Fall On Me (18 page)

It might have been my name over the door, but
Cam had always been in charge and I'd indulged her bossy nature.
I'd also banished myself to the upstairs of the house because there
was only so many times a man could walk into a bathroom and have to
stare at the scraps of lingerie she used to dry in the bathtub. It
wouldn't have been so bad, but she was like a baby sister to me. I
didn't want to even think of that shit on her body. It
was…wrong.

Cam cared about us and had mothered us to the
point where one night she sat me down to talk about my
habit.
I laughed into her face the night she handed me a
pamphlet for a treatment center in Denver. Yeah, I might have been
a screw up and a slut when I was younger, but I had never put so
much as a joint past my lips. I was only three when my mom died,
but I remembered exactly what that stuff did to her when it was
cocktailed with cocaine and heroin. Even growing up the way I did,
and seeing what I had, I knew I wasn't going
there
. I was
never going to walk
that
line...

"Do you think I'll be forgiven for the things
I've done…for the things I'm thinking of doing?" Derek asked,
stirring me from my reverie.

"What have you been thinking, Derek?" I
choked out.

"Just about past mistakes I've made."

"We've all made mistakes, dude," I told him
as I slipped my phone out of my pocket to check the time. "I've
fucked up way more than you," I said as I typed out a quick message
to Lee to let her know where I was in case she woke up again. She'd
already woken up with a nightmare and usually slept through once I
got her back to sleep. "So don't worry about any of the shit you've
done," I said with a smirk. "I bet I've trumped you."

"But you always redeem yourself, Kyle." Derek
smirked but his eyes were lifeless. He took another slug of his
beer before speaking. "There's no coming back for me."

"What have you done that you can't fix?" I
asked nervously. This was a conversation I wasn't entirely
comfortable with. In fact I was about two seconds away from phoning
his parents or his brother and having him signed in for treatment.
I wasn't losing him as well. No fucking way.

"There's this guy from back home," he said as
he took a drag of his cigarette. "I have a lot of history with him.
We were…close in high school. He's here in Boulder. Showed up at
the house today."

"Yeah…" I coaxed.

Was he about to tell me he was gay?

Because I have to be honest, right about now
that would be a huge fucking relief.

"Does that make you…happy?" I asked.
Shit,
I was not good at this.

"I guess I'm happy to see him," Derek
replied. "I've got a lot of love for him and his family, but what I
did isn't something I want broadcasted, you know? I took off
afterwards and haven't seen him in over four years."

Be tactful, Carter.

Be fucking tactful.

Ah, screw it.

"So you had sex with a dude," I blurted out,
losing all tact in my bid to comfort him. "Big deal. You've nothing
to be ashamed of. Love is love, bro, it doesn't matter if it comes
in the form of a pussy or a penis."

"What the fuck?" Derek shouted in a shocked
tone as he jumped off the mattress. "I'm not gay, Kyle."

"There's nothing to embarrassed about, Der,"
I coaxed. Standing up, I walked over to him. "So you're bi-sexual."
I shook my head. "It's not a big deal. Don't be ashamed about how
you feel," I told him as I clasped his shoulders. "Embrace it and
screw any narrow minded asshole who tells you otherwise. You have
my full support."

"I fucked his sister, dude," Derek snapped as
he jumped away from me. "Jesus."

His sister?

"Oops," I laughed. "Oh man, I totally thought
you were coming out on me."

"Yeah," Derek grumbled. "I guessed that."

"I'd be cool with it if you were…"

"I'm not," he said before sighing. "But
thanks for the love. Appreciate it."

"So, who owns the lace?" I pointed at the red
bra next to mattress. "Or do I want to know?"

"You really don't." Derek sighed heavily
before adding, "Kyle, about the other day…I'm sorry for hitting
you. I was having a…"

"Forget it," I said in a stern tone. "I
have." He didn’t need to bring that shit up. My face was fine. Not
even a bruise. Guess I really did have a head like a rock…"So, have
you thought any more about moving in with us?" I asked in a coaxing
tone. "We're moving in a couple of days."

Derek didn't answer me.

