BREAK MY FALL CHAPTER 6

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BREAK MY FALL CHAPTER 6

Josh

I have to stop thinking about her. I have to put her out of my mind and crawl back into the dead space where I’ve been living since I came home from the war.

It really sucks when you’re trying to crawl into a bottle because you need to stop thinking about things and can’t summon the energy to get blasted. I’m tired of listening to the voice in my head, and I’m hoping to drown that little fucker.

It keeps whispering that I’ll fuck up. That I’ll say the wrong thing and everyone can look at me and see the blood and the gore and the twisted parody of humanity that I’m pretending to be. All the memories are circling tonight because I’ve met her. Abby.

Making me want to pretend I’m not a fucking monster. Making me want to forget everything that has come before, that’s made me into the half man I am today. All of it. Burning my skin again, searing my nose with the smell of blood and fire and the wild thrilling shame of it.

I head to The Pint, because I don’t keep alcohol in my apartment. That would make it too easy to sit in the dark and drink by myself. Drinking is only a problem when you hide it, right?

I’m not hiding it. No, I’m about to get fucked up in public at the only place that feels even remotely like somewhere I fit. Maybe I should ask Eli for a job. I spend enough time here.

“Ah fuck.” My BFF Caleb is sitting at the bar, shooting the shit with Eli. And by BFF, I mean a guy I wouldn’t piss on if he was on fire. The last thing I want is to listen to him chest-beating about how much action he saw downrange. How the hell can Eli tolerate that guy?

I met him here a few months back with a couple of the other vets here on campus. He’s a former West Point officer, which—unfortunately—should tell you something right there. Ninety percent of the kids who come out of West Point are normal, well-adjusted adults. Like Eli. Except that Eli was the kid leading the insurgency at West Point. Not Caleb.

No, he’s one of the ones who gets high on power and authority and forgets that there are people executing the orders he gives.

God but I hate officers like Caleb. Spineless fucks who talk about how awesome it was at war, blowing shit up. Like he gets off on the very thought of it.

And what’s nuts is that Caleb thinks we’re actually friends.

And there’s a happy mental image that I’m about to try and drown with some alcohol. I’m not in the mood to listen to Caleb on a good day, but because I need a drink, I walk up to the bar and mumble something vaguely polite and order a beer.

Praise Jesus, Caleb ducks away to the latrine.

“You going to behave tonight?” Eli asks, sliding a beer in front of me.

“I shall give it my best effort,” I say with a grin that’s about as genuine as I’m feeling right now.

He glares at me in the way that reminds me of my old first sergeant. “Think of the children. Or if nothing else, think of me having to order new bar stools if you break another one.”

Eli is a study in contradictions. He runs a bar—correction: a craft brewery—but I’m pretty sure he’s got a graduate degree from the business school here, which is one of the top business schools in the country. West Point grads tend to be clean-cut and on the tight side of uptight but he’s also sporting full sleeves of tattoos on both arms and a beard that puts the members of the local chapter of Hell’s Angels to shame.

I snort and take a long pull off the beer. It’s the perfect balm to a really odd start to the semester.

Eli changes the channel on the TV over the bar.

The newscaster’s face is polished and tight with too much plastic surgery. There’s a false somberness as he reports the latest news from the war.

FOB overrun within five hours. Seven coalition forces killed in the heavy fighting over three days in the mountains near the Pakistan border.

“Change the fucking channel.” I don’t beg. I can’t go that far. But I can’t watch this. Not tonight.

“Hang on.”

I don’t know Eli’s story but I know he doesn’t turn the war off. Doesn’t avoid it like I do. He watches the news incessantly.

But then Caleb returns.

“Hey, dude. How’s the first week of classes going?”

See? He thinks we’re friends. And when he’s not being a deliberate tool, I have to be polite. Because he’s one of Eli’s stray veterans he keeps rounding up from the local area. And we’re supposed to stick together or some shit.

“Surviving. You?” I can be polite.

“Pretty good. I’m doing an independent study with the head of the law department.” He shifts his attention to the news from Afghanistan. “Fuck man, I wish I was there right now. They wouldn’t have taken the base if I’d been in command.” He takes another pull from his beer. “We’d blow those motherfuckers to Kingdom Come. Let God sort ’em out.”

“I’m sure you would.” I try, I really try to keep the sarcasm to a minimum.

I don’t really succeed.

“What. You know what it’s like, man. The fucking charge you get when you blow one of those fuckers away.”

I take a long pull off my beer. I do know. And I do not want to fucking talk about it. “You know the Green Zone wasn’t exactly fucking Fallujah, right?”

Eli sets another beer in front of me. “Not tonight, Josh.”

“We got bombed. Every day,” Caleb says mildly.

I shrug. “Sure there were a few attacks. But for the most part, it was goddamned Disney World.”

“Disney World doesn’t have incoming mortar fires, now does it?”

I smile coldly. “From six miles away. Dude, the closest thing to tragedy at the Green Zone was the Olympic swimming pool running out of chlorine tablets.”

