For All the Evers

  “I hope so.”

  His simple, seemingly honest answer soothed her. Lad had a predatory gaze that seemed to be judging her as she looked over at him. And why was he acting like they were together?

  “Okay, I’m going to stop dancing with you and say I’m heading out. If they let me go, you do the same in a few minutes. Head north. I’ll be waiting. We’ll figure this out together.” He pulled her a little closer. He smelled amazing.

  “Okay.”

  He seemed to know what he was doing, so she stepped away from him and let him go, even though watching him leave was nerve-wracking. Would he disappear just the way she’d appeared?

  Lad smiled and waved when Thomas called to him. “See ya, buddy. Need one for the road?” He waved toward the cooler.

  “Nope. All good. Thanks again.” Thomas left the circle, and as soon as he was past the light of the fire, she lost sight of him.

  It occurred to her, as the smile slid from Lad’s face like skin from a snake, that she had no frigging clue which way was north.

  She turned and tried again to see which way Thomas had gone. In an instant, Lad was there, tapping her shoulder and turning her around.

  “Hello, pretty lady. Have I told you that you being here has made my night?”

  She gave him a wary smile. No teeth.

  She started to pretend-cough, inspired by Desta, and waved her hand in the direction of the fire. “The smoke’s getting to me. I’m going to get a breath of fresh air.”

  “No.” He said it like he was in charge of her well-being.

  “Yes.” Her reply to him was fast and sure.

  He seemed to catch himself and forced a smile.

  She lifted his hands off her shoulders. “I’ll be right back.” She added more coughing.

  He tilted his head and gave her a very thorough glare. Maybe he was trying—and failing—to be sexy? Lad put his hands in the air like her leaving was a poor choice, but he made no move to stop her.

  As she strode past him into the woods, he added fairly aggressively, “Don’t go too far.”

  Fallen smiled, but she was going far. As far as she could get.

  Moments later, someone grabbed her arm as she blindly pushed at branches. Fallen whirled as a hand came over her mouth. She turned to find Thomas waiting patiently for her wide eyes to register that it was him.

  When she stilled, he put his finger to his lips, and she nodded. Thomas took his hand away from her mouth, and she immediately bit her lip.

  He bent down and gestured until she understood that she was to get on his back. Once he held her, piggyback, he took off running. She clung to him, her skirts bunched up around her, and his strong back made it hard for her to concentrate.

  Thomas moved through the trees, farther and faster, until finally he put her down. “You all right?”

  His beautiful eyes searched her face as she nodded, smoothing her dress and looking back the way they had come.

  He grabbed a limb from the ground and began sweeping, sending her in front of him. They finally reached a clearing where a spring rolled over some rocks.

  “Why’d you do that?” She pointed to his Snow White-style cleaning.

  “Covering our tracks, gorgeous. Thirsty?” He took to his knee and made a cup out of his hands, holding it up to her. She shook her head, and he nodded before taking a long sip.

  Finished, he shook off his hands and sat on a rock. Fallen sat next to him.

  “Why aren’t I awake yet?” she asked. “This is the craziest dream. It’s a dream, right?”

  Thomas shrugged. “It’s a very real-feeling dream.” He twisted so he could stare unabashedly at her. “And dream girl, you have on far too many clothes for my usual dream preferences.”

  She blushed. She blushed and wanted to him kiss her. And maybe this was a fantasy, because that’s exactly what he did. Well, he pressed his lips to her cheek and inhaled like she was a flower.

  Fallen touched his face, running her fingertips down his jawline. “Almost time to shave.”

  He lifted a brow.

  “Are you afraid we’re being followed?” She scooted closer, and he put his arm around her.

  “I’m always either chasing someone or being followed. I’m used to it. You have to take peace when it comes.” He trailed his fingers down her arm. “Dream girl, can I have a real kiss?” Thomas leaned close to her shoulder. In this clearing, the moon had painted his hair with silver streaks.

