Falling Into You (18 page)

She pauses, panting as if exhausted, then continues in a much softer and more vulnerable voice. “A tree fell. It should have hit me…it almost
did
hit me. I saw it falling towards me, and I couldn’t move. Some of the nightmares, it’s that moment I see, over and over again, the tree coming for me. Those are the nice and easy nightmares. A split second before it hit me, Kyle knocked me out of the way. I mean, he straight up football tackled me. Knocked me flying. I landed on my arm. I don’t remember hitting the ground, but I remember coming to and feeling pain like a white wave, and seeing bones sticking out of my forearm, the whole bone bent almost at a ninety degree angle.” I barely hear the next words. “I should have died. He saved me. It hit him instead. Broke him. Just…fucking shattered him. A branch broke and—and impaled him. I can still see the blood coming out of his mouth…bubbling on his lips like froth. His breath…it whistled. He—I watched him die. I didn’t even know the address of the house, and he, he told me the address as he died for the ambulance that wouldn’t get there until after he was dead. I ripped my fingernails off trying to move the damn tree. I broke my arm worse when I fell in the mud. That’s the worst dream-memory: lying in the mud, watching him die. Watch—watching the light go out of his eyes. His beautiful chocolate brown eyes. The last words he said were ‘I love you.’”

I don’t dare speak. She’s shaking so hard I’m worried it was almost a seizure. She’ll break soon.
 

“The other thing I see, every goddamn night, is his shoe. We’d gone to dinner at that fancy Italian place. He had on his dress shoes. Black leather. Stupid little tassels on the front. I hated those shoes. When the tree hit him, it hit so hard his shoe was knocked clean off. I see that shoe, in the mud. Smeared with brown mud, like shit. I see that one stupid fucking shoe, with the tassels.”

I have to say it. She’s gonna get mad, but I have to say it. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“
DON’T SAY THAT! YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW!
” She shrieked it in my ear, so loud my ears ring.
 

“Then tell me,” I whisper.

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” She’s shaking her head, twisting it side to side, a refusal to break. “It was my fault. I killed him.” A sob, then a full, unchecked sob.

“Bullshit. He saved you. He loved you. You didn’t kill him.”

“You don’t understand. I did kill him. We were arguing. If I had just said yes, he’d be alive. You don’t understand. You don’t—don’t. Can’t know. No one knows. If I’d just said yes, he’d be alive. But I said no.”

“Said yes to what?”

Shuddering, heaving in ragged breaths, still denying the breakdown, she murmurs the words, and I know they break her, once and for all. “He asked me to marry him. I said no.”

“You were eighteen.”

“I know. I know! That’s why I said no. He wanted to go to Stanford, and I wanted to go Syracuse. I would have gone to Stanford with him, just to be with him, but…I couldn’t marry him. I wasn’t ready to be engaged. To get married.”

“Understandable.”

“You don’t get it, Colton. You don’t—you don’t get it.” Hiccups, now, words coming in stutters. “He asked me to marry him, in the car. I got out, angry that he didn’t understand why I said no. He followed me. Stood in the driveway arguing with me. I was on the porch. Minutes like that, him in the driveway, me on the porch. We should’ve gone inside, but we didn’t. The rain had stopped, but the wind was worse than ever. I heard the tree snap. It sounded like cannon going off.”

“You didn’t kill him, Nell. You didn’t. Saying no didn’t mean—”

“Shut up. Just…
shut up
. I said no. He thought it meant I didn’t love him, and we wasted so much time out there, in the way of the tree. If I had just said yes, gone inside with him, the tree would have missed us both. Missed me, missed him. He’d be alive. I hesitated, and he died. If I hadn’t frozen, if I had just moved out of the way…one jump to the left or the right. I could have. But I froze. And he saved me…and he—he died. He’s gone, and it’s my fault.”

“It’s not.”
 

“SHUT UP!” She screams it into my chest. “I killed him. He’s gone and it’s my fault…my fault. I want him back.” This last, a shattered whisper, and I feel—finally—warm wet tears on my chest.

It’s silent, at first. I think maybe she’s waiting to be condemned for weakness. I don’t, of course. I hold her. I don’t tell her it’s okay.

“Get mad,” I say. “Be hurt. Be broken. Cry.”

She shakes her head, tiny side to side twisting of her neck, a denial, a futile refusal. Futile, because she’s already crying. The high-pitched whining at first, high in her throat. Keening.
 