“What the hell is your problem?” Caleb rounds on me. “I don’t have enough PTSD or something?”

I down the rest of my beer. “You know, I came in here to grab a beer, not listen to some prima donna officer bitch jack off to bullshit war stories.”

“Oh, come on. You know you liked it. Everyone fucking likes blowing shit up.”

I did like it. And that’s ninety percent of the fucking problem.

I’ve never felt so alone when surrounded by so many people.

I push away from the bar. “I gotta go.” I slap money on the counter. “You should really clean the place up,” I say to Eli. “Keep enough guys around who are as full of shit as this guy, real vets will start to stay away.”

I just need some space. Some air. Some fucking perspective on why I can’t ever seem to control my fucking temper.

I am at one of the top schools in the country. I am surrounded by expensive cars and old money and I have never felt more out of place in my life. And yes, that includes when I was in Iraq.

I look down at my hands as I step outside into the cool North Carolina night, lean against the damp brick wall and try to catch my breath.

All I can see is the blood beneath my nails. The red painting my skin again. The burning shame as the memory of the excitement mixes with the pure horror of what I’ve done.

I can’t see the stars, but the moon is bright enough that it penetrates the illumination from the streetlights.

I start walking. Down the silent, dark street illuminated by flickering overhead lamps.

The voice in my head is silent now. Leaving me alone in the darkness as I walk toward my tiny loft.

Except that I don’t end up at my place.

I end up in the glittering, polished foyer of the Baywater. I have no business here. I shouldn’t have come.

But I’m here now, standing in the middle of so much wealth and class I feel like I am a speck of dirt dragged in from the outside on the bottom of someone’s five hundred-dollar shoes.

I’m tainting this place with my very presence. And still, I cannot leave.

There is a dinner party in one of the rooms. Which has its own name, apparently: The Winston Bonaparte room. I watch them for a while, trying to figure out what to say, what to do, why I’m here.

It is a long moment before I see her.

Abby.

She doesn’t notice me. I can stand there, silently, and just watch her move. There is a fluidity in how she moves with an easy grace and class that I will never have. She smiles at a man wearing an expensive suit and tie. He’s clean shaven, and I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t have any tattoos or scars from a war he never even thought about fighting in.

I need to go before Abby notices me. I don’t belong here.

Not like she does.

But if I’m honest with myself, she is the reason I am here. She’s a beacon in the darkness, drawing me closer to something I have given up wanting.

She stops short when she sees me.

There is no smile in her eyes. No warmth. I don’t have the words to explain to her why I’m here.

But as much as I can’t explain why I’m here, I also can’t walk away. I have no business here. I have no business talking to her.

I can’t protect her from me. I can’t even protect myself.

But I cannot walk away.

Abby

My shift has been extra magical tonight, and by extra magical I mean slammed busy. Which is fine. I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t actually know how to sit still. I’m always moving. I thrive on being busy, which is strange considering I’m in the South and things tend to move a bit slower around here.

I’m waiting on a table of the dean of the business school and his polished and manicured guest. The woman on the guest’s arm looks like she could be his daughter but I learned early on not to make assumptions about those sorts of things here. I make small talk and smile, not really hearing what the dean or his guest are saying.

The moment I see Josh, though, everything else falls away. Their noise, their needs. Everything I am is focused on Josh.

He is darkness and shadows near the edge of the dim light. He doesn’t even pretend he’s not watching me. It does something to my insides as I meet his eyes and refuse to look away.

In the shadows, his eyes look almost black. His face is sharper, more angled, the stubble on his jaw darker.

He stands out. I think he always will, no matter where he is. He’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up, exposing his thick forearms. There is writing on his forearms. Big, black letters that blend into the shadows so I cannot read them.

The men who frequent this place do not get tattoos. At least not visible ones. No, these men have polished hands and pressed shirts and impeccable manners.

They don’t stand in the doorway, staring.

No, Josh is none of those things. He’s not polished and he’s not pressed.

Graham slides up beside me and, of course, he has noticed exactly who I’m watching. “Oh, look who’s back,” Graham murmurs. “Do you have any condoms?”

I lift one brow and try to pretend that I don’t actually know who we’re talking about. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t even try it,” Graham says, patting my cheek. “What did you call him the other morning? Mr. Tall, Dark & Depressed?”

“I thought it was Tall, Dark and Psychotic? And didn’t we also agreed that he was bad news?”

Graham is a good egg. The kind of guy friend that every girl needs. When Robert the Douche ripped my heart out, it was Graham who sat up with me, throwing darts at a picture of Robert and eating coffee ice cream and making me laugh until my sides hurt.

Until I was no longer sad and hurt.

“You talked about him being bad news. I, however, chatted him up after you left and I think you should spend some more time on the dark side of life. Oh, and Mr. Sexy and Brooding over there looks like he could rock your world in a shake-the-dust-off kind of way.”

I roll my eyes at Graham’s reference. He’s more concerned about my girl parts getting appropriate amounts of attention than I am these days.

