Always: A Legacy Novel (Cross + Catherine Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  She turned her shoulder to him.

  Cross grabbed for her hand.

  Catherine snapped back from his grasp before he could even touch her, and then she struck out at him, opened palmed and aiming for his face. He was too shocked to dodge it, but he did manage to catch her swinging arm before it connected.

  She didn’t hit.

  Not him.

  Not even when they were doing their on again, off again fuck-fest during his last year of high school. Oh, the girl could rage when she was drunk and pissed off at him, sure, but she never hit.

  Catherine’s eyes blazed with fire. “Let me go.”

  “Don’t ever raise your hand to me, Catherine. I’ve never hit you, and I never will. You’ve got words, so use them instead.”

  She jerked her arm out of his grasp, and headed for the back hallway that lead to the bathroom and bedrooms. Cross followed, only to get the bedroom door slammed in his face.

  He was not here for this sort of petty shit.

  She didn’t lock the door, so he went in behind her.

  And dodged a pillow coming his way the second he was in the doorway. Then, another.

  “What the hell, Catty?”

  Catherine threw the other four decorative pillows off the bed at him, too. Cross let her throw her fit, but once she was out of pillows, he headed her way.

  “That’s enough,” he said, rounding the bed.

  “How dare you?” she screamed at him.

  Cross hesitated. “What?”

  “You went to my cousin, and told him to back off? Who the fuck are you to get in my business like that, Cross? Do I ever tell you to stop running all over New York, day in and day out? Have I ever called your father and demanded he stop sending you to Chicago every other week? How dare you do that to me?”

  “Cath—”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Babe, I went to Andino because nothing I say to you is getting through. You’re not listening. You can’t keep this shit up, don’t you get that? You can’t keep doing it like you are.”

  Catherine sucked in a sharp breath, and straightened like someone had shoved a rod up her spine. “You don’t ever get to tell me what I can or can’t do, Cross. No one ever has, and no one ever will. I do what I want, on my terms. Just like you do when you keep fucking off all over this state, or whatever one you’re heading to next week.”

  “It’s not about telling you what you can or—”

  She shoved past him, once again, not listening.

  “Fuck off,” she muttered.

  Cross grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back into him before she could get too far away. “Catherine, chill out. You’re drunk and pissed, I get it.”

  He wasn’t letting her out of his arms, no matter how hard she struggled, or the cusses she hurled at him. It took a minute, but she settled a bit, sinking against him with a sob.

  “Why would you do that to me, Cross? I don’t want people thinking I’m messed up in my head, or hovering over me like I’m some fragile doll. I don’t need them asking me questions, or staring more than they already do. I handle my business alone. You had no right to do that to me!”

  He let her go, and she faced him. “Don’t you hear yourself? This is exactly why I did it, Catherine. You need to stop, or slow down. You’re not managing the rest of the shit going on in your life, or things that happened. You’re burying it, you’re using dealing and who you are when you’re out there doing that to mask the shit you don’t want to deal with. You did the same thing when you were sixteen and—”

  “I told you I was fine!”

  She definitely wasn’t fine, but he had crossed a line. Big time. Cross was only now seeing it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Catherine shook her head, and flicked her hand at him. “Just back off, all right? I need to breathe, Cross.”

  She headed for the bathroom.

  He let her go without a word.

  It was only later, when he figured her buzz wore off, and she was tired of stewing in her own anger, that she finally reached for him again. In bed, soft and naked, lips on his skin, raking lines down his back, and apologizing all the while.

  He knew that was bad.

  He saw that spiral coming all over again.

  Drink.

  Rage.

  Fight.

  Fuck.

  Bolt.

  Jesus, he didn’t want to do that again.

  Cross didn’t bother to think on it too hard, then, though. Not when he was fucking her in their bed, surrounded by them, and he had a hold of her. She couldn’t fall if he held her.

  It was three in the morning when his phone rang, and he was still wide awake. Cross grabbed the phone, and put it to his ear, not even bothering to check the ID.

  “Donati here,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand down his face.

  “You got time for a run?” Theo asked.

  Cross stared up at the bedroom ceiling. “What’s the details?”

  “Shipment’s already here. It’s all boat for the most part this time, though. It’s heading to a shitty little port over to Kenya, then it’s driving until you hit the river again to take it into Congo. I need somebody good with routes on the boat making a plan for when it hits the shore. Thirty-k for you if you get it into port with no pickup, and another twenty when you hit the drop in Congo. You up for it, or what?”

  “How many guns?”

  “Four-hundred.”

  Shit.

  “You know that run is worth more than that, Theo.”

  “Take it or leave it, Cross.”

  Cross looked to the side, and found Catherine watching him. Apparently, she hadn’t been sleeping, either. She needed a break from him; he needed a break from her. He wanted to kill that spiral of them falling back into old habits before it even got started.

  This could do that.

  “I’ll be in Chicago tomorrow,” Cross said into the phone.

  “See you, then.”

  Cross hung up the phone.

