Falling Into You (17 page)

Selfishly enough, I decide to go for it. I mean, I know I hate sleeping in pants, so I can’t imagine she does either. I pop the button, slide the zipper down, grip the denim at her hips and pull. She wriggles, lifts her hips, and I pull them down to her knees. The sight of her thighs and her pale cream skin is almost too much for me to take, especially with her tiny yellow thong, barely disguising the tender V in which I want so desperately to bury my face, my body. I can’t help my fingers from tracing a featherlight line across her thigh, just a brief touch, but too much. And not nearly enough.

I jerk myself away and scrub my hands over my face, through my hair, fighting for control.
 

I turn back, close my eyes and peel her jeans off the rest of the way.

As I’m in the process of pulling them past her toes, she speaks, muzzy and sleepy and ridiculously goddamn cute. “You’ve already seen me in my panties. Why the shy guy now?”

I settle the blankets at her neck, and she presses them down with her elbows on the outside, staring up at me with long fluttering lashes and tangled strawberry blond hair wisping across her perfect features. I back away before I give in to the temptation to brush the hair away with my callused fingertips. I can’t read the expression on her face. She just looks so fucking vulnerable, as if all the hurt is coming up and boiling over and she’s barely keeping it in, now that sleep has nearly claimed her.

“That was an asshole move,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. You were asleep, I didn’t want—”

“It was sweet,” she says, cutting in over me.

“I’m a lot of things, Tinkerbell. Sweet ain’t one of them.” I brush my hand through my hair, a nervous gesture. “I only closed my eyes so I wouldn’t feel you up in your sleep.”

Her eyes widen. “You wanted to feel me up?”

I don’t quite succeed in stifling my laugh of disbelief; she doesn’t understand how bad I want her. Good for her. She can’t know.
 

I take a step closer to her, next to the bed, and I just can’t summon the strength to resist. A strand of hair lays across her high, sculpted cheekbone. I brush it away, mentally cursing my weakness.

“You have no clue, Nell.” I back away before my mouth or my hands betray me further. “Sleep, and think of blue.”

She snorts. “Think of blue?”

“It’s a technique I learned to keep bad dreams away,” I tell her. “As I fall asleep, I think of blueness. Not things that are blue, just…an endless, all-encompassing sense of blue. Ocean blue, sky blue.”

“Blue like your eyes.” Her voice is unreadably soft.

I shake my head, smirking. “If that’s what brings you peace, then sure. The point is, think of a soothing color. Picture it floating through you, in you, around you, until you
are
that color.” I shrug. “It helped me.”

“What do you dream about?” Her eyes are awake, and piercing.

I turn away and flick the light off, speak facing away from her. “Nothing for you to worry about. Bad things. Old things.” I turn back to glance at her, and her eyes are heavy again. “Sleep, Nell.”

I close the door behind me, and retreat into the kitchen. It’s nearly five in the morning by this point, and I’m beyond exhausted. I was up at seven yesterday finishing a Hemi rebuild, and the guys are going to be here to start working on the ‘Stang around eight. I end up writing a note and leaving it taped to the frame, saying I won’t be in today. They know what to do. Perk of being the boss, I guess. I trudge back up the stairs and slump back on the couch, eyes heavy, but brain whirling.

I’ll never get to sleep at this rate. I curse under my breath, trying to banish images of Nell’s naked thighs, begging to be caressed. It’s not working.
 

Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the top drawer of my dresser is a little white medicine box. I keep it for times like this, when I can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking. It’s a holdover from the bad old days. I roll a pin-thin joint and smoke it slowly, savoring it. I rarely smoke these days. I don’t even remember the last time, to be honest.
 

I gave up hard drinking, gave up cigarettes, gave up pot, gave up a lot of other shit when I decided to get my life straight. But every rare once in a while, a little bit of weed is a necessity. I pinch off the cherry and stow the kit, and I’m finally laying down on the couch, fading away, when I hear it.

Strained, high-pitched humming. An odd noise, scary, tense. As if she’s struggling with every fiber of her being not to sob, teeth clenched. I can almost see her rocking back and forth, or curled into a fetal position.

