Catch Me When I Fall

by Jackson, A. L.

Emily.

  Anna.

  Emily.

  Anna.

  Their names ran through me on a downward spiral.

  “Don’t know.”

  Only I did. Knew it better than anything. Problem was, six months ago, before Emily had stumbled into my life, that picture had looked completely different.

  Taking my family back.

  Baz nudged the contract my direction. “You’ve got to at least take more money for this. Take a cut. A fucking percentage. Something.”

  Pursing my lips, I shook my head. “Don’t want the money, Baz. You know what to do with it.”

  He scrubbed both palms over his face before he dropped them, the smirk on his face turning wry. “Then what? You don’t want the money? At least tell me you want the goddamn band.”

  * * *

  It was close to midnight when my driver pulled up to the circular drive in front of Karl Fitzgerald’s mansion.

  Pretension oozed from the white stone walls, all the windows lit up like the estate was some kind of beacon hovering over the city, a guiding light, though there was something about it tonight that appeared sad and pathetic.

  I opened the door. “I won’t be long.”

  He offered a curt nod, and I climbed out, striding up the walkway and bounding up the ten steps that led to the grand entry.

  I didn’t bother to knock or ring.

  I let myself in.

  My mother stumbled to a stop at the end of the hall when she saw me enter, wearing a silk nightgown and matching robe, clutching an empty wine glass, eyes red and blotchy.

  “What did you do?” she demanded.

  “What should have been done years ago,” I tossed out, not even slowing as I headed for the set of curved stairs that led to the second floor.

  “Royce . . . how could you? You’ve destroyed this family,” she shouted behind me.

  I ignored her and continued to climb, heading down to the end of the hall on the right. Quietly, I rapped at the door.

  Maggie immediately opened it, like she’d been waiting for my return. Watching out the window for my arrival. She threw herself at me, hugging my waist, burying her face in my chest.

  I wrapped my arms around her.

  Hugged her tight.

  “You’re back,” she whispered, clinging to me. “You’re back.”

  My heart clenched. So fiercely I couldn’t make sense of what it was that I felt anymore. “I’m here. I’m here. Not going anywhere, Mag-Pie.”

  Edging back, she stared up at me like she was almost scared to hope. “Is it done?”

  I gripped her by the outside of the shoulders, rubbing my thumbs over her arms. “It’s done.”

  Relief gusted out on a small cry that she tried to bury in my chest. I held her, rocked her and whispered, “I’ve got you. It’s going to be alright. No one is going to hurt you.”

  She was nodding frantically at my words, trying to latch onto them, to take them on as truth.

  “You still want to leave?” I asked quietly to the top of her head.

  “Yes. More than anything.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She stepped back, swiped a hand across her bleary face, and moved to the double doors of her closet. She grabbed a giant duffle bag that was already packed from the floor.

  “Someone’s anxious.” I cocked her a teasing brow, going for light as I could when the weight of this reality had followed me all the way back to Los Angeles.

  Four days since everything had gone down in Nashville.

  Four days since Emily had looked at me with the hatred I knew I was going to leave behind in her eyes.

  Four days of feeling like I was slowly bleeding out.

  Four days since the fire she’d lit went dim.

  Maggie choked out a laugh. “I’ve been desperate to get out of this house for four years. I almost ran down to meet you at the end of the drive.”

  She handed me her bag, and I slung the strap over my shoulder, slowing when her expression turned serious.

  “I just want to start over, Royce. I want a life. A real one. And I can’t do that here. Not after everything. I’m finished being scared.”

  I took her by the chin. “And that’s what you’re going to have.”

  Her smile was small and sad. “And now you get one, too. A restart. A new chance.”

  I tried to smile back. Was pretty sure it was a grimace. “Think it’s too late for me, Mag-Pie.”

  Thirty-One

  Emily

  The harsh blaze of the summer sun beat down from the bluest sky. Blinding rays glinted in golden streaks against my eyes, the air shimmering with the fever of it. Sweat gathered along my hairline, dribbling down my back and chest, soaking my tank top.

  A swell of dizziness spun my head as I stood in the swamp of unbearable heat. But I forced myself to keep going, to keep plucking at the ocean of weeds that had grown up in my mama’s vegetable garden.

  It was all I could do.

  Keep moving.

  Keep busy.

  Don’t stop.

  Because if I did, I knew I was goin’ to crumble.

  Fully succumb to this broken heart that just kept growing wider and deeper. A crevice that had cracked right down the middle of me.

  Splitting me in two.

  An abyss.

  Infinite.

  The weeks had passed in a blur of speeding days that dragged on forever.

  Future never so uncertain.

  Not mine or the band’s or Mylton Records’.

  Sorrow clawed through my being, and I blinked my eyes frantically, trying to see past the blinding pain that seared.

  Gripping me in a fist of hopelessness.

  “Would you come inside before you have yourself a heat stroke?”

  My mama’s voice hit me from behind, and I raked my forearm across my face, swiping up the moisture, not sure if it was sweat or tears. Gathering myself, I swung around to face her, pinning on the fakest smile I could find.

