Fall Guy

by Liz Reinhardt

  “Wait, Winch! I’m coming down.”

  “No!” he protests, but I ignore him and fly down the hall and stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door that leads me into the gardens and his arms.

  He folds me in his embrace, but staggers back and has to lean on me to keep from falling over.

  “Evan.” His voice, always so strong and calm, comes out like a whimper around my name. “I’ve missed you so damn much. You don’t know…you have no idea how much I wanted you.”

  His mouth is nuzzling near my ear, and I turn my face so our lips can meet, momentarily shocked by the stench of liquor on him. One kiss has my head spinning, and I feel like I downed a viciously hot shot of whatever he drank.

  I ignore his drunkenness and kiss harder, balling my hands in the fabric of his t-shirt, pulling his hard, lean body close to mine. He wraps his arms around me and kisses back like this kiss is his final request. His hands roam everywhere, pressing against my skin and stopping to squeeze while he murmurs sexy pleas in another language.

  “I want you. Now,” I plead, using the full force of my willpower to pull away from him and drag him behind me.

  He stumbles along, trying to talk to me, trying to talk me out of this, maybe, so I refuse to slow down or listen. I just power forward, into my room and onto my bed, pulling him down next to me. He smells sooty and sweaty, nothing like the clean and polished Winch I’m used to.

  “I love you,” I insist, hoping to throw up the one roadblock he won’t dare smash through.

  It works. My words still the protest that I know was on his lips.

  “I love you,” he says instead of whatever he was going to say to argue us out of this tangled, sweet perfection. “I have to tell you something…I have to tell you—”

  I clamp a hand over his mouth, his lips and breath warm and ready on my palm. “I want to be with you. Now.”

  I slide my hand down below the waistband of his pants, skim along the elastic of his boxer briefs and listen to the hiss of his breath as I cup him, smooth, hot, and hard, against the palm of my hand.

  “I love you, and I don’t really care what you’re going to say. I want you. I want you so badly, Winch. Don’t say no to me. You’ve said no to a million things I’ve asked. Not this time, okay?”

  “You’re gonna regret this.” He leans his forehead on mine and squeezes his hands at my hips hard. “Please, hear me out, Evan. Please let me tell you what—”

  “Stop.” I kiss his lips, hungry for the taste of him, the taste I can never get enough of. I rip my mouth away. “I’m not an idiot. Whatever you’re going to tell me, I know it will be bad, okay? Maybe it will even be bad enough to end everything permanently. But before I hear it, I want this. I want right now, and when it’s done, I swear to you, I will never regret being with you right now. Please. Please, Winch. I love you.”

  He groans and blows a long, hard breath against my neck, then swallows so his throat goes tight and nods.

  “I love you, too. Never doubt that, okay? Never doubt that.”

  Then, in the dark of my room, Winch strips my clothes off with efficient ease, no fear or reluctance. His hands run over my body, cradling my skin, caressing every inch of me with a finality I don’t want to ponder too long.

  My silky green dress is puddled next to us on the floor, my flimsy underthings twisted in the sheets. I tug his clothes off, careful of the bruises that still purple his body, slowly turning a dingy green around the edges. When we’re both naked, our hands running up and down over the hot skin of each other’s bodies, he whispers against my ear, a long, shaky string of sentences in a language I don’t need to be fluent in to understand.

  He’s saying goodbye.

  My brain realizes it, but my heart rejects it completely. And my body is convinced it can change his mind.

  My kisses are quick and light while his voice rumbles against my ears, but they pick up and press harder when he falls silent. I lick and nip until my mouth and tongue and teeth coordinate to restructure the cadence of his breathing and, when I lay my hands on his chest, I can feel the frantic beat of his heart.

  Frantic from me, frantic for us, frantic over love.

  “Winch,” I moan, leaning over to grab for a condom, eager to draw this out, but twice as eager to be with him and capture him in an inescapable moment while he’s, possibly, looking for a reason to stay.

