The Fading Trilogy: Fading, Freeing, Falling: Includes 2 BONUS short stories: Hoping and Finding Forever

by E. K. Blair

  While Candace is in the shower, I check the weather report, figuring I’ll take her to Indian Beach to try and get her up on a board. When the bathroom door opens, she’s wearing nothing but a towel and leftover drops of water, and suddenly, she has my full attention.

  “Fuck, babe,” I say as I walk towards her.

  Holding her hand out to my chest to keep me from coming any closer, she says, “Don’t start. Your mother is downstairs.”

  “I don’t care who the fuck is downstairs when the only thing covering your wet body is that towel.”

  “That’s why I’m getting my clothes,” she says with a smile before running back to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Once she’s dressed and comes back into the bedroom, I start getting my things together and tell her, “Tori has an extra wetsuit in my closet that should fit you okay.”

  “What?”

  “Surfing. You and me.”

  “I’m fine with trying anything new, but that water is freezing,” she says.

  “I promise, when you’re in that wetsuit, you’ll be fine. Tori loves to surf, so she has her wetsuit here and some swimsuits in my closet.”

  Grabbing Tori’s wetsuit, Candace finishes getting ready before we hop into my Rubicon and head to Indian Beach.

  Candace is such a sport about being outdoors, and it’s great that we share that. The running, the hiking, and now, getting her up on a board—she’s a natural and is taking her first wave in on her second try. I knew she’d be great at it, and she didn’t let me down. We spend the morning hanging out in the water and having fun with each other. When we aren’t surfing, she’s fighting me when I try getting frisky with her.

  After a few hours, we decide to call it and head back. She’s freezing and wrapped up in blankets that I packed in the car. When we get back, she heads upstairs to take a hot shower and warm up. I unload the jeep, giving her just enough time before I go up to join her. I made a bet with her on the beach that if I got her up on the board, I would get a little action from her. I know she thought I was just kidding around, but when I strip off my clothes and walk into the bathroom, I take a moment to look at her through the fogged glass of the large walk-in shower before opening the door.

  “What are you doing?!” she startles as I close the door behind me and wrap my arms around her.

  “It’s time to ante up, babe,” I tease as I duck my head under the water and then push her against the glass wall. She gasps as the cold surface meets her skin, arching into me in response.

  She doesn’t push me away or make light in this moment. She stays quiet as I dip my head to kiss her. Gripping my hands behind her thighs, I easily lift her off her feet as she wraps her legs around my waist. My mouth runs down her wet neck, licking and sucking as she holds on to me, breathing heavily at my touch.

  The water cascades down her naked body, between her breasts where my hand finds her, squeezing her soft flesh. When I press myself against her, she breathes hard, “I want you.”

  “I don’t have anything with me in here,” I tell her, but before I can set her down so that we can move this to the bed, she says, “It’s okay. I’ve been on the pill for a while. I trust you.”

  “When did you get on the pill, babe?” I ask in shock, never knowing that she did this.

  “I’ve been on it. I got it . . .” She hesitates before finishing, “I got on it after what happened.”

  Leaning my head on her shoulder, I sigh as she assures me, “It’s okay. I just want you.”

  “I’ve never . . . I promise you I’ve always been safe,” I tell her. “I’ve never been with anyone without a condom.”

  “You don’t have to explain. I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.”

  She holds my face when I kiss her, water seaming between our lips as it falls over us. I focus on her mouth, exploring it with my tongue, tasting her slow and deep. Her arms stay slung around my neck, hands trussed in my hair as I begin to drag my kisses along her neck and down to her chest. Lowering my head, I circle her nipple with my tongue before gently sucking it into my mouth, pressing my tongue against the hardened bud.

  Her body writhes in my arms, and I pull back to look at her when I move my hands under her bottom and lift her up, reaching down to hold myself for her. Slowly, with her head rested on mine, I lower her down. We take each other completely as our bare flesh meets, and I slide myself inside of her. She’s so warm; she always has been, but to feel her like this, to have her give me this, I know it comes solely from our love for each other.

  The air is heavy with steam, making my breaths ragged as I hold on to her. She clings her arms tightly around my shoulders, hugging me as I listen to her soft panting in my ear. I pull her off the wall and simply hold her. Feeling her naked body with mine. Savoring having her this close to me. Bared to each other with nothing but trust.

  She draws her head back to look at me, and when she does, she brushes her lips across mine, breathing into me, “I love you.”

  With those words, I use my hands to move her, and when I do, I find it hard to stand with the pleasure that courses through me. Being inside of her like this, nothing separating us, it’s an intensity that takes over my body. I turn so I can rest my back against the glass as I lift her back up and let her descend slowly down on me. Her legs are tight around my hips as I steadily maneuver her up and down.

  It’s hard to hold on to everything I’m feeling in this moment, and the pleasure moves us to the floor of the shower. I sit back against the wall as she keeps her legs wrapped around my body. The air is thick and she’s all around me as I watch her. She’s stunning with her soft eyes on me, her labored breaths escaping her lips, fingertips pressing into my back as we move together. Never in a rush, because I need this. Every piece of this.

