Falling Deeper (Falling Series)

by Lucia Grace

  Panic strikes me quickly, bringing me back to last week in my classroom, until I hear the deep rumble of Kayson’s voice. Then fear of a different kind infiltrates my mind.

  “Why wasn’t this door locked, Ember? You need to make sure it’s locked, especially when you’re home alone.” He sounds exasperated. Like it’s something I should know.

  He really has some nerve being bossy with me. It’s been four years and he acts like it’s only been four days.

  “Yeah, well, I thought you’d be Momma coming back from running errands.”

  His heavy footfalls carry him from the hallway then around the couch where he’s now facing me. Running his eyes over every part of my pale and tired face.

  “Hey,” he whispers, seeming uncomfortable all of a sudden.

  “What are you doing here? I thought I made it pretty clear the other day that I didn’t want to see you.” I’m being rude and harsh, but I don’t care. I’m tired, I’m sore, and I want to relax and reflect and try to heal from the chaos that has been my life this past week.

  “Damon told me you were being discharged today, so I thought I’d stop by to see if you needed anything and make sure you were doing all right.”

  His change in demeanor from when he first walked in is throwing me off.

  So I decide to come right out and ask him what the hell he wants.

  I huff a sigh before I ask, “What do you want?”

  “I told you. I heard you were being discharged so I wanted to come check on—”

  “No. What do you really want? Why are you here? Why are you back? And why the hell after all this time?” I figure I might as well ask all of my questions outright and hope he answers them quickly. The sooner he answers the sooner he leaves, and the sooner I can go back to trying to rest.

  Now it’s his turn to huff a sigh. “I really did come to check on you. Today, I mean. But I came back because it was about time I did. I’ve waited long enough. What happened last week, the shooting…” He trails off as he spits the last word like venom. “It was what finally made me act on what I’ve wanted to do ever since I left.”

  He’s speaking, explaining, and my jaw is hitting the floor.

  Is he serious?

  “So as soon as I saw the breaking news coverage, saw your name, I knew it was finally time that I got off my ass and came back to you.” He at least has the decency to seem a bit unsure.

  Which is good because I sure as hell am.

  “What? Did you honestly think you’d waltz your ass back into my life after four fucking years, and what? We’d just pick up where we left off, from when we were kids?” I scoff. His eyes widen in shock from my use of curse words because I never used to talk like this. But come on, he cannot be fucking serious.

  But as he continues to look at me, I’m thinking he’s very serious.

  “I didn’t think we’d just pick back up, Ember. I know it’s going to take some time. But I would’ve thought you’d have grown up enough—”

  I cut him off before he can finish. “Really? The insults already, Kayson. Especially under the circumstances. Seems I’m not the only one who hasn’t ‘grown up’,” I say while making air quotations with my hands. I know I’m acting like a petulant child. But I’m fighting off the memories and the hurt as they come crashing back to me with each word he speaks. It’s my defense mechanism right now.

  Plus, he’s just ambushed me on my first day home from the hospital.

  “Fuck,” he curses as he runs his hands through his hair then down his face. “This isn’t coming out right. I just meant I would’ve thought we could try. Take things slow. Start as friends. Let me help you through this recovery that motherfucker forced upon you.” He squeezes that last part out between gritted teeth. Seething mad as he remembers why I’m recovering in the first place.

  While I’ve never forgotten.

  He takes a deep breath then continues. “I’m not a kid anymore, Em, I’m a grown fucking man who’s—”

  “Well it seems to me nothing has changed.” I interrupt again. “Seems to me you’re still the self-centered, egotistical asshole you’ve always been. Thinking only of himself and what he wants. Because all I keep hearing is ‘me’ or ‘I’ spewing out of your mouth. What about me, Kayson? What about me needing time to get used to you being here? What about me needing time for myself to recover, not only from the bullets of that gun, but from the blow of you returning?”

  Exasperated, he finally loses his cool. “What the fuck do you want from me, Ember? Huh? You want me to grovel? Tell you how leaving you was the biggest mistake and my biggest regret? Hit my fucking knees and beg you for a chance? For you to at least see I’m not a dumb fucking kid anymore, but a grown motherfucking man.” He pounds his chest then starts to turn away from my seated position on the couch, but whips back around to stare into my eyes. “What the fuck do you want me to do?”

  “Why did you leave me?” I yell, as tears start to pour down my face. Why the hell not? Let’s address the elephant in the room. Ignoring the pain in my shoulder and stomach. Ignoring the questions of why he returned when I need answers as to why he left. “You want to know what I want? I want fucking answers! Why did you leave me and toss me aside like I meant nothing? After everything. We may have been kids, but our struggles were fucking real. The drug abuse. The fights. The arrest. The disappearing acts. We were kids dealing with adult issues because of YOU!” I’m sobbing now and he’s looking at me with wide eyes and mouth agape. Struggling to find the right thing to say.

