Love Me If You Dare

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “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.

  Chapter Four

  There 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.

  ***

  “So 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 bo
x 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.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed hard. Shit, I’d thought Dylan was sexy as a mechanic. The thought of him in a firefighter’s uniform, those muscles rippling as he used his body to extinguish flames, as the heat made sweat run over his skin...