Here's to Falling

  When she turned completely around, it was like I'd been shot in the chest. Full force, point blank, dead. I couldn't fucking breathe.

  The perp stepped in front of me, blocking my view. "Hey, JD, you okay, son?"

  "Hey, Bren," I croaked. "What's up? Yeah. Yeah. I'm good. This place is just packed with some real beauties."

  He nodded his head to me and offered me a pair of drunk-ass duck lips. Asshole.

  We made the exchange, hand-to-hand. He pulled me in for a hug and dropped the pill bottle in my palm, which I stuffed into the pocket that held the placebo pills. Carter shook his hand next, went in for a hug, and paid him. I blinked my eyes a few times. I couldn't concentrate. If he pulled out a gun right now, I'd be dead. Forget that. I looked behind Bren's shoulder. A person who looked a lot like Charlie was still dancing. Was it her? My heart stopped instantly, and I was seriously freaking out that I might be having a heart attack in the middle of an undercover buy.

  Panic set in.

  Charlie was here? Am I seeing things?

  "Try the merchandise, bro. You'll feel better," Bren yelled over the music.

  Hold it together Delaney. Put the right pill in your mouth. You don't want to have a forced ingestion and get taken to the hospital for observation after this buy. My hands were steady, which surprised the Hell out of me.

  "Gimme one too, bro," Carter said, rubbing his hands together. His head turned to Bren to get his attention away from me in case I screwed up our little illusion, "Damn, this place is full of sweet pussy. Hooo-leee-shit."

  As he had Bren and the others’ attention, I lifted the cap off the bottle and pretended to pour out two in my hand and put the cap back on. But what was left in my hand were the placebo pills that looked exactly like the Oxycontin. Thank fuck they had no special markings on them or we would have been busted. Handing one to Carter, he smiled at me and we both popped them into our mouths and washed them down with our beer.

  "Fuck yeah!" Bren yelled. "Hey, you think there's nice pussy here? Wait 'til you see the girls I have with me. Fucking golden." Then he was off. Carter and I stared at each other in dismay, and the next thing I saw was my perp with his arm around the shoulders of the only girl I ever loved. He pushed her forward, tucked tight into his side, and she looked mad as hell at him. She looked exactly the same. Her hair was longer than I remembered, but her face? Her beautiful face stole my breath away.

  Bren pulled her closer, leaned over her, and placed an open-mouthed kiss against her temple. It was almost physically painful to watch it happen. I wanted to look away. Hell, I wanted to storm out of this club and take a shower to wash away the filth that suddenly felt two inches thick all over my skin.

  Her green gaze snapped up and collided with mine. She flinched back as if something slammed her hard in the chest. Good, I hope it hurt like hell. I hope her fucking heart was racing—just as fast as mine. I hoped it was squeezing in her chest, throbbing, choking, and gasping for all that it's been missing. Just like mine. I tried like hell to drag my eyes off of hers, but I couldn't; they were locked on her like a vise grip.

  Bren was talking to Carter about something and I was struck deaf and dumb. The only thing I saw was tunnel vision right to her. We both stared at each other. Did she know it was me? I stepped closer and searched her face. Her lips quivered the smallest bit, and she was sort of wobbling at the knees. She knew it was me. She knew she was caught. I knew her well enough to know exactly what she was thinking, and she knew—she definitely knew.

  Suddenly, Charlie was a woman. Where did she learn how to sway when she walked? Who taught that little girl to bite down on her lower lip when she looked at a man? Where did my sweet girl go? God, did she always have such plump lips? Did her cheeks always blush such a beautiful pale red? Did she always look at me with those emerald eyes, like I was the freaking messiah...?

  "Yeah...yeah, and this is my girl, Sage," I heard the words falling from the perp's lips. That scumbag just introduced her as his girlfriend, and she was supposed to be married with children and living almost three thousand miles away from me in sunny California. As an artist. Everything that she was supposed to grow up to be. But she was standing right in front of me, next to a piece of shit criminal that I’d been buying drugs off of for months.

  I forgot how to breathe.

