Falling Away (9 page)

It’s a kiss I don’t want to break away from. Usually, a kiss is nothing more than a gateway to sex, a way to ease into nudity and penetration. But this is different. He’s in no rush, kissing me slowly, thoroughly. His mouth explores mine, learns my kiss and my response. His tongue teases mine, flicking out against my teeth and tongue and then retreating until I’m hungry for his tongue inside my mouth, eager for it, demanding it, tasting the inside of his mouth and exploring his hard body and thick muscles and taut flesh.

His hands skim over my belly and roam the centimeters beneath my bra, sliding closer but not daring to touch. I don’t want this to stop. I need this. I’m sober and doing this with my eyes wide open. I know this won’t solve anything, and I’m not trying to use him as a salve or a rebound. I’m doing this because I want his body, because in the few short hours I’ve known him, I’ve grown to enjoy his presence and his personality. I don’t know where this will go, after tonight, and I don’t care. I just want
now
. I want his hands and his mouth and all of him, for as long as I can have him.
 

I push his shirt up and rip it off, toss it aside, and let my hands explore his body. God, he’s ripped. He’s not heavily muscled in a beefcake sort of way, he’s more cut and toned and defined. He’s
big
, though. Over six feet tall, easily, and probably weighs a good two hundred pounds of solid muscle.
 

I try to slow myself down, to delve back down into the kiss, to let my hands learn his torso, explore the mountain-ridge of his shoulders and the valleys of his abs and the thick iron of his arms. My hand slides from his shoulder to his bicep, clutches the bulging muscle, and then down his forearm, and then our hands are palm-to-palm, and then his fingers are curling between mine.

And the rightness of my hand tangled in his changes everything. It’s simple, natural, and scary. It takes my breath away, and I have to break the kiss, touch my forehead to his and gasp for oxygen, and I realize we’re both staring at our joined hands.

I pull away to look into his eyes, and I see the familiar weltering turmoil in his liquid brown gaze.
 

My free hand, resting on his shoulder, lifts seemingly of its own accord to touch the stubble on his cheek, and my thumb traces the shell of his ear. His gaze is intense and unwavering and indecipherable.
 

And then I’m attacking him, mouth hungry against his and we’re twisting and he’s falling backward onto the couch cushions, bringing me with him as we go horizontal. He’s a hard presence beneath me, and I can feel his erection thick at my stomach. His hands curl over my shoulders, hesitate, and then slide down my back, over my spine until they pause again at the swell of my ass, and I can only wonder why he’s hesitating, why he doesn’t take what I’m so obviously offering.
 

He breaks the kiss, his fingers digging into my skin. “Echo…wait.” There’s pain in his voice alongside the heaviness of need. He doesn’t want to wait any more than I do, but something is holding him back.

I move off him, and since he’s taking up the entire couch all I can do is slide to the floor beside him. But I can’t bring myself to break contact entirely, so I leave my hand on his chest and examine his face, hunting for clues.

“What, Ben? Did I misread the situation or something?”

He shakes his head. “No…yes.” He sits up abruptly, one foot going to the floor near me, the other, his hurt leg, extended out in front of him. He runs his hands over his scalp, through his hair. “I just…I can’t.”
 

“Why?” I ask.

He only shakes his head, as if he can’t or won’t explain.
   

I grab his hand. “Ben. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“Don’t ask, Echo. Just…don’t. Please. I need…I need a minute.” He scoots forward and swings his other foot to the floor, struggles forward and to his feet, hopping to keep his weight off his injured knee.
 

I watch him leave through the back door, one hand on his cane, the other rubbing the back of his neck and scrubbing through his hair over and over. He’s out in the long deep shadows cast by the moon and the lights from apartments and the lone orange lamp suspended from a power line over the courtyard.
 

What do I do? Let him go? Respect his privacy?
 

Fuck that.
 

I go after him.

SIX: How It Happened

Ben

Everything inside me is at war. My body wants one thing, my mind something else, my heart a different thing yet. And that’s all aside from the guilt.
 

God, the guilt.

I can still feel Echo’s lips on mine, feel her hands on my skin lifting my shirt up and off, feel her soft lush sexy body on mine, on top of me, kissing me and demanding more, attacking me and exploring me.
 