  His mouth slides over mine, his hands run up my back and press into my hair, and everything goes still for a second when I straddle his hips, pressing against him and over him the same way I have with so many other guys before, but also in a way that’s completely new and wholly, totally, extremely for Winch and Winch alone. I roll the condom on and press myself down on the length of his hard-on, flattening my palms on his chest as we fit together.

  “I love you,” I declare, my voice rubbed raw from the confusion of never being sure with him coupled with the pleasant pain of always trusting, no matter what.

  He drags his hands down my arms, my ribs, and holds my hips tight, his teeth clenched, his head thrown back, like he’s fighting against the fall. I kiss his neck, the space behind his jaw, along his stubbly chin, and pull his face up to kiss his lips, his mouth, him.

  I use my hands and mouth and words to push him closer to the edge.

  “Only you,” I whisper, and the rhythm of our two bodies is awkward and jerky because my eagerness is warring with his attempt to hold back. “I know you came here to tell me…it’s over.”

  “Evan,” he pleads, his eyes slitting open, deep blue and welled with drunken sadness.

  He wraps his arms around me and buries his face in the space between my neck and my shoulder, kissing and sucking at my skin before he pulls away with a groan.

  I rock harder against him, loving the full, heavy, pumping feel of his body in mine.

  “Don’t. Don’t hold back, Winch. Let go. Let go with me.”

  “I can’t,” he begs. “Evan, I can’t. I promised…I promised not to break your heart.” His hands hold firm until he stills me. He looks right at me, his eyes bloodshot and ringed with purple bruising. “I made a promise I couldn’t keep. I took a gamble, and I shouldn’t have. I thought I could leave before something like this happened. And now it happened.” His voice cracks, and he lifts a hand to my face, tracing a thumb gently across my jaw. “If I could walk away, I would. But I can’t. I can’t, Evan. And this one is the end.”

  I have no idea what happened. Laundering? Drug trafficking? Murder? There’s nothing I’d put past the Youngbloods.

  But I lace his fingers through mine and shake my head. “I’ll never give up on you. I can’t do it. I tried, and I can’t, so I’m not going to waste my time. We’re in this together, whatever it is.”

  He flips me over so the long, hard weight of his body covers mine. He kisses my lips, runs his tongue along my jaw, sucks softly down my neck, nuzzles my hair. He doesn’t agree or disagree with my proclamation.

  “I don’t deserve you,” he chokes out, and moves against me with all the desperation of a guy who has nothing to lose.

  A guy who’s ready to fall because he’s between a rock and a cliff’s edge.

  And, as his body clings close to mine and shudders right along with me, I know he thinks this is the end. That this is his last grab before the long, lonely descent.

  What he doesn’t realize is that I’m already standing at the bottom, waiting to catch him. And I never miss.

  Winch 15

  I never drink more than a beer or two, at the most. You can’t keep a reputation for being level-headed when you’re stumbling like an asshole. I’m a melancholy boozer, anyway, the no-fun kind of drunk who sulks in a corner until he passes out. Lala used to complain that partying with me was like hanging out with the school chaperone.

  Even if I was a happier alchie, seeing someone as constantly lit as my brother always is kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth where alcohol’s concerned. I’d mopped up my fair share of regurgitated
Jack and Coke, and I’m at a place now where just hearing that drink order turns my stomach.

  But when Colt called and I went home to my dour, straight-lipped family and they spelled out what happened and what needed to happen, I grabbed my mother’s bottle of Evan Williams. And had a few shots. Then drove to Evan’s house.

  Not the best idea. I think Benelli wanted to stop me, but our father held her back. Our father isn’t always the most rational person, but I think he would have stopped me, except he knew what a death sentence he’d just leveled on the next few years of my life. I was as good as gone, and one last night with Evan was all I was going to get, so he let me have it.

  A pity-based consolation prize for the royal fucking my life was about to be subjected to.

  Part of me felt like the guillotine fell a minute before I was ready to pull my neck out and walk away.

