Fall From India Place

  “Good night, sweet prince.

  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  It was my way of saying good-bye, of letting him know that he mattered to me, that I’d seen him for who he really was, and that I wanted him to find peace wherever he was now.

  Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

  I stepped back into the crowd, taking a shuddering breath as the minister began to say his final words. In my sadness I was vaguely aware of the people near me shifting, but I didn’t look up.

  I didn’t look up until I was startled by the warm, rough fingers sliding through mine to hold my hand tight. My breath left me as I turned to look up at Marco.

  Shock, relief, disbelief, and gratitude moved through me.

  His kind eyes locked with mine and he held on tighter.

  Ellie’s words from months ago suddenly came to me in that moment.

  Five years ago you started shutting us out, putting on this front, determined to take care of yourself without our help. You need to stop that. Not just for you but for us. We’re here if you need us, and frankly we need you to need us.

  The truth hit me then that she’d been right all along. I needed them, I needed Marco, and I knew that just like my family needed me to need them, he needed me to need him. So I let him know that I did.

  Thank you.

  He read the silent message in my eyes and in answer brushed his lips against my forehead in comfort. I closed my eyes, rested my head on his shoulder, and listened as the minister laid Jarrod Fisher to rest.

  CHAPTER 27

  M

  arco’s flat wasn’t anything like he’d described.

  It was a fairly new build, a two-bedroom flat at St. Leonard’s Hill east of the university. It was small, but it was furnished in a masculine, contemporary style – it captured the idea of luxury on a budget. A large flat-screen TV hung on the wall across from the three-seater sofa in the open-plan living space. A small but modern kitchen was situated in the back of the room. There was a door in the middle of the back wall that I guessed led to the bedrooms.

  Marco had told me his place was a dump. He’d told me that because if he’d taken me to his flat he would have had to hide the photographs of Dylan that hung on the walls. He would have had to hide the toy box in the corner of the room, and the action figures set up by the French window that overlooked the gardens.

  But he couldn’t hide the second bedroom that I had no doubt was decorated for a little boy.

  Leaving me to shrug out of my coat and take a seat on his black leather sofa, Marco marched determinedly into the kitchen and started brewing me a cup of tea. My face was frozen from the winter wind, but the chill that ran deep through the rest of my body was from having to watch a fifteen-year-old be buried on a day bright with winter sun and dark with bitter confusion.

  “It’s not fair,” I murmured. “And I have to move past that. You’d go crazy, wouldn’t you? If you obsessed over the unfairness of it all?”

  Marco poured hot water from the kettle into two mugs and then lifted his gaze to me. “It’s times like these it’s better to accept it and move on. But, yeah. It isn’t fair.” He moved back to me with the mugs, handed me one and then sat down close to me. His gorgeous eyes held sympathy and concern. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I know he was a good kid.”

  I clutched the mug tightly in both hands, allowing the heat to seep into me. “Was it Ellie that told you about Jarrod?”

  “Cole, actually.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I would have lost that bet.”

  Marco settled his left hip into the back of the sofa, sliding his arm along it until his fingertips were close enough to touch my shoulder. “My question is, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Perhaps it was too much to have this conversation after Jarrod’s funeral, but I knew it was time. Marco was here. He had come to me when I needed him without me even having to ask.

  “I hate that it took the death of one of my kids to wake me the hell up,” I muttered angrily, not flinching from meeting his gaze even though I felt almost ashamed by my choices these last few months. Strike that. These last few years. “I thought if I could just get through this alone, then I could come to you after.”

  His brows drew together. “Hannah, you broke up with me because I left you alone to deal with a miscarriage that almost cost you your life. Now you’re telling me you want me to leave you alone to deal with the shitty things that happen? I’m confused.”

  “No. I thought I could and should do this alone, that it wasn’t fair to want to lean on you, but as soon as you were there I knew I needed you.” I swallowed hard and admitted, “And I’ll always need you.”

  I watched as he leaned over to put his mug on the coffee table and when he faced me, his eyes were blazing. “Are you for real? Because I don’t know if I can take you turning away from me again.”

  “The miscarriage… I don’t know how to explain what it did to me. The worst thing that ever happened to me before it was Ellie’s tumor. When we didn’t know if it was cancer or not, and even the time in the hospital and how scary it was to see her like that… I was thirteen and suddenly I realized we didn’t live forever. Of course I knew people died and I’d known people who’d lost family, but I’d never experienced loss for myself before. And then there was Ellie, a huge part of my life, a huge part of what made me happy, and there was a possibility that we were going to lose her. One of the worst parts of it all was seeing what it did to Mum and Dad. It was like they could barely breathe until they knew she was going to be okay.”

