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BREAK MY FALL CHAPTER 9
Josh
I didn’t actually have a plan when I walked up to Abby. I just saw her sitting there and was hit with a sense of longing, a sense of being found that was so strong, so compelling, there was little I could have done to ignore it.
I can’t stop thinking about the way she felt beneath my lips. The way she yielded beneath my touch as I kissed her. And when she’d opened, just a little, the want inside me damn near dropped me to my knees. She made me miss things I’d given up on. Things I thought I’d made peace with, the way my life had turned out.
I was wrong.
I hadn’t meant to kiss her. To think about her. To start looking for her in a crowd. It had just kind of happened. Kind of like how I’d ended up at the Baywater to begin with.
My small obsession isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But given that she just told me she was checking out my sweet ass, and then I caught her doing exactly that, my day was looking up.
It felt good to tease her. Like I was stepping into the sunshine after a long grey period. It had been so long since I’d been around a female who I was genuinely attracted to. I don’t count the bullshit hookups back at Hood. Or my stalker.
I order coffee, and because I have no idea what she might actually want, I stuff a bunch of cream and sugar in my pocket. I count to one hundred before I go back to where she’s sitting.
“I managed to stay away for five minutes.” I set the coffee down next to her computer. “Was it long enough?”
She looks away from her computer at me. Her eyes are liquid gold in the light, lined with a darker sable ring. And yeah, I’ve got it fucking bad if I’m noticing her irises.
If I close my eyes, I can see her standing next to me at the bar, her eyes dark and concerned. As though I mattered.
Like she really saw me and not the pretense I’ve been showing the world since I got back from the war.
She glances at the coffee cup in my hand. “What if I don’t drink coffee?”
“Well, ah…I hope you’ll be polite and drink it anyway because, otherwise, my notoriously fragile male ego might shatter into a thousand pieces. I might never recover from the rejection.” I dump the cream and sugar packets on the table then look up at her, suddenly deeply unsure that I might have offended her. “Do you drink coffee?”
She laughs, and it’s a full laugh, not some insipid giggle.
“Yeah, Josh, I drink coffee.” She opens a creamer. “Thank you for this.”
“Well, if your night was anything like mine, you’re going to have a hell of a time staying awake in Quinn’s class today.” I watch her dump all the cream and half the sugar into her coffee. “Want a little coffee with your cream?”
“You are not allowed to judge my caffeine preferences.” She points that little stir stick in my face.
“You could never be in the Army,” I say. “We can’t run without caffeine, but half the time all we have is that instant coffee creamer.”
She looks down at her coffee, her expression darkening just a little.
It takes me a second to realize what I’ve said.
Fuck. I clear my throat. “You don’t have a moral objection to soldiers or anything, do you?”
I don’t advertise that I’m a soldier. I don’t hide it, either, but some supposedly educated people have strong moral objections to the Army. Oh, everyone will smile and say “thank you for your service” and all the while be thinking we’re just poor dumb bastards who should have gone to college in the first place.
Please don’t be one of them.
“No,” she says quietly. “My dad used to drink his coffee black or with some of that fake creamer. It was so gross.”
I hesitate, unsure how we went from coffee to her father but I’m sure there’s a connection. “Used to?”
She pauses where she’s stirring her drink. “He died in the war.”
I’m not sure what shocks me more: the fact that Abby has a connection to the Army I’ve been running away from and back to at the same time, or the news that her dad died in the war.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Because there is nothing appropriate to say. Nothing that will make it okay or ease the pain.
And the pain never goes away. Ever.
Her throat moves and she intently finishes stirring her coffee. “I was little. It’s funny. I can remember the sound of his laugh. And I remember the coffee. But I have a hard time remembering what he looks like if I don’t have a picture of him.”
“Do you have one?” I’m suddenly insanely curious about her parents.
She turns her computer toward me. A pretty young white woman who looks exactly like Abby stands looking up at a powerful-looking black man in a uniform similar to Army uniforms but definitely not Army. Between them is a beautiful little girl with shiny bronze skin and a brilliant smile and curly brown hair in two poofs on the top of her head: Abby. “He was a Marine.” Not Army like I’d assumed.
“A sergeant major?”
She smiles. “He was.”
“How old were you in that picture?”
“Seven.”
“Shit, Abby.”
“Like I said, I don’t remember much about him.”
She’s being way too nonchalant about this but I can’t push her right then without being an asshole. “You look like you were happy.”
“We were.” She pauses. “You’re not going to comment on my parents?”
“What’s to comment on?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Really?”
“It’s not 1968 anymore.”
“You’re not going to give me any of that ‘I don’t see color’ bullshit, are you?” She’s trying to make light of it but I can feel the tension radiating off her now. The teasing mood from earlier is gone, and I did that by asking stupid questions.
I do the only thing I can think of. I cup her cheek gently, sliding my thumb over her beautiful dark skin. “I see you, Abby. I see everything about you.”
Her lips part. A quiet gasp. I’ve never been very good with words but at that moment, I feel like I hit a home fucking run. I can feel the shift in her. The strange transfer of energy from one tension to another.
One that draws me closer to her until her mouth is a breath from mine. I want so badly to brush my lips against hers. To taste her and see if she’ll lean a little bit closer.
I hesitate because, with Abby, I feel like I’m always one step away from fucking up royally. I lean in, slowly, so slowly, never breaking my gaze away from hers. Her pulse scatters beneath my fingertips.
I brush my lips against hers. Give her time to pull away. Time to react if this is not something she wants.
