The Redemption of Callie & Kayden

me, and then I shut my eyes and breathe in the moment, letting go of my second biggest fear and preparing myself to face my first.
Kayden
    I slide out of her and roll onto my back, feeling more of my shield crack apart. As insane as it sounds, I’m somehow becoming whole again—or becoming whole for the first time in my life. I want to keep moving forward, putting myself back together again and helping her heal too. I decide to take a baby step in that direction and get up off the bed. She watches me walk across the room naked and her cheeks are heating, which makes me smile.
    “What are you doing?” she asks, pulling the sheets over her body as she sits up.
    I unzip my bag that I dropped on the floor near the door and rummage through my clothes until I find it. The cold metal presses against my palm as I round the foot of the bed and lie down beside.
    “What’s in your hand?” she asks as she reaches for my fingers.
    I let her pry them open and then watch her face twist as she stares at the necklace in my hand. “I found it when Luke and I were walking around in San Diego. It made me think of you,” I explain.
    She peers up at me through her lashes, chewing on her bottom lip. “How come?”
    I turn my hand sideways and let the chain fall from my hand and dangle from my fingers. At the end is a four-leaf clover, stained a shiny metallic. “Because you’ve brought me nothing but luck, Callie Lawrence.”
    She immediately frowns. Sitting up, she brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. “I’ve brought you nothing but bad luck. You almost wound up dead because of me.”
    I shake my head, then move behind her, putting a leg on each side of her and sweeping her hair to one shoulder. “Every single second I’ve spent with you has been worth it. Besides, I probably would have wound up dead anyway.” She starts to turn her head in shock, but I put my hands on her shoulders so she can’t see past my arms. She can’t be looking at me when I say this. “Before you, there was just pain and emptiness and I really didn’t care if I lived or died. I was just there, existing at the surface of the water, not quite drowning but not quite able to breathe. And then you came alone and I could finally breathe. Without you, I probably would have just kept cutting until I finished my body off.”
    “But so many bad things have happened to you since I came into your life,” she says, sounding choked up.
    “Those bad things were because of my own choices and from problems that existed well before you came along.” I put my lips beside her ear. “But you showed me something I’d never seen before.” I kiss the tip of her earlobe and she shivers, her shoulder moving upward against my cheek. “You gave me good… I’ve never had good before.” I place a soft kiss on her neck and whisper, “You showed me that it was okay to feel both the good and the bad. It just took me a while to get it balanced.” I suck her earlobe into my mouth, thinking about how she poured her heart and soul out to me on the phone. I want to say it to her, to let her know that I feel the same way, but the words won’t roll off my tongue, so instead I say, “I want to be with you, Callie, more than anything.”
    Her head falls against her knees and she starts to sob, her body heaving. I slide my arms underneath hers and then steer her back with me as I lean against the headboard. I listen to her cry and it matches with the rhythm of my heart. I feel how much I want her—need her. I feel how much she means to me. I feel the pain that coexists with my feelings for her. I feel how much I want to run a razor down my arm, feel the skin split open, and watch the blood pour out, and then I feel how much I don’t want to do that because of her. I feel how much I want to live and be with her.
    My heart opens up and I feel it all. Every single emotion that’s ever been inside me starts pumping through my veins: the good, the bad, the painfulness, the heartache, the loneliness, the happiness, the need, the knowing that there’s more out there to life than what I grew up with.
    And for the first time in my life, I feel it all and tell myself that, in the end, I’ll still be okay.
Callie
    I cry myself to sleep and when I wake up, I feel different. Kayden’s pressed up against me, with his arm around me, clinging onto me like I’m the most important thing to him in the world as he sleeps off his overwhelming day. I have a