I’m through the door and cradling her in my arms in the space of three heartbeats. She fits on my lap, against my chest, in my arms so perfectly. She’s shuddering, trembling, every muscle flexed. I brush her hair back with my fingers, cup her cheek, feel the tension in her jaw. The noise is coming from deep inside her, dragged up from the bottom of her soul. It breaks my heart. Wrecks me.
 

“Nell. Look at me.” I tip her chin up, and she jerks away, burrows against my chest, as if she wants to climb between my ribs and nestle in the spaces between my heart and my lungs. “Okay, fine. Don’t look at me. But listen.”

She shakes her head, and her fingers grip my bicep so hard I’ll have bruises later. She’s crazy strong.
 

“It’s not okay,” I tell her. This gets her attention; it’s not what she was expecting. “You don’t have to be okay.”

“What do you
want
from me?” Her voice is ragged, desperate.

“I want you to let yourself be broken. Let yourself hurt.”

She shakes her head again. “I can’t. If I let it out, it’ll never stop.”

“Yes it will.”

“No it won’t. It won’t. There’s too much.” She judders, sucks in a fast breath and shakes her head in a fierce denial. “It’ll never stop coming out, and I’ll be empty.”

She tries to climb off me, and I let her. She tumbles off the bed, falls to her hands and knees on the floor, scrambles away and stumbles into the bathroom. I hear her vomit, retch, and stifle a sob. I move to stand in the doorway and watch her. She’s got her forearm gripped in clawed fingers, squeezing so hard trickles of blood drip where nails meet flesh.
 

Pain to replace pain.

I step in front of her, take her chin in my hand and force her to look at me. She closes her eyes, jerks away. The sight of her blood makes me panic. I can’t watch her hurt herself. I wrestle with her hand, but she won’t let go, and if I force her, she’ll only hurt herself worse.
 

I need to know what’s driving this girl. What’s devouring her.

“Tell me.” I whisper the words to her, rough and raw in the unlit bathroom, gray dawn filtering through dirty glass.

“He’s dead.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It’s everything.”

I sigh, deeply, glare at the top of her head. She feels it, finally looks up at me with red-laced eyes. Sad, haunted, angry eyes.

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Nell.” The words are grated and too harsh. I regret them, but keep going. “Tell me.”

“
No!
” She shoves me back so hard I stumble.
 

She sinks backward, shrinking down into a ball in front of the toilet, next to the tub. I kneel down, creep forward as if approaching an injured, skittish sparrow. I am, really. She’s clawing her nails up and down her thighs, leaving red, ragged scratch marks. I catch her hands and still them. God, she’s strong. I heave another sigh, then scoop her up into my arms again and carry her into the bedroom.
 

I cradle her against me and settle onto the bed, slide down with her until her head pillowed on my chest and I’m holding her tight, squeezing hard, clutching her wrists in one of mine.

She’s frozen, tensed. I take long, even breaths, stroke her hair with my free hand. Gradually she begins to relax. I count her breaths, feel them even out, and then she’s limp on top of me, sleeping, twitching as she delves into slumber.

I wait, stay awake, knowing what’s coming.
 

She moans, writhes, begins to whimper, and then she’s awake and making that fucking horrible high pitched whining noise in her throat again. I hold her tight, refuse to let go. She struggles against me, waking up.
 

“Let me go!” She growls.

“No.”
 

“Let me fucking go, Colton.” Her voice is tiny, scared, vulnerable, and vehement.

“You let go.”

“Why?” A hitch in her voice.

“Because holding on to it is killing you.”
 

“Good.” She’s still struggling, thrashing against my hold.
 

“‘There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to ruin yours.’”
 

She stops thrashing and laughs. “Did you just quote
The Princess Bride
at me?”

“Maybe.”

She laughs, and the laugh turns into a sob, quickly choked off.

I sigh. “Fine. How ‘bout I start?” I really don’t want to do this. “When I came to New York, I was seventeen. I had five dollars in my pocket, a backpack full of clothes, a package of Ritz crackers, a can of Coke, and nothing else. I knew no one. I had a high school diploma, barely, and I knew I could fix any engine put in front of me. I spent the first day I got off the bus looking for a mechanic garage trying to find a job. No one would even let me apply. I hadn’t eaten in two days. I slept on a bench in Central Park that night, at least till the cops made me move.”

