Wicked Dreams (Fallen Royals, #1)(41)

I wince, then run down the stairs. I slide into the kitchen, where Lenora is making dinner. “Um, is it okay if I go to the football game?”

She glances up at me. “Are you going in your uniform?”

I glance down at my skirt and white shirt. Oops. “No, I didn’t have time to change yet…”

“Are you going with Riley?”

I’ve been in a bad mood for almost a week and a half, and Caleb has been nowhere to be found. I’d probably leap to the same conclusion.

The doorbell rings, and I curse under my breath.

“I got it,” Robert calls. A minute later, he says, “Ah, Caleb. Good to see you.”

Lenora raises her eyebrows at me.

I shrug, helpless. Caleb comes into the kitchen behind Robert.

“Found your friend,” Robert says to me. “Were you expecting him?”

“No,” I say, at the same time that Caleb answers, “Yes.”

I glare at him. “He asked if I would go to the game, and I was just asking Lenora…”

“Sorry, Mrs. Jenkins.” Caleb steps closer to me. Like the last time we tried to go to a game together, he wears the gold-and-black colors of our school, a black shell jacket over his Emery-Rose shirt. To me, he says, “It’s a bit chilly, you might want to change…”

I blush. “Right. If I can go—”

“Of course,” Lenora blurts out. “We don’t want to restrict your social experience, especially now as you’re making more—”

“Thanks!” I lean away from Caleb, shooting Lenora a look that I hope translates to, Please don’t embarrass me.

She smiles sheepishly.

It’s such a startling mom-daughter thing to do, it almost strikes me mute.

I race back to my room and change into black jeans. I find a gold shirt with the Emery-Rose logo on it and a black jacket. Belatedly, I realize that Caleb and I are going to match.

You’re dressed to support the football team, I remind myself. Of course we’re going to match. Us and five hundred other people.

I touch up my makeup and yank on my boots. When I get downstairs, I find Caleb and Robert discussing the lacrosse team, from the sound of it. They both look over at me.

“Ready?” Caleb asks.

I nod, biting my lip. This feels like a trap, but anticipation swirls through me. I’m going to get to see my home again, more than just a glance.

He puts his hand on the small of my back, propelling me out of the house toward his car. “You’re up to something,” he murmurs.

I lift one shoulder. “Not sure what you mean?”

I get in the passenger seat, closing the door in his face.

Once he’s in, he eyes me. “What do you want most in the world?”

I suck in a breath. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.” He speeds toward his house.

Once we arrive, I follow him down the side driveway. My stomach is cramping again.

This is where my parents used to park. This is where the bus used to drop me off, and I’d rush down the little walkway to get home. Later, Caleb and I would run through his house before our parents separated us for homework or dinner. It wasn’t unusual to spend the entire day together.

I snap myself out of it as he opens the side gate. I can almost smell my mother’s cooking.

I take in the grime on the windows, the weeds and vines crawling up the siding.

It’s abandoned.

Just like me.

Even sitting in Caleb’s family’s backyard, literally yards away from their back door, my old home has turned into a graveyard of memories.

He unlocks the door to my old childhood home and then steps aside. “The past isn’t a happy place,” he murmurs. “Why don’t you want to leave it buried?”

He’s been tormenting me because of this. Because of a past that only he seems to understand. “Why don’t you?”

He exhales, shoving the door open. “After you.”

Stepping inside now hurts worse than before.

Before was shock. Spikes of pain. Relief that I remembered things the way they were.

Now it’s total annihilation.

I stop just across the threshold. Ghosts are here, bringing an icy chill with them. I can’t do this.

You have to face your fear.

I glance over my shoulder at Caleb, but he’s watching me with unreadable eyes. I step in farther, ignoring the dust collecting over every inch of the space. The wine-red rug under the kitchen table. The four chairs crowded around it, one of which has a loose leg. Dad used to stuff it with newspaper when company came over.

Company being Caleb, of course. Sometimes Savannah.

Never Amelie.

The cup is in the exact same spot, so I move past the kitchen. Caleb follows me like a second shadow, past the living room on our right and into the narrow hallway. Mom got a grippy material to put under the rug when I was six, because I slid headlong into the wall with the rug bunched around my feet.

I had been chased there, but I never said so.

The first door on the left is the bathroom, and my bedroom the next door down. Between them, on the right, is the door to my parents’ bedroom. I hesitate, brushing my fingers against the painted wood.

“It’s not going to bite,” Caleb whispers.

Yes it will. The memories will sink their teeth into me and never let me go.