Falling Deeper (Falling Series)

by Lucia Grace

  There’s pride in his voice as he tells me about becoming an EMT. I can’t help but feel it as well.

  “So you see? I’ve turned my life around. I’m clean, I have a job, and now I’m back for you. Because although I know letting you go wasn’t the wrong decision, how I did it was. I never cheated on you, Ember. I never slept with that girl. I was high and drunk off my ass; I don’t remember all that I did. But I do know that I never slept with her. After you charged out of that house party, Damon took me home.” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “That next morning I made the decision that when I finally talked to you I’d lie to push you away, because I knew deep down that you would never have walked away otherwise.”

  Emotion glazes his eyes and clogs his throat.

  It feels as though ice is running through my veins. This cold dose of reality bringing clarity to the situation. Not only for the old wounds he’s ripping open, but also for the ones he’s threatening to reveal.

  I’m not ready to tell him yet. Not even close. Not when I haven’t even had the chance to digest this new information.

  “You need to leave.”

  He winces slightly at my demand then confusion slides across his face.

  “Ember—”

  “No, you need to leave now.” I open the door, signaling him to walk out.

  I can’t even look at him.

  The image of him alone in rehab searing into my brain. The memory of that house party over four years ago ripping through my thoughts. The shame of not telling him about our loss when I had the opportunity consuming me.

  As he walks through the door he spins to say something, but this time, I’m the one closing the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  KAYSON

  “So what happened?” Damon asks as he walks up to the table at Sophie’s Kitchen. Accusing me with his eyes as he sits down. With a lift of his brow he waits for my reply.

  Impatient bastard.

  “Good morning to you too, asshole.”

  “Well, I told you last night wouldn’t be a good idea and since you texted me at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning telling me to meet you as soon as possible, I figured it couldn’t have gone well.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I glare at him.

  “Spill, dude,” he says over his coffee mug.

  “Last night wasn’t a total success. When I got to the club Sam ripped into me and Amber ended up having to hold Tracey back.”

  “Shocker there. Sam is crazy on the best of days, dude. Protective Sam is even crazier. And as for Tracey, you know she’d do anything for Em. Including beating your ass.” He smirks while something else shifts in his eyes. Something has been going on with those two. But I can’t focus on them when I need to focus on Ember and fixing us.

  “That isn’t where the night ended though.” I hold in my groan when I think of Ember getting lost in me and my mouth. I swear I can still taste her on my tongue, and that thought causes my dick to jack to life. I shift uncomfortably, trying to ease my erection away.

  “Aw, man, what the fuck did you do?” Damon sounds exasperated because he knows where this is going.

  “I took a drive to clear my head and somehow ended up at Ember’s apartment. I was going to wait in my truck in the side lot to make sure she got home safely, since she was drinking.” He gives me a skeptical look, but I continue on and ignore it. “But then I remembered that I didn’t see her car in the parking lot when I left so that meant she’d be dropped off. So I went up to her floor and waited by her apartment door until she got home.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he mutters to himself, causing me to pause. But yet again, I ignore him.

  “She was surprised to see me sitting there, to say the least, but she did let me in. But as soon as I walked through the door my plans of talking turned into a hell of a lot more with her standing there in her sexy-as-fuck dress and heels.”

  Just thinking of her last night has me hard. Again. I shake my head of the vision she was last night. “Because of that I thought I might have had an in for us to finally talk. But me being me, means I said the wrong fucking thing and told her about why I got clean and then she tossed me out.”

  I run my hands over my face and through my hair when I think of the look on her face as she slammed the door in my mine. I was shocked that my telling her about my overdose would elicit such a reaction from her. All I seem to do since I came back is make her cry or make her angry. I expect that with how I left things and with my abrupt return, but we’ve seen each other a handful of times now. You’d think I could make some leeway with her and get her to remember some of the good. Not just the bad.

  Especially after that orgasm. But it seemed to have the opposite effect.

  When I start to think of other ways to get Ember to open up to me and consider a second chance, Damon interrupts my thoughts. “You can’t just waltz back into her life, hit her over the head like some fucking caveman, and drag her to your cave.” He scoffs like I’m a fucking idiot. “You need to talk to her.”

  “I’ve tried talking to her. I’ve tried ignoring the past, I’ve tried talking about it, I’ve tried explaining why I sobered up. Hence why I finally spilled about the overdose and how it changed me. All of it, I’ve tried all of it. But she either starts crying or yelling and then pushes me away.”

  “She needs time, dude. Time. To heal from the shooting. To heal from the past, and the memories and nightmares brought back by seeing you.”

  The shooting, fuck. Hot, fiery rage boils my blood and thrums through my veins whenever I think of that crazed motherfucker shooting up that classroom and my beautiful girl.

  “Ember isn’t the same girl you left four years ago. She’s a grown woman now, who’s suffered a lot but has come out on the other side.”

  “She said the exact same thing to me, Damon.” I interject.

