What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7)

by Melyssa Winchester

  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 kne
w 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?

  A ripped from the pages, real life princess.

  “Surprise!” Dillon yells across the field and pulling my eyes off Belle just for a second, I give him the finger, which with the shake of his head and the returned hand gesture, is pretty evident he’s caught even from his distance away.

  Stalking toward her, making quick work of the distance that even with the speed that she’s walking, is still too much for me, I reach my hand out when I’m close enough and take hold of hers, pulling her to me.

  Making sure to breathe her in before pulling back and questioning what this is all about.

  Belle has always been a vision to me. A sight to behold. The most beautiful girl in the room—the only girl in the room if we’re being honest—but this, the way she looks standing in front of me now, the way the dress she’s wearing seems to brush against every exposed part of my skin, she’s something else.

  She’s Beauty.

  Looks like I’m not the only one bringing memories from our past into the present.

  Only hers, she’s making it better than it was before.

  Belle standing here in her bright yellow dress with the shimmering jewellery to match, is giving me something I never thought I’d have again. A chance to do things over. Do it the way it should have been done.

  At least, that’s what I hope.

  “Is this what you wear around the house when I go to work?” I joke, fingering the material where it expands at her waist and meeting her eyes.

  “Of course. With all the times you’ve called me a princess, I figured why not start living it?” she beams.

  “Seriously, Belle. What is this?”

  “You first.” She says, moving around and taking in everything I’ve put together. Her eyes seeming to expand out and take in the entire park quickly before coming to land at last on our mom’s sitting together under the tree. A sight that when she takes it in, she rewards me for with a soft laugh and what feels like a permanent rise to her face.

  “You know what, Kay. I think I see what’s going on here.”

  Turning back she steps back to me, her hand easily finding and sliding into mine as she turns her attention to what’s laid out in front of us. Not another word, or even an idea of what she’s thinking spoken.

  When she stops near to our parents, I take the quiet opening I’m being given and take it.

  “What exactly is it you think is going on?”

  “We’re starting over.” She answers simply and I let it sink in. Sure, I was recreating a memory we’ve already had, but she’s right. These memories are new because we are starting over.

  “Is that what the dress is about?”

  “Yes and no.” she laughs softly. Fingering the dress in her hands and smiling when she catches my eyes following her movements, she meets my gaze and gives me a little bit more.

  “After we went to bed, you fell asleep and I read the last entry, it got me thinking. There was something that even after everything that happened after we read it that wouldn’t let me go. So I stayed awake until I made sense of it.”

  “Made sense of what, exactly? What a jerk I was?”

  “The opposite, actually. I know what was really going on with you that day in the hall now, Kayden. Deeper than what your journal showed me.”

  “Okay, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m pretty sure there was no deeper meaning. Well, other than me being at war with myself.”

  “Ahh, but see. There it is. You were at war with yourself, and I don’t think it was just because you missed our closeness or our friendship. I think there was more to it. Another war going on that at the time, you would never admit to, but one that now, after everything I’ve read and we’ve lived through together, is clear as day.”

  “Tell me.” I quietly push. “What can you see that I can’t?”

  “I see what you really wanted that day.”

  Huh?

  “You mean me wanting my best friend?”

  “Close.”

  “Belle,” I sigh in desperation. Needing her to tell me what all of this means and put me out of my confused misery. “Tell me.”

  “What do you see when you look at me?”

  “Right now or always?”

  “Just right now.”

  She has no clue just how much I see looking at her. How things that shouldn’t be seen to the naked eye are alive and can be seen with crystal clear clarity. Forces that have no tangible look to most people, but that are vibrant and in motion with me.

  Just like us.

  Our energy.

  “I see the air. It cracks and sparks like flames in a fire, but the more I see of you, the more electric it seems to become. Bigger. More powerful, like fireworks on the fourth of July, but without the sound because noise…it settles whenever you’re near. The only sound I can make out, the beat of your heart moving in sync with mine. Our sound. One so strong it can block out all others. Belle, you really are energy. Motion. The air.”

  “Okay…” she says, her voice so low it’s barely a whisper, but one that despite its quiet tone, I hear loud and clear. “That wasn’t what I expected.”

  “Now you know how I feel.”

  Studying me, her brows scrunching as she tries to make sense of what I’ve said, I step even closer, twirling a tendril of her hair around my finger and sigh as the feel of it tickles and then embeds itself on my skin.

  “You weren’t what I expected. Not when we were little, not when we grew up, and definitely not now. You’re not at all what I expected, but you are everything I want. I want the unexpected. Love it.”

  Please read between the lines. Feel what I’m trying to tell you. I silently plead as seconds pass with the two of us just staring.

  “I love you too, Kayden.”

  Thank God.

  “Not nearly as much as I love you, Belle, but if you want the chance to prove you love me more, you can start by telling me why you asked me that.”

  “Because your answer to that question was going to lead into my next one.”

  “Which is?”

  “With me standing here in front of you, dressed the way I am right now, recreating a memory that I honestly think we see so differently, is there anything you want to do?”

  Oh, there’s a hell of a lot I want to do with her. To her. I’m just not
sure a lot of it is appropriate with our mothers sitting a few feet away.

  “Dance with you.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Hold you.”

  “Well, since you can hold me while we dance, they’re the same thing. Is there anything else?”

  “Kiss you.”

  There’s a glimmer of something in her eyes, a split second where she seems to come to life, and I commit it to memory because something tells me, in the answer I’ve just given, I’ll find the answers to exactly what this is about. What she’s really doing here dressed this way.

  “God, Belle. I really wanted to kiss you.” I admit. My breath catching when her lips twitch and lift, confirming what I should have known all along.

  What she already figured out, but she needed me to learn on my own.

  Belle is giving me the chance to do what I wanted to do that day. What I should have done then and shit, what I’m going to shut up thinking about right now and just do.

  With my hand reaching out and connecting to her face, rubbing against her skin, committing the feel of her to memory the way I’ve done before, I lean in and gently brush my lips across hers. Only pressing for more when her tongue manages to snake out over her bottom lip. With the park fading to black, our family ceasing to exist, and only the beat of our hearts to guide us, I give myself up to the taste of her.

  The distraction she presented enough to leave me open and vulnerable as the rest of the world faded away and only she remained. Hit with a healthy dose of shock as the first blast of wetness hits me. A surprise that after I jump out of my skin is quickly followed up by the sound of Belle’s laughter as more of it rains down around us.

  Pulling myself from the daze that kissing Belle created, I look myself over and that’s when I see what happened.

  Not only did she take me by surprise showing up here this way, but she’d also taken my idea, flipped it on its head and made it her own.

  Looking from my shirt now covered in wet leaves, to the still laughing, blue eyed dancing face of my fiancée, I turn as a shadow moves and that’s when it all becomes clear.