Prologue
#103 Outrun Your Demons.
Kayden
Run.
Throw.
Catch.
Duck.
Run.
Run.
Run.
My father’s words scream from behind me like a ghost as I race around the track. I can’t outrun them, escape them, hide from them. My feet pound against the dirt as my lungs tighten in my chest, my entire body dripping with sweat even though it’s barely fifty degrees and I’m wearing shorts. My pulse is pounding, my limbs aching, begging me to stop. That it’s enough.
But nothing ever feels like enough.
I can’t outrun him.
His voice.
His words he drilled in me.
I want to be free from it. Free from him. My mom. My past. The years of abuse. What I want is my resolution. But to get it, I need to let go and I can’t let go when everything is so unknown.
I don’t know where he is – what he’s doing. If he’s alive. Dead. If he’s sorry for what he did. And I might never know. Just like I might never be able to let go.
So all I can do is run.
Until I can no longer breathe.
Until my limbs can no longer move.
Until my heart stops beating.
Until maybe his voice will disappear.
Chapter 1
#101 Jump on the Bed. A Lot.
Callie
Wintertime is beautiful. Snowflakes tumbling from the sky and swirling through the air. They remind me that the world is always changing, that people are always changing, that I’m always changing. This reminder is what keeps me happy, moving forward in my life, letting go of what happened with Caleb, and living my life for the future. A future that is filled with endless possibilities.
Despite my positivity, I do feel like something has been missing from my life lately, but I can’t figure out what it is exactly. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it might be good. Like sadness and pain perhaps. Or possibly that I’m moving more freely through life than I ever have. Or perhaps I’m just looking for something to explain this strange, new, liberating feeling residing in my heart, because the past seems so distant now. The person who hurt me has vanished and even though there was no resolution for what he did to me, I feel like my inner demons connected to him – what he did – have been resolved. Yes, the memories are still there, scarring my past, but they don’t define me anymore.
And I feel … well, happy.
I want us to share with Kayden, because he seems a little sad lately. Not like how he was before, though. No, he’s much better than he was a year ago when I met him in the clinic that horrible day, the place where he was sent because nurses and doctors thought he’d stabbed himself. While he had self-harmed, his father was the one who made the start and the worst of the injuries that had nearly killed him and almost ruined the future we have now.
The beautiful one that we have now.
‘Knock, knock, knock.’ Seth raps on the door as he cracks it open and sticks his head in. ‘Hey, what’s up with you not answering your texts?’
I set the pen down in the spine of my journal and pick up my phone from off the bed. ‘Sorry, I forgot I turned it down for class.’ I press the volume up while he fakes a pout and enters my dorm room.
He looks all kinds of Seth stylish in his black and grey sweater, dark blue jeans, and Converse sneakers, his honey-blond highlighted hair tousled to perfection.
‘Hot date tonight?’ I ask as I set my phone down on the nightstand and shut my journal.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ He taps his finger on his lips, feigning ignorance, like he hasn’t been chattering about his date with Greyson all week, the date that marks the first anniversary of when they officially considered themselves dating.
I tuck my journal underneath my pillow and get off the bed and to my feet, smoothing out the creases in my violet and black striped shirt. ‘I mean, the date you’ve been yammering about for weeks now. The date. The one that marks your first anniversary.’
He kicks the door shut. ‘You need to stop paying so much attention to me. It ruins all my fun and mysteriousness.’
‘You’re never mysterious,’ I say, putting my long brown hair up in a ponytail. ‘But we can do a redo if you want to? You can go back out and enter again, and I can pretend that I have no idea why you’re dressed up. Then you can announce the news to me and we can celebrate and jump up and down and scream, “Oh my God!”’ I wave my hands in front of me while I bounce up and down. ‘It’s going to be so epically awesome!’
He stares at me for a moment, pretending not to be amused, but then the corners of his mouth turn upward and he starts jumping up and down with me. ‘Let’s just skip to the good part,’ he says, laughing as he leaps onto my bed and bounces on the mattress, offering his hand to help me up.
