Chapter 4
Four
CALLIE
NINE YEARS AGO
“ I can’t believe your parents are trusting you two to camp together,” Michael said with a knowing smirk.
“Uh, correction, they’re trusting us all to camp together … and they’re trusting Lewis. Not me.”
Our friends laughed as Lewis shook his head with a wry smile. He knew it was true. While my boyfriend had been a total gentleman the past year we’d been dating, I was the one leading the way with the physical part of our relationship. Lewis was all about taking it slow because he didn’t want me to feel rushed or to regret anything we did together.
“ Our parents are cool with us ,” Michael’s girlfriend, Lana, reminded him.
“And ours are trusting me and Fyfe,” Eilidh threw in as she helped Lewis’s best friend build his tent.
Fyfe looked up in panic. “Eh, what? ”
I bit my lip against a smile as Lewis huffed, “You and Fyfe aren’t dating, Eils.”
“Only because Fyfe is stubborn.” She stood up, hand on her hip. Tumbles of black curls fell down her back, the dark hair and olive skin only making the blue of her eyes more striking. Even at fourteen, Eilidh Adair was a beauty. But still too young.
“And completely uninterested in you,” Lewis informed her gently.
“Let him say that.”
Fyfe’s expression said he wanted to melt into the soil beneath our feet.
“He’s dating Carianne.” I gave Eilidh a chiding look because Carianne was my friend.
“And where is Carianne?” Eilidh asked, all sass.
“ Her parents don’t trust me .” Fyfe scowled as he put the last peg in his tent. “I’m going to get firewood.”
“I’ll come with.” Eilidh followed him.
“Eilidh—”
I grabbed Lewis’s arm, stopping him. “Leave her. She really doesn’t bother Fyfe.”
“Until the day she really doesn’t bother him.” Michael waggled his brows.
Lewis scowled. “What does that mean?”
Lana smacked Michael across the shoulder. “Hush, you.”
“What?” He shrugged. “I’m just saying. Eils is cute. And in a few years’ time, a couple of years won’t matter.”
“She’s my wee sister.” Lewis had gone worryingly blank-faced. “The first bloke who tries to go there dies.”
Michael nodded. “I get it, bro.”
And he did. Michael’s wee sister, Willow, was a lot younger than us, but the sentiment was the same.
“What do you think she sees in Fyfe?” Lana whispered. “He’s kind of a geek, no?”
Irritation thrummed through me. “Eh, he’s smart, he’s nice, he’s good-looking … need I go on?”
Lewis nudged me. “Should I be worried?”
I rolled my eyes at his teasing. “Never.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult him.” Lana shrugged. “I just don’t get why she’s so obsessed with him. I’d get it if it was Michael.”
“Of course you would.” Michael winked, and I rolled my eyes at his cheesiness.
Lewis, however, stared off into the woods where Eilidh and Fyfe had disappeared. “She’s had a crush on him since she was eleven. We’d taken off on our bikes and I told her she couldn’t come with us. She followed us, anyway, and I got really pissed off and shouted at her like I never had before.” Guilt flashed across his face. “She burst into tears and ran away. Fyfe told me I was a dick, and he went after her. Two wee shits in Eilidh’s year had found her and were pushing her around. Fyfe knocked them on their arses, and they took off just as I got there. Fyfe was her hero that day, and she hasn’t stopped flirting with him since.”
I laughed because it was so Eilidh.
“Well, maybe when she’s rich and famous, he’ll fancy her back.” Lana grinned, and I assumed she referred to the fact that Eilidh had started summer courses at a prestigious conservatoire in Glasgow and had also gotten a minor role on a Scottish TV show. It worried Lewis that Eilidh wanted to act, but she was headstrong and determined, even at fourteen.
“Fyfe isn’t about that stuff.” Lewis dismissed. “And he isn’t about Eilidh. She’s just a kid to him. So can we drop it?”
“Back to the last subject,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “The only reason Lewis and I were allowed to go camping together is because our parents knew we’d never get up to anything with Eilidh around.”