  “I’m not with that Lad guy,” she began. “I don’t have any idea why he was acting like we’re a couple.” She put her hands in her lap. “I like this dress. It’s sweet. But how did I get it on?”

  “Did you hear my question?” Thomas asked. “Or should I take this as a no?”

  The kiss. “So you are one-hundred-percent sure it’s a dream?” she asked.

  “I’m eighty-five-percent sure. Because there’s only one way out of where I am—either it’s a dream, or it’s heaven. And you look so much like an angel, it could certainly be heaven.” He reached out and held her hand, bringing it to his lips. Goosebumps raised on her skin from his touch.

  “I remember I fell asleep,” she offered.

  He picked up her other hand and gave it the same treatment. She shivered a little.

  “Okay, Fallen. How about we just hang around until you wake up?” He put his hands behind him, propping himself on his elbows and looking at the sky. “These stars are off. Maybe… Who knows any more? Where I am now the constellations look far different than they did growing up in New York.”

  He looked back at her. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. This beautiful hair, so long.”

  She clasped her hands together. “So it’s a dream. I can do whatever I want?”

  “Sure. I mean, it might’ve had a little nightmare in it with that Lad guy, but I think we’re on our own now, dream girl.” He tilted his head toward her.

  Fallen stood up from the rock and shook out her dress. “So,” she said, turning toward him. “When I saw you? When you looked at me? I felt like I’d been waiting to see you my whole life, that my soul was off center until you put your arms around me. I felt safe, and until then I hadn’t even been sure what safe was. I never really knew it was an actual thing. But I can understand now why feeling safe makes people happy.” She grinned at him. “Also, you are by far the sexiest man I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m so damn proud of my imagination for slapping you together.”

  And then Fallen, wearing her pretty dress, hitched up her skirt and climbed into his lap, placing her legs on either side of his. She put her hands around his neck and kissed the living hell out of him.

  The kissing continued as they sunk to the ground, fall leaves crinkling until everything dissolved into blackness.

  Chapter 3

  Reality

  Fallen opened her eyes and found a ceiling light instead of Thomas’ face. Somewhere in her mind she registered that it looked a lot like a boob. Her disappointment was so great it almost had a taste. The end of her dream was something to mourn.

  Somehow, she’d gone from cuddling against Thomas’ chest in the woods to lying on the bed in room 514 where she’d fallen asleep in the hotel. As she sat up, she thought she saw a flash of white light, but when she tracked its source, it was just an antique mirror on the desk.

  She longed for the comfort and companionship Thomas had offered—things she’d never really had and now felt desperate for. That had been the most vivid dream of her life. She stood and turned on the small light on the nightstand. She must have slept for hours. It was completely dark now.

  In the dim room, Fallen smoothed the bedspread to remove the imprint her body had left on it. Her hand brushed over something rough and crinkly. A leaf. A random leaf… Just like the leaves she’d been lying in with Thomas as they’d kissed at the end of her dream.

  She wandered into the bathroom, flicking on the light. Looking in the mirror, she plucked three more leaves from her ponytail. She hadn’t even seen the m
ess on the bed before she’d collapsed on it. How could she have missed a pile of leaves? She wet her lips with her tongue and stared at her reflection in confusion as she tasted the wine from the dream there.

  This was probably a whole heap of sleep deprivation that had finally short-circuited her exhausted brain. She opened the hotel room door and looked at her chart. Room 514.

  The room no one ever stayed in.

  She turned the overhead lights on and saw that the leaves she’d been pulling out of her hair had friends. A nice handful were scattered all over the normally pristine bedding.

  “Must’ve been maintenance fixing something in the ceiling…or something,” Fallen mumbled to herself.

  As she cleaned off the bed, she felt the excitement Thomas had caused draining from her system. It had all felt so real. She hadn’t realized how flat and two-dimensional her usual dreams were until experiencing this one.