  But even if a week, a month, a year or two had passed, this was a classic Remy/Winch situation, and I would have been summoned. And what could I say?

  Throwing those shots back, I fantasized about exactly what I could have said. Say a few months had gone by. Evan would be ready to graduate. She’d be headed off for college, and, instead of watching her go and trying like hell to forget her burnt-sugar smell, the sound of her laugh, the icy pierce of her eyes, I could go, too.

  Maybe apprentice to a stone mason. Maybe rig us an apartment, spend my nights kicking back, watching her gorgeous ass study from an open textbook while I reveled in the ache of muscles sore from a day of hard labor. Maybe get to fall into bed with her and wake up with the cling of her smell on my skin. Maybe start to build a life that didn’t revolve around the buzz of my phone and a new set of crazy violent situations and court dates broken up by helpless fucking stretches of watching my brother wither into a blood-vomiting scarecrow while everyone kept their mouths shut and let it all happen.

  And that string of fantasies is what broke my resolve to keep Evan out of everything. I just wanted…I needed one more minute with her. One more minute to hold her and tell her I loved her more than anything, wanted the two of us to be together more than anything, before I said goodbye for good and got caught up in something so dark, it more than trumped all the petty shit I’d been involved in up to that point.

  Ending up naked in her bed, her sweat-slicked, slack-limbed body soft and sweet under mine, wasn’t in the plan. But my plans have been getting fucked up left and right, so maybe this was inevitable.

  I try to roll over to the side, but she pulls me back, her hands running along my back, her eyes raking over my face.

  “Tell me. Tell me why you think you’re leaving me again. Because you’re not, you know. You’re not leaving without me.”

  I kiss her, even though I should get up and leave. This has already gone further than it was supposed to.

  “Evan…you have no idea how much I love you.” I push the long pieces of hair tangled at her neck back, run my hands over the smooth skin of her cheeks, rub my thumbs over her lips, brush over her eyebrows with the tips of my fingers and watch while she closes her eyes and makes a noise that sounds kind of like a cat’s purr. It’s a noise that instantly works to turn me on, fast and hard, like I didn’t just have the most amazing sex with this girl ten minutes before. She makes me crazy.

  And I tell her. “You drive me nuts. In the best way. Believe me, if there was any way at all I could change things, make things right, I would do it, Evan. But I can’t.”

  I don’t know what I expect after that little speech. One more roll in the hay before she waves goodbye? Tears? Begging?

  There are a few scenarios that go through my head, but none of them match the intensity of her response.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She sits up, half knocking me off the bed and glares, her icy eyes smoldering and pissed as hell. “This is it, Winch. This is it. This is the moment you step up and take control. Why does it always come to this? Why do you always back down at the last minute?”

  “I’m not backing down,” I explain, my voice calm and cool as I watch her yank her underwear back on and wrestle with her lacy little bra. “I’m stepping up.”

  “You’re falling back,” she hisses, yanking her dress over her head. “You’re the fall guy, Winch. You’re the guy they come to when no one else will stand up and take their medicine. And they come to you because you never make them stand up and take it.”

  She jabs her finger at me and rips a brush through her hair, pulling it into a high ponytail. I pull my boxers and pants on and wish that she’d just clasped her hands to her chest and cried silently as I walked away.

  “You have no idea what I’m facing, what my family is facing.”

  “Really?” she challenges, and her eyes spark because she knows without a doubt that she has me completely beat. “Really? I don’t know? I don’t know what it’s like to face my family getting split apart? Losing the home I grew up in? Getting kicked out of school? Watching my ex act like a disgusting pig and reveal himself as a worthless piece of shit in front of everyone? I don’t know what it’s like to go a little nuts when my entire world crashes around my shoulders, and instead of drinking it off or getting away with a slap on the wrist, I wind up with a criminal record? I don’t know? Because I think I do know exactly what you’re looking at and worse, and I’m calling your fucking bluff. You need to get a backbone!”

  “I need a backbone?” The whiskey and sex and hopelessness and fear all swirl together and explode back out. “I need a backbone?”