  Her eyes got larger, rounder, and I swore, greener. A tinge of red splashed over her cheeks. I clenched my fists to my side so I didn't go yanking her away from him.

  Bren was talking smack with Carter, who obviously saw I was floundering, and I cut them all off by asking her, "Do I know you?"

  "No. I don’t believe so," she whispered in a low, hoarse voice.

  "Yeah, I think we’ve met before," I urged, stepping closer to her.

  "Um, no. I’m certain I would remember you," she said, stepping back.

  "Sage? Let me guess, is that a stripper’s name," I taunted.

  Her eyes narrowed and her beautiful face tilted up toward Bren. "Why is it every time I meet an asshole, the same shit comes out of its mouth?"

  Yeah, that's Charlie.

  "Well. Hello…Bren’s girlfriend, Sage," I said. Leaning in, I whispered against her ear, "Sorry, I guess I was mistaken. You look sort of like the only girl who had ever gotten close enough to me to break my fucking heart."

  I stepped away and watched her. She ignored me, looking at a girl with strange violet streaks in her hair standing next to her. "Hey, JD. We're getting outta here. Come party with us."

  This was usually where we left the perps and went back to base to sit behind our desks writing reports about everything that was said and done. But I was standing in front of Charlie for the first time in years, and I wanted answers.

  "Yeah, bro," I said, downing the last of my beer and wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. "I'm up for it,”

  Bren smiled and led us through the crowd of dancing bodies; his entourage flanking the sides of him like he was a king. Her whole body cringed, and her eyes squeezed tight as she got pulled in with the tide. Scratch anything nice I’d ever felt or said about myself before. I was a dick. Looking at her walking away from me, looking at her, at those green eyes that looked flat and lifeless, I realized that something or someone hurt her. Something big. She was like a cardboard replica of the girl I once loved; stiff, hard, and empty. I messed up. Should I have looked harder for her? I should have fought harder against my father. Nah, maybe she just left. She never gave me the answer in her texts.

  Carter pounded me in the arm when they all walked in front of us. "What the fuck? Are you crazy?" He clawed at my shirt, pulling me back.

  I shoved my face into his. "That's Charlie."

  Carter gave me a confused look. His mind was only on the case—then his eyes widened as it sunk in and his body stiffened next to me. "My Charlie," I repeated. It was all I needed to say.

  "Ah, man. Seriously?" He stood there raking a hand through his hair. "We're going to get in a shitload of trouble, Jase. Let's just go."

  "To hell with trouble."

  "J, you need to walk away."

  "Hey, I have a prescription for Growacet, testicular fortitude capsules, you could take one and then maybe you won’t be such a pussy," I snapped in his face and walked after Bren. After a few feet, I stopped and glanced back at Carter over my shoulder. "That's my girl."

  "Yeah. Okay. I'll meet you outside. Let me go give Brooke the heads up and have her tail us to be safe, yeah?"

  "Deal." I called out to him as I chased after Bren and his gang.

  I caught up to them outside the entrance. Bren nodded to me and asked, "Where's your boy?"

  "He met a piece of ass earlier and he's getting her number before he leaves. He'll be out in a minute."

  "No worries. We're going to take a cab to my place. I don't drink and drive. Always gotta obey the laws," he winked and started talking to one of his friends. I think his name was Jett.

  Sage was standing against the wall with the strange haired girl, s
o I slid up next to her and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I don't usually smoke while I work, but right then my nerves needed something. I pulled one out and offered one to her. "Wanna smoke?"

  "I don't smoke," she whispered.

  "When did you stop smoking?"

  "When I realized the cigarette does all of the smoking and you’re just the sucker." She pulled herself off the wall and looked up at the sky. "I really think you have me confused with someone else. I'm sorry for whatever heartbreak you had. But, I'm not the girl you think I am." She walked a few steps away, keeping me at a distance.

  Suddenly, Carter was next to me with his arm around my shoulder, whispering in my ear, "She worth it?"

  I just stared at her and nodded like an idiot, but answered, "Probably not since she's proved to be nothing but a messed up liar. But, I just need answers."

  Bren hailed three taxis and walked up next to Sage. "You're coming, right?"