And holy
fuck
do I want her. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone. Or…almost anyone.

My heart aches, telling me I’m not over Kylie, telling me Echo is a rebound, telling me I’m still a fucking mess and I’m reaching out for anything to calm the furious emptiness inside of me. And my mind is telling me Echo is using me as a way to avoid dealing with her grief, and it’s telling me that if she knew what Cheyenne had been doing out at two-thirty in the morning…if she knew what had happened moments before the crash…

I have to get away from her. I can’t think when she’s right here beside me, when I can smell the shampoo on her blond hair and the soap on her skin and the beer on her breath, when I can feel the heat radiating off her tanned silky flesh. I can’t think when she kisses me, can’t manage anything but to kiss her back and kiss her hard and beg silently for more.
 

I find myself out in the parking lot, leaning over the hood of my truck. I’m gasping for breath because I walked too fast and the pain in my knee is excruciating.
 

I don’t hear Echo approach. She’s just there, behind me. I feel her hands on my back, and then she’s leaning her backside against the bumper, one hand on my shoulder, comforting me even though she had no clue why I bolted.
 

“Ben?” Her voice is soft and low with a musical lilt to it.
 

I don’t even know how to respond or where to start, because I don’t want to tell her anything. I don’t want her to know. I don’t know how to go about baring all my secrets. So I don’t respond at all, which is just shitty as hell on my part.
 

She waits, and then twists and leans sideways against the hood, ducking down to try and catch my eye. “Benji?”

Oh hell no. That name…it hurts so bad, but coming from her it’s new and strange and sweet and I can’t help but shift my gaze to hers. “I’m sorry, Echo.”
 

“What’s wrong, Ben?”

I shake my head. “It’s—just me.”

“Look, you’ve got to give me something here, dude. You can’t kiss me like that, and then just…shut down.” She sidles closer, bumps me with her hip. Her hand is warm and small on my bare back, sliding in soothing circles. “I mean, I know I didn’t imagine that. I know we don’t know each other very well, but a kiss like that…we’ve got serious chemistry, if nothing else.”
 

“Don’t ask, Echo. Just don’t. You don’t want to know.”
 

“Yeah, okay,” she says, her voice dripping thickly with sarcasm. “Let me just pretend nothing happened real quick…oh, wait, no. I can’t. So yeah, I am asking, because I do want to know.”
 

“What if I don’t want to tell?” I ask, my voice harsh now, unfairly so.
 

I pivot and walk away again, because I’m a coward, apparently. Back to my apartment, snatch my shirt and put it on, snag another beer and go out my front door and sit on the low step. A few seconds later, Echo is sitting beside me, a beer in her hand.
 

“Well, now I’m
really
curious,” she says. “So you’re gonna have to tell me something.”

I guess I might as well get it over with, let it out.
 

I sigh. “It happened right over there.” I point with my cane at the intersection, the left turn lane.
 

“What did?”

I swallow hard, set down my beer before I drop it. “The accident. Your mom’s accident.”

“Wh—
what?
” She’s up and backing away, off the step and into the grass. She looks at me, and then twists and looks at the intersection. “What do you mean, Ben? How—? I don’t even know what to ask. What was she doing here?”

I look up at her, because she deserves to see my eyes and see the truth. “She’d…she gave me a ride home after my session. I usually took the bus, but I’d tripped during therapy and my knee was hurting too bad to even walk to the bus. So she drove me home.”

Echo is as still as a statue, staring at me, her brows pinched together, a million emotions warring on her face. “But…they said she died at—in the middle of the night. At like two-something, or three.”

“Two-thirty-six. She died at two-thirty-six.” It comes out as a whisper.

“How do you know? Why was she here, Ben?” Suspicion, now. The beginnings of anger.
 

“It’s not what you think—”

She crosses the space between us in a few short angry steps, crouches in front of me, hands on my knees. “Then what was it, Ben? If it’s not what I think, then what the
fuck
is it?”
 

I swallow hard, clench my fists. “She was my friend. She…I’m alone here, you know? And I’d just gotten injured, my knee…” I rub at my knee. “Football is all I know. And I’d just found it was over, that I’d never play again. She’d told me about how she’d been a dancer, how she screwed up her ankle and had to stop dancing competitively. I guess it was something we had in common.”