  The sound of my own yell shocks me into quick silence, but Evan doesn’t cower or draw back. Her look of anger melts away, and a huge smile spreads across her face.

  “That’s it. That’s it, Winch. Let. The. Hell. Go,” she whispers, nodding her encouragement. “Let go.”

  “Fine!” I snap, yanking my shirt over my head. “You want me to let go? You want it! Fucking fine, Evan. How’s this for you? My douchebag brother just got himself into some deep shit, okay? He took Alayah, my niece. He violated a court agreement to limited visitation and took her, and he wound up getting drunk with her in the house. He hired some high school girl to babysit, so Alayah is fine. But the girl answered his phone, since it never stopped ringing and he’d passed out. It was Delphine, and she threatened to call the cops if the girl didn’t put Remy on the goddamn phone, but she couldn’t, since my shit-for-brains brother was passed out. Benelli got there before Delphine showed up, and now my family wants me to take the fall, because, otherwise, Remy could lose custody of Alayah and none of us would be able to see her again. So what the fuck am I supposed to say?” I scream, my last word echoing, my chest rising and falling, and a tremendous, splitting headache crushing down in my skull.

  Evan stalks the two or three feet between us and sticks her beautiful face so close to mine, I can see every curling, black eyelash around her blue eyes. “No.”

  “No?”

  I can smell her skin, I know what her lips feel like, and I want to jump over everything and kiss her, hard and long, so I can forget this all, finally.

  “No,” she repeats. “Tell them ‘no.’”

  “Did you not just listen to what I said?” I ask. “He’ll lose custody of Alayah. No one will be able to see her.”

  “Good,” she says, grabbing me by the shirtfront. “Stop buying into their bullshit and think about this like a rational person for once, Winch. Does your brother deserve custody of that little girl?”

  Obvious as it may seem, the thought never occurred to me. He’s my brother. Alayah is his daughter. They’re both my blood. The word is out of my mouth before I have a chance to process.

  “No.”

  “Tell me what needs to happen, Winch. Not what your family is telling you to do. What needs to happen?”

  Her hands unfist from my shirt and she wraps her arms around me.

  I cup her shoulders with my hands and squeeze. “Remy needs help.”

  “Okay. Like what?” she asks.

  I take a deep bre
ath and say what needs more than just to be said. I say what needs to happen.

  “Remy needs rehab or counseling or something. Or he’s gonna kill himself. My parents need to stop covering for him. I need to stop covering for him.”

  “Okay. Good. So how do we do this?” Her words are soft and sure.

  “Do what?” I’m lost in the smell of her, the feel of her curves, the sound of her voice. How can I miss someone so badly when we’re in the same room?

  “Get Remy into a rehab? Stage an intervention? Get you fired from your position as Youngblood family fall guy?”

  She tries to ask it all with bravado, but she swallows so hard, I know she’s afraid of what I’ll say.

  And I want to thank her. I want to rewind time. I want to hold Remy’s breakdown off, just so I could have a few days of living out the dream of all those fantasies.

  “Evan, I know it seems like it should be that easy, but it’s compli—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” she yells. Shock presses my words back down my throat. “Fine! Fine, you want this to be goodbye? You wanna end this, Winch, then end it with me. But if you think this is the worst that will happen with your family, you’re delusional. Remy is going to kill himself, and maybe his daughter or girlfriend or someone else in the process. He’s out of control, and you know it. If you don’t step in, maybe you deserve to do time. Because you’re as good as guilty for anything he does.”

  “Evan—” She’s snapped and is right back to the rage that propelled her off the bed and straight at my jugular before.

  “Don’t! Don’t try to rationalize! I tried ignoring it! I tried accepting it! I tried letting you handle it! Nothing worked and nothing will until you’re ready. And if you’re not ready to do this, you’re sure as hell not ready to be with me and fight for us!”

  She straightens her shoulders and juts her chin out, her rage tampered and replaced by something way sadder.

  I realize she’s about to steal my goodbye.