  “Well, she’s right. She’s stronger, braver, tougher. But she’s also harder and deeper. She’s grown more mature and more cautious. You did a number on her. Even for your ages what you had was always real. Then your years apart and then this shooting. She’s survived a lot, man. A lot.”

  The way he stresses that she’s been through so much has me getting ready to question if something more happened in our four years apart. But Damon’s next words have me tensing up and freezing in place.

  “You’ve been through a lot too, bro. And I don’t just mean your downward spiral in high school or almost killing yourself in the years following. I mean you losing Ember like she lost you. I mean you picking yourself up after almost letting the darkness completely consume you and making something of yourself.”

  Before he can say more I shake my head to cut him off. “The darkness did completely consume me, man. It did. It just wouldn’t take me, and now I know why. Because I’m meant to fix this shit with Ember and get my girl back. For good. She was my only thought as the drugs and alcohol swirled through my veins and took me under. My only thought when I woke up in that hospital bed. And she’s been my only thought every day since I left her.”

  She’s been all I’ve ever thought about.

  “But don’t for one minute think I didn’t let the darkness consume me, because I did. It’s just thanks to you that I was able to pull myself from under its clutches and come out on top. Thanks to you I was able to survive and make it back here.”

  “Do you know why I became a cop?”

  He surprises me by asking. Odd response to everything I just laid at his feet, but whatever. “Figured your uncle had something to do with it.” Since his uncle is a cop it makes sense.

  “You’re the reason. Watching you slip and fall. Watching you let the despair and anger consume you. Witnessing you crumble before my eyes and not being able to help.” The darkness from our past clouds over his eyes and shocks the shit out of me. I never knew.

  “That’s why. I needed to be able to help those like you. I needed to be able to help fix those who were breaking or at least try to lead them in
the right direction. I’ve seen some fucked-up shit in my line of work, man. But nothing was ever as hard as watching the darkness take you under.”

  I knew my issues affected him, but I never knew this much. To say I’m shocked is an understatement. But I really shouldn’t be. Damon is like a brother to me. He is a brother to me.

  “So as much as you say I saved you and shaped your life, you shaped mine just the same, Kayson. Just the same.” He shakes his head as if to clear all the thoughts from his head. “Enough of that heavy shit, bro. Back to the reason why we’re here.” He laughs and I follow suit.

  Shit did get heavy.

  “Right. What should I do then? About Ember, I mean.”

  “What’s something that’s good? Something to remind her of the love and not all the other bullshit?”

  The first thing that comes to mind is one of Ember’s favorite places and one of our last great moments together. The beach and our date. The date where we vowed to make it work, but I failed.

  I ask for the check as anger and sadness weigh me down. “I have an idea. The beach. She always loved it and it holds a lot of great memories for us.”

  “Well then I’d say that would be somewhere to start.”

  As we are waiting for the check I see a look pass over Damon’s face before he asks, “Have you two talked at all? I mean I know you said you’ve tried, but have you at all? About your time apart? About what you both went through?”

  “Only a conversation that turned into an argument about why I left and why I changed my ways. But we didn’t get into anything else. Why?”

  “Oh nothing.” He seems uneasy. He clears his throat. “Just thinking that may help you two make some decisions as well.”

  The way he asked and his reply have an odd feeling settling in me. But I decide to brush it off. He decides to let it go, too.

  “Okay, let’s go shoot some hoops or some shit. All this talk is making me feel like a damn pussy,” he says as he slaps me on the back.

  Laughing, I pull him into a one-armed bro hug and shove him out the door.

  “Yeah, man. Let’s shoot some hoops.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  -MAY-

  KAYSON

  As I’m jumping down from the ambulance on my lunch break, I catch sight of Ember aimlessly walking down the sidewalk.

  The streets are pretty quiet so I contemplate shouting over to her to catch her attention, but I think better of it since she seems lost in thought and with how things have been going with us lately. Especially after what happened last Saturday night and then Damon’s subsequent lecture on Sunday morning.

  I figure a lighter, less demanding approach is how I should handle things, and hollering at her like a Neanderthal across the lot probably isn’t the way to go.

  I check both ways before I start crossing the street; I make it a few steps in her direction before I stop suddenly, as I hear a car backfire. But I start charging forward, straight for Ember, when I see her freeze and the bag she was carrying falls to the concrete. I can see her body trembling from the several feet that separates us.

  It takes me a second, but then I realize she thinks the car was a gunshot

  As I stop just a foot short of where she stands, head down and arms hugging her body tightly, I also see tears dripping from her face, staining the sidewalk below.

  Her sobs are silent but no less gut-wrenching as she stands there shaking. Fear consuming her. She must be in shock because she doesn’t even flinch when I say her name or bend down to retrieve her bag.

  I look around to make sure no one else is seeing her like this before I try again.

  “Ember.” My voice is gruff and almost frantic.

  Her head snaps up. Dark brown, vacant eyes stare up at me. She’s lost in her head.

  “Ember. It’s me. Kayson. Focus on me. That’s right, baby, focus on me.”

