Caleb?” His name tastes toxic in my mouth.
She battles to unscrew the lid from the bottle, pressing the bottom against her hand as she squeezes the lid with her fingers.
“Callie, Caleb has been part of this family since he was six years old. You know his parents barely talk to him. We’re the only family he has.”
“I don’t give a shit about Caleb!” I shout and my lungs nearly combust. But it feels good. Really, really good. I press my hand to my chest, calmly let go of the countertop, and straighten my shoulders. “I’m going to go out to breakfast with Seth.”
Her eyes are amplified and her lips start to part in protest, but the look on my face quiets her. She cinches her mouth shut as the lid slips off the bottle. “Fine, have fun.” The pills rattle as she pours a couple into the palm of her hand.
I put the cereal back in the cupboard, set the bowl in the sink, and hurry out the back door. I run across the driveway and jog up the steps of the two-story garage. When I open the door, I’m surprised to find Seth sitting on the edge of the bed, awake and dressed in a red T-shirt and a pair of dark denim jeans.
“You’re up,” I say as I shut the door.
He tousles his hair into place with his fingers. “I woke when you ran out of here like there was a fire. What was up with that?”
I shuck my jacket off, ball it up, and toss it onto the bed. “I saw my mother heading out here and I didn’t want you to have to deal with her.”
He hooks his watch onto his wrist as he wanders over to his shoes that are at the foot of the bed. “Callie, no matter how many jokes we make, I can handle your mom.” He slips his foot into his boot. “Trust me, if I can handle my own mom, then I can definitely handle yours.”
I frown as I sink down onto the edge of the bed. “But you haven’t talked to your mom since you told her about Greyson.”
He shrugs as he laces up his shoe and fastens a knot. “She’ll get over it. It’ll just take some time, just like it did when I told her I was g*y.”
I flop back onto the bed and drape my arm over my forehead. “How do you decide what’s worth telling your parents and what’s not?”
He’s silent for a while and then I hear his footsteps as he walks around to my side of the bed. He lifts my arm off my head and looks down at me. “If you’re asking me if I think you should tell your parents about what happened with Caleb, then the answer is yes. I think you should.”
He releases my arm and I lean up on my elbows. “How can you be so sure?” My mouth sinks to a frown. “She could get mad at me. Or she could hate herself as much as I hate… hated myself.”
Seth brushes my bangs out of my eyes with his fingers.
“Callie, if she hates herself for a while, then she hates herself for a while. You’ve been carrying around the burden for the last six years and it’s about time someone else took a little bit of the weight off of you.”
“I’m not sure I can,” I whisper, clutching at the dull ache inside my chest. “There’s just so much… so much acceptance in telling her the truth.”
“Like you might have to accept that it’s finally real?”
I nod as I gaze at the clear sky outside. The sunlight is beaming down on the houses across the street. Sunlight is a rare occurrence in Afton, but maybe it’s a sign that not everything is caped in darkness. That light does exist even in the darkest of corners.
He moves back as I sit up and head for my bag on a fold-up chair near the door. “I was thinking we could go out to breakfast this morning. There’s this café in town that has the best pancakes in the world.” I take a purple shirt out of the bag and a pair of jeans.
“I was thinking we could go see Kayden first,” Seth says as he texts something on his phone.
“But he’s not allowed visitors.” I hold my clothes to my chest and head for the bathroom to change.
“Yeah, he is.” Seth sets his phone down on his knee and takes a deep breath. “I just got a text from Luke saying that not only is Kayden allowed to have visitors but he’s leaving the facility today.”
I stop in the middle of the room as reality finally catches up with me. Although I’d never admitted it aloud, I’d wondered if I’d ever see Kayden again. That maybe he didn’t even exist and that everything that had happened between us was just my imagination attempting to force my mind to thrive again. “Should we wait for him to get out and then go see him?” I stare at the open bathroom door.
The mattress squeaks as Seth gets up from the bed and steps into my line of vision. “I think we should go pick him up.
Luke said that his mother’s supposed to and then she’s going to take him home, but he thinks we should go pick him up and take him somewhere.”
I raise my chin up and meet his eyes. “Like kidnap him?”
Seth laughs at me and his face turns red and his eyes water over. “He’s nineteen years old, Callie. We can’t kidnap him if he wants to go.”
“But isn’t he supposed to be being watched?”
“What? At his parents’ house? With his dad?”
I free an unsteady breath from my lungs. “But I worry that we might be doing more harm than good… running away.”
Seth steps closer to me, places his hands on my shoulders, and fixes his eyes on me. “You want to know what I think? I think that you’re afraid.”
I hug my clothes tighter against my chest because I need to hold onto something. “Of what?”
“About hearing the whole story about that night. I think you’re afraid of the truth.”
“But what is the truth exactly?” I ask.
Seth gives a lopsided smile and gently shakes my shoulders.
“That’s for you to find out because he needs you.”
He’s right. I’m afraid of everything that night holds and that I’ll have to admit that it’s my fault. I’m afraid I’ll learn that Kayden was really trying to kill himself, trying to leave me alone in the world. That he’ll leave me again, and I need him like I need air.
“Where will we take him, though?” I wonder. “My mom’s made it really clear that she doesn’t want him here.”
A devilish grin spreads across his face. “You leave that to me.
All you need to do is bring your bag and tell your mom you’re going to be gone for a couple of days.”