Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (42 page)

“Exactly!” she yells after me.

I kick the bench that’s sitting beside the front door, and swear under my breath before storming out into the crisp night air.

I don’t know why I immediately start toward Bree’s house, but that’s exactly what I do, and it only takes me a few minutes to get there. I sneak around the side of the house where there’s a wooden trellis that climbs toward her window. It looks like it might be a perfect way up, but I’m unsure if it’s sturdy enough to hold me, so I scour the ground for some pebbles to toss.

Once I find a few, I toss them one by one at her window until she finally appears.

“What are you doing here?” she asks with a hint of amusement in her voice. “It’s kind of late.”

It
is
late. What was I thinking coming over here after midnight? I’m an idiot. “Sorry,” I say. “I just needed to talk to someone.”

She hesitates, looking behind herself for a moment before turning back to me with a slight smile. She bites down on her lip before finally speaking. “Can you climb the trellis?” she asks, pointing to it.

“If it will hold me,” I reply, reaching for it and pulling myself up eagerly. It’s stronger than it looks and after a few moments of fumbling with where to put my feet, I manage to find a way to climb it to the top, reaching her window with little effort.

Once I’m inside her room and on my two feet, I look around nervously. I shouldn’t be here and I know I shouldn’t. If her parents hear me, I’m dead.

It’s obvious that the room hasn’t had much updating to it since Bree was a child. The walls are covered with white and pink wallpaper that’s speckled with tiny pink roses. A plush pink carpet covers the whole floor and her bedspread and curtains match the wallpaper.

“What’s wrong?” Bree asks as she takes my hand into hers and leads me to her bed.

So much is wrong right now and yet at this very moment I don’t want to think about any of it. My girlfriend, the sexiest girl I’ve ever met, is pulling me toward her bed and all I want to do is climb on top of her and kiss her like crazy.

“I just needed to see you,” I say.

She smiles and runs her hands through my hair. “Are we good?” she asks. “I know that we left things a little tense last night, and I hadn’t heard from you at all today.”

“We’re good,” I say. “I’m sorry that I dropped so much on you and then just brought you home to deal with it alone. That wasn’t right.”

“I went to see her this morning,” she confesses and my entire body tenses up. A sharp stab of jealousy radiates through me as I attempt to keep myself visibly collected, even though deep inside I want to throw something at the wall.

“Oh yeah?” I manage, being careful not to express my internal emotions. She nods. “And?” I ask breathlessly.

She seems to sense my uneasiness. “And Spencer was there, Parker too.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “So what happened? Did you tell her that I told you everything?”

“I used what you told me to ask the right questions.”

I nod but don’t say anything in return. Everything Ellie said to me earlier is still ringing in my ears and all I want to do is yell at Bree for going to see her ex without even thinking about how that would make me feel. And then as soon as I think it, I feel guilty because I know I’m being a complete idiot. I wish I could keep these ridiculous feeling in check and continue to nod and smile like nothing’s wrong, but I don’t think that I can anymore. I want to tell her what I see going on between her and Skylar and how I feel about it. But I’m scared to, because the minute I call her out on it, and she realizes that she’s still in love with her, she’ll throw me to the curb and I’ll be left nursing yet another broken heart. I just can’t take that kind of pain again. I don’t want to lose her. So, maybe I’ll just keep her in the dark for as long as I can, praying that she’ll eventually start loving me more.

Bree waits a moment before offering more information. “She told me she was sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

She shrugs. “I guess for how this all turned out.”

I want to tell her that I’m not sorry and if I had a chance to do it all over again I’d do it exactly the same way, but I don’t. She’s sad about losing her friend, and I really need to respect that. But God damn it, this is hard!

“Come here,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her in close to me. I kiss her forehead before resting my cheek on the top of her head. “I’m sorry you’re so sad,” I say to her. It’s the truth, but it’s all I can offer for comfort at the moment, and that makes me a total douche.

“I’ll be fine,” she says with a shrug. She looks up at me. “What about you? What’s bothering you, Evan?”

A whole lot of things are bothering me. But a lot of those things I’m not really ready to talk to her about just yet, so I decide to stick with the one thing that I do want to talk to her about. Ellie.

