Catch Me When I Fall

by Jackson, A. L.

  I gathered her closer. Wanting to bear some of it. Wanting to shoulder it.

  All the while my mind was slammed with a memory carved so deep in my brain I could never forget it.

  “What are you doing here? I said you were out,” I’d grated, barely containing my fury as I backed him toward the door.

  He laughed.

  A maniacal, unhinged sound.

  “You took the one thing that meant anything to me . . . now I’m going to take everything from you. You should have known better than to fuck with me, Royce. Now I’m going to fuck with you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Rage burned through my blood. It took all I had to remain standing in front of Emily.

  She inhaled a shaky breath. “He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me over to the table. Pictures of Richard were spread all over it. Pictures of Richard with a woman who wasn’t dressed. She was kneeling with her arms tied behind her back. Some of them were of her on his lap. One had them leaving a hotel room.”

  Emily dropped her attention to the ground, unable to look at me when she said it. “I think . . . I think she was being forced to be there.”

  My insides curled in aggression.

  In my own disgust.

  I hooked my index finger under her chin, coaxing her to look at me. “Emily. Precious.”

  That energy sifted around us. Taking a different shape.

  Her tongue darted out, swiping across her quivering bottom lip. “Cory had pointed at the picture . . . said that woman belonged to him. That he’d marked her. At first, I was confused . . . I knew Cory was married—”

  That word sent a stake of pain slicing through my being.

  Refusing to feel the impact of it, I pulled Emily closer as she continued through a rush of quieted words. “—and that woman, she wasn’t his wife. It all hit me in an instant . . . the disgusting mess they were involved in.”

  The words heaved from her throat, and I couldn’t do anything but gather her up. “Fuck, Emily.”

  I pressed a frantic kiss to the top of her head, and she clung to me, her face buried in my throat. “I wanted to run, Royce. I wanted to scream and beg for help, but I was frozen. Frozen in fear and shock.”

  Her entire body rocked like an earthquake, and she dug her fingers into my chest. Words nothing but whimpers. “He forced me onto my knees like that girl, tied my wrists behind my back, and blindfolded me. Then . . . then he kissed me. Soft. Like I was an old lover.”

  Revulsion blazed across her skin.

  Rancid and foul.

  “Next thing I knew, he had me on a bed and was pushing up my skirt. I was begging him . . . begging him not to hurt me. To let me go. That I would give him anything.”

  She hiccupped for a breath, burrowing her face deeper into my throat, the words barely heard though I felt them to my soul. “He marked me, Royce. He carved an X on my hip. Just like he’d done to that girl. The pain—it was excruciating—I screamed even when he was threatening me not to make a sound. He told me I belonged to him, told me if I said a word, he was gonna expose my brother. Ruin us all.”

  “Jesus, Emily.” My hands palmed the back of her head, her back, trying to give her comfort when I felt her completely coming apart.

  Guilt clutched me in a vice.

  Suffocating.

  Those nails scraped deeper into my skin, like she was carving me with her grief. “When he took that knife and cut off my panties, I knew he was goin’ to do terrible, terrible things to me, Royce. I knew it. He had me blindfolded, which I was only half grateful for, because then maybe it wouldn’t seem so real.”

  I wrapped her tight.

  No space between us.

  That connection no longer pulling.

  It was tying.

  Binding us in a way there was no chance either of us would come back from.

  She laughed a confused sound through her tears. “I got so lucky, Royce. Not ten seconds after I screamed, someone was knocking on the door, calling out, ‘Room Service.’ Cory had shouted that he hadn’t ordered anything, but they kept pounding. Cory had leaned up and put his disgusting mouth by my ear and whispered that he’d be right back, warned me not to make a peep.”

  Her fingers curled in deeper, voice haggard. “It all happened so fast—the sound of Cory answering the door before it burst open. A fight broke out . . . all this banging and crashing. I started screaming, begging for help, and a second later, the room service guy was ripping at the ties on my wrists and picking me up from the bed. I was weeping when he carried me running across the room. He set me on my feet and whispered for me to run. So, I did, Royce. Three steps down the hall, I tore off that blindfold and didn’t look back.”

  Destruction lined my muscles, and my bones creaked under the pressure.

  Emily’s grief banged against the walls. Banged against my spirit. She edged back, turning that unyielding gaze up to me, regret racing through her face. “Instead of calling the police to report what happened, I just . . . ran. Ran scared. Terrified for my brother and what he was involved in. Terrified for myself. I ran and ran until I got back here to Dalton. I up and left the band without a word. I didn’t even check on that guy . . . don’t even know what happened to him. I’m sure the second he saw it was Cory, he’d been too scared to say a word.”

  Her words hitched. Like she was begging for me to see. To get it. Not to judge her.

  As if this girl could hold any of the blame.

  “When I got to Dalton, I went to the house Nile and I shared. Things were already bad between us, but I needed someone to confide in. To stand beside me. I guess I was hardly surprised to find him with another woman. Still, I’d never felt so alone. So lost as that night, standing out there in the road. No home. No one to call. Terrified to tell someone and terrified not to. So, I kept it bottled, let it fester.”

