Fall (Roam Series, Book Two)

by Kimberly Adams

  Logan stirred and sat up quickly, moving to me in one stride.

  “Roam-”

  “She was real?” I begged him, grasping the collar of his shirt in my fists. He nodded, holding me as close as he could.

  “She was real,” he promised, helping me find my sanity. “You fed her. I held her. We watched her sleep. She was real.”

  “I’m on suicide watch?” I demanded.

  He looked taken aback, and then glanced down at his phone in my lap. Cursing softly, he flipped it open, scrolling to his texts. “Complete asshole.”

  “Don’t,” I protested tearfully. “It’s not fair that you kept that from me. That no one told me.”

  “No one wants that idea in your head.”

  I stared at him, my expression vacant. “Do you really think that I’d kill myself? That I’d do that to Morgan or my dad… or you or West?”

  He sighed deeply. “The doctors don’t even know half of what you’ve been through. I do. I can feel your pain, Roam. I feel your heart breaking.”

  Twisting the hospital bracelet on my wrist, I tried to control my tears. “Please let me use your phone. I want to call him.”

  “You’ll talk to him soon-”

  “Please, Logan,” I breathed, sniffing and taking a shaking breath. “Please.”

  He flipped his phone open and dialed before handing it to me.

  Half a ring sounded before West picked up. “Logan?”

  “It’s me,” I cleared my breaking voice, trying not to tremble. “It’s me.”

  “Baby… please tell me that you’re okay.”

  West. He had completely taken over my life, my mind, and every moment of our time together had been nothing but extremes…

  Extreme heartache, passion, confusion, love…

  I was exhausted.

  I loved him more than anything, but I couldn’t breathe.

  I need to catch my breath again.

  I closed my eyes tightly, thinking of his deep blue gaze. “You were right… you were right from the beginning, West.” I spoke through my tears, my voice thick with heartache. “Nothing good… nothing good comes of us. We have to find another way.”

  “Roam.”

  Pain. So much pain in one single breath as he spoke my name.

  “West,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “I don’t want to see you… for a while.” I gripped Logan’s phone so tightly that I expected it to snap at my ear. “I need things to be how they were before. Just for a while,” I repeated.

  “Roam,” he repeated, his voice was strained. I heard his breathing accelerate. “I didn’t know that she’d disappear. I had no idea.”

  “Stop,” I begged, pressing my palm to my forehead in an attempt to hold myself together.

  “I love you,” he managed, obviously struggling with control. “God, I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  I closed the phone softly and dropped it to my lap.

  Logan held me while I cried for much of the night as the nurses changed shifts and noted my condition.

  Let them write a novel about me.

  I was barely seventeen years old and had shouldered more heartbreak in a few short weeks than I should have ever had in an entire lifetime.

  My life isn’t mine anymore.

  My existence belonged to magic, and my happiness depended on that very same magic.

  The same magic that took her away from me.

  Sometime in the morning, I fell into a dreamless sleep. After speaking to the psychiatrist on call around lunch time, he gave instructions for me to be discharged. We talked for more than a half an hour before I found the right words to make him scribble his release notes.

  “Maybe it was meant to be,” I forced, watching him nod with satisfaction.

  At home in my bedroom, I curled into my bed, staring at the falling snow out my window. My dad’s truck had been returned, and Logan said that ultimately, less than an hour had passed while we were gone.

  Though I was given a note excusing me from school for the following week, I planned to go back the next day.

  I stared at myself in the full-length mirror across from my bed. I was thinner than I’d ever been, and my face was pale from spending days indoors.

  But it was my face.

  My swimming medals hung from the corner of the glass, and the thin scrap of paper tucked into the mirror frame caught my eye. The ultrasound snapshot was stuck in the glass, an arrow drawn to point to the tiny, black bubble that no longer existed.

  What is real? I pulled the pillow up to block my vision, too tired get up and rip the photo down.