Instead, he turned around and walked out of
the room.

Lovely.

****

Chapter 10

New
horizons

Derek

I saw things in my dreams sometimes. Her hair
floating over my chest. The scent of her shampoo poisoning my
senses. Her blue eyes boring into my soul.

It seemed that even in death she was intent
on haunting me. On tormenting me.

I kept finding myself at her grave. I
couldn't keep away. Every memory, every touch, every breath she'd
taken in my presence was replaying inside my head.

Would I ever get over it? I didn't think so.
Six months later and I was still as devastated as I was the day I
read that text.

* It's
over. I don't love you anymore, Derek. I'm sorry. C x.*

If she'd been unhappy for a while I could
understand, but we were solid. Kyle and Lee were the ones with the
screwed up relationship, not me and Cam. We'd been fucking strong.
Closer than ever after Lee's miscarriage.

Finding Lee hemorrhaging on the bathroom
floor had messed Cam's head up. Mine too. She'd been extra clingy
in the days after Lee's surgery. She'd talked a lot of babies and
how what Lee had went through scared the life out of her. I
couldn't have agreed more with her. It had terrified me, too. All I
could think about when I was holding Lee in my arms on that
bathroom floor was what if this was Cam? How would I feel if the
love of my life was losing our child? It shook me up and I'd felt
Kyle's pain. I'd put myself in his shoes and it was somewhere I
never wanted to be again. Not even hypothetically.

I remembered the morning everything changed.
I remembered the exact moment I'd lost Camryn Frey and it wasn't
that day in April when I'd received that text. She'd been all
fucked up since that morning back in January when she ran out of my
room crying. To this day I still didn't know why. We'd woken up as
normal and had some amazing morning sex before I slipped across the
hall to take a shower. Cam always used to join me. That morning she
didn't. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but when I'd
walked into my room ten minutes later she'd thrown my phone at my
head and ran out crying. That day was the beginning of the end for
us. She didn't come home for three days and when she did she had
closed herself off from me. Three months later I lost her. Two
months after that I buried her.

It wasn't right. I'd known it then and I knew
it now. Something must have happened to her. I'd gone over and over
it in my brain. What had I done? What the hell had I done to make
her stop loving me? I'd checked every call and text in my phone
even though I knew I had nothing to hide. There were no other
girls. I'd been faithful to that girl from our very first day to
our very last. There had been no secrets between us…

Dammit, I should have done more. Fought
harder for her. I could have kept her safe. She sure as hell
wouldn't have been in that house if she had been with me. I looked
down at the plane tickets in my hand before tucking them into my
back pocket.

Ireland.

Cam had always wanted to go. I'd worked in a
shitty kitchen, for twelve hour days, all summer to pay for us to
go. It was supposed to be her graduation gift. I had it all
arranged. We were supposed to fly out the morning after graduation,
but she'd left me before I had a chance to tell her. Walked the
fuck away from me for Kyle's asshole brother.

At the time I'd been too proud to fight for
her. Too heartbroken and angry to say another word to her. I hadn't
told her want she meant to me. She didn't know the plans I'd made
for us. She'd never know about the engagement ring I planned to
give her after we kissed the Blarney Stone in Cork. Or the cruise
I'd booked for us to take on the river Shannon. That ring and those
dreams were in the same place as her now. Dead and under the
ground.

The day she was buried, when Kyle had chased
after Ted and Mora, I'd gone back to her grave with Hope and tossed
the ring into the ground with Cam's casket before they covered it
over. It had been for her. It would never be for anyone else. I
would never be anyone else's. Jesus Christ, the regret was killing
me. I felt like I was choking on bitterness. Most days I could
barely breathe.

Just the other day I found her hairbrush
under my bed. Yeah, that's about all I can remember from that day.
I'd seen her golden hair on the bristles and I'd lost my shit. I
had ended up at a bar and had tried my very best to drink myself
into oblivion. It didn't help. I'd woken up still tormented and
with another girl in my bed.

I hated myself. I wasn't me anymore. I'd
never been a big drinker, not really, and I wasn't a whore. But
lately it was all that helped.

