Why’s there two of them when there’s no way in hell Dean can do anything with the way he’s shackled up?
“Apparently, thanks to you, I’ve gotta have these two follow me around everywhere.” Dean clears up, the venom I’m used to rearing its ugly head.
Pushing down the anger I feel at seeing his smirk, I lean across the table and get straight to business.
“Not my fault the shit you were doing for years is actually a crime.”
“You gave back as good as you got, boy. If anything you should be in here beside me.”
“Funny thing about that, Dean. Apparently fighting back; it’s called self-defense.”
That wipes the smirk off his face just the way I hoped it would. The boy he spent years beating on doesn’t have to take it anymore. This time, he’s fighting back.
“So I guess you got my letter.” He says, changing the subject and bringing us back to the reason I’m here.
“Yeah I got it. So here’s where you tell me everything she said. I want to know where she’s staying, who she’s with, and anything else she told you, even if you think it’s not important.”
“I’ll tell you what you wanna know, but I want to know something first.”
“No. You wrote that letter and got Tom to give it to me. You wanted me to know about Mom, so the only thing I want to talk about is Mom. Everything else is off limits.”
“It’s about Mom.”
“Fine. Ask.”
“I’m curious why you want to know where she is. I mean, she took off. I thought if anyone hated her as much as I did, it would be you.”
“Who says I don’t hate her?”
“Why would you wanna know where she is, who she’s with and anything else she might be up to if you hated her? Tell the truth, Kayden.”
This is what Belle and I talked about earlier. The way Dean and I are different. It should be as easy admitting it to my brother as it was saying it to her, but for some reason I can’t get the words to come out. I don’t want him to know that despite her running away and abandoning us, I still give a shit.
I don’t even like admitting that to myself. Loving her after what she did seems wrong.
“You know the saying, keep your friends close but your enemies closer? Well I wanna get her before she gets me.”
Its bullshit, but I’m selling it. It’s almost like being here, I’ve gone back in time to the way I used to be and the bullshit flies. I can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s falling for it and for once I’m grateful for the way I used to be.
Dean doesn’t deserve to know the truth.
“You mean you wanna get to her before she lands on your doorstep and says or does something to hurt Belle.”
“Isabelle.” I clarify, hating the way the shortened version of her names falls off his tongue. It’s another thing Dean hasn’t earned the right to do.
“Fine. Isabelle. I don’t hear you denying it though.”
“I can’t deny the truth. I don’t want her anywhere near Belle. So where is she?”
“You know the ratty ass motel off Highway 403? The one leading into Wexfield?”
“She’s there?”
“Yeah. According to her it was the only thing she could afford with the small amount of cash she left with.”
The way he’s talking about her, I’m torn up inside. Conflicted. I want to know about her, yet don’t want to know anything about what she’s been doing or where she’s been for the last ten years. As much as I want the non-caring part to win out, I’m losing the fight because I care a little too much.
“What else did she tell you?”
“She’s alone, for what it’s worth. The dude she took off with wasn’t anything more than a free fuck and chuck.”
“What else did she say?”
His face contorts, like he’s in pain and it makes my heart seize. I may believe a lot of things about Dean, I might even hate him, but this is a way I have never seen him. At least not since he told me she left. Whatever she said to him, it’s big.
“Kayden, you and me. We got our issues and I know a lot of it’s on me. I’m not a nice guy. I told Tom that if you ever came to visit, I knew what I wanted to say and today when I walked in, all of it fell to shit. I went right back to blaming you for the shit I created.”
I don’t want to hear this garbage. He can sit here and act like he’s different. Try and sell that because he plead guilty that he’s somehow seen the error of his ways all he wants, but I don’t buy it. I’ll never buy it. He’s wasting his breath.
All I want is information about our mom. He can store the rest for someone who actually gives a crap.
“Just spit it out. I don’t wanna hear some preplanned speech. What did she say to you?”
“I don’t think I can tell you that.”
“Well, if you can’t tell me there’s no reason for me to be here. You’ve given me what I came for. Risk for reward. I’m done.”
Pushing the chair back, scraping it across the floor the same way he did when he entered the room, I stand and prepare to leave. If he wants to hold onto whatever she said to him, so be it. It’s not important anyway.
“Kayden, what she told me. It’s not pretty.” He says before I can make my way completely around him.
“Since when has anything in our lives been pretty, Dean? Tell me what she said or I’m leaving and this time, I won’t be coming back.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but where I’m expecting him to finally break and admit everything, I get is the complete opposite.
“Where’s Belle?”
“None of your business.”
“She came with you, didn’t she?”
“Again, none of your business, Dean. I’m not in the mood to play games.”
“What she said, the reason she’s back and what she’s been through, when you got here I wanted to tell you.”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you might think you’re hiding it, but you’re not. You don’t wanna know where she is so you can protect yourself or even Belle. You wanna know because you still give a shit. If I tell you what she told me, it’s gonna be like last fall all over again.”