  "I think Violet and I are going to head back. I'm really tired."

  "Bull-fucking-shit! You ain't tired. You're either going to text your secret little prince charming or you're going to go home alone and read. What the fuck are you reading now? The Great Gatsby? I'll just buy you the stupid movie."

  “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly,” I remarked.

  Bren just looked at me and stared—dumbfounded. I shrugged. “One of my best friends growing up got me hooked on reading and I never gave it up.”

  “Oookay,” Bren turned around, shaking his head.

  "Come on, bro." I laughed at him. "You gotta love a girl who reads…one of those girls that wakes you up at two a.m. clutching her books to her chest in tears."

  "Bro, how many pills did you pop?"

  I laughed and leveled my gaze back on Charlie's. "Nah, not the pills talking. I just love a chick who reads. They see things that other people don’t." I gave her a smirk and a wink. "They can find magic in words and bring life into the mundane everyday things with their imagination. I'd just let her wake me up and give her a hug, pull her close. I’d let her tell me about the scene in the book that made her cry." I shrugged my shoulders and continued, "Then, to comfort her, I’d kiss the fucking hell out of her lips, make her want to read a book that I was the main character in. Be a man worth immortalizing with words."

  Bren laughed out loud. "Yeah, you could be best friends with the nerd." He pointed to Charlie. "She used to be a lot more fun, though."

  Two of the taxis were filled and left, leaving Violet, Sage, Bren, Carter, and me on the sidewalk. "Let's go, you fucking booknerds," Bren called out, climbing into the last taxi.

  Carter slid in the front seat of the taxi, and the girls quietly followed Bren. I sat squashed between the hard stickiness of the taxi door and the soft heat of Charlie. The ride was silent and quick. We drove across town and then stumbled out onto the sidewalk in front of the building where I usually do business with him.

  My eyes never left her as Bren pulled me over to the side and whispered, "That's her. I need her taken care of, bro. Not tonight. Not in front of me. We'll talk business tomorrow." He bumped shoulders with me and smiled maliciously, "Relax and chill with me and my boys. Get your dick a little wet tonight. I always have prime pussy with me—ass too if that's what you need."

  I nodded, clenching my teeth.

  Bren and his friends led the way through the lobby and into the elevator. Charlie held the door open for Violet. They looked at each other, silently passing secrets between them with their eyes. Carter walked in after Violet and I followed. As I passed, I turned to face her. I slid through the doorway purposely too close to her, gliding my whole body against hers, and she let out a small gasp. I could tell how it affected her by the way her face turned bright red, and she looked like she was having trouble breathing, limbs shaking.

  "Hmmm," I hummed in her ear. "Sorry, Charlie."

  She shifted closer into me, fists clenched. "I told you, I have no idea who you are," she said through heavy breaths.

  I felt the heat from her body against mine. It rolled off her like waves, and I wanted to dive into her ocean. Leaning my face closer to hers, I looked dead in her eyes. I could have stared into them for hours, days, weeks. No, I wanted to stare at them for forever. I wanted to stare at those green pools until the ivory smooth skin around them turned thin and wrinkled with lines from her laughter and not a second less. There was no way to ever describe the depth of green of Charlie's eyes. I'd spent years trying to forget that color, and now they were making me want to slam her against the wall and tell me what the fuck was going on. First, I had to prove she was Charlie.

  I slid my hand to cup her neck, "Okay. But I got one word for you, ya know, to prove you're Charlotte Stone."

  Wide eyes stared into mine.

  Her lips parted,

  And she waited.

  "Joey,"

  I whispered.

  And then

  The tears

  Came.

  Chapter 12

  Charlie

  The whole world stopped and completely vanished the second he spoke the name. My eyes welled with almost a decade worth of tears, and my hands balled into a lifetime worth of angry fists.

