Jump Then Fall

by Alyssia Kirkhart

  “Good. ‘Cause Mama always told me to follow my dreams.”

  He grinned a grin that soaked into my skin and I laughed. Because, yes, the rhyme but also because he dripped charm like ice cream off a cone.

  I swatted at his thigh and he caught my hand. Kissed my fingertips. “How many of these do you have?”

  “I’ll be here all week, darlin’. Well, in Columbus. Hey, do they have a mall there?”

  “Um…yes?”

  He leaned his head against the headrest. “I haven’t been to a mall in ages.”

  “Why do you want to go to a mall?”

  He shrugged. “See what’s out there, I guess. I do most of my shopping online, if I shop, which I don’t. Except with you, of course.” His gaze dropped to my lips. “That’s pretty fun. Is Victoria’s Secret still open?” That blue-eyed gaze roamed up, gauging my reaction.

  Photos fanned out in my mind like a deck of cards. Me wearing lingerie for him. Something soft, something lacy, something transparent, something that made it impossible for him to keep his hands off me.

  “Yes.”

  He was still staring into my eyes, when he said, “Hey, Harper?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were wonderful last night.”

  My face warmed. “So were you.” But I didn’t think wonderful was sufficient enough to describe what he’d done to my body. To my mind. To my heart. The word for the way he made me feel did not exist.

  “Hey, Harper?”

  I tried not to smile. I really did. “Yes?”

  “I’m really sorry about your dad.”

  My breath hitched.

  “But it’s gonna be okay.” His eyes searched mine. “One way or another, we’ll figure this out. One step at a time.”

  I believed him. Maybe I was being stupid. A victim of inexperience. Definitely inexperienced with criminal behavior that led to prison. But Lawson’s cool demeanor calmed the storm. Soothed the doubt.

  “Hey, Harper?”

  I kicked my head back, too, so we were almost nose to nose. “Yeees?”

  “Regardless of what you found out this morning, you were still wonderful last night. We were wonderful. Are wonderful. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Harper?” His tone had softened and, God help me, I wanted to kiss him so bad. He was trying to ease my nerves. Loosen me up, when I’d been nothing but a coiled mess of wires since I’d gotten the lieutenant’s phone call. And I was grateful. More than he knew, I was so freaking grateful my heart felt close to bursting.

  “Yes, Lawson?”

  His lips stretched into another smile. “You’re so beautiful, you made me forget my pickup line.”

  Katie booked a two-story townhome in Upper Arlington. Only place that was available under such short notice, she’d texted Lawson after he’d told her we’d arrived. Wouldn’t be the last time I understood why she was Lawson’s manager, why she had been since he’d landed a recording contract, why she probably would be for years to come.

  Newly renovated, the place looked like it’d leapt from one of those websites featuring lavish Manhattan apartments. The kind most worked two jobs and gave up food to afford. Hardwood, marble, stainless steel. Clean, minimalistic. Lawson set his guitar case next to an upright piano perched in front of a bay window.

  “Of course.” He took off his jean jacket, tossed it aside and sat down on the piano stool. “Katie found a way for me to work.” He did a fancy run that made the hair rise on my arms. Cocked his head to the side, listening. “In tune, too.”

  The fridge and cabinets were fully stocked. There was a Keurig and an assortment of coffees and teas. I uncapped two bottles of water and handed one to Lawson.

  He took a long pull. Look around.

  “Should we find the bedroom?” I asked and his eyebrows shot up. “Not…because of that.”

  I was tired. Emotionally drained. No cure or remedy but to face my dad and (hopefully) get the truth.

  But Lawson was here. He owed me nothing. We hadn’t promised each other anything. And he’d chosen to stay. With me. Through a life crisis that took the cake on bad shit happening to good people.

  I was a good person.

  I tried to be.

  “How about we find the bathroom, run you a hot bath, maybe with some music, and I’ll figure out dinner. Sound like a plan?”

  Lawson was good, too.

  Better than me.

  “Okay.”