“Ellie’s in trouble,” I say finally.

“Trouble how?” she asks, trying not to seem overly eager, but I can tell that she’s curious. I haven’t told her much about my sister, and I know she’d like to know more about her. Although once I tell her that Ellie’s life is entangled with Parker’s, she may not be so eager to know anymore.

“She’s hanging around with a bad crowd, and I don’t know what to do to get her to stop,” I say finally.

She looks thoughtful for a moment. “How bad is it?” she asks.

“Dealing drugs, bad.”

Bree takes my hand into hers and gives it a comforting squeeze.

“I tried talking to Ellie but she’s being such a bitch about it. I don’t know what to do and it’s really bothering me.”

“Well is she just hanging out with them, or is she dealing too? Is she doing drugs with them? What did she say?”

I sigh, “I don’t even know. Parker says she’s smoking pot. He says that’s all it is.”

“Parker?” she repeats his name in disgust. “You talked to Parker about this?”

“Yeah,” I reply with an equal amount of distaste. “Apparently he’s her friend.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! This is ridiculous! I bet she says he’s a good person, right?

“Yeah. That’s pretty much what she said.”

She sighs. Even though she doesn’t say it, I know she’s thinking about Skylar and what it is that she could possibly see in Parker. “So what are you going to do?” she asks finally.

I shrug. “I really don’t think there’s much I can do. She’s got this thing for this guy, Colton, he’s Tris and Parker’s friend I guess… she says she loves him. I don’t know,” I say, feeling completely deflated.

“How is it you found out about all of this anyway?”

I wonder if I should tell her? She hates Parker and, to be honest, even after everything that’s been said between us tonight, I still can’t be sure how I feel about him. I mean, besides the fact that he’s kicked my ass twice in the last few days, he’s also slept with Adrienne—a number of times—in a number of positions… with Tris. God, that image will never leave my mind. It’s been years, and yet I can still picture it clear as day.

“Parker called a truce with me last night,” I tell her finally. “He told me that Ellie’s not safe being with Colton because the people they work for can hurt her. He seemed… really concerned.”

“See, he's not a good person! I don’t care what your sister or Skylar say. He’s responsible for what happened to Sky that night. I don’t know how, but he is.”

And it’s back to Skylar.

“Yeah,” I say, “about that. He told me that what happened with Skylar that night was because of his drug ties. Someone he works for hurt her. He wasn’t clear on the details, but I think he saved her from them.”

She grows very silent as I watch her think over what I’ve just told her. It’s like she’s been trying to fit all of the pieces to the Skylar and Parker puzzle together and this was the final piece she needed to really understand who they are to one another. “So he’s a drug dealer,” she says finally. I nod. “And he’s trying to protect your sister,” she continues. I nod again. “From having what happened to Skylar happen to her,” she finishes.

“Yeah, it seems like that.”

“Why the hell did he get back with Skylar then if his life is so unsafe? If he wants you to keep Ellie away because he’s trying to protect her, why isn’t he trying to protect Sky too?”

She’s making no attempt at hiding her concern for Skylar now, which is becoming more and more of a problem for me. I know she can’t just shut off how she feels about her, but at the same time it sucks that everything we ever seem to talk about lately always comes back to her.

I sigh, “I don’t know, Bree. Maybe he thinks that Colton can’t protect Ellie like he can protect Skylar.”

Bree doesn’t look convinced, but she lets it go anyway. I think she suspects that her comments about Parker and Skylar are bothering me. “And Ellie sees no danger at all, I bet,” she says instead.

“She’s in love. She won’t listen to me,” I say, lying back on her bed and putting my face in my hands. I feel so exasperated by this whole mess. Why the hell did Parker have to put this on me? I can’t make her stop seeing someone. Especially someone she thinks she’s in love with. Doesn’t he know how stubborn my little sister is? She’s not going to walk away from this guy because her brother told her so. She wouldn’t even walk away if our mother forbade it.

Bree lies her head down on my chest and curls her body up against mine. She runs her hand through my hair and along my neck, trailing her fingers up and down. I immediately feel relaxed. “I wish there was something I could do,” she whispers. “Maybe I could talk to her.”