  It was crazy how hard she’d slept. She pulled out her cell phone to look at the time—almost 6 pm. That was pretty much all she did with the device, as she had a fairly measly allotment of prepaid minutes—no data, no internet, nothing smart about this phone. Her brother had one as well, and they used them just to keep up with each other and for emergencies. He was really good about texting to let her know where he was. Better than she was, evidently. Hopefully she hadn’t worried him. She’d had to stay late in the past to get the rooms right, so she crossed her fingers that he’d just assumed messy rooms were keeping her. She sent him a quick note to say she would be on her way shortly.

  Fallen shook her head at the empty room and turned to go, making sure to pull the door all the way closed behind her—sometimes it stuck. Clearly she had too much on her mind. The bills and her concerns for Fenn were all she’d thought about, until that dream, since she’d come home from school.

  As she stole back downstairs, the hotel was a ghost town. Dinner hour was a great time to sneak out of the place without talking to anyone. After logging out for the night in the empty maintenance closet, Fallen walked home, pulling her jacket tight against the cold and the dark, which came earlier every day now. Two miles had never seemed so long.

  With each step, Fallen missed Thomas. She practically grieved his loss, which was ridiculous. And though the dream had been incredibly real, now that she was awake and experiencing no adverse effects, her worries about being drugged seemed silly—just another part of the very vivid dream. Sleep deprivation and an available bed had ganged up to remind her of all the things her life lacked. Namely, any sort of real living. Fallen sighed and shoved her hands deeper into her pockets.

  When she got home, she opened the door, but the warmth she’d been looking forward to was absent. Instead she found her brother on the sofa, all wrapped up in a blanket and wearing his winter jacket. His shadow vibrated slightly with his shiver in the candlelight.

  “I made an electric payment to the guy on the doorstep right after I got back. What the hell?”

  Fenn shook his head. “They came by again. Said there were insufficient funds in the account they draw from.”

  Fallen pulled her phone from her pocket, closing the door behind her for security, not to keep any kind of heat inside. She plugged in the numbers and listened to an automated voice tell her the bank account was in the negative by one hundred dollars.

  Before she could even wonder how to get it fixed, there was a knock on the door behind her.

  When she opened it, Nora—who she hadn’t seen and had barely spoken to in weeks—stumbled in, along with a wave of alcohol fumes.

  Fallen’s stomach dropped. Before she could stop herself, the little girl in her thrilled at seeing her mother’s face. The way the woman’s eyebrows curved and the familiar scent of alcohol represented the Nora-managed childhood for Fallen. But the part of her that was freezing cold? The part of her that hated having her brother wear a coat inside the house? That part was angry. That part had no time to deal with an alcoholic mother right now.

  There was a slight slur to Nora’s words. In someone else this would be a hint that she’d had a few too many glasses of wine. For Nora, it meant she’d had a few bottles too many.

  There was no “Hello.”

  No “How are you?”

  No “Why is it so damn cold in here?”

  Instead her mother said, “So you’re making a paycheck? How regular is that?” She used the coatrack like a handrail in a subway car to keep herself steady.

  And after that Fallen knew she wasn’t talking to Nora; she was talking to Addiction—the disease that had taken her mother’s self-control, that had taken her mother from her kids.

  Fallen hated Addiction. She closed her mouth, which must have fallen open at the shock of seeing Nora, and let her tense jaw keep it shut.

  Fenn bridged the space between them, embracing his mother like the open soul he was.

  Nora used one arm to hug him. The other white-knuckled the coatrack with the effort of keeping herself upright. “Your sister’s got a new job, angel?”

  Fenn came away smiling, not faulting Nora for being only half able to commit to the hug.

  “Yeah. Downtown at the—”

  Fallen held up her hand to stop him. “No. Don’t tell her. Not when she’s like this.”

  And then Fallen was the bad guy. Her brother listened to her correction, nodding, but Addiction was immediately on her. Her rebuke was blood in the water for a hungry shark.

  “Don’t be like that, little girl. All I want to know is where you work. And what your pay schedule is. Don’t have to be all high and mighty.” Addiction looked back, using Nora’s eyes as laser beams into Fallen’s guilt.