“Well, that was naive.” Eilidh suddenly appeared out of the woods with Fyfe. “Because I brought earplugs.”
Laughter exploded around the campsite, and just like that, Lewis’s big brother protectiveness was forgotten.
Despite Eilidh’s joking, there was no way I intended to lose my virginity in a tent surrounded by our friends and Lewis’s sister. Eilidh had finagled her way into Fyfe’s tent because she decided last minute she didn’t want to sleep alone. Fyfe was so unbothered by this, as if she was his little sister, that Lewis “allowed” it. I’d been about to suggest she sleep with us, when, as if she had a sixth sense, Eilidh had shot me a half-pleading, half-murderous look.
She lived in vain if she thought Fyfe was going to see her as anything but a kid, but I kept my mouth shut.
By the time we went to bed, my eyelids were heavy and Lewis’s words had grown rough and slow, which was always a good indicator he was tired. It was no surprise that the last thing I remembered was drifting to sleep, sprawled across his chest, within seconds of getting into our sleeping bags. Even though the days had been warm this summer, the nights could still get chilly. But Lewis was like a furnace, and he kept me toasty.
The nightmare came out of nowhere. Or at least that’s how it seemed. I was lost in it, the bad dream made up of memories mixed with fear. Suddenly cutting through it was Lewis. He was calling for me.
Saying my name over and over.
Then the feeling of being shaken finally yanked me from the sharp claws of my dreams.
I blinked, terrified and confused, as the nightmare faded and I found myself staring into Lewis’s face .
“Callie?” He was holding me, his expression creased with concern.
Light flooded our tent and my eyes dropped to the battery-operated lamp we’d charged earlier. Lewis must have switched it on.
“What …” I pushed up from the ground, and Lewis’s arm slid around me, helping me. My hair clung to the back of my neck, and I realized I was clammy with sweat.
At once, the nightmare came rushing back, and disbelief and horror filled me. Tears burned my eyes.
“Shit.” Lewis saw and pressed his forehead to my temple. “Talk to me, mo chridhe .”
I leaned into him at the Gaelic endearment. We’d learned it in our Gaelic language class at school. One day, a few months ago, I got insecure by how he kept pulling back every time our kisses got a bit hot and heavy. I’d started to think he wasn’t into me romantically after all. Lewis couldn’t believe I’d think such a thing and had kissed my tears away. The endearment had slipped out.
I wondered later if it was because his dad called his mum by a Gaelic endearment. If he liked the sound of it. I knew I did. He never called me mo chridhe in front of anyone else, though. His friends would never let him hear the end of it.
But those two words made me feel safe and loved in Lewis Adair’s arms. Even as the memories continued to make me shiver.
“You were whimpering in your sleep,” he whispered hoarsely. “You sounded so scared.”
Hearing the question in his words, I pulled away but only to look him in the eyes. I knew confusion colored my tone. “It was about the day my birth father kidnapped me.”
Lewis tightened his embrace.
“I don’t know why. I haven’t thought about it in forever.”
“Michael and Lana were talking about that documentary they watched. About the kidnapped girls.”
My lips formed an O . And then frustration filled me that something so simple and meaningless could still trigger nightmares after all this time …
“In the grand scheme of things, Callie … six years isn’t a long time. It was only six years ago.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to talk about it? I … I still have bad dreams about the night Mum’s ex broke into the house …”
I knew that his stepmum’s deranged ex-boyfriend had not only come after Regan, but had broken into the house, assaulted Eredine who was watching Lewis and Eilidh at the time, and then tied Eilidh and Lewis up in the guest annex. The man had gone after Regan then, and she’d fought him off. Her ex had slipped off a cliff’s edge, never to be seen again. They were assured he’d drowned.
As awful as it sounded, I wished my birth father were dead so I never had to worry about him coming back.
“He took me from school,” I told Lewis. “Do you remember?”
Lewis pursed his lips. “I felt guilty. I’d been too busy watching the fight that broke out in the playground, and I didn’t see Andros approach you.”