  I felt my chest compress as the memories flooded me. “When I started to feel ill after you left all those years ago, I tried to explain it away to myself because there was this dark part of me, buried deep down, that was scared there was something really wrong with me like there had been for Ellie, and that I was going to put everyone through it all over again. That fear almost cost me my life. And yet… I didn’t learn my lesson. I put these blinders on, facing the world on my own as if that somehow makes up for the fact that underneath my bullshit I’m utterly petrified. I didn’t mean to hurt you because of that. I am…” I shook my head, knowing an apology wasn’t enough but giving one anyway. “I’m sorry. But I can promise I won’t ever do that you again. Ever.”

  He made a move toward me as if he was going to touch me. I held my hand up to stop him.

  “Before you say anything, you need to know something.”

  Marco grew still but gave a stiff little nod for me to continue.

  I took a shuddering breath for the coming revelation. “I wish I was stronger. I wish I was Hannah before the miscarriage, but I lost a huge piece of her after it happened. Especially the part of her that went after what she wanted no matter the consequences. I want kids, I need you to know that, but if we get back together and somewhere down the road you wanted kids, I don’t know if I could actually give you that.” I couldn’t read his expression. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m frightened to try to get pregnant, and I can’t promise I’ll ever get over that.”

  His hands were suddenly on me, pulling me close until our noses almost touched. “Do you love me?” he asked hoarsely, giving me a little shake.

  I laughed softly at the question, the answer so obvious – to me at least. Reaching a hand up, I ran the backs of my knuckles along his cheek, feeling the possessive thrill I always felt when I was near him. Because buried under all my crap was the utter belief I had deep in my bones that this man belonged to me. “What I said before was true. I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen.”

  His grip tightened. “Then that’s all that matters to me. We’ll take the future as it comes. There’s no promise that life will ever be easy. It never has been for me. But the moments where all that shit disappeared, where it ceased to matter to me, those moments always had you in them. I know you make me laugh, I know you make me feel worth something, you make me feel needed, and I know I want
you like I’ve never wanted any other woman in my life. All that makes sense.

  “I’ve never been able to explain what it is about you that makes all the bad go away. I don’t need that to make sense, though. I don’t know why it is that way. All I need to know is that you do, you always have. I’m in love with you. There is no one else for me and I don’t know how I know, but I do know that there never will be. So” – he cupped my face in his hands, drawing me closer – “we’ll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  After he pressed a soft kiss to my lips, he hugged me to his side and we sat there for a while as he comforted me in silence.

  Finally I said softly, reflectively, “It changes you. Loss.”

  I felt his arm tighten around me. “It changed you, babe. But not as much as you think.”

  “Still, it’s always there. Do you think that’s okay?”

  “In what way is it always there?”

  I took a moment, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “When you haven’t experienced loss directly, it’s like… well, you drive the same road home you drive each night. You know it as well as anyone can. Then one night you decide for the hell of it to drive a different road home. You think nothing of it. It’s merely a change of scenery.

  “But if you’re someone who has lost someone or come close to losing yourself… and if you take that different road, there’s this second after you’ve made that decision, just a second, in which you wonder, worry, if taking that road means changing your life irreparably – you don’t know the curves in the road as well, you don’t know the blind spots. In that second you imagine a crash, a collision. Just a second, until you tell yourself to stop being so morbid. Yet no matter how silly it makes you feel, every time you make a decision to take that different road, you can’t help that instant of questioning if your choice will end in loss.”

  He was quiet as he processed my words, and then his lips were in my hair, his whisper a promise. “Life’s fragile, Hannah. You know that and that’s what those seconds are a product of. You’re allowed to have those seconds, just as long as they don’t mean you ever shut me out.”

  Relieved that he understood, I closed my eyes and held on tighter, giving him a silent promise in return.

  That night I slept next to Marco in his bed for the first time. He held me close, keeping me warm and safe through my sadness.

  I was just drifting to sleep when I heard Jarrod’s voice in my head, a memory from weeks before.

  “Just saying. Nice to know a big guy like that is watching your back.”

  From his voice came peace.

  CHAPTER 28

  “I

  ’ll get your short essays back to you next week,” I promised my literacy class as they all began packing up for the evening.

  “Have a nice weekend, Hannah,” Duncan said, throwing me a kind smile as he headed out the door.

  The others followed his lead. They’d been somewhat subdued this week and I had a feeling they knew the reason why I hadn’t been there to teach them last Thursday.

  I was packing up my own things when to my surprise Lorraine made her way over to me. Trying to mask my disbelief at her willingly approaching me, I stilled, waiting for her to say something.

  She shifted a little uneasily. “I, eh… I heard aboot the wee laddie fae yer class. Sorry tae hear it.”

  I blinked rapidly at the unexpected condolence. “Thank you.”