I smile. I love that she wants to help me with my problems, but I don’t want the first conversation she has with Ellie to be about how Ellie spends her time with delinquents. It’ll put Ellie on the defensive and poor Bree will get a pretty shocking verbal bashing because of it. “Thanks,” I say, running my fingers through her hair. “But I’d rather take care of it myself. She won’t take too kindly to a stranger getting involved in her business.”

“Yeah, I suppose I wouldn’t like that either,” she says with a chuckle as her fingers explore the skin on my neck further.

“That feels really good.” I don’t know if her actions are to intentionally take my mind off of Ellie or just an effort at comforting me, but I welcome it willingly.

I let out a little moan the minute her hand passes below my shoulders and into the neck of my shirt.

“You should take your clothes off,” she whispers into my ear, and I’m instantly turned on by the suggestion.

Should I? We’re in her bedroom, and I’m pretty sure the door is locked. Her parents are probably asleep by now. I give her a little half smile as I reach for my belt buckle and slowly unfasten it. I pull my jeans off and let them tumble to the floor. Next, I yank my shirt up over my head and toss that on the floor next to my jeans.

My excitement is anything but discreet in my boxers and I can’t help but be self-conscious about it. I reach down to cover the erection with my hands, but Bree stops me. She pushes me down onto the bed and straddles me instead.

She reaches for my hands and takes them both into hers, guiding them to the buttons of her shirt. She wants me to undress her. I can’t even express how much that simple gesture excites me. I have to use all the will power I can muster not to rip that shirt open. Instead, I calmly unbutton it, and once I do, I’m met with the most beautiful sight ever. Her perfect breasts are bulging out of the top of a white bra with a tiny pink bow positioned right in the center of it. Why do bras always have bows there? It must be some sort of man-bait designed to drive us crazy because the only thing I’m thinking about right now is finding a way to get my teeth on that bow.

She lies down on top of me with her breasts pressed against my chest and her pelvis pushing into mine. Her most sensitive area, still covered by her pajama pants, is pressing down on my now very sensitive erection.

Oh my God, she’s not even naked, we aren’t even close to having sex at this point, and yet if she wiggles her body anymore, I’m done. This is by far the most intimate thing I’ve ever done with a girl. I reach for her hips and grasp them so tightly that I think I might leave little bruises from where my fingers are. This is too fucking good.

She starts to kiss my neck and simultaneously begins rocking her body back and forth over mine ever so slowly.

I gasp.

“Oh my God!” I say. I can’t help it, she needs to know how amazing she is.

She brings her mouth to mine and kisses me, still softly rocking her body over mine, and it’s amazing; she’s amazing.

Her mouth moves back to my neck now. She licks her tongue up from my collarbone to my earlobe. I push my head back into the pillow and groan.

I don’t notice the noise the bed is making right away, but the minute I hear footsteps in the hallway and notice that Bree has stopped moving, I realize that the bed had been making a lot of noise.

Someone tries the knob of the door and when it doesn’t open, they proceed to knock loudly. “Bree, open the door!”

It’s her mom.

Bree jumps off of me and reaches for her shirt lying beside her. I roll off the bed and hit the floor with a loud thump. It takes me less than a second, however, to get back up and pull my jeans on. I fumble with the belt for a few seconds and then reach for my shirt. As I’m pulling it over my head the door flies open and I jump back, startled. I look at Bree and see that she’s managed to put her shirt back on but didn’t have the time to button it back up. She wraps it tightly around her body with both hands. I peer at her mother and if looks could kill, I’d be dead right on the spot because it isn’t hard to tell that this woman is pissed. I back up toward the window because she may try to hit me, and I want to give myself as much of a head start as possible in case that happens.

“What’s going on in here?” she asks, staring right at me like I’m the only evildoer in this scenario. She seriously needs to get to know her daughter better.

I’m literally at a loss for words. I hear myself stammer a few incomprehensible sounds, but it doesn’t get me very far. I don’t know what to say to get myself out of this situation. We’ve been caught red handed.