Freefall

by Tess Oliver

  She scrunched up one eye and pointed to it.

  “Dray’s a fighter. He usually doesn’t get his face slammed around like that, but this time he climbed into the arena at the wrong time.” I nodded toward the kitchen galley. “Do you want something to drink?”

  She motioned to Dray’s glass of water.

  “Water? We’ve got plenty of that. Even some without salt.” As expected, Dray had left a pig sized mess in the kitchen. I tossed his dishes into the sink and reached for a clean glass. “How did it go with Nana today?” I handed her the water.

  She wrote quickly and gave me the paper. I’d grown used to waiting for her response, but I couldn’t imagine how frustrating it would be to have to write down everything you wanted to say. I even hated to write texts. It would be hard to write down every question, thought, and answer. But she did it with patience, and everything about the way she wrote and the words on the paper told me exactly how she was feeling. “We baked cookies. It was by far the best part of the day. With the exception of standing here with you right now.”

  “I could tell you had an awful start to the day. You don’t know how badly I wanted to be with you this morning after you texted me.”

  She followed me out to the small living room.

  “The sound of your voice helped me get through the morning,” she wrote. She turned and lifted her shirt. There was a nasty bruise right in the center of her back.

  I grabbed the edge of her shirt. “Holy shit, Scotlyn, what happened?”

  “I slipped against the shower handle.” She hesitated as if she was going to write again but didn’t.

  There was more she wanted to tell me, but she was keeping it to herself. She’d assured me that Hammond had never hit her, but that didn’t lessen my urge to want to plow my fist into his smug face. She’d cried enough today, and I decided not to ask her more.

  I walked back around and lifted her shirt. “I guess it’s too late for ice.” I lowered my mouth to the bruise and kissed it lightly. A shiver ran through her and that soft, breathy sound I’d heard before when I’d touched her floated around the room. I moved my mouth to the tattoo and ran it along the long vine of flowers. My hands slid around her waist as I straightened. She relaxed back against my chest, and the pad of paper slipped to the floor. I lowered my mouth to her ear. Her scent and the feel of her body pressed against me made me hard with need. I lowered my mouth to her ear. “That sound you make when I touch you, I want to hear it.” My hand slid beneath her t-shirt, and my thumb trailed beneath her bra and across the bare skin of her breast.

  A soft sigh fell from her lips.

  My tongue traced her ear. “That’s it. Tell me I’m the only person who hears that sound. Tell me I’m the only one whose touch makes it happen,” I whispered hoarsely. She held tightly to my arm as if she would slip to the ground without my support and nodded.

  My hand traveled down her smooth stomach, and my mouth trailed kisses along her neck. I reached down and unbuttoned the top of her shorts, and she gasped softly.

  “I want to touch every inch of you, Scotlyn.” My hand slid down into her shorts and below the lacy underwear. Her fingers bit into the skin on my forearm, and her knees weakened. I held her up with one arm while my hand moved to the heat between her legs. The sound rose from her throat again, and I felt her soft, sweet breath on the side of my face. My fingers slipped inside of her, and she melted against my grasp. I moved my fingers in and out and she moved against my hand. She held my arm tightly, and her head rolled back against me as my fingers went deeper. Her back arched and her fingernails dug into my arm and then she cried out. She collapsed against me with a small groan and silence fell around us. She stayed pressed against me but did not turn around. Her grip on my arm had not loosened.

  “That cry,” I said quietly, “that was you. That was your voice.”

  I waited for her to nod or shake her head, but she didn’t respond. She held my arm tightly, frozen against me. And then the trembling started. Her entire body began shaking.

  I swallowed hard. “You haven’t heard your voice since—” My throat cracked around the words.

  She was shaking wildly and then she nearly slipped out of my grasp. I lifted her into my arms and carried her to the couch. I sat down and pulled her into my lap. Nothing felt so right as having her in my arms. I held her until the trembling subsided, and she relaxed against me. A breeze floated through the open window, and she shivered with the coolness.