  “Aye, well, ye seem like ye probably give a shit, so, I imagine it hus’nae been easy fur ye.”

  I nodded in silent agreement, honestly not knowing what to say.

  Lorraine shrugged, looking anywhere but at me. “Aye, well… thote ye might like to ken that I, eh… got a jobe.”

  “That’s brilliant.” I grinned. “Where?”

  “Fur one eh the sport bookies chains.” She flashed me a smile and I was almost knocked over by the extremely rare sight. “It’s awright money, like.”

  “Lorraine, I’m so pleased for you.”

  She shrugged, shuffling back from me, seeming all too uncomfortable again. “Well, just wanted tae tell ye ’cos I probably widnae huv got it if it wisnae fur this class. I’ll see ye later.” She dashed out of the room before I could say anything else.

  I stared after her. Lorraine was as rough as they came and prickly as hell. She didn’t like me, or at least she didn’t understand me, but she was the first student since Jarrod’s death to make me feel like there was still a chance to make a difference at all this.

  Marco’s muddy riggers were sitting on a folded-out newspaper just inside the door to my flat. I felt something pleasant shift in my chest at the sight of them, and after I shut the door behind me, I cocked my head to listen for the sound of him.

  I could hear the shower running.

  To prove to him I was serious about us, I’d given him a key to my flat a few days ago. I knew, despite his determination to keep us together, that I had a way to go in reassuring him that I wasn’t going to do a one-eighty and come up with another reason for us not to work it out. My suspicion that he wasn’t quite over my defection sprang from the fact that this weekend was his weekend with Dylan and he hadn’t suggested I stick around for it.

  I could live with that.

  For now.

  Dropping my keys in the bowl on my side table, I kicked off my shoes and then moved into the sitting room. Marco’s empty coffee mug was sitting on the table, his jacket was hanging over the back of the armchair. Shrugging out of my own jacket, I draped it across the arm of the chair and began making my way out into the hall, unbuttoning my shirt as I sauntered toward the bathroom. For the last eight nights Marco had stayed with me, but he’d given me space sexually, allowing me to deal with Jarrod’s loss, and the ramifications of it upon my kids at school. Marco didn’t want to push me into the physical stuff, and that was thoughtful and considerate and, ironically, sexy as hell.

  That’s why I was done with him giving me space. I wanted a new kind of comfort from him. Specifically in the form of orgasms.

  Dropping my shirt to the floor, I pushed open the bathroom door, the steam from the shower hitting me immediately. Marco jerked his head up at the sight of me through the somewhat fogged glass of the shower screen, and then a slow smile that melted my insides lit up his handsome face.

  I unzipped my pencil skirt and pushed it to the tiled floor, my eyes devouring my too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend. By the time my underwear was off, Marco was ready for me. I stepped into the shower, eyed his hard-on with a sense of empowerment, and lowered myself gracefully to my knees to help him out with the situation I’d gotten him into.

  As I lay in bed, my arm draped over Marco’s stomach and my head resting on his chest, I suddenly gave voice to my wandering thoughts. “Do you ever think about finding your mum and dad?”

  Marco gave a huff of surprise. “Where did that come from?”

  “I was just thinking about you and Dylan and how you managed to turn into this great dad despite your lack of a role model.”

  “I guess I just don’t need my folks anymore, you know? It used to burn in my gut – the rejection. It did for a long time. But once Dylan came along, I slowly began to see it wasn’t my fault that my parents didn’t want me. You hold your kid in your arms, and if you don’t feel an overwhelming need to protect them, then that’s on you, not the kid.”

  I sat up a little so I could look him in the eyes. “You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

  His eyes warmed. “Back at you, babe.” His gaze suddenly turned knowing. “I’ll introduce you to Dylan as my girlfriend soon. I promise.”

  Wrinkling my nose, I pulled back from him, disquieted. “Are you a mind reader now?”

  Marco grinned and it was cocky enough for me to want to smack it off his lips. “I’m a Hannah-reader and my not introducing you this weekend doesn’t mean what you think it does. I just want this weekend to explain stuff to him first.”

  Appeased by that, I said, “It’s fine. I get
it.” I settled back down beside him and pressed a soft kiss to his chest. “You do what’s best for Dylan.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’m sorry, but… you’re never taking him ice skating. Ever.”

  Marco’s laughter rang throughout my apartment as he attempted to escape the punch that I was aiming for his upper arm.

  “So I take it this is permanent this time?”

  I turned back from watching Dylan as he chatted quietly to his dad. Marco was down on his haunches, rezipping Dylan’s jacket after his son had started to remove it. We were taking him out today, however, and I gathered that was what Marco was telling him quietly, since Dylan kept throwing me quizzical looks every now and then. It was hard to pull my eyes away from them together, but I did at Leah’s question.