Falling into You

by Jackson, A. L.

  She smiled up at me, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “I heard you had a visitor.”

  I sighed and sat down on her bed, facing her, bringing my knees to my chest like it could hold the brittle pieces together. Every crack running through the middle of me aching like mad. “He brought Daisy a present from him, Mabel, and Emily.”

  She hummed. She didn’t believe for a second that was the full story.

  A sigh pilfered free, and I hugged my knees tighter. “He kissed me. Last night and today,” I admitted in a rush, cheeks blazing with embarrassment.

  “That’s that boy’s way, isn’t it? Sweeping in like a storm that hits in the middle of the night without warning, and you can never tell what kind of damage has been done until the sun comes up in the mornin’.” She said it with a soft smile. Disappointment and affection.

  We’d all loved Richard Ramsey which was probably why my daddy had come to hate him so much. Because he’d put his trust in him even when he’d swept me up in the whirlwind that was his life.

  “I’m afraid if I let him, he’ll demolish me again. All of us.” My gaze shifted out the door into the hall where we could hear Daisy playing in her room. Her imagination running wild as she prattled on to herself. “And I don’t want to walk blindly in the night.”

  Understanding moved through her expression.

  “And what’s he saying, Violet?”

  My lips pursed. “He’s actin’ like he wants me back.”

  “And what do you want?”

  I choked out a laugh. “Not to be a fool. Not to stumble out and get lost in his darkness.”

  The man a total eclipse.

  Awestriking.

  Earthmoving.

  Heart-altering.

  A curtain pulled over your eyes so quickly you were caught unaware.

  “He left me with nothing.”

  A lame excuse and a faulty explanation.

  That and a shattered heart.

  She reached out and curled her hand around my ankle, her voice rough and low and filled with emphasis. “You are no fool. Not even close. But you are not driven by the sensible. You are driven by the sensation. By the feeling you get buzzing through your veins. Are you listening with your heart? What are you feelin’ right now?” she asked, those dark eyes searching me with their unending warmth. With her belief and hope.

  “Terrified.”

  It was the bare, basic truth.

  Sympathy pulsed through her expression. “That should probably tell you something.”

  My head shook, knowing how crazy it was. “I think he’s in trouble, Mama.”

  A frown pinched her brow. “What kind of trouble?”

  I hugged my knees tighter, mind spinning as I tried to add up the pieces he’d given. The secrets he held. “That, I don’t know. But whatever it is? I think it just might have been bad enough to rip us apart.”

  Anguish flayed through my heart. Every wrong he could have committed. The ideas of what he had done. When I’d gotten that pathetic letter six years ago, I’d come to the quick, undeniable conclusion—he’d fallen for someone else.

  It’d hurt. Hurt so badly, but I’d done my best over the years to come to terms. But then why would he say the things he had? Imply he’d had no choice?

  My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and I forced out the admission, “I agreed to go to dinner with him tonight. To talk.”

  Mama laughed out a wry sound. “Oh, I doubt very much that man has talkin’ on his mind. Look at you, already loved up and he’s barely touched you.”

  Redness streaked. “Well, there won’t be any more of that touchin’. I already told him that was it. That I wasn’t taking him back and if he wanted to have dinner, we would talk, lay out the past, and get over it. Move on. It’s time.”

  She looked at me like I was the one telling the lies. “That’s just it, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  Her mouth slipped into a disbelieving grin. “Don’t be so sure there’s not more.”

  “Why do you defend him?”

  Her features morphed in understanding, her goodness pouring out. “I’m not defending him, Violeta. Not at all. But I saw what was between you two. Something real and instant. An instinct you both possessed that recognized the other. There was no mistaking it.”

  “Then maybe I should have known he would leave me.”

  Her face pinched.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I just never believed the reason he gave.”

  All those questions spiraled and blazed. I shoved them down. “The reason doesn’t matter. He left me, Mama. He walked away. For six years.”

  “And now he’s here.”

  I exhaled a heavy sound. “And now he’s here.”

  “And in trouble.”

  I huffed out a heavy sigh through my nose. “I think he’s always been trouble.”

  “Yes, he has. The best kind of trouble.” Her eyes danced.

  “Mama,” I chastised, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

  She reached out and took my hand, squeezed it tight. “I just want my baby to be happy. To know her heart is free. With Richard or without him.”

  She didn’t need to say it, the rest of what she’d thought.

  Before I go.

  I squeezed her hand fiercely, sorrow a thousand bricks piled on my chest. “I will be fine, Mama. I promise you.”

  “I know you will be fine, my angel. But I want you to fly. To soar. For your joy to blossom with more color and beauty than every flower in the field.”

  My voice hitched in desperation. “I love you. Love you with all of that.”

  “And I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve had it, Violet. That true joy. My family.”

  Heartbreak blanketed her ashen face, hopeful desperation in her quieted voice. “Have you had any news on Liliana?”

  My heart clanged against my ribs, but I forced a wary smile that I hoped came across as positive when just thinking about it made me want to spiral. “The private investigator said it would take time, but he felt confident he would find her.”