  I rested my chin on the top of her head. “It gets cold out here on the water in the late afternoon.”

  She tucked herself into a ball and cuddled against me more. Having her wiggle her bottom in my lap was slowly dissolving any self-control I had left, and then she sat up and slid off of my thighs. I was majorly disappointed but then she pulled out her paper pad.

  As she flipped to a clean page, her shoulders hunched up against the cool, moist air that seeped into the cabin. I got up and grabbed my sweatshirt from my room and tossed it on to her lap. She quickly put it on and held up the sleeves that hung off the ends of her hands. She was swimming in it. She ran her hands over the fabric and then lifted up the neckline and pushed it against her nose. Her eyes drifted shut and she breathed in the scent of it and then she lowered the sweatshirt and smiled.

  “I guess it’s a good thing I washed it.”

  Her dimple creased deeper, and she reached up and touched my face. It was a gesture she performed often, and I had the same profound reaction each time. She dropped her hand and stared down at the blank paper on her lap.

  “You were about to write something,” I reminded her.

  She slid off her sandals and brought her knees up to her chest. My sweatshirt covered her bare legs like a tent. She held the pad of paper and twirled the pen in her fingers. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to remember what she was about to write or if she was still trying to decide if she should write it. Her reaction to the sound of her own voice had been intense, and I wondered if it had opened up some old wounds.

  She huddled deep in my gray sweatshirt and pulled the hood up over her head. Then she wrote, again with sharp, deliberate strokes as if her thoughts were too important to rush through. Her hands were trembling as she held up the paper. “I haven’t heard my voice since the accident. I thought it was gone forever.” She trembled again but not as violently as before. The pen balanced between her long fingers.

  “It’s all right, Scotlyn. You don’t have to write about it if you don’t want to.”

  Her blue gaze looked stricken by my words. She dropped the pen in her lap, took hold of my wrist, and pressed my hand against her chest. Her heart was beating fast. She released my hand and wrote hastily on the paper. “Please, you’re the only person who hears me. I need to write this.” She pulled the sweatshirt tightly around her, but it wasn’t because of the cool air anymore, it was because of what she was about to write. The fact that she found comfort from my faded gray sweatshirt made me happy.

  The tremor in her fingers lingered, but it didn’t keep her from dragging dark lines across the page. I sat and watched her pour her nightmare out onto her little pad of paper. Anguish rolled off of her as she wrote feverishly, turning the page quickly as she got to the bottom of one side. Then she stopped and stared at her writing as if someone else had written it. She rubbed her long finger over the words as if she was checking that they were real, that they’d come from her pen.

  I thought she would just hand them to me, but instead, she climbed back into my lap and rested her face against my chest. I took hold of the papers with one hand and cradled her with my other arm. She closed her eyes, and the shaking subsided some as she relaxed against me. I stared at the words. Her handwriting was so personal to me already, she could have scribbled something on the side of a building and I would recognize it instantly as hers. I read it to myself as she sat quietly in my lap.

  “It happened so fast, only seconds between my normal happy life and the end of it all. Two week
s before the crash, we’d all gone to Palm Springs on a family vacation. There was a high dive at the motel pool, and I’d spent hours on it working up the courage to jump. I finally did. That was what it was like— the fall over the cliff. It was like freefalling into a pool only there was no water to cushion the impact. I’d been busy texting my friend. I hadn’t seen why Dad swerved, but somewhere in my mind I saw a deer standing in the road. The impact knocked me out. I woke with something sharp in my side, and I couldn’t move. The car was upside down. I looked over at my dad. His eyes were open, and he was staring at me almost as if he was just watching me do my homework. I cried out ‘daddy’ over and over again, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t blink. He never blinked. Then a tiny noise came from what had once been the back seat. It was so small, the space was so small I kept thinking no one could still be sitting back there. And then I saw the bright pink of my mom’s nail polish. Her fingers moved as if she was reaching for me and then the movement stopped.” Scotlyn shifted in my lap and nuzzled her face into my shirt. Long dark lashes shaded her pale cheeks, and it seemed she’d fallen asleep. “Aside from the creaking metal of the car as it folded in on itself, there was no sound. I screamed for help over and over again. The slice of windshield cut deeper into my flesh with every breath, but I screamed. No one heard. It was as if my voice was suddenly useless. Only I could hear it. It was nearly dark when a policeman’s flashlight glared in the opening that had once been a window. By then I’d screamed myself hoarse. It felt as if the strain of it had erased the sound of my voice for good. Everything went mercifully black as the firemen freed me from the car. It was the last time I saw any of my family and the last time I spoke.”