I don’t follow. He’s confusing the hell out of me. How learning anything about my mom can be compared to what we went through last year makes no sense.
“How so?”
“I’ll be hurting you.”
I can’t help it, I laugh. Dean actually feeling remorse for the hell he put me through is laughable. A joke. If I didn’t know any better I’d think he was drunk again with the nonsense coming out of his mouth.
“Little too late to care about that now.”
“Kayden,” he starts and I flinch the minute his cuffed arm grabs onto my wrist, forgetting in the moment that I was still standing within his grasp. “I know Belle came with you. I know why you didn’t want her in the room, but there’s some stuff that I need to say to her.”
No way in hell am I letting him anywhere near Belle. He can keep dreaming. He’s already done enough damage just with the names he’s called her over the years. The way he came after me when she was standing in the room scared out of her mind. Letting him get another chance to hurt her with his cold hateful words is never gonna happen.
Over my dead body.
“There’s nothing you have to say that she’s going to want to hear.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“It’s not happening Dean.”
“If you wanna know everything Mom said to me…”
Shit. This is what I was afraid of. Well, one of the things. He’s not changing me into an asshole, the past isn’t colliding with the future or anything, but dangling this carrot under my nose, knowing how much not knowing is going to eat me up inside, I should’ve seen it coming.
This is Dean being Dean.
Can I really go along with this?
“Don’t do this shit. You
and me, we’ve got a load of bullshit the size of the Titanic between us, but Belle, she’s innocent. Don’t dangle this and make me choose. If you ever gave a shit at all, you’ll just say whatever it is Mom told you and let me leave.”
I’m weakening and I hate it. It’s the damn conflict inside me. It’s so strong that I’m actually giving thought to bringing Belle in here and letting Dean talk to her just so I can find out more. Even if what I find out only makes things worse.
“I don’t want her to come in here so I can fuck with her head or whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“Then why?”
“What Mom did taking off, it doesn’t just involve us. It involves her too and even though its ten years too late, I think it’s time she found out the truth.”
Belle
The last time I saw Dean Walker was in the middle of a courtroom standing beside Kayden as he detailed everything he’d been through over the last ten years while in Dean’s care.
Before that, it was the night I couldn’t get my stomach to settle, found Kayden unconscious and bleeding.
The last way I want to see him is the way he looks now. I don’t like the things that he’s done, but I’m not a hateful, grudge holding person. As much as he deserves to sit where he is, it’s not the end I would have wanted for him. He might not have been a good person before, but I still had hope there was some good in there, even though history proved otherwise.
For someone who spends his days locked behind metal bars, he looks about the same. I expected something more, or considering where he is, less. I expected his eyes to be dulled, his appearance disheveled, something that would show that what he’s been through is taking a toll on him, but there’s nothing.
Other than the blue prison jumpsuit, he is exactly the same, right down to the smirk on his face.
Last year when I stood in his living room and called 911, I had no idea how things were going to play out. I didn’t know if he would step forward and stop me or if I’d even be able to find the words in order to get Kayden the help he needed. Every step I took was just one giant risk. It’s exactly the same thing I told Kayden earlier. Risk for reward.
The reward that night was getting him help. Saving his life. The life that Dean seemed to disregard so easily. The risk was speaking up for the first time, in front of someone I definitely didn’t feel comfortable with in order to make the reward become reality. It happened, but it wasn’t easy.
It’s not easy now either.
Sitting across the table from him, feeling his eyes on me, brown to Kayden’s light green, I’m nervous. I’m right back in that living room all over again, only this time, the reward isn’t someone’s life, its information.
Anxiety still rules my life. Talking, it’s still dependent on my comfort level with the person I’m speaking to and right now, there isn’t a level at all with Dean because I can’t get a read on him the way I can with other people. He’s barren. A blank slate and it’s disconcerting.
The only visible sign there’s anyone even alive in there being that damn smirk.
“When Kayden went to get you, I wasn’t sure you would agree to see me.”
“She’s here the way you wanted, but I didn’t promise she’d talk to you. So just say whatever it is so we can go.” Kayden interrupts before I can formulate a response.
“You should let her speak for herself, brother.”
Kayden’s arms are on the back of the seat I’m in, but they’re also stretched over enough to where his hands are resting on my shoulders. He tenses at what Dean said and I can feel the pressure pushing down on me. It’s a feeling I don’t like.
“Kay,” I turn and whisper. “Relax please.”
For a few seconds he’s confused, but when he follows my eyes as they fall to my shoulders, he seems to get it because the pressure eases up.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I say before turning forward and facing Dean down again. “Why do you want to t—talk to me?”