She’s fully in charge here. Fully able to rip my heart out of my chest and grind it into the ground.
But she doesn’t. For a moment, only a moment, she leans into me. Her lips brush against mine, a ghost of a sensation, the barest caress. Her breath is warm on my mouth. I want to breathe her in. Taste her.
Take her somewhere where it’s just her and just me, and I can spend all afternoon just kissing her.
Her touch is the faintest glimpse of heaven after a lifetime in hell.
Abby
I lean into him. It is all at once the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long time and the most compelling. I cannot move away. I’m not sure I want to. His hand is rough against my skin. Rough but infinitely gentle. And before I can think about what I’m doing, I open beneath his mouth and close that final distance between us.
His lips are full and smooth. I can almost feel him exhale. It’s a physical change in him, where he relaxes into me. I can’t say how I know it, but I feel it in everything that I am. I brace one hand on his thigh to keep from crashing into him and open a little more, inviting his touch, his taste.
Inviting disaster because that’s what this is.
But he’s far too tempting to walk away from. My tongue slides against his, and a tremble runs through him and into me. My breath hitches as he deepens the kiss, and I open until he is surrounding me, consuming me, and all I want to do is crawl into his lap and let the world stop around us.
He makes a warm noise in his throat, and his hand slides over my cheek and down my throat to cradle my neck. I feel cherished and such a keening sense of want that it physically burns inside me, reminding me of things I can’t have.
I gently, so gently, ease back.
“Well,” I say. “That was certainly unexpected.”
He lowers his forehead to mine and laughs.
“Jesus, you’re hell on the ego,” he whispers against my mouth. I hear an echo of something harsh and cruel that Robert said to me once, but I don’t stiffen. I refuse to let Robert into my head to ruin this.
I cup his cheek gently. “Unexpected in a good way.”
“What about in a ‘I’d like to do that again sometime’ way?” His voice is low and heavy. I can imagine him in bed, his long body pressed against mine, his words as much of a caress as his fingers or his tongue.
I close my eyes. I have a thousand reasons to hesitate. Even more to run in the opposite direction.
There are no happily ever afters for girls like me. Girls who can’t keep their mouths shut and go along with society’s expectations of what a good girl is. And it hurts, it physically hurts, to think of how this ends.
Because it will end. It always does.
“Hey?”
I open my eyes, not realizing that I hadn’t responded. “I’ve probably done irreparable damage to your ego at this point, haven’t I?”
He smiles. “I’m a little bit tougher than that. Not much, though.” He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip. “You don’t have to answer.”
I narrow my eyes then. “You’re quite the mystery, aren’t you?”
“I suppose?”
Because I can’t help it, I lean in, brushing my lips across his. “You’re like a good dream. And I don’t want to wake up.”
He grins but there is a shadow in his eyes. “There’s something to be said for good dreams.”
“That’s an odd thing to say,” I whisper against his mouth.
Josh Douglas is a craving. A want.
And he’s turning into an unhealthy distraction from my purpose here at school. Oh, I want to do this. Him. I really do. Josh has a whole lot of good going for him. And that’s before I mentally strip that shirt from his body and explore those glorious shoulders with my fingers.
He shrugs and shifts so that he’s resting his elbows on his knees. The tattoos on his forearms are more than shadows now. I am drawn to the stark lines on his skin. “Why these words?”
I swallow and physically move closer. Apparently, I’m about as subtle as an elephant in the room because he notices my eyes drop to his arms.
“You have a thing for tattoos?” he asks.
I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to resurrect anything about those memories that are circling dangerously, waiting for the right moment to strike.
“Not really.” The truth, from a certain point of view. From another point of view, though, it’s terrifyingly simple. And it’s a simplicity that I’m not ready to talk to him—or anyone—about. “I’m curious, that’s all.”
It doesn’t matter anymore. It does not get a vote on who I am anymore.
“I got them before my last deployment,” he says after a moment.
I blink rapidly, the lines on his arms blurring as a memory hits me hard. “So are you?” I look up at him. “Your brother’s keeper?”
“I was.” He swallows hard and looks away. “I’m not anymore.” He looks back at me.
“Who are you?”
He says nothing. People say you can’t change what you come from. They might be right but that doesn’t mean you have to let it define you. You don’t have to keep going back home again and taking shit from people about how much better you think you are than they are now that you’ve got an education.
And holy shit I am not doing this. I can’t wait for his response. I can’t let myself be drawn toward the darkness.
I have to focus. I have to keep moving forward before the past catches up to me and drags me back where I come from. To a place where tattoos are drunkenly etched into hard, damaged skin. Where life is nasty, brutish, and short.
I lift my laptop to my knees. “I really need to finish my assignment.” The truth, cloaked in regret. “I’m on scholarship. I have to keep my grades up.”
I don’t miss the flicker of disappointment a moment before he smiles.
It doesn’t reach his eyes.
I lick my lips, wishing I couldn’t taste him on me. I can smell him on my skin from that brief contact. And I want more, so much more.
But Robert destroyed a lot in those few months. He destroyed the façade that I’d built out of the wreckage of an out-of-place kid from southern Georgia who didn’t belong at a wealthy college. He reminded me that this is not my world and that no matter how hard I try, I will never truly fit here.
I can feel my past pulling at me, trying to drag me back down to what I was. Angry. Withdrawn. Hating the world.
I will not be that person again.
When Josh gets up to leave, I don’t stop him.
Proving that the insecure person I was is very much a part of who I am.
**ONE CLICK BREAK MY FALL**
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