  But would she be dead or alive?

  Would she come?

  Would she steal away that joy my mama was talking about?

  Staggering fear slammed me, my lungs squeezing in a fist.

  “I’ll bring her here, Mama. If there is any way possible, I will bring her here.”

  She nodded through the streaks of moisture that dripped out of the corners of her eyes and rushed into her hair. I crawled over to her, laid down on my side, and wrapped my arms around her.

  A silent promise.

  And a wish that I didn’t have to let her go.

  Twenty

  Richard

  Awareness panged in my chest, heart giving an extra beat at the sight of her.

  Eyes eating up the girl who stepped out the front door and clicked it shut behind her.

  She was wearing a sundress.

  The sexiest sundress I’d ever seen.

  Red.

  Thin straps and a ruffle that ran across the straight neckline, exposing the gorgeous skin of her chest and shoulders, arms thin but built from working out in the fields. A mess of black hair was tied up high on her head in a ponytail and wrapped in a ribbon.

  A few tendrils got free and kissed along her collarbones that I could barely glimpse over the top of the billowy fabric.

  The dress landed just above her knees.

  Black cowgirl boots on her feet.

  My insides tightened.

  She looked like a picture of home.

  Wanting to get to her faster, I stepped out of my truck, rushed anew with the sense of standing on even ground when I’d been clawing through desolation for the last six years. That I was there, right in the place where I’d been purposed. Where I would have belonged if I hadn’t been condemned.

  I shoved those thoughts down. Wanted to savor this moment. To give myself over to the fantasy of what this could have been if I hadn’t made that one mistake
that had sent me toppling into a black hole.

  One that just got darker and uglier and vaster the farther I fell.

  If I hadn’t thirsted for success so desperately.

  She edged across the porch while I took a couple steps her direction. A cool breeze blew through, whipping those strands around her gorgeous face, that mouth covered in a shiny gloss, her eyes luminous and mysterious and overflowing with every question that I’d left her with.

  That stunning body written in nerves.

  Toiling and shivering.

  I was wracked with a bout of longing, so intense and fierce, it almost dropped me to my knees.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” I said, leaning against the front of my truck and waiting for her to come my direction.

  “Hi,” she whispered. Wariness bled from her demeanor. But beneath it was something more.

  Something that had been us.

  That relentless energy that had staked its claim on who we were.

  A connection unending even when it should have been ripped up at the root.

  It banged and lashed and heaved through the dense air.

  Girl’s eyes flashed and those lips parted.

  Affected.

  I pushed off the truck and strolled her way. Hands stuffed in my pockets to keep from doing something stupid like reaching out and touching.

  Because I was achin’ like mad to do the very thing she’d asked me not to do.

  To taste and to kiss and to fuck.

  Reclaim.

  I stopped at the base of the steps. Holding onto the railing, she took the first step down. It sent tremors rocking the earth. When she climbed down to the next, it might as well have been an earthquake with the way she hit me.

  A landslide.

  A complete collapse.

  She stopped on the last, leaving us face-to-face.

  Our breaths mingled in the air.

  Whirring around us with the whisper of possibility.

  Could I be such a fool to think that I might have this again? So selfish to go after the girl who deserved so much better than what I had done?

  Stomach contorting in conflict, I reached out and grabbed a single piece of her hair.

  She jerked in a sharp inhale.

  I tucked it behind her ear, keeping clear of her skin, my breath close to her ear. “You are stunning. You have any idea what you do to me? Finding you like this? Fucking most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Old wounds opened up and rushed from her pores. “You can’t go around sayin’ stuff like that to me. We already talked about this.”

  “You said no touching or kissing. Not doing either of those. And I came here planning on telling you the truth.”

  At least what I could give her which wasn’t gonna be a whole lot.

  She huffed out a painfully cute sound. “You just touched my hair.”

  I quirked her a grin. “Hair doesn’t count.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Lord help me if you’re the one making the rules.”

  “I thought it was plenty established that I’m the rule breaker, not the rule maker?” It came off playful.

  Her laugh was droll. “Rule breaker. Heart breaker. Same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Violet.” Her name tumbled off my tongue in an apology.

  She shook her head, lifted her chin. “Come on…let’s get this over with.”

  I pushed out a sigh and stepped to the side so she could make her way to my truck. I followed close behind, my hand hovering at the small of her back but not quite touching. Probably didn’t matter a whole ton considering the heat of us created a fiery ball of energy in that bare space, burning us alive, anticipation a razor-sharp edge in the atmosphere.

  Her breaths were coming short and swift as I reached around and opened the door for her. She climbed in. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She’d always been.

  My sheer and utter pleasure.

  I shut her in, rounded the front, and hopped into the driver’s seat. “You ready?”

  She huffed a little sound, though there was something light playing around her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever been ready for you, Richard Ramsey.”

  “Funny because I think you were the only thing in my life I’ve ever been ready for.”

  Pain creased the corner of her eyes, and I started the truck and backed out without saying anything else.