  Letting him take care of me was easy. As if we’d been doing this for years, living together, domesticated, a give and take that usually only came for two people who knew one another inside and out. Habits, quirks, good, bad, endearing and downright annoying.

  There was nothing annoying about Lawson.

  Except that maybe I couldn’t find anything annoying about him.

  I took a bath in a huge garden tub, soaked in lavender bath salts while Bon Iver played from my phone and the aroma of whatever Lawson was cooking drifted up the stairs.

  Two days and I was going to see my dad.

  Two days and I didn’t have a plan, didn’t know how to face him, what to say, what to ask, if I should even ask him anything. I wasn’t his lawyer. What if he was wrongly accused? Locked up for an uncommitted crime?

  One fact was certain.

  He hadn’t left Nashville to help out a teacher at the high school.

  Deep in my gut I knew that had been a lie. Meant to protect me, sure, but a lie nonetheless, and Dad and I, we had a strict policy to never lie to one another. No matter how much it hurt. No matter how badly we imagined the other person may react. Honesty was vital. Honesty had made it easy to be myself, to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, to go after achievable goals.

  But Dad, he’d obviously gotten himself into a situation too deep to share with me. And that might’ve been fine. Honesty was great, but so was privacy. He didn’t have to detail every aspect of his life, just like I didn’t tell him every time I got my period or whether I was crushing on a boy at school. But this. This was different. Public humiliation, blacklisted by the very town we’d spent our entire lives, prison—God, prison.

  I drained the tub. Put on a pair of sleep pants and a tank top. I couldn’t let the fiction I’d painted in my head to be the end-all-be-all reality, because it wasn’t. I knew that. If I’d gained an ounce of wisdom since being attached at the hip with Lawson Hill, it was that one day at a time was the only policy worth having. Yesterday was gone. Tomorrow didn’t exist. We weren’t guaranteed breath in our lungs for the next five minutes, let alone the next day.

  Here and now. This moment. This was it. This was everything.

  In this particular stretch of time, my everything was moving between stove- and countertop like he was filming a piece for Food Network. T-shirt untucked over his jeans. Barefoot. Hair in slight disarray but somehow sexy as all get out.

  He glanced at me quickly from over his shoulder, turned back for the stove. Glanced again. Longer this time. Smiled. Tap-tap-tapped the spatula to the edge of the saucepan, set it down. Gave his hands a quick swipe on his hips.

  Then he advanced on me and there was nowhere to go but the steel table that served as an island. My butt hit the edge and his hands went to either side of my hips.

  “Hi,” he whispered on my lips and kissed them. Because he could. Because this was us, here and now, and we were perfect, despite the circumstances that had brought us to Columbus.

  “Hi,” I returned.

  “I cooked.”

  “I see.”

  “Spaghetti and garlic bread. Salad. You like that, right?”

  “Yes.” I chewed my lower lip as he pushed my hair off my neck, bent his head. Trailed kisses from the flat of my shoulder to the pulse throbbing beneath my ear.

  “You smell delicious.” He breathed me in, and my nipples hardened. “I missed you.”

  “While I was upstairs?”

  “Uh huh. Can you handle me missing you?”

  He palmed
my breast, slid his thigh between my legs. I huffed a gasp, the friction terrible and glorious, at once.

  “Harper?”

  “Yes?”

  His hands slid over my hips, lower. “You’re not wearing underwear.”

  I secret smile played at the corners of my mouth.

  “On purpose?” he murmured into my neck.

  “Now, why on earth would I do that? It’s impractical.”

  “It’s very practical.” His index finger slid just inside the waistband of my pants. “And sexy.”

  “Is it?” I tried to play innocent. Truth was, I felt anything but. For the first time in my life, I felt in control of my own sexuality. Like I didn’t have to be anyone but me and that was good enough for Lawson.

  His attraction to me was blatantly clear.

  And currently pressed hard against my hip.

  “I think you know you’re sexy. I think,” he said, reaching inside my pants and palming an ass cheek, “you’re well aware of what you do to me.”

  “What about what you do to me?” I challenged.