  She just about stumbled in her tracks when she got a good look at me. “Oh, Emily.”

  Sympathy rolled out.

  Sympathy I didn’t have the power to stand up under.

  “Don’t, Mama. I’m just fine.”

  A frown dented her forehead. “Just fine you are not.”

  She kept coming closer. With every step, I could feel the exterior I’d been fronting crumbling. The faked smiles and the shallow conversations I’d been giving the last four weeks drying up.

  We’d labeled Carolina George’s break a vacation. A celebration of being signed. A commemoration of the huge influx of followers we’d gained and spike in sales after the performance we’d made at the ACB Awards.

  We didn’t let on that we’d been crushed. Had the rug ripped out from under us.

  Neither Richard nor I able to stand.

  He’d been . . . devastated when he found out what Cory had done to me.

  Taking on the blame but unwilling to confess to me why he was hiding what he was.

  He refused to explain what those pictures meant, even when I promised I’d still keep his secret. That I had no place to judge.

  While I’d walked around like a zombie. Unable to feel and feeling far too much.

  Watching the tabloids go wild with the speculation over Mylton Records, a barrage of pictures of Royce that had surfaced from years before, when he’d been a rising star.

  Streaking and shining and so gloriously bright in all his desperate darkness.

  Before he’d fallen.

  Bound behind bars in a tiny cell for three years—something he’d never once mentioned—before he’d been released and found himself as Mylton Records second-in-line.

  Now at the helm since Karl Fitzgerald had been dethroned.

  God, it hurt.

  Finding out that I didn’t know him at all.

  That his intentions might not have been wicked, but had still been wrong.

  That he’d used me up and spit
me out.

  Now I was left unable to wipe the picture of his wife’s face from my mind.

  His fingers in her hair as he’d sagged with clear relief.

  Like he’d been overcome with joy that she was free and safe, too.

  And how could I bemoan that?

  I just wished he wouldn’t have made me fall in love with him along the way.

  Just another one of those pawns on his fingers that had been played.

  “I’m barely holding it together, Mama,” I said in a rush.

  Suddenly weak, I stumbled forward and slumped down onto the lawn that stretched between the garden and the back of my childhood home.

  I blinked through the inner chaos, through the searing heat that I could feel burning me alive from the inside out.

  A blistering torment that I wasn’t sure I would ever escape.

  A knot grew thick in my throat, emotion racing up from where I’d been trying to keep it buried for weeks.

  Pretending as if I was goin’ to be just fine.

  My mama settled beside me on the lawn. The two of us stared off into the sagging heatwaves that glimmered across the rolling planes.

  “I’m so sorry, Emily, about what happened to you. I . . . I still can’t fathom it. The horror of it. There is no worse feeling for a mother than to know one of your children has been hurt and you weren’t there to stop it. That there’s nothing I can say or do now to fix it. Erase it. And God, that is the only thing I want to do. I want to take that pain from you.”

  I let my attention drift over to my mama, who was wearing her own heartbreak. “You know that it’s not your fault. I’m a grown woman.”

  “But you’ll always be my baby,” she told me, her brow twisting, trying to get me to see.

  I got it.

  I got it so much.

  “The only thing that matters is he can’t hurt anyone anymore,” I whispered.

  “Is it? Is it the only thing that matters?” she asked, angling her head to the side in a bid to take in my response, to watch for my truth, because we both knew this was so much more than the trauma from Cory.

  I sucked a heaving breath into my aching lungs. It trembled back out in an undulating wave of misery. “I couldn’t sing, Mama. I couldn’t write. All the songs that had burned inside of me dried up.”

  Gathering my fingertips to a pinpoint, I pressed them to the vacant spot in the middle of my chest. “It’d been that way since I was assaulted . . . a part of me that got locked up. Lost.”

  I let my gaze drift out over the property, to the branches of the trees that rustled in the hot summer breeze.

  A tremor ripped across my chest. “And then he found me, Mama . . . this man who I knew so much better than to fall for found me, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I truly belonged. Like someone got me for me. Like a part of me that hadn’t been there before had come alive. But I was wrong. So wrong. The only thing he did was leave me wandering. Adrift. Falling.”

  I struggled for air. “Now, I’m lost. So lost, and I don’t know if I’m ever goin’ to find my way back.”

  She reached over and threaded her fingers in mine.

  Silent support.

  Quiet encouragement.

  Rocked with a spear of pain, I dropped my head, squeezed my eyes about as tightly as I squeezed her hand. “I’m pregnant, Mama.”

  She squeezed back. “I know, sweet girl. I know.”

  I lifted my gaze to hers. She sent me a secret, sorrowful smile. “You think I haven’t noticed you running to the bathroom every morning the last week?”

  My lips trembled in something between a smile and devastation. “You know when you wish for something so badly, with all of your might for so many years, and then it’s given to you but it looks so much different than you ever imagined? You’ve got to wonder if you’re being taunted. Given a curse.”

  A frown tipped her mouth down at the side. “Is that what you really think?”

  A bluster of wind blew through, whipping my hair into disorder and rushing across my heated flesh. That cavern in the middle of me throbbed, suffering intense. But I welcomed it. Let myself feel. Maybe fully for the first time in weeks.