I once saw a baby kitten in an alley sitting next to it’s mother. The mama cat was dead, of age or something, I don’t know. The kitten was pawing at the mama’s shoulder and mewling, this nonstop sound that was absolutely heartbreaking, heartrending. It was a sound that said
What do I do? How do I live? How can I go on?

This sound, from Nell, is that. But infinitely worse. It’s so fucking soul-searing I can’t breathe for the pain it causes me to hear. Because I can’t do a goddamn thing except hold her.
 

She starts rocking in my arm, clutching my bare shoulders so hard she’s gonna break the skin, but I don’t care, because it means she’s not hurting herself. Now it’s long jagged sobs, wracking her entire body, and god, she’s got two years worth of pent-up tears coming out all at once. It’s violent.
 

I don’t even know how long she sobs. Time ceases to pass, and she cries, cries, cries. Clutches me and makes these sounds of a soul being ripped in two, the grief so long denied taking its toll.
 

Fermented grief is far more potent.
 

My chest is slick with her tears. My shoulders are bruised. I’m stiff and sore from holding her, motionless. I’m exhausted. None of this matters. I’ll hold her until she passes out.

Finally the sobs subside and she’s just crying softly. Now it’s time to comfort.

I only know one way; I sing:

“Quiet your crying voice, lost child.
 

Let no plea for comfort pass your lips.

You’re okay, now.
 

You’re okay, now.

Don’t cry anymore, dry your eyes.
 

Roll the pain away, put it down on the ground and leave it for the birds.
 

Suffer no more, lost child.

Stand and take the road, move on and seal the hurt behind the miles.

It’s not alright, it’s not okay.
 

I know, I know.

The night is long, it’s dark and cruel.
 

I know, I know.

You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

You are loved. You are held.

Quiet your crying voice, lost child.
 

You’re okay, now.
 

You’re okay, now.

Just hold on, one more day.

Just hold on, one more hour.

Someone will come for you.
 

Someone will hold you close.

I know, I know.

It’s not okay, it’s not alright.

But if you just hold on,

One more day, one more hour.

It will be. It will be.”

Nell is silent, staring at me with limpid gray-green eyes like moss-flecked stone. She heard every word, heard the cry of lost boy.

“Did you write that?” She asks. I nod, my chin scraping the top of her scalp. “For who?”

“Me.”

“God, Colton.” Her voice is hoarse from sobbing, raspy. Sexy. “That’s so sad.”

“It’s how I felt at the time.” I shrug. “I had no one to comfort me, so I wrote a song to do it myself.”

“Did it work?”
 

I huff at the ridiculousness of the question. “If I sang it enough, I’d eventually be able to fall asleep, so yeah, kind of.”

I finally glance down at her, actually look into her eyes. It’s a mistake. She’s wide-eyed, intent, full of heartbreak and sadness and compassion. Not pity. I’d flip my shit if I saw pity in her eyes, just like she would if she saw it in me.
 

Compassion and pity are not the same: pity is looking down on someone, feeling sorry for them and offering nothing; compassion is seeing their pain and offering them understanding.
 

She’s so goddamn beautiful. I’m lost in her eyes, unable to look away. Her lips, red, chapped, pursed, as if begging me to kiss her, are too close to ignore. I’m suddenly aware of her body against mine, her full breasts crushed against me, her leg, one round thigh, pale as whitest cream, draped over mine. Her palm, long fingers slightly curled, rests on my shoulder, and lightning sizzles my skin where she touches me. I’m not breathing. Literally, my breath is stuck in my throat, blocked by my heart, which has taken up residence in my trachea.
 

I want to kiss her. Need to. Or I might never breathe again.

I’m an asshole, so I kiss her. She deserves ultimate gentility, and my lips are feathers against hers, ghosting across hers. I can feel every ridge and ripple of her lips, they’re chapped and cracked and rough from crying, from thirst. I moisten them with my own lips, kiss each lip individually. First the upper, caressing it with both of mine, tasting, touching. She breathes a sigh.
 

I think I’m okay, I think she wants this. I was honestly terrified at first she’d wig out, slap me, scramble away. Tell me she couldn’t stomach a kiss from a blood-soaked monster like me. I don’t deserve her, but I’m an asshole, a selfish bastard, so I take what I can get from her, and try to make sure I give her the best I’ve got.