  “Let’s see.” Deftly, his hand slid around to my front. His fingers traced the seam of my sex. One dipped inside to a knuckle. “Well, what do you know?”

  The grin in his tone had me grinning, too. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “No?”

  I shook my head, loving we could play like this. Loving every moment with him.

  His hand retreated and I groaned, empty from the lack of contact. From craving his touch. He held up his fingers, the middle glistening with proof of my own desire.

  “Open up, baby girl.” His words set fire to my face, but I couldn’t disobey.

  My lips parted and I focused on blue eyes that were completely focused on mine. His finger slipped inside. I closed my mouth, the sweetness of my own juices hitting my tongue. My eyes shut. A moan whirred in my throat. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t at all—

  His mouth seized mine and we were instantly wrapped up in each other. Grabbing, pressing, teeth colliding, breaths coming hard and desperate. It was sinful, erotic. The taste of him, the taste of me on both our tongues. We were electric. Powerful. We were together, and that fueled my want for him.

  My want for a relationship that would never be.

  He would go his way.

  I would go mine.

  Here and now, Evans. Here and now.

  The thought didn’t center me as much as I would’ve liked.

  “Hey,” I whispered, because it was all I could muster. I was too breathless.

  He pushed my hair away from face, framed my cheeks in his hands. “You okay?” Concern flared in his eyes like a storm.

  “Yeah.” I smiled, squeezed his shoulder. Inside, the anxiety had begun to creep up again. Raw, ugly. Feeding me a reality I didn’t want to consume. “Just hungry, I think. Maybe a little tired.”

  His smile was warm. “Then let’s get you fed.”

  chapter twenty

  We spent the next couple of days holed up in the rental house. Lost in a blur of food, music and mind-blowing sex. I thought Lawson was the insatiable one. He was a man, after all, and men thought about sex…what? Every two to three minutes?

  Turned out my libido was equally salacious.

  Lawson wrote. He wrote in the middle of the night. He wrote on napkins at the breakfast table. He wrote on the mirror after we’d showered together. Beautiful prose scripted in his all-lowercase handwriting. He rarely stopped. Small details of ordinary life developed into lyrics easily paired with music that flowed out of him like water. In three days, he’d written no less than twenty songs. Some light and fun. Most had me on the edge of my seat, slack-jawed, dangling on an emotional ledge. He was just that good. That talented.

  When he wasn’t making music, we were making love. Heedless to the time of day. Waving off whether we’d eaten lunch at ten in the morning or three in the afternoon. Food sustained energy, but sex? Sex sustained life or, in the least, soothed the ache that only seemed to die down for short, short periods before I was needing him again. Wanting him so badly as he strummed the guitar and sang, I had to squeeze my thighs together. Remembering him there. Wishing he could somehow stay, that I could keep him forever.

  On visitation day at the penitentiary, Lawson drove me in the luxury SUV he’d rented upon our arrival to Ohio.

  “I want to go in with you.” He parked in the designated lot. Killed the engine. “I know you don’t want me to—”

  “Lawson, you can’t.” Katie had advised against it. She was right. The chances of nobody recognizing him in a jail buzzing with officers, visitors and prisoners were non-existent. “You want your face all over the internet, people gossiping about why you were at a corrections center?”

  “Hey, Johnny Cash performed at Folsom. Recorded a live album.”

  “You’re not Johnny Cash.”

  “I could be Johnny Cash.”

  I cocked my head. “Lawson, be serious.”

  “I am serious.” He unfastened his seatbelt. “I’m going with you.”

  “You know what Katie said. Besides…” I lifted my gaze to his effortless-perfect coif. “The hair. It gives you away.”

  “So.” He reached into the backseat, came back with an LSU baseball cap. Put it on and smiled so big I laughed. “See? Done.”

  “And yet somehow you just made it worse.” I unbuckled my own seatbelt, opened the door. “Just so you know, your manager’s gonna kill me and, when she does, you’ll need to figure out a way to hide the evidence, because there’s no way you can make it without her.”

  He met me around the front of the vehicle. “Can’t argue that.” He grabbed my hand. “You ready for this?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Fact was, I didn’t. But not in the way I had imagined.