  “God, I want you,” I say on a heavy breath, and she braces her arms around my neck, using the leverage as she sways her hips into me.

  “You have me.”

  When her body begins to respond, she drops her eyes to mine. I don’t even have to tell her, she just knows. It’s my security of knowing that she’s always with me in this moment. Never wanting her mind to drift. It shouldn’t be the reason, but it is, and it’s something that, even though it originates from such an ugly place, has become something I can redeem with her, because she’s so beautiful when she comes.

  My muscles tense up when I feel her spasm around me, moaning my name in the heat of the air as we both lose ourselves to each other. The pleasure she gives me radiates through my entire being, and I clutch my hands to her hips when our movements begin to falter as passion takes over.

  She’s incredible. She doesn’t know it, and if I told her, she’d deny my words, so I don’t speak. We just remain like this, together, on the bottom of the shower as our tired bodies collapse against one another.

  We decide to stay the week here, so after Candace spends a couple of days with my mom, shopping and dining out, leaving me to fend for myself, I choose to steal her for the day.

  We went to Astoria this morning for a late breakfast with Tori and the kids, and now I’m driving her up to Washington to take her to Long Beach to drive her along the water and spend the rest of the day together.

  When we get there, I pull off the road and onto the sand, and she asks, “Are you sure this is okay?”

  Laughing at her, I say, “Yes. Everyone does it.” When I pass a sign that states the driving dates for the beach, I point, and tell her, “See. There’s the proof,” with a smile.

  It’s still cold this time of year, and today can’t be any higher than fifty degrees, so aside from a group of guys hanging out, the place is pretty empty. We drive along the water, and I get a kick out of her laughing the whole time. The simple fact that driving on sand can make this girl so giddy is a trip, and I’m enjoying every giggle coming out of her.

  Pulling away from the water, I find a spot back by the sea oats that’s already set up for a fire. I pull the jeep up the beach and
park.

  “You wanna grab the blankets?” I ask as we get out of the car.

  I open the back hatch and pull out the firewood to start a fire while Candace bundles up. Once I have the fire going, I sit next to her, wrapping the blankets around the both of us as she cuddles into me.

  “I had fun at Tori’s this morning,” she says as she clutches the blanket to her. “She’s really nice.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “So her mom is Donna’s sister?”

  “Uh huh.”

  She laughs quietly, saying, “It’s hard to keep it straight.”

  “It’s my mom and her two sisters. And then all my cousins are girls as well,” I explain. “Tori and I always linked up because of our age, and she’s really into surfing too, so we get together a lot to hit the beach.”

  When the wind kicks up, she turns her head and rests it on my chest. “I was wondering something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If that’s the house you grew up in, why does your mom still live there?”

  “I don’t know. I asked her that not too long ago,” I tell her. “She told me that she loves the house and that she chooses to remember all the good memories we had there.”

  “What about you?” she asks as she looks up at me.

  Adjusting to pull her between my legs, I lean back against the log lying behind me before answering her. “It’s hard for me to remember anything good. Being in that house is sometimes hard on me. I’ll see things that remind me of a particular beating and stuff like that, and it dredges up a lot of shit for me.”

  She lets go of the blanket and wraps her arms around me, asking, “Why did she stay?”

  “Honestly . . . I never asked her. Now that I’m older, I would just assume that she was scared. Worried about how she would support the two of us if she did leave.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just leans into me as we hold on to each other. I stare into the fire when I continue to talk and explain, “My dad was a frightening man. I was terrified of him. Scared he was going to kill my mom one day. He would drink heavily and lose control. You never knew how far he would go. I used to sit and watch him beat her, scared if I left that he might go too far and I wouldn’t be able to help her.”

  “So you watched?” she asks, horrified.

  “I couldn’t say anything because every time I would scream for him to stop, he would just go harder on her, making it worse.”

  “I can’t even imagine. But what about you?”

  “He hated me, Candace. At least with my mom, he had once loved her. But never me. He didn’t give a shit what he did to me. I was always walking around in pain. Broken ribs, concussions. That’s mostly why I started using X. It just felt good.”

  She looks at me, and I watch her eyes puddle with tears that don’t fall.

  “And nobody ever knew? Nobody helped you?” she questions.

  “The only other person who knows, beside me and my mom, is you.”

  “No one in your family?”

  “Only you,” I tell her.

  “Does Donna know that I know?”

  “No.”

  She shifts to her knees and faces me. I know she doesn’t know how to respond to everything I just laid on her, so I take away the pressure when I hold her face and kiss her. She grips my wrists with her hands, and I keep my eyes open as I watch her tears finally fall.

  I pull back and wipe her cheeks before I lie us down on the pile of blankets in the sand, the only heat from her and the fire. I’ve never unloaded this weight that I’ve been carrying for years the way she allows me to.

  “You’re the strongest person I know,” she whispers against my neck.

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “Before I met you, I hid everything. I was selfish and used people. I was weak.”

  “But you’re not now. I don’t see any of that in you,” she says, and I know the only reason for that is her.

  After a few more days, it’s time to head back to Seattle. I’m finishing packing our bags while Candace gets ready in the bathroom. Having this week away has been good for us. And having her here with my mom makes this connection that we have so much stronger.