  The nightmares, North Carolina, Russia, the dreams of the ice castle, 1977, 1955…

  Eva…

  “Roam.” Morgan knocked softly on my door. “Can I come in?”

  I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. Eventually, I pretended hard enough to make it happen.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Wow… OMG, he totally grabbed you!” Ally-May cringed at my neck, and I self-consciously adjusted my gray, cable knit sweater, lifting the gray and green scarf. “Don’t hide it, everyone knows what happened to you. It’s just so awful.” She lifted her hand to her mouth, as if telling me a juicy secret. “You’re never going to believe this, but you’re already getting early nods for prom queen. No joke.”

  “I really… just need to get back to normal, you know?” I shifted the books in my hand, returning waves from people that I barely spoke to. Everyone knows what happened?

  No one knows what happened.

  “Well, I’m here for you. Let’s hang out on Saturday, okay? Shopping?”

  “Okay.” I nodded, fishing in my locker. “Do you have a pencil?”

  “Sure.” She handed me a mechanical pencil. “Oh, girl, you’ll never believe… well, I’ll just let it be a surprise.” She grinned and winked, skipping off toward her first period class. “See you at lunch?”

  “Okay.” I turned toward my history class, slipping in just as the bell rang.

  I moved to a seat against the wall in the back, gathering my hair to my left shoulder. When Logan picked me up for school, I could barely find words to speak to him in the car. He let me sit in silence, not pushing me to talk about how I was feeling. He chatted about Violet going back to Virginia until winter break, and about how she wanted to have said good-bye to me before she left.

  I wished I’d stayed at home. The constant chatter in the classroom, the hectic halls, the bell clamoring… my nerves were on edge, and it was only first period.

  “Ugh…vacation’s over,” Michelle muttered, glancing at the front of the classroom and rolled her eyes before finishing a quick text.

  The door closed with a heavy thud.

  My heart failed to beat.

  “Hey, Mr. Perry!” Two boys in the front gave him a laughing welcome, reaching for fist-bumps. He obliged, his eyes scanning the seats.

  He stilled when he saw me.

  He wore exactly what he wore on the first day of school; khakis, white dress shirt, brown leather loafers. His face, cleanly shaven, held no marks of the brutal beating he’d received in his basement. His eyes, the deepest blue of all oceans, touched me with their gaze.

  “What, they just gave you your job back?” I blurted, my words shaking. The entire class fell silent at my incredibly intrusive outburst.

  He loosened his collar before running his hand through his hair.

  I can’t cry in the middle of class. I can’t!

  How could he do this to me, with no warning?

  “Good to see you, Miss Camden. I didn’t think you’d be back until next week.” He smiled curtly, but his eyes sent silent apologies.

  I would have told you.

  I couldn’t answer. My throat was tied in knots with my stomach. “Okay,” I breathed, lowering my face to the desk. He watched my eyes fill with tears and quickly turned his back to the class, moving to the board.

  “I’m told you finished off with The Rise of Russia.
We’re going to move on to World Economy, specifically 1500-1700. Causation and the west’s expansion-”

  “Was the result of men, and their conquering visions to expand and rule the whole world,” I snapped, grabbing my books. I was ready to walk out of the classroom.

  I couldn’t be there for an hour.

  “Hormones,” Brad murmured to my right, laughing under his breath. I felt my knees buckle before I could stand up.

  West turned to Brad, his jaw clenched. His eyes turned thunderous gray that caused everyone in the classroom to audibly gasp.

  “Get out of my class,” he growled, pointing to the door.

  Brad jumped back defensively, rolling his eyes at me before standing heading for the door. The entire classroom went uncomfortably frigid, silence roaring down each aisle.

  I cleared my throat, adjusting the scarf to better cover Troy’s crushing handprint. “And without leaders… like Cortes or Vasco da Gama,” I began nervously, “there would have been no voyages or settlements in Asia or the Americas,” I rambled, my voice quivering.

  West gazed at me, the fury in his eyes simmering to the same intimate love and compassion that I’d known from him for so long.