‘Why, thank you, sir.’ I grab his hand and he pulls me up with him.
We continue to jump on the bed like kids, yelling about his anniversary until my roommate, Harper, walks into the room. She stops dead in her tracks at the sight of us, standing on the bed, red-faced and panting with our hands in the air.
‘Hey, Harper.’ I wave at her as I stop jumping on the mattress. Seth continues, though, unbothered that he looks like a complete lunatic, but he also doesn’t have to share a room with her the entire year either.
Harper gives an intrigued glance at Seth and me as she steps into the room and closes the door behind her. ‘What are you guys doing?’
Seth begins to bounce exaggeratedly on the bed. ‘Exercising,’ he jokes, breathless.
‘Great idea. I’ll have to try it sometime. Although, I’m a two-person kind of jumping-on-the-bed girl myself.’ Harper winks, but something about it looks wrong, like she’s just playing a part in the moment, being how she thinks she needs to be. She’s that way a lot. Then she walks over to the desk near the window to set her books down.
Seth giggles at her remark, while I feel a blush rush to my cheeks. Even now, after having sex, I still get embarrassed over sexual innuendos. I used to think it was because I was raped when I was twelve by my brother’s then best friend, and it had left that kind of a mark on me, but now I’m coming to realize that it might just be my personality.
‘So, what are you two up to for the day?’ Harper asks as she pulls her long blonde hair up in a messy bun before picking up her iPod from off her bed.
Seth shrugs as he hops off the bed and lands on the floor with a thud. ‘Not anything right now. Why? You looking for a party buddy again?’
She wavers, slightly distracted as she shuffles through the list of songs on her iPod. ‘I was thinking about going to this frat party tonight, but I’m still on the fence.’
Seth makes a gagging face as he mock clutches his neck. ‘Frat boys. Yuck.’
‘For sure,’ she agrees, reaching for her headphones on her pillow. ‘But I need to get out of this tiny box-of-a-room for a night or I’m going to go crazy.’
‘Well, sorry, but you’re going to have to ride solo on this one,’ Seth tells her. The two of them occasionally see each other at parties and hang out, but that’s about as far as their friendship extends.
‘Bummer.’ She smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. ‘What about you, Callie? You down for a party?’
‘I’m with Seth on this one,’ I reply, feeling kind of guilty when she frowns. ‘I’m not into frat parties.’
She shrugs it off, seeming a little depressed. But once she notices me noticing her plummeting cheeriness, she forces a bright smile then puts her earbuds in. I’m not sure why, but Harper seems lonely all the time, even though she’s always surrounded by people. She keeps smiling as she moves for her bed, but I’ve given enough fake smiles in my life to recognize one when I see it.
As she flops down and gets situated to do her homework, Seth waves at her then takes me by the elbow and pulls me toward the door. ‘Let’s go get some coffee,’ he says, grabbing my hoodie from the bedpost and shoving it at me, ‘and I’ll tell you about the present I got Greyson.’
Slipping on my jacket, I follow Seth out the door and head down the hallway to the elevators.
‘So it’s a collection of things we’ve done together,’ he says as I push the bottom floor. ‘Like movies we’ve watched, music we’ve listened to and food we both agree are awesome.’
‘That might be the coolest present ever,’ I tell him as we reach the bottom floor and step out into the lounge area.
‘I know, right?’ he says as we stroll toward the door. It’s a breezy yet beautiful day to be walking beneath the crystal blue sky. Frost clings to the branches of the leafless trees that surround the building and the frozen grass makes the entire scene look like a winter wonderland.
‘So what’s new with you?’ Seth asks as we steer in the direction of the nearest coffee house, which is kitty corner to the University of Wyoming – the college we both attend. ‘It feels like ages since I’ve talked to you.’
I laugh because it’s only been like a day. ‘Not much.’