  My intentions clear.

  She was just going to have to catch up to them.

  We started the trip into town in basic silence.

  Violet’s apprehension was heavy and dragging in the cab, the minutes slugging by and racing too fast.

  I glanced across at her, girl shifting in the seat more than she had been the day I’d gone with her to take Daisy to the emergency room.

  Because then her focus had been the child.

  The sweet, adorable child who lodged a rock at the base of my throat.

  Guilt came at me like a sledgehammer sent to crush my tainted soul to dust and debris.

  I reached out and broke another of those rules. Caressed the pad of my thumb along the edge of her hand she held on her lap.

  Tingles ravaged her flesh.

  Palpable.

  The beat of her heart a hammer, a clanging riot, so loud I could feel it like a shout at my spirit. Mine raced to catch time. I glanced her way for a second, still touching that spot and wishing I could sink all the way inside and make her understand.

  “Want to make one thing clear before we start this night, Violet. Need you to know I never meant to hurt you,” I said, shifting to stare out the windshield. The countryside blinked by, passing in a blur, same way as our love.

  Gorgeous and wilting. Bright and fading.

  Blooming before it’d been sentenced to decay.

  “You were the one thing I cherished beyond any other in this world. The one thing.” The words scraped from my raw throat.

  Sadness rippled from her being, filling up the space and stealing the air. My lungs wanted to cave. “You keep sayin’ that, Richard, but you chose to do it anyway. You think you comin’ back here can just erase that?”

  “No. I don’t.” I huffed out an uncomfortable laugh. “Do I wish it could? Fuck yeah. Would do anything to take away the pain. But I can’t escape this.”

  My attention drifted to her, like she might be able to see to the bare truth of what I was tellin’ her.

  The hidden confession.

  I was a prisoner.

  Bound to what I’d done. To what I had to do.

  Her expression was tortured. “What have you been runnin’ from? What you said back at the house…”

  She trailed off. The implication clear.

  My teeth mashed together. “Won’t let anyone get near you, Violet. Won’t let anyone touch you.”

  This whole mission was about saving the innocent. The pure who had been defiled.

  “Who is it I need protected from?”

  My jaw clenched tight, voice only half a tease. “Apparently only me. Anyone else won’t get close.”

  She choked out a wry sound. “Now that is something I can believe.”

  I slowed as we got into town, and I took a left into the restaurant parking lot. I pulled into a spot, turned off the truck, and released a heavy sigh as I roughed a disturbed hand through my hair, staring ahead before I finally forced myself to look at her. “It’s a bad world, Violet. That’s the truth.”

  “What’s a bad world?”

  I looked out the windshield. “Fame. Striving to be something, to stand in the limelight, not having the first clue you’re gonna get burned by it.”

  Sorrow swam in the depths of those fathomless eyes.

  Mystery and mourning and fidelity.

  Girl so fuckin’ genuine and sweet and real that she made it difficult to sit in the purity of who she was.

  “Every life has its hardships, Richard. Its trials. We could have gone through them together.” Her mouth trembled when she sai
d it, with the loss of the years and the what-could-have-beens.

  Hand shaking like a bitch, with the truth of the corruption this girl didn’t understand or see, I shifted so I could set my hand on her cheek.

  “You’re not getting what I’m saying.”

  Didn’t want her to.

  It was what I was protecting her from in the first place.

  “It’s bad, Violet. And when I say bad, I mean bad. Cruel and wicked and perverse. You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

  What I’d been involved in.

  How it would wreck her if she even caught a glimpse.

  Moisture filled her eyes, and she attempted to blink away the tears, but one got free, her voice quivering with dread and sympathy. “You mean…like what happened to Emily? I saw, Richard, on the news. That somethin’ bad happened to her. It’s horrible. I can’t…”

  She trailed off, her breath hitching in pain.

  Grieved.

  Gutted.

  Blame lashed like a whip. Gashes that would forever bleed. “Like that. Even worse.”

  And fuck, I hated to even compare what my sister had gone through because that was bad enough. But I’d seen to the full depths of depravity.

  “You would have protected me.”

  “What if I couldn’t? What if it was the only way to keep you safe?”

  “Then you never should have been there in the first place.”

  There she was.

  Honest.

  Real.

  Right.

  I never should have been there in the first place, and that had been the first mistake I had made.

  “And sometimes you’re standin’ in the middle of something, and you have no idea how you got there,” I told her, words an abrasion that scraped and ground. “You’d do anything to get out, but you’re already a prisoner and there’s no hope for escape.”

  Dread dampened her expression. “If you were in trouble, why couldn’t you have trusted me?”

  My teeth gnawed at my bottom lip, and I stared at the woman who meant everything. I warred with what to say, finally settling, not sure if it was the whole truth or an excuse. “Because I didn’t trust myself.”

  Didn’t know if the reality was that every faulty choice I’d made had been ushered in by shame.

  Our gazes tangled. A fusion in the dusky light that poured from the lamppost that lit the parking lot. A labyrinth between us that I had no idea how to cross.