  She splayed her hands out over her sweet heart. “I let it fester and fester until it started coming out as these anxiety attacks that I couldn’t control. So much guilt for letting that man roam free, so much worry over Richard, hiding something like that, for being involved in the first place. And then Cory started sending me messages . . . saying he would be back to take what was his and do it soon. It all became too much to handle.”

  With the pads of my thumbs, I swiped the tears from under her eyes.

  “I’m going to end him, Emily. I promise you, I’m going to end him.”

  She brushed her fingers across my mouth, hope breaking across her gorgeous face. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to enact revenge for me, Royce. I told you because you need to know what I have to come out and say. What this is going to mean for your job.”

  “Fuck my job.”

  Her voice softened, those fingers tracing my lips, their own brand of comfort. “But I told you for more than that, Royce. I told you because you are the only person I can trust. Because you’re the first person in forever who I feel like understands me. Because you? You are the person I want standing by my side.”

  I wanted to be him.

  Fuck, I wanted to be.

  I wanted to be the guy she thought she was talking to.

  “You’re the reason I want to get on that stage each night, Royce, because I want you to see me. I want you to hear my songs because I think you might be the only person in this world who can understand them. I want to sing them with you.” On the last, her voice dipped with need.

  With outright desperation.

  “Emily.” It was both a plea and a warning.

  “Royce,” she whispered back. “Don’t you see it? I found you when I needed you most.”

  That feeling rose in the middle of us. Intense and deep and bigger than I ever should have let it grow.

  I gathered up one of her hands and pressed her fingers to my lips. “I’m not sure I’m strong enough for that. I wish that I was,” I murmured, searching for strength. For a reason to keep this charade up.

  Guilt crushed me under a million pounds of stone.

&
nbsp; Obliterating.

  Too much.

  I had to get out of there before I made this worse. Before I hurt this girl any more than she’d already been.

  “You are that person,” she almost begged. “I see it. I feel it.”

  She traced her fingertips over the battering going down in my chest.

  My head shook. “No. I’m not, Emily. You are too precious for me to allow myself to be another man to do you wrong. But I promise you, Cory Douglas will pay for what he did.”

  It took everything I had to straighten and head for the door, my stomach somewhere in my throat and my heart on the floor. Her voice stopped me halfway out.

  “Before you walk out that door, Royce, I need you to know something.” She slowly pushed to standing. Her presence slammed me from across the space.

  Wholly consuming.

  She took a step forward. “Before we sign after the show on Sunday night, before I stand up and take a stance against Cory and risk losing it all, before I put my brother’s future on the line, I need you to know.”

  Energy hummed, as powerful as her words. “I love you. I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone before. I know you don’t feel it back, but I need you to know.”

  Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.

  It screamed in my mind.

  A lump grew in my throat, my tongue so thick that I couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t answer.

  Couldn’t process what she’d said.

  I stepped out and snapped the door quietly behind me.

  Darkness consumed me out in the hall.

  I stood frozen in it.

  Unable to move.

  Stuck by the sound of her heart crying out. The girl the loudest song.

  Truth.

  Truth.

  Truth.

  And I realized I had nothing left.

  Only her.

  Without thinking it through, I swung the door back open and pushed back inside.

  Twenty-One

  Emily

  Shock ripped up my throat when the door banged back open without any warning.

  Energy raced, Royce’s presence surging back into the room.

  A storm that’d hit land.

  Overpowering.

  As terrifying as it was beautiful.

  I guessed that’s what I felt when he wrapped one of those strong arms around my waist and tucked me tight against the erratic beat of his heart.

  Terrified by the intensity of what I felt.

  The stunning relief.

  The overwhelming joy.

  By the realization that I felt more for this man in the weeks that I’d known him than what I’d felt in all the years I’d been with Nile.

  He splayed his other hand across my face. Onyx eyes flashed like strikes of lightning in the muted light. “You think I don’t feel it back? Fuck. I love you, Emily. I love you so goddamn much I can’t think. Can’t see. Can’t feel anything but this need I feel for you.”

  My heart pressed and pulled and thudded, growing so big inside of me I was sure it was gonna rupture where it pressed against my ribs.

  “I love you,” I rushed to whisper back.

  “Fuck.” Royce dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes squeezed tight. “Say it again.”

  “I love you, Royce. I love you so much more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. You’ve ruined me.”

  That was it.

  His aura gasoline.

  My confession a match.

  We struck.

  Our mouths and bodies collided in a frenzy of greed.

  Hands ripping and touching and raking. Impassioned kisses of warring teeth and lips and tongues.

  We bit and licked and stroked in a desperate play to consume.

  The rhythm of our hearts an erratic thunder that rumbled in the air and rippled across our skin. We spun and spun as we fought to get closer, me fumbling to get the shirt over his head, my palms pressing flat over the hot planes of his magnificent body.

  His cut abs shook and flexed beneath my touch, his hands diving under the fabric of my sweatshirt, dragging it up as he trailed his hands up my back. The man’s fingers reached all the way around to run up my sides as he pulled the sweatshirt over my head.