Nathan Andros. My father. The psycho drug dealer. What a legacy. For a long time after he’d kidnapped me, attempted to kill Mum, I’d worried I was tainted by him. That by merely being his daughter, I didn’t deserve good things. Didn’t deserve Walker. Didn’t deserve Lewis. Lewis’s constancy as my friend had helped me shake off those fears.
Walker adopting me finally made me realize that who my birth father was wasn’t my fault. Walker was my real dad, in all the ways that mattered. And if he found me worthy of love, then surely, I must be. Now and then, however, that old insecurity would whisper insidiously in my ear.
“It wasn’t your fault he took me,” I reassured Lew.
Lewis didn’t look like he believed me. My boyfriend could be frustratingly overprotective sometimes. He took on too much responsibility for things. We were alike in that way.
“I mean it. You couldn’t have stopped it, anyway.” Make a scene and I’ll shoot your mother in the fucking head, kid. “He threatened my mum. I was going with him no matter what.” Say “Yes, Daddy.” My lip curled in disgust. “He made me call him daddy , like his sperm donation to my existence meant any-fucking-thing to me.”
My boyfriend’s arms squeezed around me at my uncharacteristic cursing.
“He … he took me to this motorhome in the middle of nowhere. And he … he said the most awful things about Mum.” Nausea roiled in my gut. “I didn’t understand some of it then, but I understand it now.” I looked at Lewis. “That man is my flesh and blood, and he threatened to rape Mum with his gun. He said that to me. His ten-year-old kid.”
Lewis looked sick for me. “Callie …”
“He called Mum all the names under the sun. Tried to turn me against her, like he ever could. Kept telling me I was going home with him to the States. And I was so afraid it would happen. When Mum showed up, he threatened to kill me. My own father threatened to kill me. And then Mum had to leave with him to protect me … I … I was terrified. Because she went with him to save me, and if something had happened to her?—”
“But it didn’t. Your mum is alive. And Andros is in prison.”
“I … two years ago, I asked Mum to find out more about him.” I hadn’t told Lewis or anyone that. Only Mum and Dad knew. “He’s still in the same prison in California. He’s been di agnosed by a psychologist. Andros has an antisocial personality disorder. He’s a sociopath, Lewis. My birth father is a diagnosed sociopath. That’s what I’m made of.”
“No.” Lewis turned me fully toward him, his expression fierce. “The only thing he gave you was the color of your eyes. That’s it. You are good and kind and strong.”
“Like my mum?”
“Aye, but more than that, you’re you because of what you’ve experienced. You’ve been through so much, Callie. And you moved to an entirely different country and took it all in stride. Everything you’ve been through makes you more compassionate. You don’t judge, you see the best in people despite all the bad you’ve witnessed, and you’re the fiercest friend anyone could ask for.”
Love was an ache in my chest. “I like the way you see me.”
“Good, because I see you the way you are.”
Embarrassed, I apologized. “I’m sorry for waking you.”
“Don’t apologize.” He snuggled me close. “I still have nightmares too sometimes. Out of the blue. I can’t remember much about them other than the leftover feelings they cause.”
I hated that he still had nightmares, but it was comforting to know he understood. “What feelings?”
“The fear I felt when Mum’s ex attacked Aunt Ery and dragged us into the annex. I thought we were going to die. Then he left us there and Eilidh was terrified, and I felt like shit because I didn’t know how to help her.”
“Oh, Lewis, you were only a wee boy.” I smoothed a hand over his chest. “If I had one wish, it would be that you stopped trying to carry the weight of the whole world on your shoulders. Not everything and everyone is your responsibility.”
“I know that.” He flashed me a boyish grin that made my belly flutter. “Just the people I love.” His smile died, and he clasped my face in his hand, his thumb brushing my cheek. “I’d do anything for you. ”
It was official. I was ruined. Lewis Adair made all other boys my age pale in comparison. They were emotionally immature and self-absorbed. Lewis was the complete opposite. Part naturally older than his years, part molded by his experiences, Lewis was mature, open, caring, loving. He made me feel safe … and no one else would ever do.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He sighed and leaned his forehead against mine. “Never stop,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Because I’ll never stop loving you.”