Prologue
#103 Outrun Your Demons.
Kayden
Run.
Throw.
Catch.
Duck.
Run.
Run.
Run.
My father’s words scream from behind me like a ghost as I race around the track. I can’t outrun them, escape them, hide from them. My feet pound against the dirt as my lungs tighten in my chest, my entire body dripping with sweat even though it’s barely fifty degrees and I’m wearing shorts. My pulse is pounding, my limbs aching, begging me to stop. That it’s enough.
But nothing ever feels like enough.
I can’t outrun him.
His voice.
His words he drilled in me.
I want to be free from it. Free from him. My mom. My past. The years of abuse. What I want is my resolution. But to get it, I need to let go and I can’t let go when everything is so unknown.
I don’t know where he is – what he’s doing. If he’s alive. Dead. If he’s sorry for what he did. And I might never know. Just like I might never be able to let go.
So all I can do is run.
Until I can no longer breathe.
Until my limbs can no longer move.
Until my heart stops beating.
Until maybe his voice will disappear.
Chapter 1
#101 Jump on the Bed. A Lot.
Callie
Wintertime is beautiful. Snowflakes tumbling from the sky and swirling through the air. They remind me that the world is always changing, that people are always changing, that I’m always changing. This reminder is what keeps me happy, moving forward in my life, letting go of what happened with Caleb, and living my life for the future. A future that is filled with endless possibilities.
Despite my positivity, I do feel like something has been missing from my life lately, but I can’t figure out what it is exactly. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it might be good. Like sadness and pain perhaps. Or possibly that I’m moving more freely through life than I ever have. Or perhaps I’m just looking for something to explain this strange, new, liberating feeling residing in my heart, because the past seems so distant now. The person who hurt me has vanished and even though there was no resolution for what he did to me, I feel like my inner demons connected to him – what he did – have been resolved. Yes, the memories are still there, scarring my past, but they don’t define me anymore.
And I feel … well, happy.
I want us to share with Kayden, because he seems a little sad lately. Not like how he was before, though. No, he’s much better than he was a year ago when I met him in the clinic that horrible day, the place where he was sent because nurses and doctors thought he’d stabbed himself. While he had self-harmed, his father was the one who made the start and the worst of the injuries that had nearly killed him and almost ruined the future we have now.
The beautiful one that we have now.
‘Knock, knock, knock.’ Seth raps on the door as he cracks it open and sticks his head in. ‘Hey, what’s up with you not answering your texts?’
I set the pen down in the spine of my journal and pick up my phone from off the bed. ‘Sorry, I forgot I turned it down for class.’ I press the volume up while he fakes a pout and enters my dorm room.
He looks all kinds of Seth stylish in his black and grey sweater, dark blue jeans, and Converse sneakers, his honey-blond highlighted hair tousled to perfection.
‘Hot date tonight?’ I ask as I set my phone down on the nightstand and shut my journal.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ He taps his finger on his lips, feigning ignorance, like he hasn’t been chattering about his date with Greyson all week, the date that marks the first anniversary of when they officially considered themselves dating.
I tuck my journal underneath my pillow and get off the bed and to my feet, smoothing out the creases in my violet and black striped shirt. ‘I mean, the date you’ve been yammering about for weeks now. The date. The one that marks your first anniversary.’
He kicks the door shut. ‘You need to stop paying so much attention to me. It ruins all my fun and mysteriousness.’
‘You’re never mysterious,’ I say, putting my long brown hair up in a ponytail. ‘But we can do a redo if you want to? You can go back out and enter again, and I can pretend that I have no idea why you’re dressed up. Then you can announce the news to me and we can celebrate and jump up and down and scream, “Oh my God!”’ I wave my hands in front of me while I bounce up and down. ‘It’s going to be so epically awesome!’
He stares at me for a moment, pretending not to be amused, but then the corners of his mouth turn upward and he starts jumping up and down with me. ‘Let’s just skip to the good part,’ he says, laughing as he leaps onto my bed and bounces on the mattress, offering his hand to help me up.
‘Why, thank you, sir.’ I grab his hand and he pulls me up with him.
We continue to jump on the bed like kids, yelling about his anniversary until my roommate, Harper, walks into the room. She stops dead in her tracks at the sight of us, standing on the bed, red-faced and panting with our hands in the air.
‘Hey, Harper.’ I wave at her as I stop jumping on the mattress. Seth continues, though, unbothered that he looks like a complete lunatic, but he also doesn’t have to share a room with her the entire year either.
Harper gives an intrigued glance at Seth and me as she steps into the room and closes the door behind her. ‘What are you guys doing?’
Seth begins to bounce exaggeratedly on the bed. ‘Exercising,’ he jokes, breathless.
‘Great idea. I’ll have to try it sometime. Although, I’m a two-person kind of jumping-on-the-bed girl myself.’ Harper winks, but something about it looks wrong, like she’s just playing a part in the moment, being how she thinks she needs to be. She’s that way a lot. Then she walks over to the desk near the window to set her books down.
Seth giggles at her remark, while I feel a blush rush to my cheeks. Even now, after having sex, I still get embarrassed over sexual innuendos. I used to think it was because I was raped when I was twelve by my brother’s then best friend, and it had left that kind of a mark on me, but now I’m coming to realize that it might just be my personality.
‘So, what are you two up to for the day?’ Harper asks as she pulls her long blonde hair up in a messy bun before picking up her iPod from off her bed.
Seth shrugs as he hops off the bed and lands on the floor with a thud. ‘Not anything right now. Why? You looking for a party buddy again?’