  “And I stayed,” I continue on before he finds those words. “After everything, I stayed. After watching you slowly slip away with the drugs and alcohol, time and time again. The arrest that kept you away from me and left me worrying. The court appearances. The days of no contact and waiting by the phone for a call from you or what I feared most—the morgue. After constantly being second best to everything else in your life.” I pound my chest, ignoring the pain that radiates from my bullet wound because that pain pales in comparison to the pain ripping through my heart. “I fucking stayed. So why the fuck, after all of that, did you leave me?”

  I’m screaming. I’m screaming and I hate it. I don’t want to be this person. This volatile woman who can’t control her emotions. I’ve worked hard to become an independent, strong woman and he’s shattering the progress I made by just returning.

  I take a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm down.

  “Because my life was imploding around me! Couldn’t you see that? Feel it? The drugs, the alcohol, the distance. They were all an escape from my shitty home life, my football injury, the pressures of trying to be perfect for you. I was suffocating and all you did was smother me with your love and light. But I never deserved any of it. You were all I wanted, all I needed, but I wasn’t good enough. Never good enough. Not for my dad to stick around. Not for my mom to stay sane. Not for anybody. So before you could leave me, I left you,” he shouts back. “Before you could realize how far I was dragging you down, before you could realize what a waste of a year that was for you, I fucking made the move first and left you.” Regret immediately flashes through his eyes as he takes a step toward me on the couch.

  I toss my hand up, palm forward, to indicate I don’t want him any closer. Even after all this time, after all this anger and hurt, I know if I sense any of his comfort, strength, and warmth, I will crumble at his feet. And I need to remain strong. So he needs to keep away.

  He stops a foot away from me before he continues. “You’re light and pure and good. I was tainting you with my darkness. With my hate and insecurities. So I got fucking scared, okay? I got scared because after everything, after that entire year of me dragging you down, you were still there. Still there for me to sink with my bullshit.”

  I stare at him in horror. Never realizing these were his deepest thoughts, nightmares, and regrets when were together. When we were kids.

  “So you’re telling me you shoved me away, ended our dreams together, because
you were insecure?” I question him because I hope he isn’t telling me his insecurities took him away from me, left me alone to mourn the loss of our child. I’m really hoping and praying with all that I am that I am misunderstanding his reasons for dropping off the face of the earth. For leaving me.

  “Didn’t you think that was my choice to make?” I stare him down as I look up at his towering form, trying to keep it together. “Didn’t you trust me enough to know that after all we endured together that year, that I would have stayed?” I question as the anger rushes back into his eyes.

  “Yes! And that was the fucking problem.”

  With that final blow and all the answers I’ll ever need, I turn my face away from the man I once thought to be the man of my dreams.

  “I need you to leave,” I speak quietly so he can’t hear all the hurt, the anger, and the tears that threaten to fall. “I need you to leave now,” I repeat a little louder, when I see from the corner of my eye that he hasn’t moved an inch.

  “Ember—”

  “No, Kayson. You don’t know what it’s like to watch the person you love slip away. Succumb to the darkness and drugs they drown themselves in. You don’t know what it’s like to lose that one person to the fight they won’t take on. Because they don’t want to. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone with every inch of yourself and it still will never be enough.” I’m yelling again, but I can’t find it in myself to care anymore. He needs to hear this and finally leave me alone so I can process all I’ve been through with the shooting and with his return. It’s been a week since the shooting, almost a week since he burst back into my life. I just need a damn minute to myself to breathe.

  “I know what it’s like,” I continue on. “Me. Not you. You didn’t lose me that day. You tossed me away as you lost yourself. So you don’t get to come back here and make another fucking decision on your own and think you’re just going to walk back into my life as if nothing happened. As if four years didn’t separate us. Now I need you to get out of my apartment, give me time to process what the hell happened to me, and give me time to adjust to you being here. I think I deserve that much at least. Now leave.”

  I don’t even look back up at him. Not through that whole speech and not now when I hear him huff a deep breath, walk out of my apartment, and close the door behind him.

  Bringing me back to that day four years ago when he shut the door on us.

  KAYSON

  As the door clicks shut behind me I stop dead in the hallway. I cannot believe all that came spilling from my mouth. She didn’t need that bullshit on top of everything else. On top of her recovery. Her shock of my return. I just meant to come over, check on her, and see if she’d allow me to step back into her life, slowly, in any way.

  Because four years without her was torture and now after returning home and seeing her, breathing the same air as her, there is no way I can go back and live my life without her anymore. No fucking way. I waited too long before, no way am I leaving her now. She needs to know that I am not giving up, that I will win her back because she is mine. I need to prove to her that I’m not that stupid fucking kid anymore, but a grown man who has never stopped loving her.

  I can’t leave her apartment building without telling her such, so I take out my cell and scroll through my contacts until I find her name as I start walking toward the stairwell. Against his better judgment, Damon gave me her new number at the hospital, when I wouldn’t leave him alone about it.

  Hitting her contact, I bring the phone to my ear as I wait and hope she’ll pick up the unknown number.

  “Hello?” Even though I just heard her voice in person, her breathy, raspy tone through the phone does funny shit to my chest.

  Causes my heart to hurt and heal all at once.

  “Hey, Em.” I clear my throat. “It’s, uh, Kayson. Damon gave me your number the other day, before you left the hospital.”

