Falling for Colton (Falling #5) (28 page)

Back to my life.

Away from her, away from this place.

Somehow, the thought of leaving her doesn’t sit well with me.
 

I glance away, and see Mrs. Hawthorne standing in the open back door of the church. Looking at me, looking at Nell.
 

“Shit. Guess it’s time to go.” I gesture at her, and Nell nods.
 

She sighs. Glances at me. Eyes wide and pleading. “Can I ride with you?”
 

I don’t understand the question, even though it’s obvious and simple. She messes with my head. “Ride with me?”

“To the cemetery. They’ll…want to talk. Ask me questions. I can’t…I just can’t.” She’s shaking again. Eyeing her mother as if she’s the last person on earth she wants to be around. As if the thought of a car ride with her mother is just too much.

I pinch off the cherry of the cigarette, stamp it out, pocket the butt—these are beautiful grounds, no reason to litter. “Sure.” I shrug. “Come on.”

I open the passenger door for her; hold her soft small hand to help her climb up onto the chrome step and into the truck. It’s a massive beast, Carl’s truck. Knobby off-road tires, jacked-up suspension, diesel exhaust pipes sticking up behind the cab. It’s got mad torque, a wicked diesel snarl to it. Not my thing, but still pretty badass. And Nell looks sexy as hell in her wet dress, climbing up into it.

What the hell am I thinking? Jesus, I’m an asshole. Such a fucking dick. I let go of her hand as soon as I can, wipe my hand on my leg to smear away the sensation of her hand in mine.

It felt too right, and that’s
way
too wrong.
 

I turn over the ignition, setting the gargantuan engine to rumbling. “Barton Hollow” comes on, by The Civil Wars, kicking in where it cut off when I stopped the truck. It’s a damn good song, so I leave it on. Maybe she’ll like it. I don’t know. I don’t expect the reaction I see in her as I back out, though. It’s a visceral reaction, like she’s been hit in the gut. I start the song over, and drive in silence. Let the playlist from my USB stick take over. They’re all songs I’m learning to play, and I use them when I busk. Good folksy songs that have meaningful lyrics, and melodies that translate well to acoustic covers.
 

I can tell Nell is caught up in the music, so I leave her to it. Let her ride the music, because sometimes you just have to get swept away, let it give you a moment of not feeling, not thinking, a moment when all that matters is the music.

We’re at the cemetery all too soon. I hop out and come around to help her down. We stand there, in the gravel parking lot of the rural cemetery, in the rain, our eyes locked. I can’t look away. I try, but I can’t look away. I give myself a moment to just look at her, to memorize what perfection looks like, because this is the closest to it I’ll ever get.
 

I realize we’re still holding hands.
 

I let go. Let out a sigh. “Let’s do this.” Reminding both her and myself why we’re here.

She looks like she’s about to bolt. This, burying Kyle, she’d rather die than do this. The church, that was just a service. Meaningless in the face of this kind of grief. But seeing that casket sink into the soil, watching dirt cover it, knowing the possessor of your love lies in the box, knowing it’s really real…that they’re really gone? That’s impossible to do, but you have to do it anyway.

I walk in front of her to the awning covering the casket and the burial plot. I feel her behind me. Maybe following me will help her do what she needs to do.
 

The casket is closed, now. I never saw him in it. Didn’t want to. Couldn’t. It’s better to remember him as the kid out in the yard, tossing the football up in the air and catching it himself, floppy black hair in his eyes. Smiling, happy, alive. Carefree. He’d be a stranger in that box, if I saw him.
 

I stop, off to one side as Nell goes up to the casket. All eyes are on her. She tries to turn away from the casket, as if it’s too much, as if she just can’t do it. Which I totally get. I almost didn’t make it up to India’s grave, that day. Split had to prop me up, push me, carry me. The spike of Nell’s heel catches in the grass, and she stumbles. I catch her, right her, let go.
 

Even that brief touch is irrevocably electric.
 

There’s a basket of blood-red roses near the grave.
 

A minister in black with a white collar stands up and performs the burial service. He quotes the Bible, talks about loss and finding comfort in Jesus.
 