  “Absolutely correct, Miss Camden.” He managed an impartial smile, turning back to the white board.

  I shifted in my seat and opened my notebook, trying to apply my shaking pencil to the paper.

  He thought I’d be at home… do I want him here?

  I do.

  I wanted him there, with me always, holding me, comforting me.

  Loving me.

  I watched him teach. He charmed the class with the history of our world’s economy, and I paid extra attention to his every look my way. His deep, even voice soothed me, and after a half an hour, my hands finally stopped shaking. Now that I knew him like I did, I realized that he spoke of history as though he was simply recalling memories, describing people, places, and events in a way that had the entire class enthralled.

  “Maps continued to change with every newly discovered land.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, placing the cap on his dry erase marker. The board was covered in his neat, capitalized handwriting. “Your assignment tonight is to make a map of the world from the year 1500. That’s it. It can be as detailed or as crude as you’d like. Tomorrow, I’ll ask you to change a specific detail, and I’ll continue to do so for the rest of the week. We’ll see how closely our maps relate by Friday, when you’ll turn them in. Fifty points.”

  The bell rang. I slowly gathered my books as the class cleared out, watching him as he moved between desks to walk to me.

  “Roam,” he said softly, coming as close as he could without touching me, “you should be resting at home in bed.” His eyes raked over me, and I could feel his restraint.

  I exhaled sharply, my butterflies swarming in my stomach. He smelled like aftershave and fabric softener…

  And our daughter.

  “You smell like her,” I whispered in one exhaling breath. I tripped on the desk, and he caught me before I lost my footing.

  “I want you to go home. Now,” he pleaded, his self-control obvious as he struggled not to touch me. “It’s too soon.”

  “I’ve got her.” Logan’s voice broke through the torrent of pain that consumed me. “Come on, Cam. Statistics.”

  “Wait.” I held my palm in the air, taking deep, calming breaths. “Wait.” I turned to West, trying not to cry. “I am staying. I need to bring my GPA back up. I will… lose myself… at home.” I borrowed Logan’s words. “I’m glad that you’re here, all day, in the same place as I am, West. But please… give me space. Don’t talk to me for a while. Just let me… be.”

  He wouldn’t be able to understand how broken and weak I felt in his presence. When he was there, I was fragile, unable to stand on my own feet.

  Unable to find my strength.

  The pain slashed across his face, and I hated myself for putting it there. His professional mask returned before I could blink. “I will respect that, Roam. You know where to find me,” he said softly, giving Logan a sideways glance before returning to his desk.

  I walked with Logan into the halls, and he gripped my arm tightly. “It’s good that he’s here, Cam. Just let him be in the background while you heal.”

  “Did you know he’d be here?”

  “I knew he was going to try to get his job back. I didn’t know it’d be so soon.”

  I hardened my jaw, nodding. “I have to get to class.”

  I made it through the entire day without seeing West again. I spent much of the evening diving into his map assignment, thankful to keep my mind occupied with something other than the horrible emptiness that threatened every time my thoughts wandered. The prescription sleeping pills that the doctor had given me sat unopened on my dresser. I chanced another night without dreams, and, luckily, woke the next morning without a single nightmare.

  The next day, when I walked in, he greeted me with polite distance, moving on with the lesson. He walked around the classroom looking at our maps, stopping at a few to comment. “Michelle, you may want to check your information. I’ve never seen a map from the 1500s that included the state of Ohio.”

  “This is a map of the future,” she explained.

  He nodded, continuing down the aisle to where I sat in the back row….

  …and rolling his eyes so that only I could see.

  I couldn’t stifle the burst of laughter in time. My giggle escaped from my chest. Curling his lips inward to refrain from laughing with me, he looked down at my map. “Very nice. Class, look at Miss Camden’s map.” He lifted my paper, taped together using six sheets of manila construction paper. “This is called a Cantino planisphere. Notice the two focal circles, and the elaborate compass rose. Venice, Jerusalem… even the Alexandria lighthouse. She needed six pieces of paper to make this work, and what a great job.”

