave a shit about me, the less exciting Sawyer twin. What I was finding, though,
was that some residents of my hometown cared a bit more than was comfortable.

I
wasn’t sure what the hell to do with it.

“I’m
not feeling well,” I muttered, and I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know why, but my
world had just tilted off of its axis, and I had fallen with it. “I’m going to
head home.”

“Kaylee.”
Jax fixed me with a concerned stare. “Will I still see you tonight?”

“For
sure.” I managed a wobbly smile as I shoved paper back into my tote bag.
Closing my laptop back up, I looked up when someone entered the garage. Backlit
by the blazing sun of late afternoon, the figure was cast in shadow and I
couldn’t see the person’s face.

“Can
I help you?” Jax greeted the newcomer and wiped oil off of his hands with a
rag.

“Thanks.”

I
froze. I knew that voice.

“Someone
said they saw Kaylee Sawyer come in here a while ago?” The figure moved
forward, out of the sun. Tall, treadmaster fit body, pale blue eyes. Dark hair
cut neatly, designer jeans, and a leather jacket that had probably cost more
than the car that Jax was currently working on.

Fuccckkkk.

“Kaylee?”
Jax turned to me, a hint of wariness on his face, reserve over a strange man
asking after one of his friends.

But
the man wasn’t strange at all. In fact, I knew him pretty darn well.

What
I didn’t know was what he was doing in Fish Lake, when he was supposed to be
back in Connecticut.

“Joel?”
I stood, hugging my laptop to my chest like a shield. “Joel, what the hell are
you doing here?”

“I
’ll
give you two some privacy.” Jax looked from Joel to me, his expression
inscrutable as he turned and walked towards the back of the shop. My heart
thudded against my ribcage.

“Who
the hell is that?” Joel shoved his fingers through his tidily coiffed hair
roughly, making the fine strands stand upright. Instead of making him rakishly
dishevelled, he just looked like he needed to comb his hair.

“Never
mind.” I cast a distracted look back over my shoulder in the direction Jax had
gone. “Joel, what the hell are you doing here?”

“That’s
a nice welcome.” The civility of his crisp east coast accent tempered the
irritation in his voice, but only a bit. “I came to see you. What else would
bring me to Fish Lake, Oregon?”

I
caught the hint of condescension in his voice. Normally I wouldn’t have cared
about someone running down my hometown. But two weeks back here had somehow
managed to change my tune.

“It’s
not that bad. And you didn’t have to come.” Frowning, I stalked out of the
garage. I wasn’t comfortable having this conversation around one of Dylan’s
best friends.

I
breathed in a lungful of fresh air once we were outside. It helped to clear my
head, but only a bit.

“Joel,
I...” I was floored that he’d shown up here. I thought I’d been clear enough.
Then again, I supposed that our track record suggested that I was likely to
change my mind.

“Don’t
say it.” Joel pressed his hand on my arm and turned me so that I was facing
him. He clasped one of my hands in his own, and I squirmed, wondering who was
watching, what assumptions they’d come to.

“Let’s
go get some coffee, or something.” I suggested. At least in a booth at Twin
Peaks, we could be a bit more discreet.

“I’d
rather just get this out, then we can go hang out. If you want.” Joel stared
into my coffee colored eyes with his own blue ones, the expression unexpectedly
tender, given the circumstances. “I know you said we shouldn’t talk for a
while. It’s been a week, and the time away from you has made up my mind.”

Oh,
shit
.

“Joel—”
I started, but he cut me off.

“I
understand that you’ve got some issues that you don’t want to share with me. I
do. But I’d rather have what I can of you, than nothing at all,” he insisted.
He sounded sincere, and knowing Joel, he was.

I
shook my head, speechless, and my heart did a sick little wobble in my chest.

“I
want you to come back to Connecticut with me. You can stay with me, and we’ll
hang out for the rest of the summer.” In the fall I went back for my senior
year, and Joel started law school. He had a guaranteed job at the end of it, on
the partner track at his dad’s law firm.

It
should have been exactly what I wanted—stability with someone who wasn’t going
to ask questions about my past. Someone who cared enough to fly all the way
across the country to be with me.

I
didn’t want it. I had never wanted it.

At
least not with him.

“You
shouldn’t have come.” I could barely force the words out of my mouth. My heart
ached when I saw his face fall, just for a moment before he smoothed it out
again.

“I’m
not going to go home until you at least think about it a bit.” His face was a
study in determination, and I winced inwardly. “I think you owe me at least
that.”