I wonder if anyone is actually listening to him.
 

Certainly not Nell. She’s gone—she’s lost in thought. She stares at the casket, barely containing her tears. She’s riding a fresh wave of grief, holding back the crest.
 

When the pastor finishes, there’s a long silence. Everyone is waiting for Nell to throw the first flower on the casket. You’d think it’d be Mom or Dad, but they wait for her. The love, the loss, the grief, everyone just instinctively gives way to Nell, to the massive presence of her pain.
 

She stumbles up to the casket, takes a rose in trembling fingers as the casket is lowered into the ground. She’s breathing hard, as if it is physically exhausting just to be alive without him, to survive the loss, to contain the grief she clearly won’t let herself express. It’s heart-rending.
 

She has to let it out or it’ll kill her; I know this personally to be true.

She tosses in the rose and whispers something meant only for Kyle. Then she turns, trips, kicks off her shoes and leaves them in the grass. Then she runs, sprints barefoot, wild and desperate.
 

For a moment, no one knows what to do. Everyone just watches her go.
 

“Let her go,” Nell’s dad says. “She knows the way home. She needs time alone.”
 

No one goes after her, which is just…fucking stupid.
 

I toss my flower in, stare in mental and physical silence at the casket, not even knowing how to say goodbye to the brother I never really knew.
 

And then I jog after Nell.
 

Her parents are fighting, her mom clearly demanding that her father go after Nell. He should, and he does. He gets in his fancy-ass Mercedes SUV and drives after her.
 

I don’t bother with the truck—I’d rather run. The rain feels good. And something tells me Nell needs to run. After a mile or so, I catch up to Nell, who’s running crazily. Her arm is bound in a thick cast, which can’t feel good; the jostling and jouncing has to hurt that broken arm like a bitch. I see her dad cruising beside her; see him leaning out the open window, pleading with her. Hear his voice, and her mom’s. Nell just shakes her head and keeps running. Barefoot on a dirt road. Tripping on rocks.
 

They pull away. Clearly, they’re just gonna let her run.

Another car pulls past me and slows next to Nell. It’s that kid, Jason.
 

Eventually, he drives away, too.

I’m not a runner, but I keep pace with her. When it’s clear no one else is going after her, I pick up my pace and run just behind her. She knows I’m here.
 

She ignores me and that’s just fine. As long as she knows I’m here.
 

We’re not quite a mile from our street when she steps on a big rock and rolls her ankle.
 

I catch her. Lift her in my arms. I’m gasping for breath, and I’ve got a charley-horse in my thigh, but I carry her.
 

“I can walk,” she insists, so I let her down.
 

Except she can’t, her ankle gives out and she has to hop for balance. She’s tough, determined. She continues to hop, not putting any weight on that ankle.
 

“Let me carry you, Nell,” I say. My voice is gruff, rough. I want her in my arms. She belongs there. But that is not going to happen. It’s stupid, it’s wrong, it’s fucking horrible of me to even think it. But it’s also true.
 

“No.” Her voice is so full of determination it makes me shake my head in wonder.

And then she puts her weight on that ankle, walks normally, as if she didn’t just sprain her ankle. Damned impossible. Shouldn’t be walking. Should be limping. But she doesn’t. The pain has to be unbearable. But she pushes through it. All I can do is follow her, letting her make her own way. I want to scoop her up, but she’d hate me for that. So I follow her, amazed at her pain tolerance, her toughness, and her fortitude.
 

She’s crying. Her hair is loose from the pins, and it’s falling around the front of her face, obscuring her features. Although I can’t see them, I can just tell…tears are trickling down her face, mingling with the rain.
 

I ache for her.
 

I walk her home; make sure she gets into her house, where her parents can look after her.
 

They offer me their condolences, and I leave. I head back to my house and stalk past my parents up to my old room. I leave them to their grief. They don’t need me here to witness it, they don’t even want me here. I’m a stranger, an intruder.
 