  Lawson and I went inside, handed over our IDs. Lawson drew a few glances, most of them trained on his hat. Passed through two metal detectors without issue. Gave my father’s name to the officer who was allowing visitors into the visitation area.

  I was turned away.

  Dad didn’t want to see me.

  I was on the list. I’d filled out the application and been approved by Lieutenant Hartline himself. It didn’t matter.

  Dad didn’t want to see me.

  “I’m on the list,” I protested as Lawson’s hand settled at the small of my back. “Check again.”

  “Yes, Miss Evans. You are on the list,” said the officer. He was young. Maybe only a couple of years older than me. He had to be wrong. Confused about protocol. “But he doesn’t want to see anyone today and made the choice to stay in his cell.”

  In his cell. This was so surreal.

  “Maybe you can come back—”

  “Look, I don’t think you understand. We live in Nashville. I came all this way.” Cold, I rubbed my upper arms. “Can you check again, please?”

  “Nashville.” The officer’s head snapped back. Gaze tapered on Lawson. “Hey, I know you. You’re that country singer. Layton…Luke…” He snapped his fingers as Lawson shifted from foot to foot and the noose tightened around my patience. “Lawson! Lawson Hill!”

  Lawson laughed, but it wasn’t the easy, jovial sound I was used to. “Nice to meet you.” He and the officer shared a handshake. “Like she said, we’ve come all this way, so she can see her dad, talk with him. Is there any way you can push this through, see if someone can go get him or, I don’t know…” Lawson shoved a hand in the back pocket of his jeans. “Something?”

  “Sorry, no can do.” To his credit, the officer appeared sincere. “We can’t force an inmate to see anyone he doesn’t want to. You can come back next week, if you like, or write him a letter. Maybe reach out to his attorney?”

  “He doesn’t have an attorney yet,” I said. “Or, at least, I don’t think he does.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep trying, Miss Evans. I’m sorry.”

  I was about to ask to speak with Lieutenant H
artline. Maybe he could help. Maybe he could speak with my dad, persuade him somehow. But people were beginning to recognize Lawson. Stares, whispers, gasps, squeals, finger-pointing. One girl was jumping up and down, clapping her hands, and an officer had to shoosh her.

  This was not going to work.

  The ride back to the townhouse was the longest I’d ever taken. Part of me understood why Dad didn’t want to see me. Pride, shame, being forced to look me in the eye when we both knew he’d lied about the reason he had to go back to Columbus. I chewed my thumbnail, stared out the window. Tried to organize thoughts that kept getting out of line like children at a theme park.

  His job. Our main source of income. We had savings, sure, but eventually that would deplete. We wouldn’t be able to make rent. I would be homeless. Yeah, I was leaving in September. I’d have room and board at school. But what about breaks and holidays? Where would I go? Would I even have a home to visit?

  Heat crept up my neck. Tears pressed behind my eyes, hot, burning. I wanted to know what happened. Wanted to hear from his mouth, wanted him to look at my face and give me the truth. I deserved the truth. Deserved to know if he’d really done what they’d accused him of.

  “I just don’t know when he would’ve had the time.”

  I didn’t realize I’d said the words aloud until Lawson responded with, “You couldn’t have been together twenty-four-seven. Right?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t know anything anymore.

  Lawson sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t have gone in.”

  I huffed a laugh. “You think?”

  The weight of his stare pressed against my cheek. “Come on, Harper. If I had known—”

  “How could you not know?” I met his gaze for a second before he was forced to return attention to the road. “You’re well aware of the reaction when people see you. They lose their freaking minds, Lawson. It’s like it didn’t even matter people were there to visit their loved ones. Once they saw you—”

  “I get it, I get it. It was a bad idea, okay? You don’t have to explain the situation. I was there.” His jaw set and he pulled in a deep breath. Released it slowly through his nose.

  It was the second time I’d seen him even remotely angry. We still hadn’t talked about the first. When he and the guy who had filled his empty seat in Vegas had exchanged cold stares and forced conversation.