I
felt irritation spark. I didn’t owe him anything—I’d been very clear, or at
least I was pretty sure that I had.

We
were done.

But
I knew Joel well enough to see that under that insistence there was a mix of
pain and desperation. He loved me, and I loved him.

I
just didn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved. I didn’t know if I was
capable of that kind of love at all, whether with Joel or with the guy who had
started to haunt my every waking thought and dream.

“Is
there someone else?” Joel asked sharply. I had been too busy arguing with
myself in my head to notice the silence stretching out between us.

My
gaze whipped up, a guilty flush spreading instantly. I opened my mouth,
compelled to be honest.

But...
Dylan wasn’t the reason I’d broken up with Joel. I didn’t even know what was
going on between us.

So
what was the point in upsetting Joel further?

“No,”
I finally answered, looking at the ground, hoping that my face didn’t give me
away. “Joel, you really caught me off guard. I need to... I just need some
time.”

I
needed time to think of how to phrase my words. Words that would make him
understand that I wasn’t about to enter the ‘on-again’ phase of our
relationship, not ever again.

“All
right.” He said finally, though he looked like he wanted to argue. “Can I see
you tonight? Can we go for dinner?”

“Tomorrow,”
I replied, thinking of the party. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to get on down
anymore, but I was aching to see Dylan, stupid as it might be.

I
spoke again before Joel could argue. “Where are you staying?”

He
gestured across the street to the small motel that had stood in the same spot
since before I was born.

“It’s
not the greatest, but there wasn’t a lot of choice,” he replied. There it was
again, that faint hint of derision. I could feel my hackles rising. “I’m booked
through the week. Unless you want me to stay with you?”

“No.”
Seeing the hurt bewilderment on his face, I backpedaled. “I just mean—there
isn’t really any space.” This was a flat out lie. Mom wasn’t likely to notice
if he stayed right in my bed with me, but it wasn’t going to happen.

No
way did I want Joel to meet my mom. To find out about Ella. Or Dylan. Or any
combination thereof.

“All
right.” Joel’s words were clipped, and I knew I’d hurt his feelings. I felt
like shit, but combined with that was a bright red streak of anger.

I
hadn’t asked for him to follow me here, to complicate things that had already
been settled. This was not my fault.

As
I watched him cross the street, his broad, athletic shoulders stiff with
tension, I wondered, if it wasn’t my fault, why I still felt so bad.

***

I
sat on the edge of my bed, my hands on my knees, frozen like every cell in my
body had turned to ice. My eyes took in the sight of my hands, pale against the
slightly darker skin of my knees, the polish that had been so perfect only this
morning already chipped all to hell.

Panic
lanced through me with every breath. It wasn’t an emotion that I had expected
to come along with the guilt, but it did.

Joel’s
offer was tempting. No matter that he wasn’t the one I really wanted—was any
relationship perfect, after all? But he represented the stability that I had
lacked for most of my life. And we could probably be happy, after a fashion.

The
selfish part of me told me to just do it, to maintain the facade of a life that
I had been living for the past three years.

But
I found that I couldn’t even reach for the phone to call him, to say the words.
I wasn’t going to do it. Part of the reason was noble—I knew that Joel would
find someone so much better suited for him than me.

The
other part? I wanted as much of Dylan as I could have before the twisted
inferno that was us exploded inside of me.

Fuck
being noble
. That’s what Ella would have said.
She would have reached for what she wanted without apology.

And
hard as it was for people who had known me once upon a time to believe it, I’d
tried so hard to keep a piece of Ella alive inside of me that it had really
happened. I wasn’t the sweet, studious girl people remembered.

And
the girl I was now just wanted to be free to be me.

“Fuck!”
A knock at the window broke the silence inside my room and made me scream. Hand
pressed against the suddenly hammering heart in my chest, I lurched on the bed.

Dylan
was on the other side of the glass, hanging on to a branch of the apple tree he
used to coax Ella into climbing down.

“What
the fuck?” Striding across the room, I intended to throw up the sash of the
window and give him hell for scaring me, no matter that the fearful
acceleration of my heart had turned into delicious anticipation.

“Hey.”
The one syllable was dark, almost morose. Though he smiled at me, it didn’t
quite reach his eyes.

“Hey,”
I replied, opening the window fully so that he could climb in. “We have a front
door, you know.”

“I
know.” He didn’t explain further, instead pulling me into his arms.