“Can I ask you something?” he says and I just nod. With the way my voice sounded, quiet, unsure and then the hitch that happened halfway through, using my body to get my point across is a dream come true. It releases my own building tension.
“How much do you remember about when our mom left?”
“Not much. I remember Kayden coming over for a while after it though.”
“Do you remember the day she left?”
I start shaking my head before he’s even finished the question, that’s how easy this answer is. I don’t remember that day at all, but it doesn’t surprise me because I wasn’t the one impacted by what happened.
“You spend a lot of time watching people, so I gotta figure you pick up on a lot more than the rest of us. What do you remember about our mom?”
This is a little trickier. I’m a blank slate for a lot of the younger years stuff, but the times she was over at our house, I remember her smiling a lot and being really connected to Kayden. Inseparable even. I’m just not sure that’s what Dean wants to hear. I know how he feels about her, so hearing how much she loved his brother might not be the way to get the answers we want.
“She smiled a lot. She was happy. Her and my mom used to spend a lot of time laughing.”
“Dean, what the fuck is with the twenty questions?” Kayden cuts in and despite not liking the anger in his tone, I’m thankful. It’s something I want to know the answer to as much as he does.
“The day she took off, she didn’t just take off.”
“What does that mean?” Kayden asks, beating me to it.
“She was running.”
Kayden turns to me at the same time as Dean’s eyes go wide and his stare is so intense that it’s like he’s drilling a hole through me with his eyes.
I don’t know why I said that but with the way Dean said what he did, it made me think of another reason for someone leaving. If she wasn’t just bailing because she didn’t want to be a parent, she did it because she was running from something.
“How did you know that?”
I shrug and I feel Kayden’s hands squeezing my shoulders. He might be wondering the same thing but he wasn’t voicing it. He’s being the way he’s always been with me since that day in the parking lot. Concerned and protective.
“You said she didn’t just take off, so I thought about it and it made sense.”
“Running from what, Dean?” Kayden asks once I’m finished and I watch as Dean’s body goes rigid. Whatever it was Daphne was running from, it’s obviously something he hates as much as he does her.
“Dad. She was running from Dad. There’s a whole lot more shit that went on but it’s not important.”
Dean’s version of important isn’t the same as mine. I think if he wants Kayden to understand everything their mom said, he has to tell him everything. Giving half of it will only breed more questions later.
“She brought us to Isabelle’s house. Her mom took us in.”
Now I understand why he asked what he did. He wanted to know if my mom had told me or I remembered and was just keeping it all a secret. Dean doesn’t know anything about me other than my diagnosis, so he doesn’t realize that I wouldn’t hide something like this.
“You really didn’t know this?” he asks, and there must be something in my eyes because he starts speaking again and it’s actually the last thing I expected to ever hear out of his mouth. “Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to ask.”
“It’s okay.”
I’m not sure how I feel about this. My mom has never had a problem talking to me about things before, treating me like an adult a lot of the time, but she never mentioned anything about this. I want to be mad that she didn’t tell me, but I can’t because I understand it.
She may have treated me like an adult, but I wasn’t one and this is something that back then I definitely wouldn’t have understood or accepted.
She helped Kayden’s mom leave him.
“Are you say
ing Grace hid us?” Kayden finally asks and as I turn in the chair I see the way I’m feeling reflected right back at me in his eyes. He can’t understand this any more than I can.
“No. Once she took off, he followed her. With the way she tells it, that was the whole point. Grace kept us overnight, but after that it was on me.”
“She was there when you told me Mom left.”
The way he sounds, it’s like he’s remembering something for the first time. Like he went back in his mind and the picture’s becoming complete.
“Is that all you wanted her in here for? So you could tell her that her mom kept something from her when she was a kid?”
“No. I wanted her in here because I want to ask her for something, but I knew she needed to know that so I ran with it.”
“You’re an asshole. Why didn’t you just say that from the beginning?” Kayden snaps, his voice raising.
“You wouldn’t have let her in here if I told you what I wanted to say.”
“Spit it out.”
As much as I understand Kayden’s reaction to Dean and him choosing to hide his true reason for wanting me in the room, I don’t feel the same. I don’t want to sympathize or agree with anything he has to say, but I’m doing it and it makes me feel bad.
“The reason I wanted you to come in here, Belle,” he starts and again I feel Kayden tense. “Is because I know the way Kayden feels about our mom. I know that despite her taking off, he still cares about her. He loves her, but I know her better than he does. I spent a lot of years with her before he came along. I don’t trust her and I want you to know that so you can take care of him. The way I should’ve been doing all along.”
“De—” I go to speak but before I can even get his name out, Kayden cuts me off.
“I don’t need to be taken care of. I’m fine! Just because I wanted answers about where Mom is doesn’t mean I’m going to go running back to her.”
“Kayden.”
All My Heart (Count On Me Book 4) Page 12