Smiling despite myself, I shake my head and walk away. Graham doesn’t understand the way I’m wired. He’s always been so sure of who he is.

He’s never doubted that the people in his life love him for who he is, not despite of it. And that’s saying something considering he came out to his evangelical parents when he was sixteen.

Because I cannot stay away, I make my way to where Josh is still cloaked in shadows. “What can I get for you?”

All business. That’s the only way through this interaction. I have to keep some distance between us. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am to risk screwing it up over a guy. Again.

He looks at me silently, letting the quiet wrap around us until I’m sure we’re the only two people in the world. Now that I’m closer, his eyes change from dark and hidden in shadows to light, light green. So light they’re almost clear. I’ve never seen a man’s eyes change color before. It’s fascinating. They stand out even in the dim lighting of the Baywater. And he’s got ridiculously dark lashes. He probably doesn’t even realize what that does to the ladies.

I take that back. He probably does. Guys like him always end up with girls like Parker throwing themselves at him. They’re both lucky enough to have those options. And yeah, I’m a little jealous over the carefree way I imagine him having sex. With Parker.

His penis probably never lacks for company.

I almost smile at the decidedly not business train of thought. But then I realize that he is watching me, silent and unmoving.

“Are you going to speak?” I finally ask. “Or are we going to stare at each other until one of us blinks?”

His lips twitch, and I really don’t need to focus on his bottom lip again.

“You never stand at the bar and bullshit with the other waiters. You’re always busy.” His voice is warm and smooth, not rough and slurring like that night at the bar. Nor is he fierce and solid like he was in class. No, he is something different now.

“Aren’t you the observant one?” I brace my hip against the solid wood door. The cut above his eye is almost healed. “No bar fights tonight?”

“Almost.” He tips his chin. “Tried getting a drink, but the company at my usual watering hole isn’t very appealing this evening.”

“Sounds like you were avoiding unpleasant company.”

His mouth curves into a smile then and it’s kind of overwhelming how it transforms him. The hard edges melt away and his eyes crinkle at the edges.

“Pretty perceptive, aren’t you,” he says.

I frown but I’m smiling when I shake my head. “It goes with the territory.”

He lifts one broad shoulder and I can’t help but notice the way his neck moves. I’ve always been attracted to strong men. Which is part of the problem, because guys who spend too much time in the gym are generally overcompensating for either an underdeveloped sense of self or a small penis. Sometimes both. It’s hard to decouple which way the causal arrow goes.

But I should not be letting the butterflies in my stomach entertain ideas about Josh Douglas. He’s trouble. He might be dark and compelling and incredibly sexy, but he’s trouble nonetheless.

And wow, can I think about something that is not tangentially related to my lack of a sex life? Graham would be so proud.

Josh swallows but says nothing. Again his neck moves, and all my attention zeroes in on the way his skin slides over the muscles.

Down, girl.

He shifts and folds his arms over his chest.

I reach out.

It’s a stupid thing. But my curiosity has gotten the best of me. I urge his arm over so I can see the letters those thick black lines form. Both of his forearms are extended now, allowing me to read the stark black letters.

“For I am my brother’s keeper,” I whisper, reading the words spelled out across the inside of his arms. He shivers beneath my touch. “You didn’t strike me as particularly religious.”

“I’m not.”

“This is a line from the Bible. The book of Genesis, I think.”

His eyes have darkened but he hasn’t pulled away, leaving his arm resting in my palm.

“The verse references when God asks Cain about his brother Abel.” He grinds his teeth, the muscles in his jaw pulsing, his shoulders tense. “I modified it a little bit.”

I trace my nail over the word “keeper.” “Are you?” I whisper. I am terrified by the powerful want drawing me closer to him.

“Not a very good one.” His words are thick and rough. Laced with something I cannot possibly understand.

I swallow because the way he’s looking at me…no one has ever looked at me like that before. Like I’m needed. Like I matter. Not what I can do for someone else, but just for me.

It’s a stupid craving. A holdover from a time when I was less aware of how the world really works.

There’s a flash of disappointment in his eyes. Only a moment and then it’s gone but I’ve been watching people long enough that I notice. What the hell could he be disappointed about?

“Do you get a break?”

“In about a half hour.” I glance at my watch. “Are you okay?” I finally ask.

He looks down at my hands, then back up at me. It is strange to be talking to someone and not being mentally undressed. “I don’t know.”

I think that is the most honest answer anyone has ever given me. And I have no idea what to do with it.

I’m no stranger to really bad shit. It’s just that it’s usually something I can handle. College drama, mostly, since I’ve been here. But back home? Before Dad died and my mom started on the not-so-brief period that we don’t talk about? Yeah, sometimes those memories creep in, like they’re doing right now.

But Josh is not my nightmare.

At the very least, he deserves a chance to disappoint me all on his own.

I meet his gaze and there is an intensity in his eyes that draws me closer to the flame.

And despite the fear, despite the uncertainty, I am one step closer to the fire.

**ONE CLICK BREAK MY FALL**