  Needing to grab a few things out of the bathroom, I don’t knock when I see she has left the door cracked. When I open it, she startles as she pulls down on her sweatshirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” she says as she still has her top clutched in her hands.

  I walk over to her and take her hand, lifting it up along with the shirt, and when I do, she says, “I don’t like it,” referring to her tattoo that is peeking over her pants that she has tugged down.

  I lower her shirt and ask, “Why?”

  “Because it’s not me,” she admits. “I was trying to be someone different, and it only led to bad things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got it in a moment of rebellion, I guess. It was stupid, really. I got it and started acting foolishly, which led to . . . umm . . .” her words stammer off as she drops her head away from me. I know what she’s trying to say, and it’s insane to think getting a tattoo would result in her getting raped.

  “I get it. But, babe, nothing you did led to that.”

  When she doesn’t say anything and refrains from looking at me as she starts walking out of the bathroom, I grab ahold of her because I need to know that she agrees with me.

  “Wait. You know that, right?”

  God. She doesn’t agree with me. I can see the guilt in her eyes. How could she possibly think this?

  “Come here,” I tell her as I sit on the bed, taking her hand and pulling her towards me. “Tell me you don’t think that.”

  When she doesn’t respond, I say, “Babe, there is nothing you could have possibly done to deserve that.”

  She turns away from me as I say this, and when I tug her back to me, she’s crying.

  Fuck.

  How did I not know that she blames herself for this?

  “Shit, babe. I had no idea this is how you feel.”

  “Please, don’t,” she says in a broken voice.

  “I need you to talk to me about this. You have it all wrong. What that guy did was fucked up, babe, and you didn’t do shit to deserve what he did to you.”

  She looks up at me and pulls her hands out of mine when she gets mad and yells, “You don’t get it, Ryan! What I did was stupid, and I completely led him on. It wasn’t right, and I knew it, but I did it anyway.”

  Infuriated that she feels this way when her logic is so fucked up, I raise my voice at her, saying, “What the fuck could you have possibly done? Because I know you, Candace, and I know you couldn’t have led him on that much. But that shit doesn’t even matter because you could’ve stripped down in front of him, and you still didn’t deserve to be raped.”

  “Don’t say that fucking word, Ryan!” she snaps and then begins to fall apart, sobbing.

  Banding my arms around her, I hold her close. “Babe, I’m sorry. I just had no idea that this is how you think.”

  “I didn’t even really like him,” she begins to stammer out between her cries. “But I was stupid and lonely, so I would let him kiss me, knowing that I didn’t like him. And I fucking hate my mother for this, because if it wasn’t for her being such a bitch, I never would have gone out with him.”

  “Candace, please don’t do this.”

  “You just don’t get it. I did lead him on, and I pissed him off. I never should’ve acted like that. I should’ve just been honest.”

  “This isn’t your fault.” I tell her in a hard voice.

  “Yes, it is!”

  “It isn’t your fault, Candace.”

  Facing me, she takes my shirt in her hands, fisting the fabric when she yells, “But it is!” and then falls into my chest. Her cries are loud, staggered, and strained. It’s hard to listen to, but I do because I love her. I don’t say anything else because I’m only upsetti
ng her worse.

  I can’t argue her irrational thinking because she isn’t seeing it with clear eyes. This guy screwed with her head so badly that she’s been carrying the weight of the responsibility on her own shoulders. And here I am, blind to this fact. My girl has been holding fault when that son of a bitch is the only one to blame.

  Moving her with me as I lie down on the bed, she tucks her head under my chin and continues to cry for a while. She’s in so much pain, and I don’t know how to make it any better for her. I’ve always questioned her choices for how she’s been dealing with this, but now, knowing this piece of the puzzle, it’s clear that she needs to do something.

  We’re face to face when she finally speaks. “It’s been seven months, Ryan.”

  “I know, babe.”

  “I just want it to go away.”

  “I know. But it’s never going to get easier if you keep blaming yourself. It kills me that you feel this way. It fuckin’ kills me that I can’t take this away from you.”

  Knowing that there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do to lessen her misery frustrates me beyond anything I have ever dealt with. I want to take care of her, to be the person that makes this better for her, but that’s what’s so fucked up about this situation—that’s what’s so scary—because it all lies within her. She’s the only one who can make this better, but she refuses to help herself. She figures if she just ignores it for long enough then it will fade away and everything will go back to normal. It’s not a sane way to deal with this. In fact, I think it’s just making it worse for her with every day that passes. The avoiding is catching up with her, and I’m afraid she’s just going to—one day—crumble.

  When her breathing begins to even out, she asks, “Can’t we stay another night?”

  “Anything you want,” I tell her.

  I lie here, and I can’t shake my own guilt about this whole situation. I’ve always had it. I’ve always asked all the what-ifs, but the fact remains, this girl was outside fighting for her life while I was mere feet away. If only I would have gone out there, I wouldn’t be lying here with my girl falling apart on me. She wouldn’t be carrying this around with her every day. I was the only other person there, and I did nothing.