* * *

Somehow, the rest of the day passes, and I sleep a little. I wake up at three in the morning, thinking of India, thinking of Kyle, missing India, hating myself, aching inside. I grab my guitar, Frank’s old acoustic Taylor that Frankie insisted I keep. I grab the liquor and the beer and my smokes and head out to the deck. I sit in the old wooden Adirondack chair, watch the moon ripple on the water, and drink whiskey, chase it with beer, pluck at the guitar. Hum under my breath.

At some point, I realize Nell is on the deck with me. Barefoot. Wearing a big hoodie that must have been Kyle’s, judging by the fit and by the way she huddles into it, as if hoping he’ll speak to her through the soft old cotton.

We drink, smoke, and chat. It’s idle chatter, but I’m watching her. I know she’s still holding it in. The grief, the ache, the pain.
 

“You can’t hold it in forever,” I tell her, at one point.

She doesn’t blink, doesn’t falter. She knows exactly what I mean.
 

Her answer is immediate. “Yes, I can.”
 

“You’ll go crazy. It’ll come out, one way or another.” I know that from experience. I held it in, about India. I bled it out, cut it out of me. Eventually, I just had to face it, feel it, own it, and move on.

I’m still feeling it. Still healing. Still learning to live without her.
 

“Better crazy than broken,” she says.

I can’t argue with that.
 

So we drink, and I play. Sing. It’s all I know how to do, the only thing I have to offer. I play Mumford, Simon & Garfunkel, Iron & Wine, City and Colour. Everything I know, I play. Eventually, there’s nothing left, just the need to keep putting what I feel into music. It’s the only way I know to grieve, I think.

So I play for Kyle.
 

There are no words, it’s not really a song, just notes that come out of the guitar on their own, as if I’m just a vessel. It’s a goodbye for my kid brother.
 

And something about that song just…fucking breaks her.

She lunges off the chair; hobbling on her fucked-up ankle, arm in a cast awkwardly waving for balance as she hobbles off the deck. I don’t even know where she’s going, and I don’t think she does either. She’s choking on sobs, still trying to keep it in. She stumbles off the deck and collapses into the sand at the water’s edge.
 

I put the guitar down and crouch beside her, not daring to touch her.

“Leave me alone,” she snarls.
 

She doesn’t want comfort, doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.

“Let go, Nell,” I tell her. “Just let it out.”
 

“I
can’t
.” It’s a broken whisper.

“No one will know,” I tell her. I know the embarrassment of grief. “It’ll be our little secret.” That sounds so paltry, but I’m no good with this shit, with being sensitive and comforting.

She just shakes her head.
 

She’s got sand on her lips. I want to brush it away, but I don’t.

Her breathing goes ragged, sucking oxygen past the grief, losing the battle against the pain.
 

The first sob is the worst. It’s like the whole world is grieving through her vocal chords. I can’t not touch her. I put my hand on her back, her shoulder, an innocent touch just so she knows I’m here. She writhes away, but I know she needs the reminder that she’s not alone. She’ll get lost in it, if she doesn’t have that grounding.
 

I know that from experience too.

There’s nothing to say, so I say nothing. Just sit beside her as she cries.
 

She tries to stuff it back down, of course. Tries to stand up, and can’t. So I lift her to her feet. Her ankle gives out, she cries out with pain, and she falls into me.
 

I catch her, hold her. Inhale her scent. The smell of woman, shampoo and soap and a bit of perfume.

I let myself hold her. I pretend, just for a single instant in time, that this is okay. That this is allowed. It’s not, but I pretend anyway. I try to tell myself that I’m doing what anyone would do in my position—I’m comforting my dead brother’s girlfriend. But I know it’s so much more than that, and I feel guilty as shit for it.
 

But I don’t stop.

I don’t know how it happens. One second the top of her head is under my chin, and I’m smelling the shampoo in her silken copper hair, holding her body against mine, pretending this isn’t wrong on so many levels. And then, the next moment, she’s staring up at me, and the universe is in her eyes, those goddamned mesmerizing gray-green eyes that seem to know me better than I know myself.
 

She’s falling into me; I’m falling into her.
 

Her lips touch mine. God, I can’t stop it. It’s magnetic. Tidal. Galaxies are colliding. Her lips are soft, sweet, tasting of Jameson.