She shakes her head. “No. Ben…come on, no. No.” Her hand covers her mouth, her eyes shining with tears.

“She dropped me off, and I—I asked her if she wanted to come in. We watched a movie. That’s it. That’s it. I swear.”
 

“Jesus, Ben. That’s my
mother
.”

“I know. God, I know.” I try to look at her, meet her eyes, but she shakes her head again and backs up, falls to her ass. “But I told you, we watched a movie and that’s it. We both fell asleep on the couch, and then she left.”

Echo’s eyes pierce me, pin me in place. “You’re lying. You’re fucking
lying
to me. Don’t lie to me!”

I push myself to my feet; walk past her, toward the street and the intersection. I stop at the curb and stare out at the left turn lane, the light shining red. “I’m not lying.”

She’s there beside me because I can’t seem to get away from her. “There’s something else. I fucking feel it, Ben.” She grabs my arms and turns me, stands chest-to-chest with me, looking up at me, her hands on my biceps. Her brown-gray-green eyes plead with me for the truth. “What happened, Ben? Just…just tell me exactly what happened. Please.”

I don’t know how to tell it. I don’t. I swallow hard and sigh hard and think hard. “I…we…we almost kissed.”
 

Echo doesn’t move away, doesn’t let go of my arms. She just blinks up at me. “What? What do you mean, ‘almost kissed’?”

I duck my head and stare at the green grass beneath my bare feet. “We fell asleep, I told you that. When we woke up, there was this…moment…Cheyenne and I—we…almost kissed. We didn’t, though. She…she backed off and said she couldn’t. Because I was her client, and because she had a daughter my age.” I try to breathe, try to force words past my lips. “She got up to leave, and I could tell she was tired. I didn’t want her to go, because I could tell how sleepy she was. I was worried for her. She tripped, walking out the door, and I tried to get her to stay, and I swear it was just to keep her safe, to keep anything bad from happening. In the doorway, she stopped and turned around, and that moment almost happened again, but she repeated what she’d already said, that she couldn’t, that it just wasn’t right. She couldn’t. And I got it. I really did. And it was more than that…because I was so lonely and had been for so long, and with everything else I’ve—she was my only friend, and she was…your mother was a beautiful woman, Echo. A beautiful person. And…I tried to keep her from leaving, but she said she was fine, she’d be fine.” My voice breaks, there.

“Fuck. Ben…you almost kissed my mother? My
mom?
And then you kiss
me?
”

“Now you get why I stopped.” I choke out the words. “I watched her drive away. I stood right here on this step and watched her pull up in that left turn lane. The light was red, and I watched her car sit there until it turned green. The whole intersection was empty. I mean, it was two-thirty in the morning, and she was so tired…so she didn’t check for oncoming traffic. She just went. And this car…this red Mustang. It ran the light. It just…it didn’t even slow down, even though the light had been red for so long, you know? And…and fuck, I watched it happen. I watched that Mustang smash into her door. It came from her left. I don’t know how she didn’t see it. I saw it happen. I saw her door just…crumple. Saw her truck roll, and I ran over to where she was, and she was already—already dead.”

Echo just stares at me. “Ben…” she whispers, her voice cracking.

I shake my head. “I tried to stop her from leaving. I tried, Echo. I fucking…I couldn’t do anything—” I can’t take her silence, can’t take the agony in her eyes, can’t take the weight of my own guilt. “I’m sorry, Echo. I know that doesn’t mean shit, but…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Echo blinks, then scoots on her backside away from me, and I know how truly I deserve the anger in her eyes. She stands up, stumbles, rights herself. “I need…I need to think. I’ve got to—I’ve got to go.” She starts walking, just walks away.

I force myself to my feet. “Echo. Wait.” She stops but doesn’t turn to look at me. I go inside and get my keys, bring them back out to where Echo is waiting. “Here. Take my truck.”
 

“I don’t know where I’m going—” She has the keys clutched in her hand, though. “I don’t know where I’m going, or when I’ll—I just need to think—I can’t be around you right now. I’m too upset.”