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Chapter One
Callum
I probably looked like an asshole just standing there outside the restaurant. I was at the greenhouse at the top of The Victorian Hotel. It was bursting with her favorite blue flowers and all these other bright colors that mocked my shitty mood.
My mother had rented out the garden because there was apparently no better place to host what she’d nicknamed her “No Questions Asked” dinner. “Flowers represent a new start and that’s exactly what she’s come back for. Which is why we are all going to be respectful. No questions asked tonight. We don’t care why she left, we only care that she’s home. Correct?” She didn’t wait for an answer because she knew mine would be along the lines of a flat “no.” I had questions. I had tons of them. I’d spent years of my life beating them to death so I could finally move on but now they were wrestling their way back to the front of my spinning head because it was really happening.
Lake was back.
My Lake. The Lake I fought tooth and nail to push out of my brain because once upon a time, I’d been dependent on whatever toxic brand of pleasure she breathed into my lungs. We’d grown up together and our minds had grown fucked up together. We worshipped and loathed one another. She pissed me off to no end but I started to like how she drove me insane. The more she worked me up the better it felt when she brought me back down and I fucking loved the way she brought me back down. It felt like I was rolling on ecstasy. My skin would still be burning hot and tingling when she’d murmur an inch from my face and tease me for getting so mad. The sound of my name drifting out from those pretty lips was always enough to get me hard as a rock.
“Take your time, man.”
Coming out the doors was Logan. I turned away when I caught the smirk on his face. I had two best friends in high school and he was the one I didn’t end up nearly killing. After twelve years, I was pretty familiar with his smug looks and I knew exactly what this one was about.
“You’re gonna need all the time you can get.”
My eyes told him that I was already tired of his shit. “I know she has to look good, Logan.”
“Better than good. It’s kind of fucked up how good she looks right now. I mean she had to have beat like, fifty, sixty guys away with a stick just to get here. She probably has a collapsible baseball bat in her purse.”
“This is your idea of a pep talk?”
He grinned. “You know you can’t wait to see her.”
“I haven’t thought about her once since she left.”
“Yeah. Minus the dreams.”
“I don’t really count things that happen in my sleep.”
“It’s only your subconscious reflecting your thoughts.”
I gave him a look. “I can’t remember if you’re here to help or annoy the shit out of me.”
He laughed. “When have those two things ever been mutually exclusive?” Fair. He’d always been the one to slap joints out of my hand back in school because of the random drug tests from our AAU wrestling team. “Alright, alright, I’ll leave you alone,” Logan surrendered. “Just thought I’d give you a heads up.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I spent another few minutes outside after he went back in. Five, maybe ten. I couldn’t get this one memory of Lake out of my head because it was the epitome of our love and hate. It was ages ago – the first summer back from college – but I still remembered the day in my old bedroom. Rolling my eyes, clenching my teeth and cursing her out while I jerked myself off.
I’d told her to stop. That I’d catch her if she stole from my old room again. The first time had been with cufflinks I didn’t care about but I couldn’t overlook it when nights later, the Rolex Submariner disappeared from my dresser.
I knew it was Lake but my suspicions were shot down.
“You’ve always had a habit of misplacing things.” My mother said it as quick as she could because we both knew the opposite was true. I needed things neat, uncluttered. I had a system for everything and a habit of cleaning during shitty moods. Elena used to joke that she should piss me off if she ever wanted me to do her job. She dubbed me a neat freak and my mother agreed but if it supported her image of Lake, she was happy to flip-flop on her opinion. “She would never steal, Callum. She has her own credit card.” A quick summary of how blindly she loved and spoiled that girl.
I was pissed. And Lake faked innocence, as usual so I installed a camera in my room and genuinely hoped that she’d try to steal from me again.
A week went by before the third strike. A tie. Ivory satin Brioni. I never wore it but it was the first one in my pull out rack and I’d seen it the night before so I practically fucking salivated when I noticed that it was gone. I knew it had to be Lake so I dialed back the footage from my camera and practically sprung wood when I found the exact moment she snuck in my room and took it from my drawer. I had her. I had everything I needed to prove that she was behind that string of missing shit in the house. I could expose her, invalidate every other time she’d pinned the blame on me.
But instead of sneaking my tie out of the room, Lake took it onto my bed.
I watched her lay it down, put her hands on her hips and narrow playful eyes at every corner of the ceiling till she guessed the spot where I hid the camera. I sneered when she blew a kiss. Kneeling on the bed, she tossed her hair behind her shoulders and hooked her finger into her V-neck. I stared. I stopped blinking as she started pulling down, down, slowly, till the V was just above her navel, the cotton straining thin against the shape of her perfect tits. They were threatening to burst out and pissed as I was, I prayed to see them spill. Fuckin’ Lake. I had my face inches from my screen now, my lip curled but my dick hard. I couldn’t remember when I’d whipped it out and started stroking. All I knew was that I couldn’t stop. A minute ago, I was seething, waiting to humiliate and expose Lake as a liar. But suddenly, I was living for her little striptease. Every hot second of it. I breathed heavy when she turned around and got on all fours. She lowered herself slowly, her stretched out T-shirt sliding up her gorgeous, toned back. I stroked faster when she pressed her cheek to my mattress and stuck her ass in the air, using two hands to wiggle slowly out of her terry cloth shorts, till they were down her thighs and around her knees. Her wavy hair fanned out in a dozen heart s
hapes over my sheets. I wanted to feel them entwined in my fingers. I wanted so bad to suck on her bottom lip. The whole time, she peered over her shoulder at the camera, biting it back and looking at me with such wicked fucking mischief that my muscles flexed with the physical need to find her, grab her and pin her to the bed. “See, asshole? You like it.” Her eyes had such an uncanny way of expressing her thoughts it was irritating. I could practically hear Lake saying those words and I hated how vividly I could picture her voice. Of course at the same time, I loved it. “Come for me, Callum. All over me.” I imagined Lake saying it, her full lips wrapping tight around every lusty “m” and adding a “please” since I so rarely heard that word coming out of her mouth.