  I stared at the pieces of paper in my hand and then gazed down at the girl in my lap. She’d spent an entire day in an upside down car with her family, and she had been the only one still alive. Scotlyn kept a pretty smooth exterior for someone who had lived through one of the worst nightmares life had to offer. I folded up the papers and put them down on the cushion next to me. I hugged her against me and fell asleep with the girl who’d stolen my heart long before I’d met her.

  CHAPTER 20

  Scotlyn

  The unfamiliar ring of my phone startled us from our sleep, and Nix nearly dropped me on the floor. It was Lincoln. He never called because there was no real use in it. Reluctantly, I crawled away from Nix’s arms and sat on the couch. I pushed the phone to my ear.

  “This is bullshit,” Lincoln said angrily. “Get your ass home now, or I will come and find you.” He hung up.

  Nix stared down at me knowing what the call had been about. “Don’t go. Stay here with me.”

  I searched around for my paper and pen.

  Nix grabbed my hand to stop me. “Stay, Scotlyn. You belong here— with me.”

  I pulled my hand from his grasp, completely irritated that I couldn’t respond. He sensed my frustration and pulled the notepad and pen up from the couch cushion. The papers I’d handed him to read were next to it. I’d told him everything. I’d laid out my soul for him, relieved to finally have found someone I could tell it all to. I picked up my pen, my only voice, and wrote.

  “I don’t want to drag you into this. I need to break free of him first, otherwise he’ll make this impossible. Please, Nix, take me home.” His eyes darkened as he read my words.

  The sun hung low in the sky as we left the harbor. Utter disappointment radiated off Nix as he drove me back home. He saw no complication in any of this. In his mind, I could just simply walk out of Lincoln’s house forever without a fight. He saw Lincoln as a shallow, rich bastard who could just switch girls as easily as he switched his pants. But that was not how Lincoln’s mind worked. I was his possession, and no one took what belonged to him. Control was all that mattered to him, and as far as Lincoln was concerned, he was in complete control of me. Even if he didn’t truly want me anymore, he would make certain no one else could have me, especially someone like Nix.

  I picked up my pathetic little notepad. I was growing so tired of it. “Please don’t be mad.”

  He pulled his eyes from the road just long enough to read it. “I’m not mad, Scotlyn. I hate the guy, and I don’t trust him.” He squeezed his hands around the steering wheel. “I can’t stand the thought of him touching you.” The words shot out as if he hadn’t really wanted to say them aloud, but they’d broken free anyway. He scrubbed his black hair with his hand. “Fucking hell, now I sound like Hammond, like a controlling asshole. It’s just I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’ll be fine, and I will leave him soon. I promise.” I flipped over the paper. “And you’re nothing like him.”

  As we neared the last corner before turning onto Lincoln’s street I tapped Nix’s arm and pointed for him to stop. He sighed with irritation and pulled over to the curb.

  I held up another note. “You are mad.”

  He looked at the paper and shook his head. “No.” He leaned over, lifted my chin with his fingers, and kissed me. “Just disappointed. Will you be at Nana’s tomorrow or did we just blow this whole thing?”

  “Your sister is taking her to the doctor’s office for a physical,” I wrote. “I met your sister this morning.”

  “You did? Sorry. Hope she wasn’t too awful.”