She doesn’t kiss me back, though. She shifts on my body, and her curled fingers tighten on my chest, but her mouth? She just waits, and lets me claim her mouth with mine. I take her lower lip in my teeth, ever so gently. My palm, my rough and callused paw is grazing her cheek, smoothing a wayward curl back behind her ear. She lets me. Foolish girl. Letting a brute like me kiss her, touch her. I’m afraid the grease under my nails will mar her skin, worried the blood that has been soaked into my bones will seep out of my pores and sully her ivory skin.
 

She nuzzles her face into my palm. She opens her mouth into mine, kisses me back. Oh, heaven. I mean, god
damn
, the girl can kiss. My breath never really left my throat, and now it rushes out of me in disbelief that she’s letting this happen, that she’s actively taking part.
 

I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m a nice guy. I’m not good. I just held her when she cried. I couldn’t do anything else.
 

I end the kiss before it can turn into something else. She just looks at me, lips slightly parted, wet like cherries now and so, so red. Oh, fuck, I can’t resist going in for another kiss, from letting some shred of my raging hunger for her beauty show through in my kiss. She returns it with equal fervor, moving so she’s more fully on top of me, and she doesn’t stop me when my hand drifts down her scalp, down her nape, down her back, rests on the small just above the swell of her ass. I don’t dare touch her there.
 

This is insane. What the hell am I doing? She just bawled her eyes out, sobbed for hours. She’s seeking comfort, seeking forgetting. I can’t have her like this.
 

I pull away again, slide out from beneath her.
 

“Where are you going?” She asks.

“I can’t breathe when you kiss me like that. When you let me kiss you. It’s…I’m no good. No good for you. It’d be taking advantage of you.” I shake my head and turn away from the confusion in her eyes, the disappointment. I retreat, squeezing my hands into fists, angry with myself. She needs better than me.
 

I grab my guitar, rip it from the soft case, and head for the rickety, creaking, outside stair to the roof, a bottle of Jameson in hand. I plop down on the busted-ass weather-beaten blue Lay-Z-Boy I lugged up here for this purpose, twist the top off the bottle and slug it hard. I kick back with my feet up on the roof ledge and watch the gray-to-pink haze of onrushing dawn, guitar on my belly, plucking strings.
 

Finally, I sit forward and start working on the song I’ve been learning: “This Girl” by City & Colour. I regret it immediately, because the lyrics remind me of what I don’t deserve with Nell. But it’s an intoxicating song, so I get lost in it nonetheless and it barely registers when I hear her on the stairs.
 

“You are
so
talented, Colton,” she says, when I’m done.

I roll my eyes. “Thanks.”

She’s got her jeans back on, and one of my spare guitars in her hand. There’s a battered orange loveseat perpendicular to the Lay-Z-Boy, and she settles cross-legged onto it, cradling her guitar on her lap.
 

“Play something for me,” I say.
 

She shrugs self-consciously. “I suck. I only know a couple songs.”
 

I frown at her. “You sing like a fucking angel. Seriously. You have the sweetest, clearest voice I’ve ever heard.”

“I can’t play the guitar for crap, though.” She’s strumming, though, even as she says this.

“No,” I agree. “But that doesn’t matter once you start singing. ‘Sides, keep playing, keep practicing, you’ll get better.”

She rolls her eyes, much like I did, and starts hitting chords. I don’t recognize the tune at first. It takes me into the first chorus to figure out what song it is. It’s a low, haunting tune, a rolling, sad melody. The lyrics are…archaic, but I understand them. They’re sweet and longing. She’s singing “My Funny Valentine” by Ella Fitzgerald. At least, that’s the version I know. I’ve heard a dozen versions of it, but I think she was the one who made it famous.
 

The way Nell sings it…her voice is a little high for how low the song is written, but the strain to hit the lower notes only makes it full of that much more longing. As if the desire was a palpable thing, so thick inside her she couldn’t hit the notes right.

She trails off at the end of the song, but I roll my hand in a circle, so she plucks a few strings, thinking, silent, then strikes another slow, bluesy rhythm. Oh, god, so perfect. She sings “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. Louis Armstrong and Ella. God I love that song. I doubt she realizes this. I surprise the shit out of her by coming in right on cue with Louis’s part. She smiles broad and happy and keeps singing, and holy shit we sound good together.