  Catherine pulled him into her again.

  Don’t go.

  Catherine didn’t move, despite the words her mind screamed silently.

  Please don’t go.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, while Cross strolled out of the walk-in closet with a pile of clothes in his arms. He dumped the items uncaringly into the duffle bag. His hand reached out to her, and his thumb stroked her cheekbone.

  Stay with me.

  Catherine turned her head into Cross’s palm, and kissed his skin.

  “You good?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she lied.

  She was dying.

  Inside, she was blackening, rotting, and dead.

  She hadn’t been good for a while.

  She was better with Cross.

  I need you here.

  “This one is going to be a while,” he said, referring to his trip.

  Catherine nodded, but stayed silent.

  Cross headed for his side of the bed, and she felt the loss of his hand on her before it was even gone. He pulled out that gold-tinted Eagle he loved so much from under his pillow, checked the clip, and slid it back in with a snap, before putting it back.

  “You know where that is and how to use it, if you need it, babe.”

  “Thought you said it would break my wrist?”

  “A broken wrist is worth a living Catherine,” he murmured, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.

  Then, he was heading back into the walk-in closet again.

  Don’t go.

  It’s black in my mind without you.

  I’m not okay.

  Please don’t go …

  Catherine didn’t—couldn’t—speak up. Her screaming thoughts echoed through a catacomb, but stuck to her tongue like tar. She couldn’t get them out.

  Cross was checking his phone as he came out of the closet once more, saying, “Shit, my flight got rescheduled. It’s a half hour earlier, now. I’ve got to go.”

 
; Don’t …

  “You’re going to call me, right?” Catherine asked.

  “As much as I can.”

  You help me to breathe.

  It’s easier when you’re here.

  Cross came to stand in front of her, and his fingers slid under the line of her jaw. Catherine tipped her head back to take his kiss. She sucked in one last, large gulp of air.

  It was going to hurt to do that for the unforeseeable future.

  It would hurt to even breathe.

  “We’re good, right?” he asked.

  I am broken.

  I am wrong.

  Don’t go.

  “We’re perfect,” she said.

  That was the truth.

  It was her that was a lie.

  She took one last kiss from him, and stayed on the bed as he gathered his duffle and headed out of the bedroom. She didn’t want to say goodbye at the door. She might not make it back to the bedroom where she wanted to stay until he got back.

  Catherine heard the front door slam.

  Her chest tightened painfully.

  Alone.

  Lost.

  Too quiet.

  Black mind.

  Tired.

  Restless.

  Without.

  Why did you go?

  Don’t you see me?

  Catherine needed to breathe; the anxiety in her heart and mind started to build like a fast rushing wave that she couldn’t escape. The panic spiked higher; her fear of being alone and broken and frightened by her own mind and a body that felt dirty when it wasn’t being held by someone who adored only her.

  Before she knew it, she was in full meltdown mode on the edge of the bed, a fucking mess, hungover, sobbing, and unable to get enough air in to satisfy her need.

  One breath … two.

  Two breaths … three.

  That had always helped her before. Always kept her steady.

  It did nothing now.

  Catherine stumbled her way to the kitchen, and pulled open the fridge. There, she found something that helped. At least, for a little while. She downed a bottle of white wine she needed for cooking.

  She was drunk.

  She was stupid.

  She was alone.

  She could breathe.

  Catherine stared at the ceiling of the bedroom, unmoving on the bed.

  She hurt.

  Her whole body ached.

  She didn’t know why.

  She just wanted to be numb.

  Her alarm had gone off two hours ago. She let it ring through. Five reminder alarms went off, too, but she didn’t bother to move. She missed her first class. She was late for her second. She was well on her way to skipping the whole day altogether.

  She’d already missed three days that week.

  She hadn’t even been sleeping, simply staring. She couldn’t sleep. Her dreams were not nice places lately. Her dreams were not dreams at all.

  They were nightmares.

  Her phone rang, and for a moment, Catherine thought it was another alarm. She didn’t bother to reach for it right away, until she realized Halsey’s Now or Never tune was actually the ringtone she had placed for Cross’s number.

  He’d been gone three weeks.

  He called twice since then.

  Catherine broke from her daze, and grabbed the phone on the fifth ring, just before it would go to her voicemail. She picked the phone up just in time. “Cross?”

  “Hey …” The phone crackled in and out for a bit, making Catherine want to cry. “Shitty service, though.”

  “It’s okay,” she lied.

  She was lying a lot more lately.

  She was falling, too.

  Constantly, relentlessly falling into a black abyss she had made. It was cemented by a depression she couldn’t shake, by thoughts that scared her, and memories that haunted her. It was made worse by a man she needed to keep her steady, but wasn’t close enough to touch.

  Now, she couldn’t even hear him.

  “Maybe two weeks, okay,” she heard him say.

  “Two and you’ll be back?”

  “Or …” The phone crackled again. “Damn, I have to go, babe. Love you, huh?”

  “Always,” Catherine echoed.