  “Dammit Damon,” she mutters before I could continue.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t give him much of a choice.”

  Silence falls between us, and I almost pull my phone away to see if I lost her but she speaks before I do.

  “You left my apartment less than a minute ago. What do you want?”

  She sounds tired. At me. At the situation. Just tired.

  So instead of dragging this conversation out, I come right out and say what I need to say.

  “I’m not the same guy I was then, Ember,” I say softly. Trying a different approach than my abrasive way before.

  “And I’m not that same girl, Kayson. I’m a grown woman now. No longer a doormat for you to walk all over. So when I ask you to give me some space, then give me some goddamn space.” She huffs a deep breath into the receiver. Sounding more and more exasperated and exhausted by the minute.

  I need to hurry this up.

  Rushing on before she can say any more, I cut in. “I’m clean. I haven’t touched a single drug in two years. I do indulge in a cigarette or two on occasion. But I swear I don’t touch the hard stuff. The blow, the pills, all of it, it’s done.” Not since I woke up in that hospital room, I want to add, but I don’t. That’s something she should hear from me when we’re face to face.

  “I need you, Ember. I’ve always needed you. I just got lost. Depended on you too much. Then the guilt of dragging you down would consume me. But the past is the past. I’m a changed man. Let me show you that. I need you, any way I can get you.”

  I let my confession hang in the air before I continue.

  “Give me this chance to prove to you that I can be the man you’ve always deserved.”

  Exasperated and sounding defeated she replies, “I need time, Kayson. You just came back into my life a week ago after four years without so much as a phone call. Give me some time,” she ends on a whisper.

  A sense of relief washes over me at her whispered words. “I can give you time. I can do that. As long as that time gives me you, then I can wait.”

  A choked sound rings through the receiver before she replies.

  “I never said you’d get me, Kayson. I said I needed time to get used to you being back.” Then she ends the call and my heart plummets again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  -APRIL-

  EMBER

  Besides the day of our fight, I haven’t seen or spoken to Kayson in the week since I’ve been home.

  To be honest I was a little shocked with each day that passed and I didn’t hear from him. Shocked because he actually listened to me.

  And then shocked because I was actually disappointed that he listened to me.

  Damn my stupid heart.

  Random, unknown deliveries have been showing up each day though, and I have a feeling it’s him. Everything from DVDs and popcorn, to crossword puzzles and magazines, to flowers and chocolates. Each day it’s something new to help keep my mind busy and to help make my recovery easier.

  Momma ensures it isn’t her, and I believe her, whenever I mention the newest package she coyly replies that she has no clue who could be sending them.

  Like I believe that.

  If it was one of the girls they wouldn’t bother having it delivered, they would bring it themselves.

  So that leaves Kayson.

  Well besides Damon, but even though we’ve remained close, he wouldn’t know that my favorite chocolates are caramels or that my favorite flowers are daisies and peonies.

  No, only Kayson would know that.

  So it has to be him. And damn him for sending them. I’m supposed to be mad at him. I should be holding onto my anger and sadness, and I am, but these sweet gestures are warming my heart.

  I hate to admit that I’m starting to anticipate the knock at my front door, signaling each new delivery.

  I hate to admit that my heart melts each time I open my door to see the same plain, brown paper wrapping of each gift.

  And I really hate to admit that over only two weeks, he’s already starting to weasel his way back into my life. An
d intensifying his hold on my heart.

  I shake myself from my thoughts and finish locking my front door then head down to the sidewalk after exiting the elevator.

  It’s been two weeks since the shooting and just one week since I’ve been home, and today is my first day out and about. I’ve stayed locked up in my apartment and hiding out long enough. It’s time I start living again. So I called the girls to see if any of them could meet me for coffee at Tracey’s cafe on their lunch breaks. And as luck would have it, all the girls were able to meet up with me. So I was on my way to meet up with Amber, Sam, and Tracey.

  Since I’ve been home all the girls have stopped by to visit, either in pairs or separately. So it will be nice to all be together for the first time since the “incident”, as I prefer to call it.

  Living in such a small town and with my converted apartment building being at the end of Main Street, I’m able to walk the block it takes to get to The Coffee Press, which is the local coffee shop that Tracey and her family own. Well, walking may be a little bit of a stretch. I’m more like limping and shuffling my way down the sidewalk, but the fresh air and movement is good for me. So as uncomfortable as it is, I’ll take it because I’m lucky to be alive.

  As I make it down the block and open the front door, the bell overhead jingles, signaling my arrival. A few heads turn and don’t look away. Probably surprised to see the shooting victim actually leave her apartment. Being such a small town, everybody knows every detail of what happened to me. From being held hostage, to the shooting, to my recovery.

  But I ignore them as I inhale the rich aroma of coffee and mocha and make my way to the back of the shop where the girls are bound to be. When I look to the back I see them all huddled at our usual table, Tracey just taking her seat. A steaming cup of java or tea in front of each girl with a hazelnut hot chocolate placed in front of an empty seat. The whipped cream swirled on top gives my drink of choice away.

  I smile at the gesture.