Page 68
I pull away, lifting my head and locking eyes with the most beautiful blue butterfly I’ve ever seen in my life. The creature flaps its expansive wings from its perch atop Lydia’s forearm as I stare wide-eyed, unable to say a single thing.
Kaila’s here. She’s fucking here with me. I’ve never been one to believe in ghost stories and all of that shit, but somehow I know that my sister is here with us now. Perhaps inside this familiar butterfly, perhaps in the shift of the breeze as it skitters along the skin of my flesh. Perhaps in the way the grief within me transpires into peace as I watch the insect flapping its wings before me.
“She’s here. She wants me to know that she’s at peace,” I say without thought. Lydia nods, turning and taking a seat beside me.
“She is. I can feel it—feel her,” Lydia says, leaning her head against my arm as we both stare at the butterfly, lost in the serenity of the moment.
I’m not sure how long we remain there, transfixed by the small creature. All I know is that I’m right where I want to be, and with the one person I’d spend a million more moments like this with.
☽ ✦ ☽
“If you want to bring me home and spend the rest of the day alone, I’d understand,” Lydia says from the passenger seat. The sky darkens around us, a storm threatening up ahead. Seems fitting, for the day and the circumstances of it.
“No,” I say, reaching over and grabbing her hand in mine. “I’ve spent so many July twenty-seconds alone, buried beneath grief and glasses of whiskey. I want to be with you, to share this with you. Kaila would have wanted that for me. She was so selfless, always talking about how I should move on and find happiness after she was gone from this world. I ignored all her morbid talk then, but I can at least honor her words now. And what I want,” I say, pausing to glance her way, “is to be with you, near you, beneath you, inside of you.”
“Oh, wow, that is not where I thought that was going,” she says, blushing.
Lydia Aston rarely blushes, but in those rare moments when I can catch her off guard like this, it’s worth it. Thunder rumbles loudly in the distance, stealing her attention from me.
“Plus,” I start, “there’s something I want to show you.”
Her head tilts in my periphery, her curiosity charging the air with anticipation.
“Oh, really?” she asks. “Can I get a hint?”
She’s grinning, turned in her seat toward me. I go to reply, but something catches my attention in the rear view. I’m almost positive that the car behind us has been following us for quite some time. I don’t recognize it, and I can’t see who’s driving. All I know is that every turn we take, the car follows. I brush it off, thinking that maybe I’m being paranoid. Another crack of thunder fills the silence, and a few raindrops hit the windshield.
“No hints. I want to see the look on your face when I take you to my dungeon and have my way with you,” I say, revealing way more than a hint when I can’t help myself. She has a way of making me divulge all of my secrets like that.
“Mmm, yes,” she says. “You do strike me as the secret dungeon type.” The light pitter-patter of rain against the windshield swells into a steady drumming as the storm intensifies. The weather is starting to make me uneasy, especially today.
“I love a good summer storm,” Lydia says, staring longingly out of the window and distracting me from thoughts of her naked inside my BDSM room.
Yep, I have a fucking BDSM room. Who would have thought?
“I love the smell of the earth as the rain begins to seep beneath it. I love the feel of it against my skin, and the way the sound of rainfall drowns out the noise—if only for a moment. It’s so beautiful, don’t you think?” she asks.
When I turn and catch a glimpse of her, she’s smiling. Her eyes are closed, her face turned up toward the passenger window.
“Yeah, I do,” I say, as her eyes open and she continues to watch the rainfall ahead of us. “I really fucking do.”
A loud screeching draws my attention back to the rear view and to the same car that’s been there the entire time. The car fishtails across the center line, seemingly out of control. Panic claws its way to the surface as I pull my hand away from Lydia’s thigh to grip the steering wheel with both hands, squeezing until my knuckles are bleached and burning.
My anxiety climbs at an alarming rate as I’m instantly transported back to the night I lost Kaila. I’m brought back to a time when the rainfall was torrential, and the darkness surrounding me was absolute—to a time when the only thing visible was Kaila’s terrified expression in my periphery. Except this time, it isn’t Kaila sitting beside me, it’s Lydia.
“Callum.” Lydia’s worried voice echoes loudly in the confines of the car, even louder than the rainfall. “Who is that back there?”
She turns frantically in her seat, noticing the car behind us now. The headlights grow closer, not slowing as they approach. This cannot fucking be happening right now. I squeeze my eyes shut and then open them again, as if to blink away the brutal reality staring me in the face. The jackass behind us is going to hit us at any second. The car is going to send us off the highway, probably right into another fucking tree. I am going to lose everything, again. I am going to kill Lydia Aston.
I go to speak, to say anything to make the moment less intense, but I’m silenced by a strange sound that starts playing over my car speaker.
“What the fuck?” I ask as my eyes dart down to the screen. The sound grows louder, the notes more intense as they work their way beneath my nervous system.
“Callum, I-I don’t feel so—” Lydia starts, her words slurring to a stop. My eyes dart to her just as her head slumps over to the side.
“LYDIA! Lydia, wake up!” I scream, but she doesn’t move.
I catch a glimpse of her chest rising and falling, but it does little to reassure me as the gravity of what’s happening hits me dead in the fucking chest.