  My chest heaved, chills streaking as my bare flesh was hit with the cool air that pumped through the vents. My nipples puckered, and my small breasts ached for his touch, this unending need gushing through my body, wringing me in a fist of lust.

  His touch chased away the chill, his mouth following suit, crazed as his lips ran the line of my shoulder, caressing down across my collarbone as he cupped my breasts in his hands. “Shit . . . fuck . . . Emily. You are perfect. You are perfect.”

  We were spinning, frantic. The two of us banged into the dresser as we moved deeper into my room, lost to this delirious dance.

  I peppered a million kisses across his chest, across the tattoo that shattered a piece of my heart.

  Love is the heart’s greatest deceit.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” I murmured across the inked flesh. Like I could heal whatever wound had written it there. I prayed he’d understand that piece that broke off belonged to him. That I was giving it to him. An offering to make him whole if he would let me.

  And if those words were true, then I wanted to be his only lie.

  He groaned, twisting a hand up in my hair, palming my bottom and tucking me against the rock-hard length begging from his pants as he kissed me mad.

  Dizziness swept through my mind, desire so fierce it was blinding. My eyes only accustomed to him.

  That face and this body and his mesmerizing soul. He backed me toward the bed. His fingers found the elastic band of my shorts, and he shoved them down as we went. I twisted them off my ankles, whimpering with need when he tossed me onto the bed.

  Totally naked.

  Bare.

  Exposed in a way that I’d never been.

  I pushed up onto my hands, heart screaming at my chest, as if it were trying to break out and find a way to get back closer to him.

  “Look at you,” he murmured, so rough, I felt it scrape across my flesh.

  Chills spiraled down my spine, getting lost with the need shimmering on my skin.

  “First time I saw you, you knocked the breath out of me, Emily Ramsey. Prettiest thing I’d ever seen. But it was this I felt.”

  He climbed onto the bed, splaying one of those big hands over the thunder banging in my chest.

  Everything heaved, my breath and my soul.

  “I felt you, too.”

  Something staked through his expression, grief and guilt, more of that shadowy darkness that howled with his harsh, raw beauty. I wanted to traipse into the savagery of it.

  I pressed his hand closer, refusing to let him go. “Something has always been missing inside of me, Royce. Something I didn’t understand. It was you. It was you.”

  A space carved out in the middle of me that hummed like a song. A plea that whispered to be filled.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever feel again. Wasn’t supposed to. You changed everything.” His words were coarse. Gravel. As rugged as his muscles that flexed and bowed, the man so big where he hovered over me.

  “That’s what fallin’ does, Royce. It changes everything. Because when you fall, you don’t know where you’re going to land. This . . . this was where I wanted to be. To fall and land in the safety of your arms.”

  A growl reverberated up his throat, and he was raining a frenzy of kisses down my throat.

  A downpour of devotion.

  “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not ever again.”

  He kept exploring my body with his mouth, kissing over the swell of my breast before he was pulling a nipple into his mouth. He lapped at the sensitive flesh with his tongue.

  Flames shot through the middle of me, lighting up every cell. My hips bucked, seeking friction. “Please. Royce. I need you.”

  I was starting to beg, little pleas filling my chi
ldhood room as he traveled down my quivering belly.

  I lost my breath as he kissed over the scar on my hip, the mark Cory had left when he tried to violate me. I’d worn it like shame. But I knew better now. Knew I had to stand, that holding my tongue and burying my pain wasn’t going to help anyone.

  “You are the most courageous person I know. So goddamn gorgeous. Inside and out. Wanna get lost, Precious. Give you everything you deserve.” He rumbled the words in a maddening puzzle across my trembling belly.

  “Royce, I need you.”

  He lifted his head. The man so beautiful my lungs faltered at the sight.

  Every time.

  But this time . . . this time he was mine.

  He edged back off the bed and shucked the jeans from his hips, pushing them down his muscular legs and stepping out of them.

  He stood at the side of the bed, completely naked, him looking at me, me looking at him.

  Two of us devouring the other with our eyes.

  My mouth watered and my throat went dry.

  The man was covered in a canvas of ink, his skin swelling in spots from the battle he’d fought.

  The man standing for me.

  And I knew right then that I would always stand for him.

  My gaze traced over chiseled muscle and sinister innuendo, the man a song written of scars and tragedy.

  I was so ready for him to let me see. To let me bear some of what he held.

  His thick penis bobbed against his stomach, hard and engorged, dripping from the tip. I scooted up my bed, planting my feet on the mattress and spreading my knees, asking for what I wanted.

  Him.

  All of him.

  Everything.

  A growl echoed through my room. Bouncing from the walls. Amplifying the feeling.

  “You have any idea how sexy you are? Voice the sweetest sound and body the greatest temptation?” he grated.

  “Funny, how I could say the exact same thing about you. But how is it temptation when two souls belong?”

  I swore, there was a low hum in the room. A call. A rhythm that sped out of time.

  “Do you hear that, Royce? Do you hear me calling for you? I think I have been my whole life.”

  He climbed onto the bed and crawled over me. My breaths came shorter and shorter as he nestled his body between my thighs, hands planted on either side of my head to hold himself up.