  “The original map was made of six glued parchment sheets,” I murmured softly, without looking at my classmates. “It was obsolete within months because the Portuguese continued to make so many mapping voyages. But- it was important because it showed the Italian’s knowledge of Brazil’s coastline, and how much of the Atlantic Coast of South America extended to the south.”

  “But Michelle’s map has McDonalds,” Brad pointed out, and the class laughed as Michelle blushed prettily and pretended to be embarrassed.

  West gave in, smirking at Michelle playfully. “Again, very nice work, Miss Camden. We’ll just add a Hilton in the Rome airport over here, to keep up with Michelle’s business development.”

  He tapped his finger against Italy on my map, gazing down at me before moving on to the front of the class.

  My mind drifted to a four-hour layover in a Hilton hotel room, and a heated flush began at my neck and crept over my cheeks.

  We were told to add one new discovery to our maps for Wednesday. Before I left his classroom, he caught my fingers softly. His touch doubled my heartbeat, and I nearly dropped my books.

  “I just wanted to tell you… don’t take any sleeping pills.” He watched the busy hallway as he spoke under his breath. “If the nightmares return, you’ll be trapped.”

  Widening my eyes in horror, I imagined not waking up in time as Troy sliced my throat. “Thank you… for telling me.” I covered my heart with the hand he wasn’t holding, willing it to beat normally.

  He watched me struggle, his fingers pinching mine before letting them go. “I’m here. I’m waiting for you.”

  I nodded, turning to hurry into the hall.

  Working diligently that night, I added a star chart to my map, using a protractor to draw perfect circles and grids. Morgan came in around dinner time, bringing me a cup of hot chocolate and some buttered, white toast. “Grandma’s special.” I smiled, carefully moving the tray away from my map.

  “I’ll let you get away with these skimpy meals for a few more days,” she said softly, her eyes fixed on my map. “This is beautiful, Socrates. Is this for ma
p class?”

  I could tell she was completely serious, so I refrained from laughing. “History. They didn’t offer AP Cartography this year.”

  “Oh yeah… Mr. Hot History.” She rolled a colored pencil between her fingers. “I wonder if he’s single.”

  I stiffened. “What about Jason?”

  “I’m not married to Jason.” She gathered her shoulder-length hair into her hands, flipping it absently. “When I talked to Mr. History at the hospital, I didn’t see a ring. And I really think we hit it off, you know-”

  “Everyone likes him,” I snapped, turning back to my map. “He’s just really charming.”

  She watched me carefully. “He and Logan talked. A lot.”

  The Morgan-knows-something sensor that I’d fine-tuned over the past seventeen years went from orange to code red. I pursed my lips, turning to her. “He has to write me an excellent reference for my applications. He and Logan both talk baseball constantly, so I’m hoping if they are friendly, he won’t mind writing one for me.”

  She stared me down, finally sitting back in her chair. “Oh. I get that.”

  I shrugged, non-committal. “This project is worth fifty points.”

  “Get back to work.” She saluted me, walking to my door.

  “Morgan, when does the quarter start for you?” I realized she hadn’t left to go back to college yet. She winked.

  “I needed a break. Back to business in the spring.”

  When she left, I stared at my map. Morgan is babysitting me.

  I stood and walked to my mirror, pulling the ultrasound photo out of the framed glass.

  Empty did not singly describe what I felt inside. The tiny black dot physically hurt to look at. I folded the paper in half, glancing outside. A warm front had moved through, melting much of the snow and leaving the evening wet and mild.

  Eat dinner, go back to your map, I told myself, staring at the streetlight as it flashed and flickered on. Tucking the photo in the back pocket of my jeans, I slipped on a hooded sweatshirt and went downstairs.

  Morgan watched me slide my feet into my boots, slapping her hands together in excitement. “Where are we going? Let’s get out of this house! Wal-Mart? Dinner? The mall?” She squealed with feigned excitement.