  I shifted my gaze to my mother. This woman who had stood by me in every season of my life. Through tiny hurdles and the biggest obstacles.

  Huge victories and the smallest wins.

  “No, I don’t. Maybe I’m not sure how to hold this blessing. Not when it scares me so much.”

  A soft smile pulled to her lips, and she reached out and tucked a wayward lock of my hair behind my ear. “The things that are the most important are what scare us the most.”

  “No wonder I’d been terrified of Royce the first time I saw him,” I said.

  “He sure looked plenty scared of you, too.”

  My head shook. “No, Mama. I was a means to an end. Insurance.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  My spirit screamed, thrashing and toiling, my mind etched with his expression from that night. “He admitted it himself.”

  “Love makes us do drastic things, Emily.” She stood, dusted off the back of her shorts, and stretched out a hand to help me to standing. “Makes me wonder about the lengths he would go to for you.”

  “I haven’t heard from him in four weeks, Mama. He hasn’t even tried to explain himself. Left the band without a word. We don’t even know if the original contract is gonna stand.”

  I’d found out from Detective Casile the magnitude of the changes that had been made to our contract.

  The way it’d given them the right to cut any member loose at any time.

  Karl had wanted Richard gone. I shuddered at the thought of the way he’d wanted to have control over me.

  Rumors had been running rampant about the dissolution of Mylton Records. That its future was uncertain. We had no idea where we stood, our attorney instructing us to hold tight until he had more information.

  Not that the contract was my main concern. But Royce knew how important it was to the band. To my family. That it was what was supposed to have brought us together in the first place.

  “The silence speaks volumes, don’t you think?” I said.

  Mama touched my face. “Maybe you should listen to what it’s saying.”

  * * *

  It was just after seven that evening when I was coming down the stairs and there was a light tapping at the front door. Twilight poured in through the windows, spilling pinks and grays and muted light into the quieted house.

  My pulse spiked, drummed an extra beat. I sucked it down, increased my pace as I took the last couple steps to the front door. I peered out the side window onto the porch, trying to fight the unending disappointment that it wasn’t him.

  That he’d really left me.

  That what I’d thought we’d shared hadn’t been real.

  Confusion narrowed my eyes when I saw a woman standing at the door, hair tied in a haphazard knot on top of her head as she peered around, anxiously taking in her surroundings.

  Well, a young woman.

  A very young woman who was shifting on her feet and chewing at her bottom lip.

  I reached for the lock and turned it.

  A strange sort of energy lit in the air when I opened the door.

  Familiar but different.

  She lifted her gaze.

  Dark, dark eyes tangled with mine.

  The color of onyx.

  Though hers didn’t glint white flames. They held a warm, simmering amber.

  My chest clutched and my spirit gave, tendrils reaching for her as if it’d found a fiber it didn’t know it’d been missin’.

  “Hi,” she said, so quiet, her voice so timid and unsure.

  I swallowed around the thickness in my throat, as if it might hold back the emotion rising fast.

  A flash flood.

  “Hi,” I barely managed.

  “I’m . . . I . . .”

  I widened the door. “I know who you are.”

/>   Maggie.

  I could almost see his eyes glimmer when he’d said it. Compassion and love and loyalty.

  “Come in,” I told her, realizing how badly my hands were shaking when she angled past me and I shut the door.

  A leather messenger bag strapped across her body, she was wearing simple clothes, jeans and a white tee and white Vans, the girl so sweet and pretty that it was making it hard to remember that hard cruelness of her brother. The only thing I could feel right then was the stunning protectiveness he’d felt for her.

  “Would you like something to drink?” I offered.

  Awkwardly.

  Because what I really wanted to ask was what she was doing here. If Royce was okay. Scream that none of this was fair.

  Then I wanted to wrap her up and hug her close and tell her I understood.

  But I just stared, watching her carefully, her watching me, as if neither of us knew if the other was going to crack.

  “No, thank you. I won’t be here long.”

  Was that disappointment that flashed?

  “He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m spending the weekend in Palm Springs with my girlfriends . . . my first trip away by myself,” she admitted, a blush pinking her cheeks as guilt clouded her features. “But I couldn’t not come. Not after everything he’s sacrificed for me.”

  I nodded slow. “He cares for you . . . so deeply.”

  She laughed out a disbelieving sound, her gaze cast to the floor before she turned it back on me. “I think I could say the same about you.”

  Grief clutched every cell in my body, refusing what she claimed and simultaneously wishing that it were true. “He did what he had to do for you, Maggie. I understand it. Have accepted it. I forgive him for it.”

  I was willing to be one of those pawns on his fingers if it meant him getting justice for his little sister. That she might be able to step out of her home without a sense of fear. That she might have a chance to fly free.

  Lines curled across her brow. “You think he used you?”

  She said it as if she were actually disgusted by the thought.

  “I’m okay that he did.”

  It was only partially a lie.

  The laughter that rolled out of her was quiet. Incredulous affection. “Can I tell you something, Emily? If I can call you that?”