My
heart leapt into my throat—fuck, but just the warmth of his body against mine
felt good. Despite all evidence to the contrary, when I was around Dylan my
world felt more stable than it ever had.

But
something was niggling at the base of my brain.

“You
didn’t call. Or text.” I winced at how needy I sounded. But damn it, he’d just
professed that he’d missed me, when his actions said otherwise.

“No
cell reception.” He said. Something flickered over his face—guilt, maybe?
“Sometimes we have it, sometimes we don’t. This fire was a bad one, way up
north. Things were pretty rustic.”

“Oh.”
I said as he tightened his arms around me again. There was a sense of urgency
in his touch, in the way he immediately bent to press his lips to the base of
my throat.

I
had thought about little else but how it would feel to be in his arms again for
the entire week. But this didn’t feel right, didn’t taste good, the way a
rotten apple is still sweet but at its core has gone bad.

“What’s
wrong?” Dylan pulled back when I stiffened. I looked up at him, confusion a
bitter taste in my mouth.

“I’m
not Ella,” I said carefully. I was sure he knew this by now, but he’d confused
the hell out of me by climbing the apple tree to knock at my window. That was
something he’d done with her, never with me. “You can’t swap one twin for the
other.”

Dylan
reared back as though I’d struck him. Though panic coated my throat and made it
hard to breathe, I made myself continue to gaze up at him calmly, holding my
ground.

I
wasn’t trying to be a bitch, wasn’t trying to start a fight. But I wasn’t about
to be a substitute for my dead sister, either. I had to make that very clear.

“Why
the fuck would you say something like that?” Dylan looked ready to punch
something. I knew him well enough, though, to know that that something would
never be me. “Do you think I’m so dumb I don’t know the difference?”

His
upset seemed extreme. The Dylan I knew might have been hurt, might have been
puzzled, but would have shrugged it off, filed it away. Something else was
going on.

“What’s
wrong?” Perching on the edge of my bed, I held out a hand for him. My pulse
sped up when he looked at the outstretched hand without taking it.

He
didn’t respond.

Should
I let it be or should I push?
He wasn’t himself
right now. Something had happened in the last week that I didn’t know about.

After
Ella had died, all I’d wanted was to be left alone. People did what I wanted,
instead of what I’d needed, which was to push until I was able to share what
was going on inside of me.

I
decided to push.

“What
happened this week, Dylan?” When he still didn’t take my hand, I took away the
choice, leaning forward and clasping his fingers in my own. He tugged away, and
I swallowed the snaking tendril of hurt.

“What
makes you think something’s wrong?” His voice was flat. “Apart from me being
pissed that you just essentially told me I’m a dumbass.”

Part
of me wanted to roll my eyes—I hadn’t said anything of the sort. But I seemed
to have inadvertently hit a sore spot, one I thought was probably linked to his
dyslexia and his dislike of school, so I made a mental note to tread carefully
in that area in the future.

“We’ve
seen each other at the absolute lowest point in both of our lives.”
Miraculously my voice stayed steady, but inside I was a quivering wreck.

What
if I made him so mad that he just left? What if he never wanted to see me
again?

I
gave myself a mental bitch slap. I’d survived worse. It would suck, but I’d be
just fine. And if he left because I was trying to help, then he wasn’t who I
thought he was, anyway.

Instead
of speaking, Dylan grunted in response. I thought I detected the slightest hint
of tension leaving his limbs, but I couldn’t be sure.

“You
know something about me that I don’t even want to know about myself.” I
couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice anymore, not when I remembered the
two very different ways that Dylan had looked at me the night everything has
gone wrong.

Swallowing
hard, I pushed farther.

“Tell
me what’s wrong.”

The
setting sun silhouetted him from behind, highlighting the way his brow
furrowed, the way his muscles stood out with the sharp relief of tension.

As
I watched he clenched his hands into fists at his sides. Relief was bright and
beautiful when he finally, slowly, seemed to expel half of the tension out of
his body before taking a seat beside me on the edge of the bed.

“I’m
sorry.” He held himself stiffly, taking care to not even brush against me. He
opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“Tell
me.” Lifting my hand, I hesitated a second before placing it on his tense thigh
and squeezing.

If
we were officially together—if I was his girlfriend—I wouldn’t think twice
about offering comfort in the form of a hug or a soft touch. What we were was
strong but undefined, but I found that I couldn’t just sit beside him and let
him be so alone.

“We
lost someone on the team this weekend.” His voice was gruff and almost
unfamiliar with the tone.