  I shook my head and pulled off his sweatshirt. I could have slept in it all night, surrounded by his scent. I wrote. “I’ll be at Nana’s after tomorrow.” I stepped out, and he watched me walk away. I waved and blew him a kiss and then went around the corner. In the distance, I could see Grady’s car in the driveway, and a shudder ran through me. My only hope was that Lincoln was steeped deeply enough in his business conversation to not notice me slip inside. I definitely wanted to avoid his sleazy partner.

  I plodded up the driveway completely drained by the emotional events of the day. Now more than ever, I hated being here. More than ever, I wanted to break free of this place. Now, more than ever, I realized that Nix was the only person I needed.

  My hopes to sneak inside unseen were dashed when the front door opened as I reached for the handle. Grady’s beady eyes stared out at me. The fancy dresser with the shaved head and creepy face stood behind him.

  “Well, well,” Grady sneered, “if it isn’t the silent but beautiful bitch.” He spoke quietly making it obvious that Lincoln was close by. Grady looked back past his thuggish- looking buddy. “Hey, Hammond, do you really think you should be letting your collateral walk around the streets of L.A. all by herself?”

  I shot a puzzled glare at Grady as Lincoln’s face appeared behind the bald man. He looked ready to spit fire, but fortunately, his anger seemed to be focused toward Grady.

  “Just get out of here, you idiot,” Lincoln snarled.

  Grady smiled smugly at Lincoln. His demeanor toward Lincoln had definitely changed in the last few months. For the longest time, he’d followed Lincoln around as if was ready to lick the man’s boots at first request, but now Grady seemed to have the controlling edge.

  I stepped out of the way as the two men plodded past. A tremor of disgust ran through me as they both made a point of leering at me.

  Lincoln all but pulled me inside and slammed the front door shut. Icy rage followed him into the living room. I turned to go upstairs. “No way, Sweetheart, get your ass in here and tell me where the hell you’ve been all day.”

  I pulled out my pad and had the note written before I reached the living room. Lincoln stepped behind his wet bar and poured himself a drink. I ripped my message off the pad and handed it to him. “I was sitting with Lucy, the woman I’ve been hired to watch.”

  He threw back the drink and crumpled the paper in his hand and then threw it at me. “All fucking day?”

  I stared coldly back at him and nodded.

  I scratched out a question. “Why did Grady call me collateral?”

  He squinted at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about, but he’d heard him use the word. There was no way he could have miss
ed it. He took another shot and slammed the glass on the granite bar top. “I don’t know what the hell he was talking about. You know he’s an idiot.” That was obviously the only explanation I was going to get, but I could tell by the way he was slugging back scotch, there was more to it than Grady being an idiot. He threw another one back. I had never seen him drink so much. “And don’t change the subject away from this stupid job of yours.” The alcohol was already slowing his speech. With any luck, he’d be passed out cold in an hour. He opened the bottle of scotch but didn’t bother with the glass this time. He took a swig. Something was definitely wrong.

  I looked pointedly at the bottle he held.

  “What’s wrong with a little afternoon cocktail?” he said angrily. “It’s not like you’re great for conversation.” He laughed cruelly. “Sort of like looking at a fucking rainbow, breathtaking but useless.”

  I flinched at his harsh words and spun around to leave.

  “You’re done with that job,” he called to me. “And I fired the wedding planner.”

  I froze and took a deep breath of relief.

  “We’re not going to wait that long to get married. As soon as the lawyer has everything written up, we’re going to city hall.”

  I closed my eyes. For a brief second, I’d seen myself packing up my things and walking out with Lincoln holding the door for me. I headed to the stairs hoping he would drink himself into a coma. As I rounded the corner, I tripped on a box. The top flap was hanging open. It was filled with copies of my pin-up poster. Lincoln had had a thousand printed to sell my picture to advertisement agencies, but he’d never distributed many. He had decided not to share his possession with the rest of the world. At the time I remember feeling relieved with his change of heart. It was hard to know why he’d dragged the box out of storage.

  I grabbed up a poster and returned to the living room. He’d plopped down on the couch with his bottle. I held up the poster in front of him, and he looked a bit taken aback as if he hadn’t meant for me to see them.