  Dressed all in black with those silent, watchful eyes, was Jase Delaney, and he was all man. There was no more roundness of childhood; just all hard, tight angles and ridges and muscles. His striking blue eyes studied me with the same intensity they held for me when we were kids, only now they seemed full of sadness and disappointment. So much disappointment. His eyebrows knitted together with thousands of questions that I would never want to answer. We weren’t seventeen anymore I repeated in my head to save myself from wrapping my arms around him and clinging to him for the rest of my life. We weren't seventeen. I was different. He was different. And there were too many lies and secrets between us.

  Yet, I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.

  For years I’d practiced in my head what I would say to the first boy I ever loved if our worlds collided again. What I came up with made me want to run away. Jump in front of a fast moving train.

  I just told Jase Delaney that he didn't know me. I walked away from him without acknowledging him, without running and jumping into his arms and crying and gasping for air. I lied straight to his face and threw away any chance I ever had of him understanding.

  I blinked back the tears and wiped at my cheeks, realizing for the first time how my life felt as if there were a thick layer of dust covering it since the last time I'd seen him. Its joints were rusted; its tears were dried up and stained along my surface, not having been truly alive since the last time I looked into his eyes.

  Panicking, I wanted to leave. Run. Save him from all the pain that I held secret from him. Yet, I found myself following everyone up into Bren's apartment. I had worked out most of my demons in the last seven damn years of my life, and for the most part, I survived. I survived it all, right? I could get through this. He was my past. Past.

  Past.

  Past.

  Over. Done.

  Then why the hell? Why the hell did I feel like those blue eyes just yanked me out of the grave that I’d unintentionally dug myself into all those years ago? Why the hell was I freaking out about seeing him again? Why was my heart threatening to beat out of my chest at the mere thought of being in a room with him?

  Goose bumps scattered across my skin and my lungs ached, realizing I’d been breathing shallow breaths of air since the last time I had seen him. That's right, I hadn't been breathing correctly since I was seventeen.

  Everything I had built in the last seven years of my life completely shattered into millions of tiny pieces of dust the minute he walked through the door and his fingers touched my skin. Where his hands touched the back of my neck, I was on fire. How the hell did I ever think I could want anyone else, be with anyone else, love anyone else, was beyond me. There was never any other; there would n
ever be any other. Everything since him was stale, make-believe, soft, nothing. And I hated Jase's father even more, for not only making my skin crawl from his touch, but also taking away the life I so badly wanted with this man.

  I stormed into Bren's apartment with teary eyes. The chaos inside was nothing new to me. Bren would never change. There was a mountain of white powder piled on his dining room table, and Jett was cutting it into lines as Bren ran his nose along the wood.

  I shivered in disgust. I needed to get the hell out of there.

  Bren caught me as I walked toward the bedroom to use the fire escape. Grabbing me by the waist, he tugged me against his chest. "Why the fuck are you crying? You said it was over, right? That means, baby, that I can do all the blow I want." He bit into my shoulder, hard, then shoved me away. "You'll see; you're nothing without me, Sage. Nothing."

  I stumbled away from him, throwing his hands off me. "Then I’d rather be nothing," I snapped.

  Over my shoulder, I could see Jase right behind me, barreling through the apartment, hot on my heels. Bren grabbed a handful of my ass, hard. "This ass belongs to me, baby. I own you. I own that shop. If it wasn't for my mother, you'd be sucking dick on the corner."

  I pushed off of him again and he and Jett stumbled into each other, laughing and falling over one of the dining room chairs. Panicking, I ran into the hallway. I didn't care about Bren. He could have the shop; he could have it all. He just couldn't have me anymore. But right then, I needed to get away from Jase. Lying to him was easy through texts, but having him look at me with his father's eyes–I just couldn't. In the hallway, I slammed into Violet and that guy that was with Jase. "Hey, what's going on? Are you okay?" Violet called after me.

  "Yeah. Just going to climb down the fire escape."

  Carter's eyebrows arched, "What? Where is JD?"

  Then he was there, raw and angry, storming down the hallway after me. I ran past the bathroom, and he grabbed hold of my waist and pulled me inside. He pushed me roughly against the wall as he kicked the door closed and locked it. His hands slammed the wall on each side of my face and his eyes bore down on me with just enough anger to terrify the living hell out of me. It was like we were nine again, and he lived next door with those alien laser eyes.