Falling into You: A Falling Stars Stand-Alone Romance

by A. L. Jackson

  My tongue darted out to wet my lips, keeping quiet enough that only she could hear. “You asked me to come here. What did you think was going to happen?”

  “I thought you were gonna stand up in my wedding.”

  “Next to her. Don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing, Em.”

  Her chin quivered. “I…I want you to get back on track, Rich. Find your joy. What’s right in this world. I’m just prayin’ you don’t hurt her along the way.”

  “I think I’ve already done plenty of that.”

  The door reopened, and Violet came rushing out. Wearing that floral dress she’d been wearing all day, the one that had just about done me in, long locks of black hair braided in a pretty twist, errant pieces falling in delicate wisps around her gorgeous face.

  Want fisted my stomach.

  “Only question now is why,” Emily pressed, the words secreted by the wind.

  “Why doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is it’s too late,” I grunted, shifting in the seat when Violet opened the front passenger door. “I’ll give Rhys a text to come pick me up when we get back,” I said.

  Emily gave a wary nod.

  “I’m sorry again, Emily,” Violet rushed through the open door. “We can regroup tomorrow…for now, just start getting the invites prepared. Those need to go out ASAP.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Take care of your sweet girl. That’s the only thing that matters.”

  Violet sent her a bumbling nod as she climbed in. I was slammed with a wave of her.

  Violets and dreams and the girl.

  Emily angled her head in behind me so she could talk to Daisy. “You get all fixed up. We need our pretty dancer better for this wedding.”

  “I will,” she sang, though it came out weaker than the kid’s normal exuberance.

  A sad smile graced Emily’s face. It passed from Daisy to me and over to Violet. “Good luck. Text me later and let me know what they say.”

  Violet hugged her purse on her lap. “I will. Thank you.”

  Violet turned to check on Daisy, cooing a bunch of words, promising it was going to be okay.

  Emily stepped back, and I leaned out to shut the door. I caught the disturbance that hovered around Royce.

  The warning he wore in the set of his jaw.

  I lifted my chin at him because I wasn’t walking away from this.

  For once…for one fuckin’ time…I was going to be there for Violet, whether she wanted me there or not.

  He just shook his head and pushed off from where he was leaning against the Suburban.

  He knew it as well as I did.

  I was in deep.

  And I wasn’t sure I wanted to get out.

  Twelve

  Violet

  Had you ever felt like you were being conned?

  The wool pulled over your eyes before you realized what was happening?

  Deceived into thinking you were making the right choices for you and your family?

  Problem was, too often you were opening doors better left shut.

  Before you knew it, you were swindled right out of your heart and, if you let yourself unravel any further, most likely out of your panties, too.

  I could feel the threat of it trembling in the air.

  This tension that bounded and ricocheted and lashed.

  Suffocating.

  Curling through the cab like a million silenced questions that were never going to have any answers.

  I peeked to my left at the man who was barreling down the road toward town. Leaned back in the driver’s seat like he’d belonged there all along, one arm stretched out to hold the steering wheel and the other with his elbow propped on the windowsill with his head rested on his hand.

  He would have come across as casual if it weren’t for the fury that lined every inch of his glorious body.

  If it weren’t for that fierce jaw he had clenched tight.

  The sun sank low on the horizon behind him, rays scattering through the window and casting him in a golden glow.

  A music god who’d stolen the songs right out of my soul.

  Pieces of myself missin’ because they would forever belong to him.

  “I don’t know why you’re actin’ so angry. I didn’t ask you to do this,” I mumbled, so quiet, trying to keep my voice in check.

  Hell, I’d begged him not to.

  He grunted, that jaw working like mad.

  I had the urge to touch it. To brush my fingertips through the stubble. Press my nose to it, too.

  There went that spiral.

  Down, down, down.

  I dug my fingers into the seat, refusing to let myself falter.

  He cut me a glare. “And you think I was just gonna let you handle this yourself?” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Daisy who was being uncharacteristically quiet. I wondered if she wasn’t immune to any of this, either. If she felt the potency.

  The roiling waves that grew higher and higher.

  Sucking me deeper.

  “Yes,” I told him, point-blank.

  His head shook, and he scrubbed a palm over his face. “I never should have come back here.” He rumbled it under his breath. Like I wasn’t going to hear. Or maybe that was exactly what he’d intended.

  I stared out the windshield. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  Not when he was never going to stay.

  “Fuck,” he muttered with a shake of his head.

  “That is a very bad word,” Daisy piped in. Awesome. My little heckler was listening from the back after all.

  He flinched and glanced her way again. “Sorry, Daisy. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “That’s okay ’cause you’ve got no little girls to watch over and then you’re talkin’ all those bad big people wordses, right?”

  He cringed harder, and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “Something like that.”

  Slowing, he made a left into the hospital that was built on the outskirts of town.

  Thank God.

  I couldn’t take much more of being cooped up with him in this cab.

