The Redemption of Callie & Kayden

and squeezes out from between Kayden and Luke. He reaches in front of Luke, sticks the end of his cigarette out the window, and ashes it into the snow. “Why would we ever joke about going to the beach?” He turns around and leans against the dash, angles his head back, and stares up at the cloudy sky. “Does it constantly snow here? I swear I haven’t seen it stop since I’ve gotten here.”
    “From December to April,” I clarify as Kayden’s fingers sneaks up to my face and he smooths his hand over my head. I can’t stop my eyes from closing and an almost noiseless but embarrassing sigh slips out. My cheeks start to heat, so I keep talking to distract everyone. “So are we going to do it?”
    “Go to the beach? To San Diego?” Kayden asks with doubt in his voice. I nod my head and soak up the comfortable feeling of his hand on my cheek. “I’m not sure I can.”
    My eyes open and he’s watching me. “Why not?”
    He shakes his hand. “There’s just stuff… things I need to deal with.”
    “Can’t you deal with them at the beach?” Seth sits forward in the seat and lowers his feet back onto the floor, and then he nods his head at me. “With this beautiful girl over here?”
    Kayden looks torn as he glances from me to Seth and then out the front window and into the night. “I have something on Monday that I have to be here for.”
    “We can be back on Monday,” Luke chimes in, rotating the defroster up as the windows fog. “That’ll give us four days of freedom and that’s four days we don’t have to spend here.”
    I stare into Kayden’s eyes and see something I don’t like—overpowering fear. “We don’t have to go,” I say to him because he’s the only one who matters at the moment and I can tell something’s wrong.
    He rubs the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip, flipping it down a little. “Do you want to go?”
    “Only if you want to go,” I reply, and to add emphasis, I lean in and whisper, “And you
can
go.”
    He stares at me with the strangest expression, like I’m this amazing, unique creature that no one knows about, and then his mouth tilts up into a small but breathtaking smile. “I can go until Monday.”
    Seth squeals, claps his hands, and kicks his feet against the floor as he screams, “Road trip, here we come!”
    “Thank fucking God.” Luke sighs with relief. He cranks the heat up and then flips the lever next to the steering wheel, turning the wipers on. They move back and forth and back and forth, wiping away the snow from the glass and making it dewy. “Now we just have to go get everyone’s shit.”
    “I’m good,” Kayden says as I sit up and put my feet on the floor. He combs his fingers through my hair, gazing out the window with his eyebrows knit. “I’ll just get some clothes and stuff when we get there.”
    None of us press him because it’s obvious he doesn’t want to go home. “What about your bike?” Luke turns around and puts his arm on the back of the seat, looking in the bed of the truck at Kayden’s motorcycle obscured by a sheet of fluffy snowflakes. “You want to take it?”
    Kayden shrugs. “All I want is to not have to go home yet.” His fingers fall from my hair and settle on my hip where he delves into my skin just beneath the hem of my shirt. “So we can take it or ditch it somewhere.”
    Luke rotates back around in the seat and shoves the shifter forward, the gears grinding a little before slipping in. “We’ll just take it.” He presses on the gas, inching the truck forward. “What about you?” He looks at me and then at Seth. “Do you guys need to go get your stuff?”
    I start to open my mouth to say no, but Seth interrupts. “I don’t go anywhere without my kit.”
    Luke doesn’t even bother asking. He just rolls his eyes and aims the truck in the direction of my house. I watch the homes zip by as I sit on Kayden’s lap, hoping I’m not doing anything wrong, hoping I’m not doing more damage than good. Really, I don’t know what I’m doing and all I can hope for is the best. It’s the worst feeling in the world because hope has never been that kind to me.
    * * *
    I rapidly get thrown into a state of anxiety when Seth and I climb out of the car. There are four figures that I can see through the kitchen window of my house and I recognize that the dark-haired fourth member isn’t part of my family. My mom, my dad, Jackson, and Caleb are sitting at the kitchen table as I walk up the driveway