What Lies Beneath (Count on Me Series #7) Read Online Free PDF

sobering reminder of the hell that I put her through only a few years after this entry was written.
    The way I bailed on her and treated her like she didn’t matter. Hurt her.
    The eight long years I spent that despite the last three, I don’t think I’ll ever entirely be able to make up for, no matter what she believes about our future.
    That’s not all, though. I realized something else while going back in time with her through these journals.
    I miss the old me. The boy I was.
    The one that my mom said would be good for someone like Belle. Well, when she wasn’t saying that Walker boys were the devils work anyway.
    “How many of these do you have here?”
    “Ten or so. Why?”
    “Would it be alright if you pulled a few more of them out?”
    I don’t want to force her hand or make her feel obligated to read her private words from back then, but I’m thinking with as dark as I remember things being growing up, what I know is waiting for me in those journals even though it’s been years since I’ve read them, I’m gonna need a little bit of her to balance it out.
    Keep me above the tide.
    “Sure. It’s not like they’re state secrets or something, Kayden. A whole lot of random gibberish with some pretty cool thoughts in between, sure. But not anything I haven’t wanted to share with you.”
    Shifting my body, I move back on the bed, stopping when I feel my back hit the headboard. Leaning forward, I pull a couple of the pillows up, situating them behind my back and when I’m sure I’m comfortable, pat the spot beside me.
    “Since we’re already here, and here is where I was when I wrote a lot of things, maybe we can do it here?”
    Nodding her head, she slips off the bed and heads for the door, turning and lifting up a hand before heading out of the room, the pattering of her socked feet hitting the floor as she heads back into the living room to grab my journal, like music to my ears.
    The opposite of the harsher, lead footed sound that used to accompany my father, mother and then Dean as they stomped their way angrily around the house. Belle, with something as simple as the sound of her feet across a carpet taking years of horror and replacing them with happiness.
    Creating what should be instead of what was.
    After a few seconds of staring up at the ceiling and then taking in the rest of the room, she slips back through the door, but where I expect her to saunter to the bed slowly and slip in beside me, she dives onto the bed in a fit of laughter, crawling across the mattress until she’s curling herself around me.
    Placing the book of horrors in my lap before reaching up and pressing her lips to my cheek gently.
    “I hope this answers your question.” She whispers against my face and with a slow nod, I turn my attention to the book.  Sucking in yet another breath in preparation of what I’m about to find next. Knowing that whatever the next memory is on the page, it will be as much news to me as it is to her.
    As I begin to speak, reciting the date, her next move halts me.
    Leaning forward, she places her hands on the paper, a small gasp escaping before she lifts her head,  and even though I’ve seen it happen a million times over the last couple of years, she dazzles me with her smile.
    “I remember this!”
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
     
    July 10, 2004
     
    I didn’t know days could be like this.
    When I got up this morning and mom called down the hall telling me to get ready cause we were gonna head over to the Reagan’s place, I had no idea that what we’d end up doing would turn out to be so fun.
    Weekends always seem to go the same. At least they have for the last couple of weeks.
    When she’s sure he’s gone, she wakes me up and after sliding a bowl of cereal across the bar and letting me wash it down with some orange juice, we go over to see Belle and her mom. Locked up inside while they talk and Belle and I come up with things to do.
    Rain does that.
    Ruins things.
    I don’t care