  I was beginning to think the only options I had left were either to kiss him or claw his eyes out, and I was not in the market to get my heart mangled all over again.

  The alternative didn’t seem all that prudent, either.

  I hefted out a sigh of relief when he pulled into a parking spot in front of the small emergency room. Dalton was nothing but a speck on the map, and I figured we were lucky to have emergency services available at all.

  “Here we are, sunshine. We’re going to get you all checked out,” I told her, doing my best to ignore the pinging of horror at what could have been. This could have been so much worse had Richard not been there to catch her when she fell.

  And god, that destroyed me, too.

  Knowing what he’d done. What he’d given. What he’d saved her from.

  “I think I’m all the way fine. It’s only hurtin’ barely a bit.” She sent me the fakest grin.

  “Let’s just see what the doctor says, deal?”

  “Okay. Fine. It’s a deal. Let’s get this show on the road. I got reals important things to do,” she said, all kinds of matter-of-fact.

  Richard sent me an exasperated look. Like he didn’t know what to make of her mischief, either. Whether to laugh or drop to his knees and cry.

  My little angel child who was nothing but a hellion.

  The second Richard put the truck in park, I climbed out. I rushed around to get Daisy, and then I was huffin’ out my displeasure when he was already there. He unbuckled her and pulled her into his arms, murmuring these words that cut through me like a dull, rusted blade.

  Agonizing and slow.

  “Here you go. I’ve got you. Don’t worry, flower girl, I’ve got you.”

  Did he think that bein’ there now was gonna change anything? That it could make up for what he’d done?

  “I can get her. I have to carry her to her room all the time when she f
alls asleep on the couch.”

  “I have her.” It was a grunt. No room for argument.

  I didn’t even fight him.

  At this point, I just wanted to get this over with.

  Make sure my Daisy was okay and then get as far away from this man as possible. Set boundaries. Make him promise there would be no more of this.

  The way he was infiltrating our lives as if he had a right.

  Like he wanted to, which was a smack to the face in itself.

  I couldn’t handle it, the betrayal that had cleaved a hole in the middle of us.

  Couldn’t take his presence that screamed to fill it.

  Couldn’t risk getting swamped in his dark, decadent aura.

  The last thing I could do was allow him to hold my hopes and my fears for a second time.

  Give him that trust.

  Because when he left me again? I wouldn’t know how to stand.

  Darkness cloaked the sky, heavy and oppressive in the moonless night.

  A cascade of stars spiraled across the heavens, so low where they dipped down to meet the horizon that it felt as if we were driving through a glittering veil as we traveled the deserted two-lane road.

  Headlights cut a path through the disorder that had become my world.

  Silence a roaring presence in the cab.

  Different than it’d been on the way to the emergency room.

  It’d shifted.

  Turned into something somber and quiet.

  I glanced back at where Daisy was asleep in her car seat. Out cold. Sleep had already been chasing her down while we’d been waiting for the doctor to come in and cast her wrist.

  I reached back and caressed it, my chest stretched tight as I took in the child who was filled with so much life and laughter and mischief, and still, so vulnerable and innocent.

  Her well-being cast into my hands.

  A shiver curled down my spine.

  An ice-cold dread.

  Maybe it hit me right then. After the shock had worn off.

  What truly could have been. How close she’d come. That it could have been any other day when she was off on one of her escapades and no one would have been there to save her.

  Gratefulness rocked me. Slamming me from out of nowhere. So intense it brought moisture burning at the back of my eyes.

  “Shit,” Richard muttered.

  Like he’d been struck by the intensity, too, but in an entirely different way.

  I jerked, and my attention rocked back to the man who kept hitting me like an earthquake. Quivers that staked through my being every time he said a word. Driven deeper with each glance.

  Pain lashed across his face when he looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

  My brow twisted, and my heart skittered. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

  Loaded question, much?

  But I couldn’t stop the gate that busted wide. Freeing something. Opening me up for one vulnerable second.

  Truth billowing between us.

  That connection zapping and zinging through the dense air.

  “For not getting there sooner. For doing it wrong. For fuckin’ it up.” He mumbled it toward the windshield as if the night could take hold of his confession. Like there was more to it than what had happened this afternoon.

  I needed to refuse it. Give him no credit.

  But I couldn’t ignore what he had done. That cresting of gratitude pouring from me.

  Wave after wave.

  “You saved her, Richard. If you hadn’t been there…in that spot…”

  I shuddered at the thought, unable to process a tragedy that great.

  “She has a broken wrist.” His voice cracked with some kind of unspent grief when he said it.

  My head shook, that truth gettin’ free. “And I’m thankin’ God it wasn’t a broken neck. Thankin’ God that you were there. Right when she needed you. Right when we needed you.”

  The statement hovered in the cab.

  Words smothering just as much as they were giving life.

  The weight of it pressed down on our chests.

  Our hearts drumming so fierce they’d become a lifebeat in the cab.

  The two of us trapped in it.

  Going under.

