Did I do something wrong?
“You didn’t—no one—”
“We left it,” he says. “No one’s gone in there since they took you away.”
“Caleb.”
My mother shaking me hard enough to snap my head back.
I flinch at the jarring thought. “My things. My childhood.”
All of my memories of my parents are in that guest house. In his house.
He steps closer to me. “You don’t go in there,” he warns. “It isn’t yours to take.”
It is mine. It’s my life that has come unraveled, and all I want is to roll it back up again. Now Caleb is the gatekeeper to my past.
My present.
Hell, my future.
“Please,” I whisper. I’m less than air, floating away. His hand on my chest, hotter than fire, is the only thing keeping me grounded.
But please is the wrong word to say.
His gaze hardens. His fingers dig into my skin, as if he’d like nothing less than to claw my heart out.
He leans in close, close enough that I could move forward just a bit and kiss him if I wanted to. Or bite him.
His eyes go from my lips to my eyes and back, burning fury.
One word decrees my death sentence: “No.”
13
I didn’t have much interaction with Caleb until I was five years old. We went to the same preschool, and I had seen him in my kindergarten class, but boys were… boys. My mom pulled me out of my room one day and brought me across the grass to the Asher house, and I finally spoke to Caleb.
His mom was there, too, waiting with him in the kitchen. Our moms smiled at each other, while Caleb and I just stared.
To me, he was as odd as an alien. He ran around with boys twice his size and didn’t flinch. I stuck close to Savannah and Amelie. We played with dolls and dressed up in their rooms—and we never came to my house.
“Say hello,” my mother said, her finger pressing into my spine. She did it when I slouched.
I snapped my back straight, if only to relieve the pressure, and contorted my lips into a smile. “Hello, Caleb.”
He shook his head, glancing at his mom. “She’s a dumb girl.”
I walked up and smacked his shoulder. “I’m not dumb.”
Strange as it was, Caleb and I became fast friends after that. The way to a boy’s heart is through physical violence, apparently. He still hung out with his friends at school, and I stayed with Amelie and Savannah. On the playground, if their ball sometimes rolled in our direction, I’d be the one to climb to my feet and toss it back to him.
He’d give me a weird, appraising look and mutter a thank you.
He also sat with me on the bus. I hadn’t realized how awful the bus was until he was next to me, and everything got better.
We carried on that way until we were eight. And then our friendship got a little more immediate. I ate dinner with his family. He helped me with my history homework, and I helped him with math.
“I’ll only be friends with you if we play dress-up,” I declared one day, holding a box of clothes in my arms. I snuck them from the drawer of costumes I’d been collecting from Savannah. They were hand-me-downs, usually with rips in the hem or holes in the pockets that my mom mended, but I didn’t care.
Caleb sighed, putting his forehead down on the table. “Guess I don’t really have a choice then, huh?”
He followed me to his room.
I pointed to him. “You need a suit.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so!” I chucked a shoe at him for good measure, but it soared wide. If he threw it back, he’d probably nail me in the chest. His aim was a lot better than mine.
He grunted and left the room, and I put on the special dress I had snuck out of the house.
When he came back, he stopped dead. “What is this?”
I snorted. I smoothed the old white fabric with my hands. I’d been a flower-girl only a few months ago. My dad’s cousin got married, and I was apparently the only one eligible to walk down the aisle and throw flowers.
“What does it look like?” I asked him.
He squinted at me, the tip of his tongue sliding out of his mouth with his concentration. And then he blinked. “We’re getting married?”
I grinned and waited. He’d either be in or out—with Caleb, you never knew. I figured this was a good way to solve my dilemma of how much he actually liked me.
You know: friend-like or marriage-like.
He straightened his tie and came closer. “I didn’t get you a ring.”
I shook my head and reached into my pocket.
“Got it covered,” I said, showing him the two pieces of braided string in my hand. I’d made one that was equal parts gold and blue, and the other was blue with a single thread of gold. It was annoying, having to try to make something so small it would fit around my finger, so I gave up and made bracelets. “We’re married until these fall off.”
That was how those types of bracelets worked: keep them on until they fall off, or it’s bad luck.
“Okay,” he agreed. “But…”
“What?”
“Do we have to kiss? To seal the deal?”
My eyebrows crinkled. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
He grinned and walked closer, holding the pants—his dad’s, I’d bet—so he didn’t trip on the hem. “We could, you know.”
“Kiss?”
“Adults do it.”
My heart raced. “Do they?”
Mom and Dad didn’t really kiss in front of me. They barely touched. Did Caleb’s parents kiss in front of him? I’d seen it on movies, but I thought it was just that: fiction.
I knew the definition of fiction at age eight. I wasn’t dumb.
Some things just weren’t real: Santa, parents who really loved each other, my future with Caleb.
He picked up both braided pieces, which I’d left untied, and fisted the one with more gold. “I want this one. It reminds me of you.”
And then he raised my left arm and tied the mostly blue one around my wrist. He left it loose enough that I could’ve inched it over my hand, but I didn’t. I slid it farther up, until it got stuck on my forearm. I didn’t want to lose it so quickly.
“Now me,” he said, shoving his bracelet at me.
I tied it with clumsy fingers, as loose as he had made mine. Who knew when these things would fall off? I suddenly wished I had made them out of steel.
“Kiss me, Wolfe,” he said. “Make it official.”
I leaned in, my hand on his wrist and my gaze on his mouth.
Our lips touched, just the barest of brushes. We both pulled back and stared at each other for a moment.
Then Caleb lifted my hand. “Wow. So this is what marriage feels like.”
I shook my head. “I don’t feel…”
And then it hit me.
The bond. We’d be linked, him and me, by our wrists and our lips, forever. I wasn’t mad about it. I was selfishly glad that he was mine.
Mine and no one else’s. I’d fight them, and he would come back to me. Because: marriage. Even if Mom and Dad’s marriage sucked, and Caleb’s parents’ marriage was rocky, sometimes fiction and real life could be the same.
We’d be the happy couple when we got into our older years. Twenties, thirties, forties. Hell, he’d probably love me through gray hair and wrinkles. I knew it, and judging from the look in his eye, he knew it, too.