  The phone went dead.

  His voice got her out of bed, though.

  The orange prescription bottle, compliments of a doctor she had decided to see, got her out the door with two Xanax. One more pill than she was supposed to take, according to the label. She didn’t bother to consider that the one blue pill she took at night was supposed to make her sleep, but it only worked if she doubled that, too. Sometimes, tripled it.

  She didn’t think about it at all when she dropped back two anti-depressants as she sat in the parking lot of the college campus. Another prescription that was supposed to be helping.

  Her hands trembled as she rested them on the steering wheel. They had been doing that a lot since she started adding three or four glasses of wine to wash back her sleeping pills for longer than she was willing to admit.

  Catherine let out a slow breath, finally feeling calmer.

  Slightly.

  It wasn’t so much calm, as numb. She liked that blissed, numbed place the meds got her to; a place where she didn’t have to think very much, or feel, if she didn’t want to.

  She didn’t have to think.

  The only problem with being numb and dazed?

  She couldn’t fucking concentrate.

  She lost seconds.

  Minutes.

  Several …

  She blinked, and she was sitting in her fourth and final class, listening to a lecture.

  Catherine wasn’t even sure if it was the same day.

  That terrified her.

  It kept getting her through the day, though. It kept getting her to sleep. It kept getting her out of bed. It was doing what it was supposed to, right?

  “Did you get that last note?” the girl next to Catherine asked.

  She stared at the girl, unsure and slow in her mind.

  A bit too in the clouds.

  Light on her feet.

  High.

  “No,” Catherine said, “I didn’t get anything he said at all.”

  The girl laughed. “Damn. Trouble concentrating today? That’s me, like, all the time. I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Catherine.”

  “June.”

  The pixie-like brunette with the short, short hair dug in her bag, and pulled out a blue bottle. It looked like Catherine’s prescription bottles for her sleeping pills, but without a label to say what was inside or who it belonged to.

  June popped open the cap, and tipped a small white pill out into her hand. It was stamped with CIBA on the top. “Here, try it.”

  Catherine hesitated. “What is it?”

  “Ritalin. It’ll calm you down, make you focus. I’ve been on it for, like, seven years, but they won’t up my dose, so I know a guy I can get some from.”

  Catherine plucked up the little pill.

  She tried to remember what she had already taken in the last twenty-four hours from her own goddamn pharmacy. Something to sleep, something to breathe, and something to make her mind happy. Wine, too.

  “You want it, or not?” June asked.

  Catherine tossed back the pill, swallowing it down dry.

  “Let me know if it works for you. We all have to get through this shit show somehow, right?”

  Right.

  “Catherine, are you listening to me?”

  She blinked across the large dining room table, seeing that almost all of her family’s eyes were turned on her, but it was her father’s she wanted to shrink away from. His familiar green gaze was searching her face, looking for a problem, reaching into her mind and pulling out truths without her needing to say a thing.

  “Are you okay?” her father asked.

  Her gaze skipped over
the faces of her cousins, her mother, brother, his wife, and her aunts and uncles. Even her grandparents were watching her like she was a baby deer ready to bolt.

  “I’m fine,” Catherine said.

  Why did her voice feel like an echo?

  “You sure?” her brother asked. “Because you’re a little out of it, Catherine.”

  “Tired, that’s all.”

  “Are your classes keeping you busy?” Dante asked.

  “Yeah, classes.”

  “When is Cross getting back?” Andino asked, from four seats down.

  Catherine shrugged. “Soon.”

  He’d called again—a week after his last call. The service was better. He talked. She listened.

  Catherine was high the whole time.

  He didn’t even know.

  She cried herself stupid when he let her go.

  “You don’t know when he’s getting back?” her father asked.

  “Soon,” Catherine repeated, getting irritated.

  “Lay off the wine a bit,” her mother said, reaching over to snatch Catherine’s glass.

  “I’m fine, Ma,” Catherine said. “Leave my glass alone.”

  Catrina cocked a brow. “You heard what I said, Catty.”

  They didn’t mind her drinking wine at dinner.

  She started having glasses at celebrations when she was sixteen.

  Now they wanted to fight her on it?

  “Fuck this,” Catherine muttered, getting up from the table.

  Standing fast made her tipsy.

  The ground moved under her feet.

  She managed not to show how dizzy she was. She didn’t look anyone in the eye as she darted for the dining room’s exit in her grandparents’ home. Footsteps echoed behind her, but she kept walking.

  Andino caught up with her, and grabbed her arm to spin her around. Catherine glared at her cousin. “What the hell, Andi?”

  “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, brushing him off. “I’m going to head back to Manhattan.”

  Her cousin stared hard at her. “Do you need a break or something? Do you want to chill out for a bit, maybe?”

  “Andino, I am fine.”

  “You sure? I mean, Cross mentioned getting you to back off a bit, and maybe he had a p—”

  “I am fine!”

  Andino took a big step back, and his hands came up in surrender. “All right. We hitting that premier party next weekend?”