I have her interest, now. She’s still in my arms, staring up at me. I’m speaking to the ceiling, because her eyes are too piercing.
 

“I nearly starved to death, to be honest. I knew nothing. I’d grown up privileged, you know my dad, how much my parents have. I’d never even had to make my own food, wash my own clothes. Suddenly, I’m alone in this insane city where no one gives a shit about anyone else. Dog eat dog, and all that.”

“How’d you survive?”

“I got in a fight.” I laugh. “I had a nice little spot to sleep beneath a bridge, and this old bum comes along and says it’s his spot and I have to move. Well, I hadn’t really slept in days, and I wasn’t about to move. So we fought. It was sloppy and nasty, since I was hungry and tired and scared and he was old and tough and hard, but I won. Turns out this guy was watching the whole thing. He came up to me after I won and asks if I wanted to make a quick hundred bucks. I didn’t even hesitate. He brings me to this old warehouse in a shitty part of I don’t even know where. A back alley in Long Island, maybe. He feeds me, gives me a cold beer. I was a new man after that. He brings me down into the basement of this warehouse where there’s a bunch of people in a circle, cheering and shit. I hear the sounds of a fight.”
 

Nell gasps, and I can tell she knows where this is going.

“Yeah. I won. The guy I fought was huge, but slow. I’d been in my share of trouble in high school, so I knew how to fight. This guy was just big and strong, no technique. I did three fights that night, all in a row. Took an awful beating in the last one, but I won. Made four hundred bucks, and that was how I started. Then I met Split. He was at one of the fights, and offered me job, sort of. Said he needed someone to be muscle for him, collecting debts, be scary. Well, I could do scary. So I went with Split and I…well, it wasn’t bare knuckle prize fighting. Intimidation, mostly. People owed him for favors, for drugs…I’d solve the problem. That’s how I met Split, how I ended up in the Five-One Bishops.”

“A gang?”
 

“Yes, Nell. A gang.” I sigh. “They were my family. My friends. They fed me, gave me a bed to sleep in. Gave me booze to drink and pot to smoke and girls to roll. Sorry, but it’s the truth. I’m not proud of some of the shit I did, but those guys, they were tight. Honorable, most of ‘em, in their own way. They’d never, ever betray me, no matter what. They’d back my play, no questions asked. Even now, years out of the game, living clean and honest, working for myself, if I called them, they’d come, and they wouldn’t flinch to do whatever I asked.”

“Like Split, today.”

I nod against her hair. “Exactly.”

“Tell me the truth, Colton. Where did he take Dan?”

I shrug. “I honestly don’t know. I told him I didn’t want to know. I told Split I didn’t want a body on my conscience though, but I also didn’t want you to ever have to worry about Dan again. So forget him.”

A long silence, and I knew she was formulating a question. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have bodies on your conscience?”

I don’t answer. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. To me it does.”

“Yes. I do.” I hesitate for a long moment. “You can’t understand that life, Nell. You just can’t. It was survival.”

“I guess I can get that.”

“But?”

She sighs. “I don’t understand why you came here alone with no money. What about college? Why didn’t your parents help you? Do they know about how you survived?”

I shake my head and examine my knuckles. “That’s a different conversation.”

“My turn?”
 

“Yes,” I say. “Your turn.”

“You know the story, Colton. Kyle died.”

I growl low in my chest. “There’s more.” I lift her wrist to trace the scars there. “That’s not enough to make you do this.”

She doesn’t answer for so long I wonder if she fell asleep. Eventually she speaks, and when she does it’s raw whisper. I barely breathe, not daring to interrupt.

“We were up north. Your parent’s cabin. We’d been dating for over two years, and we were so excited to be taking a vacation together, like adults. Your parents and mine gave Kyle and I the talk about being careful, even though we’d been sleeping together for almost two years by that point. Until then it seemed to be don’t ask don’t tell, I guess. I don’t know. But we had a great time. Swimming, sitting by the fire, having sex. I…god…god…I can’t.” She’s struggling so hard against her emotions. I comb my fingers through her hair and scratch her back. She continues, her voice tight, but a bit stronger. “Sunday, the last day, it was stormy. Rain so hard you couldn’t see shit, windy as hell. I mean, I’ve never seen wind like that, ever, before or since. Those huge pine trees around the cabin were bent nearly double.”