‘How’s the new job coming?’
I sigh. I got an internship writing for an online newspaper at the beginning of the semester. I love writing and everything but … ‘It’s kind of not what I was expecting,’ I tell him as we step off the grass and onto the slippery sidewalk.
‘What do you mean?’ he asks as we link arms before one of us wipes out.
I give a half shrug. ‘I just wish I could write … I don’t know, whatever I want, instead of certain things. It feels like such a job.’ I sigh. ‘That makes me sound selfish, doesn’t it? And ungrateful.’
Seth chuckles as he maneuvers us around a large ice patch in the center of the sidewalk. ‘No, it makes you sound normal. You don’t have to like a job just because it’s your job.’
I tuck my free hand into the pocket of my jacket as the wind bites at my skin. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’
‘No, not guess I’m right; I am right.’ He shoots me a conceited grin. ‘I’m always right when it comes to advice.’ He gets a thoughtful look on his face. ‘Which speaking of advice, why haven’t you talked to Kayden about moving in together? I thought we talked about that a couple of weeks ago and you were going to finally’ – he makes an air quote with his free hand – ‘“Go for it.”’
I cringe internally at the painful reminder. ‘I already told you I decided not to.’
‘I know, but I was hoping you changed your mind. I think you’re wrong about Kayden not being ready for that big of a step. And even if he isn’t ready, I still think you should know where he stands,’ he tells me as we halt at the corner of the sidewalk, waiting to cross the street. ‘You guys have been together way longer than Greyson and me, or Luke and Violet.’
‘Yeah, but the four of you all live together.’ I know I’m giving him an excuse and not the truth, but I don’t want to even think about the truth right now because it kind of hurts.
‘You want us to all get a place?’ Seth asks as we shuffle off the curb and cross the street to the quaint-looking coffeehouse that has one of the best mocha cappuccinos I’ve ever had.
I shake my head. ‘Six people under one roof is too much.’
‘Good, because I really didn’t want to,’ he says with a playful nudge in the side. ‘I just didn’t want to seem like a jerk.’
‘You’re not a jerk,’ I tell him as I jump up onto the curb. ‘You’re the bestest friend ever.’
‘You’re so right.’ He points a finger at me. ‘Just like I’m so right about needing to talk to him, see where your future lies.’ He steers us around a car pulling out of the coffee shop. ‘I love the boy to death, but he needs to start expressing how he feels more instead of always leaving you guessing.’
‘Kayden’s good to me,’ I say defensively. ‘But he’s had a lot of stuff happen to him and it makes it hard for him to trust people, I think.’
Annoyance fills Seth’s expression. ‘So have you and that’s something you both need to remember.’
‘Seth, please just drop it, okay?’ I hope he can’t read me as well as he usually does because I don’t want to talk about this.
He studies me suspiciously. ‘You’re keeping something from me,’ he says as we arrive at the coffee shop, but instead of walking in, he stops just before we reach the door and makes me stop with him. ‘Okay, Miss Callie, fess up. What aren’t you telling me?’
A stray strand of my bangs falls into my face as I try to keep my gaze averted from him, but I’ve never been a good liar and end up breaking down beneath his withering stare within seconds.
‘Okay, fine.’ I blow out a breath as I look at Seth. ‘I do know for sure that Kayden doesn’t want to live with me because I asked him at the beginning of the year.’
‘What!’ Seth exclaims, dropping his hold on me. ‘Why am I hearing about this now?’
I inch toward the railing as someone walks out of the door to the coffeehouse. ‘Because I didn’t really feel like talking about it.’
He frowns as he puts his elbows on the railing and reclines against it. ‘Well, what exactly did Kayden say? Just straight up no, I don’t want to live with you?’
‘Well, he didn’t straight up say it like that,’ I explain. ‘I just said something about how it’d be cool to live in an apartment with a roommate next semester and how I was thinking about it, but I needed a roommate … and he didn’t say anything.’