And believe me it helped.

Maybe Kyle was right. Maybe I did need to
leave Thirteenth Street. But I knew what he'd do the minute I left.
He'd sell the house and I couldn't let that happen. I wasn't ready
to let her go. There was also a very high chance that he'd torch
the place. Therefore, I considered it my civic duty to remain there
until I was ready to let go and until my best friend got over his
new favored notion of arson. He said he'd do it on enough occasions
and he was an impulsive guy… I didn't want him to come near me, but
I didn't want him to give up on me either. I knew that didn't make
any sense, but I wasn't making sense. Nothing fucking clicked in my
brain anymore. I wasn't sure if there was a way out of this
darkness, but if there was then Kyle would find it. He was good at
fixing things. He'd get me out of this…

The sound of footsteps approaching stirred me
from my daydream. I swung around and was faced with my worst
fucking nightmare. "Derek," Mike said, nodding his head in my
direction as he moved to stand beside me at Cam's graveside. I
watched as he placed a bunch of flowers on her grave next to my
ones. Roses. What an idiot. Cam's favorites were lilies.

Showed what he knew...

"Have you been here long?" he asked as he
straightened his spine and wrapped his coat around himself.
Clenching my jaw I shoved my hands into my jean pockets. He'd some
fucking nerve. I'd give him that. "Derek?" he repeated.

"Don't talk to me," I ground out as I
concentrated really hard on not tackling the creep. "Don't ever
speak to me, you got it?"

"I didn't mean any harm," Mike muttered
stepping away slightly. Wise move. "But you're soaking wet and
shaking, man," he added.

I looked down at myself and realized he was
right. I was drenched. When had it started to rain? I hadn't
noticed. I also hadn't worn a coat. All I was wearing was a black
t-shirt and jeans. In October.

"I don't remember," I mumbled more to myself
than to him. Come to think of it, I couldn't remember how I came
here. Fuck, I was confused.

"Do you want a ride home?" he asked as he
placed a hand on my shoulder. That was the wrong fucking thing to
do.

"Don't touch me," I growled as I swung around
and caught him by the back of the neck. Kicking him in the back of
his knees, I pushed him to the ground and forced his face into the
earth.

"You fucking did this," I roared as I forced
his face into the wet mud. "You took her from me and you couldn't
keep her safe." Pushing him forward I released his head and backed
away from her grave. "I hope your conscience chokes you."

****

I kept walking until the graveyard was out of
sight and my heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm. The rain
hammered down on me but I trudged on. I walked for hours through
the rain. I didn't have a clue where I was or where I was going. I
didn't care and it didn't help. I couldn't walk away from my
memories. I could shake her off. Not one single building looked
familiar to me, so I guessed I was lost. Good. I wanted to lose
myself.

I hated him.

I fucking hated him.

How could Mike walk up to me and talk like
nothing had happened, like we were friends? It was his fault.

He'd ripped my heart out of my chest.

He'd taken my whole world away from me and
then he'd let her die...

****

Lee

"Are you sure this is what you want?" I asked
Kyle as we pulled up in front of the huge wrought iron gated
entrance. My fingertips hovered over my name on the paperwork on my
lap that I'd–rather reluctantly–signed this morning. A home. A
fresh start for the three of us…

"This is a big decision, Kyle," I told him.
"It's your money and it's not like I'm bringing anything to the
table. I want you to be sure about this."

"Am I sure?" he scoffed, as he keyed the
password into the small handset on the wall. "Of course I'm fucking
sure." I could tell he was excited because he was more restless
than usual. His knee was bobbing at a furious pace as he tapped his
fingers against it while we waited for the gates to open. "I have
no doubts when it comes to you, Lee."

"Okay," I whispered in relief. It felt good
to hear him say that. "I just don't want you to feel like you have
to put my name on the house just because we're engaged."

I just didn't want Kyle to feel like he had
to give me half of his house–or feel like I wanted his money. I
also didn't want to kill his buzz by telling him that I'd live in a
tent just as long as it was with him. I'd follow him
anywhere…except back to Thirteenth Street.