  It might have worked a few years ago. But being the adult had made Fallen realize Addiction was a manipulator—a living being that sought to bring down Nora and everyone who loved her, a devil in her mother’s clothing. It was unsettling, but Fallen held her chin high and stared hard at it.

  Nora now needed another hand to steady herself on the tilt-a-whirl Addiction had created for her. As she reached for the wall, she dropped a plastic card, which fell to the ground.

  And then it clicked. Her mother still had the bank card Fallen had left for Fenn, and Fallen had never even thought to change the PIN. Addiction had stolen her money out of the bank account and turned it into alcohol before the electric company had been able to get there.

  Fallen bent and picked it up off the floor, tucking it into the pocket of her jacket. She knew she should rage. She should fight, or at least yell until her throat was hoarse. But that was pointless. Instead she would change the PIN number that accessed the bank account tomorrow. Because even if she had the card back now, Addiction was clever when it was craving.

  Nora’s grasp on the coatrack faltered, and Fallen caught her before she hit the floor.

  Fenn came quickly to help, and together they pulled her to the couch. Once she’d blacked out, Nora’s face lost Addiction’s cruel animation. Fallen brought blankets to tuck around her mother, making sure she was propped on her side so she didn’t choke on her vomit. And she placed the bucket she kept under the sink close by for just that purpose. The ritual came back to her as if she’d never stopped doing it.

  Fallen promised Fenn their mother would be fine, and she shooed him upstairs with a sandwich to do his homework. She hoped his room’s small window would mean fewer cold drafts. Fallen sat on the edge of the couch, by her mother’s feet, and spoke quietly to the electric company’s call department.

  Maybe it was the desolation she felt, thinking of how it would be days before her next paycheck, but she told the representative exactly the truth: Her mother had stolen her money to drink, and was currently piss drunk on her couch.

  The electric company was surprisingly willing to work with a payment plan, agreeing to stop by to turn on the electric in the morning.

  Fallen hung up the phone and felt her feet aching. Tomorrow would not be a pleasant day at work. Especially since tonight she would stay awake, making sur
e her mother didn’t choke and her brother was warm.

  She touched her lips. Thomas’ kisses seemed even more like a dream now. The feelings he’d awakened in her were about as far from her current concerns as it was possible to get.

  ···

  Her mother’s face was hollow in the morning. When Fallen was younger, Nora had always woken up apologetic after a bender. But this wasn’t a bender any more. It was a way of life.

  Fallen greeted the electric company man at the door, bright and early. Nora stumbled around behind her, trying to navigate the house.

  When the lights came on, Fallen waved her thanks out the window and blew out the remains of the two candles that had helped her navigate the stairs last night. The heat kicked on, but it would be a while before the old place felt warm again.

  Though she had to be more sober now, Nora and her addiction seemed to be still thinking about the same thing as they had been last night. She started in right away on Fallen’s paycheck.

  Fallen ignored her mother, but the woman followed her into the bathroom as she fixed her hair in the mirror. Her long, brown required ponytail had stray tendrils sticking out. She used water to smooth it all into submission.

  “So it’s how much an hour?” Nora sat on the closed lid of the toilet.

  Fallen continued to ignore her and looked for her toothbrush. As she grabbed it she mentally added toothpaste to the always-growing list of things she and Fenn needed. Her mother rambled on about work at the call center and how she was picking up hours whenever she could, coming back with a new angle to try to find out how much Fallen made and when the money was deposited. Adding this information to what the bartender had told her just after she got home, Fallen concluded that Nora’s full-time spot was gone. Now she was just filling in as a sub for people who were ill or had vacation.

  Fallen used the scissors she cut Fenn’s hair with to cut open the toothpaste tube. There was easily enough inside to get them through a few more days.

  It hit her that she tossed out tiny tubes of toothpaste all day long while cleaning the hotel. She needed to keep them instead. That would be a good resource.