  Clearing my throat, I ripped my attention from his profile and glanced back at her again, my voice filled with adoration and fear. With the burden I carried. “Sometimes I worry that I’m not enough for all that she is.”

  Richard’s teeth clenched, his hands firm on the wheel as he stared out at the road ahead of him. “I’m pretty sure you’re everything she needs.”

  My mouth trembled. “You don’t even know me anymore.”

  He tossed me a glance. “Don’t I?”

  I got caught there, lost in the depth of his gaze. Unrelenting. Hard and soft and everything in between. I searched for a missing breath, finally tearing myself from the trance cast by this man and forcing myself to drop my focus to my lap.

  I doubted that more than a blip of a second had passed that we’d both been there watching it through the distance. But in it had been the eternity we were supposed to share.

  His eclipse right there to swallow it up.

  A black hole where I’d forever gotten lost.

  I instantly felt the loss of it like a kick to the gut. This hollowed-out vacancy that moaned and ached.

  Coming alive from where it’d lain only half dormant in the time he’d been gone.

  Agony rushed me all at once.

  I stifled it and tried to hold it together, but my chest constricted, and moisture clouded my eyes as a sea of sorrow threatened to sweep me away. Through the tears, I looked out the window at the passing countryside.

  I just needed to make it home. Get inside and lock the door and shut him out.

  Permanently.

  Because I wasn’t sure I could remain this close to him for a second longer, for my heart to be right there but no longer mine to keep.

  Pressure filled the space. His breaths hot and heavy and saturating the air.

  The man the oxygen in my lungs.

  Questions vied to get free. Like talons trying to claw their way out of me. Eviscerating. No care for the destruction their seeking this closure might impose.

  I bit down on my tongue, praying for the seconds to pass, holding my breath, feeling like I was nearly gonna faint by the time Richard rounded the last curve that brought the house into view.

  A beacon on the hill.

  In silence, we rambled up the dirt drive, old truck bouncing like crazy, my hand already curled around the doorlatch.

  Before he came to a full stop, I was out the door like a gun had gone off, and I was launching myself into a 300-yard dash.

  I rounded the back of the truck so I could get to my child.

  And yet again, he was there.

  Invading my space.

  Stealing that breath that he’d supplied.

  Before I could argue with him, he shot me a look that told me his actions were not up for debate when he opened the back door.

  Oh, I was pretty sure there was plenty to quarrel about.

  But still, I remained quiet as he picked her up, his entire demeanor at odds with the gentle way he handled her.

  The way he pulled her sleeping form into his arms.

  The way his breaths were short and ragged.

  As if he were suffering.

  Physically.

  Mentally.

  Like maybe he’d had his heart broken as severely as mine.

  My spirit screamed, Why, why, why? Why would you do this to me? Was loving her too much of me to ask?

  I sucked them down and instead ran ahead of him, keeping my footsteps quieted as I moved up to the porch and to the door. I pushed my key into the lock, and I could feel him behind me, the man towering, a dark fortress that eclipsed.

  My bright star that had gone dim.

  I struggled for clarity as I let us into the darkness of the sleeping house.

  “Shh,” I w
hispered as if the baited silence echoing back needed to be acknowledged. But the last thing I needed was for my daddy to come face-to-face with Richard having the nerve to come stand under his roof.

  As it was, I’d been worried the man was going to have an aneurism when I’d told him what had happened—that Daisy had hurt her arm and Richard was driving us to the emergency room—that vein at his temple thumping like mad and gettin’ ready to burst.

  I hadn’t stuck around for the lecture that I’d known was coming. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know exactly what my daddy would say.

  “This way,” I muttered, heading for the stairs. They creaked as we ascended, but I was worried it was the thunder of my heart that was going to wake the entire house.

  Richard didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t need to.

  His presence profound.

  Loud.

  Already proclaiming that he was there.

  At the landing, I took a right and ushered Richard into the room across from mine that had been Liliana’s.

  He slowed for a second, glancing down at me, this hard, tortured turmoil in his eyes.

  Did he get it?

  The pain I’d endured?

  His thick throat bobbing with his heavy swallow, he tore his gaze from mine and carried Daisy inside.

  The room had been redone since the last time he’d been there. It was now a painted oasis of rainbows and flowers and unicorns.

  Magic.

  Just like the little girl.

  Richard’s gaze darted around, taking it in before he moved to her bed that we’d made to look like she was floating on a cloud in that blue, blue sky.

  I pulled back the covers, and he set her onto the mattress.

  “She needs a bath but I’m pretty sure she would lose it if I woke her up right now,” I said quietly, rambling more than I should. “She never wants to go to sleep and then she’ll fight you tooth and nail if she has to get up.”

  He nodded, voice rough, sage eyes caressing over me. “Rest is probably more important right now. It’s been a hard day. I think she had to have been in a lot more pain than she was letting on.”

  I returned a nod. “I think so, too. She doesn’t want a thing to slow her down.”