  I continue to talk as I walk right up to her, shouldering her bag then grasping her face in my hands. At my soothing tone and warm touch, life comes back to her eyes, but the fear doesn’t subside.

  She starts looking around, and at first I think it’s because she’s embarrassed. But I quickly realize otherwise when she becomes frantic.

  “Oh my God. We need to get down. Take cover. He found me. How did he find me? I thought he was dead. Damon said he was dead.”

  Her silent sobs are no more. She’s now full out crying loudly and yelling for us to get to safety. To call the police.

  My chest burns and my heart aches.

  “Ember, no. We’re fine. That was a car. Shh. That wasn’t what you thought, baby. It was a car.” I plead with her to hear me, but she keeps crying and shaking.

  Not caring that we’re in the middle of the sidewalk, that she’s mid-panic attack, and that the last time we saw each other she was kicking me out of her apartment with her taste still on my tongue. I drop my hands from her beautiful face and wrap her up in my arms, crushing her to my chest.

  Her knees buckle just as my large body engulfs her much smaller one, but I take her weight. I hold her and comfort her. I let her cry until she’s calmed down enough, then I slowly walk us both to the street bench at the corner.

  As I sit I pull her down in my lap and drop her bag to the side, my arms still banded around her. I rock her slightly until she stops trembling but her tears still fall.

  When the sniffling and tears die down, I bring my fist under her chin to lift her eyes to mine. Seeing the fear and sadness all over her face shreds me. It completely tears me apart and ignites my fury at the weak motherfucker who harmed her. I take a deep breath to calm myself down before I lift my hand and use my fingers to wipe the remaining tears from her face.

  “Are you okay now?” I ask her gently.

  She sniffles a few times before she answers. “I-I think s-so.”

  I scan her face and take in her beauty while she collects herself a little more. I see the questions burning in her eyes.

  “What happened?” she asks quietly.

  I close my eyes briefly before I answer her. “A car backfired and then you had a panic attack, I’d say.”

  Shame washes over her face at my simplified version of what went down and she tries to duck her head to hide it from me.

  “Hey, now. Don’t hide from me. It’s okay. You’re okay. I know what you thought you heard. And I know that triggered your panic.” She starts to shake her head, but I finish before she can shut me down. “Was that was your first panic attack or have you had one before?”

  She looks into my eyes, then realizes she’s on my lap so she wiggles herself free then slides into the spot next to me before answering.

  I feel the loss of her immediately.

  “I’ve had a minor one or two since the incident. But that is the biggest one I’ve had.” The shame has returned, and so has my anger.

  “Are you seeing anybody about them? Getting any help?” I know my voice is harsh. But I can’t help it. Just thinking of her suffering has my blood boiling.

  “No.” She shakes her head and replies barely above a whisper.

  “I think it may be a good idea to start going. Or at least look into it. Especially after today,” I reply just as quietly.

  She looks up at me and it’s then that I realize I’m absentmindedly playing with a few strands of her hair. She looks away as I bring my hand down and she ignores it. Just like my advice.

  “Thank you,” she says instead. “Thank you for being here even though you didn’t have to be.”

  She peers up at me through long black lashes, and now my chest burns for a whole other reason. A warmth that only her presence can bring consumes me.

  “Even if it wasn’t you, Ember, I still would have stopped to help. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

  She tries to look away, but I clasp her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “But I stopped especially because it was you.”

  Her shoulders drop slightly and she seems to relax at that, so I release her chin. We sit in silenc
e for a few minutes before I break it.

  “I know this really isn’t the best time to ask you considering the circumstances. But I’m afraid if I wait another day I’ll do something else to fuck up and then blow my chances with you. So here goes…”

  I take a deep breath then release it as I catch a small smile split her full lips. Her lashes still wet from her tears.

  “I realize that my return was a shock and was probably unwanted.” Her smile falters at that. “But I want to prove to you that I’ve changed. That I’m better, I’m calmer, I’m more mature.”

  She looks nervous, almost as nervous as I am, but I push on anyway.

  “Let me show you that. Let me show you how much I’ve changed but how my feelings haven’t.”

  That small smile of hers is back. But it seems brighter now—causing my chest to tighten like it always does when she shines that shy smile on me.

  “Go on a date with me. One date. And if you hate it, and me, I’ll step back. It’ll kill me, but I will. Just give me this one chance, baby.”

  She turns to me fully and dread starts to seep into my veins. I’m an idiot for even thinking a time like this would be appropriate to ask her out on a date.

  I’m about to take it back. Tell her never mind. But before I can speak she beats me to it.

  And shocks the hell out of me.

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  EMBER

  Kayson shifts into reverse and then backs up to the beach.

  He turns off the truck as my heart starts to flutter when memories of our past filter through my mind.

  The start of this date seeming very reminiscent of our last date so many years ago.

  As soon as he picked me up and started in the direction of the beach, I knew his intentions, and I can’t say I’m surprised. Or disappointed. That night was one of the best of my life.