Love Me If You Dare (Safe Haven) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hard.
    Should
I have stayed, instead of running away three years ago?
    I
supposed the better question was, could I have?
    Had
we ever actually been happy? It wasn’t the first
time I’d wondered this in the last few years, but for once I tentatively let
the notion come out of hiding to be poked at and examined.
    It
didn’t seem like so long ago that my mom, my dad, my sister and I had all lived
under this roof, and now it was down to just my mom—my dad lived a few towns
over, with his girlfriend of the moment, who likely wasn’t much older than I
was. Cliche, but true.
    Yes,
it didn’t seem like so long ago... and yet it seemed like an entirely different
lifetime.
    When
Ella and I had been in our early teens, our dad had gotten a promotion and had
started to make a lot more money. Had started to work late. Until then my mom
had enjoyed drinking, but hadn’t depended on alcohol to get her through the
day.
    And
as our parents’ marriage had become more and more dysfunctional, Ella and I had
starting gravitating towards the opposite poles to which we would stubbornly
cling throughout our teens. She became a party girl, the daughter who would
sneak out the window and climb down the apple tree to drink and experiment with
drugs. She’d made a new set of friends—and Dylan had been part of that group.
    They’d
been inseparable, two badasses who did whatever they wanted. Just friends, or
so they’d claimed, but the kind whose friendship had little room for anyone
else. And while I became the good daughter, the glue that held our family
together at the seams, I secretly longed to be Ella, just so that I could be
around the guy who fascinated me like no one ever had.
    Setting
my now empty coffee mug on the counter with a sharp clack, I slid off the
counter, shaking the memories away like a wet dog trying to dry itself.
    With
the clarity of hindsight, I could now see that maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t been
as good as I’d once believed myself to be. After all, my desire for Dylan McKay
hadn’t been good at all.
    “I
need to get out of here.” The house was deafening in its silence. There was too
much room in the empty space for my thoughts to fill.
    The
problem was, I had no idea where to go.
    ***
    T he
waters of Fish Lake were still cold right now, in the early days of summer. I
shivered as I looked down at the stretch of pebbles and sand on which I’d
played for countless hours when I was kid.
    The
early morning breeze was warm, but I shivered regardless as I stripped off the
tank top and shorts that I’d pulled on over my bathing suit. Leaving them
strewn carelessly on the sand, I made my way to the edge of the water, rocks
digging into the feet and making my gait unsteady. I knew that not all of the
good bumps that prickled over my pale skin were because of a chill.
    I’d
had to work very hard to not let myself be taken under by an irrational fear of
water after Ella... well.
    I’d
fought through the worst of it, refusing to succumb when I knew exactly where
the sudden terror had come from. But I still had to push through a thin barrier
that rose, every time I confronted a body of it—a pool, a pond, a lake.
    I
ground my teeth together as I stepped forward, letting the ripples of water lap
at my toes, then my ankles. Sucking in a mouthful of air, I ran forward into
the lake until the water was deep enough to submerge myself in. The cold was
shocking, cleansing me of the cloying fear and reminding me of who I was.
    I
was Kaylee. I was the one who had survived.
    Diving
forward, I began to swim. Though I hated exercise, and poked fun at my friend
Serena every time she taught a yoga class or went for a run, swimming was
something that I made myself do once every few weeks. I told myself that it was
because I needed to work off the the booze, the late night instant noodles, the
ice cream that I downed every time that Joel and I broke up.
    In
the deepest, darkest corners of myself, I knew that I made myself do it so