If We Fall: A What If Novel

by Nina Lane

  Chapter 2

  Josie

  * * *

  I can’t see. A demon is chasing me.

  I stumble up the hill, my sneakers slipping on rocks and holes. My breath scrapes my throat. Shadows close in on me from all sides, heavy and suffocating.

  Making it worse, as always, is the voice in the back of my mind, taunting and shrill.

  Coward. Fucking woman up, Josie, and stop being such a baby. There are a thousand worse things to be scared of than lack of light.

  Shut up, I snap back. The voice wasn’t there when darkness flooded my life, my brain. When it obliterated my consciousness and part of my memory.

  It doesn’t know that everything bad happens in the dark.

  Countless times as a kid, I’d climbed this hill, had once known every groove in the earth. I latch on to a memory of bursting through the door of Watercolor Cottage, inhaling the smells of clay and oil paint. My mother coming in from the sunroom, her hair pulled back by a bandanna, her smile wide and welcoming.

  The image splinters, then explodes into a million pieces. Fear chokes me, pounds in my blood. Fixing my focus downward, I concentrate on the pale light of the flashlight.

  Follow it. Follow the path.

  I force myself to walk slowly, fighting the urge to run despite the prickling sensation that something is chasing me.

  Nothing is chasing you, the voice sneers.

  Bullshit. The past is always hovering, poised to lunge and swoop down on me like a sharp-taloned death eater.

  I put one foot in front of the other, again and again. Blessedly, the light shines on a worn gray flagstone. Then another. The stones lead to the front door of the cottage, curved like the entrance to a hobbit hole.

  Fumbling for the key, I shine the light on the door handle. My hand shakes violently, but I manage to insert the key into the lock and turn it. The door clicks.

  Thank God.

  Swallowing a gasp, I stagger into the house and feel for the light switches on the wall. I shove all three switches upward, desperate for the explosion of light to ground me, ease my panic, show me where the hell I am.

  Nothing happens.

  Oh fuck no.

  My breath gets faster. I flip the switches again and again, but the cottage remains dark, clouded in murky shadows, filled with terror.

  Disembodied heads, skinless and skeletal, loom through the blackness, mouths agape, eyes empty sockets with burning pinpoints of red. The ghastly creatures who have haunted me for a decade.

  Stay calm. Get to the sunroom, the kitchen. There are more lights.

  Bracing my hand on the wall, I make my way to the sunroom with the big picture window overlooking the cove. I find a floor lamp and pull the chain. It’s dead. I try the lights in the kitchen, even knowing before I flip the switch that nothing will break the suffocating darkness. All I have is a thin souvenir shop flashlight, which for me is like going into war with only a needle as a weapon.

  Shit. Pressing a hand to the wall, I drag air into my tight lungs. I can’t make it back down the hill. I can’t stay here either. I’ll go crazy.

  You are crazy. What kind of adult woman is so scared of the dark she can’t even sleep for fear she won’t wake up?

  This one.

  I drop my backpack and sink to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest, my grip so tight on the flashlight my fingers ache. Painful gasps saw from my chest.

  “Josie.”

  His voice is a sudden stream of gold slicing through the dark. My chest tightens. I’m imagining it, an unexpected memory pushing through the fear, breaking my defenses. Once upon a time, nothing was of more comfort to me than Cole’s voice. I’d heard it even in the wrenching torture of heartbreak.

  But then the broad silhouette of his body is kneeling in front of me. His hands close on my shoulders, a heavy, solid weight easing me away from the knife’s edge of panic. I angle the flashlight on his face—the hard set of his features, the burning concern in his eyes, the slash of his mouth.

  “Can you stand up?” he asks.

  I manage to nod, clawing one hand around his arm. Part of my brain registers the fact that he didn’t ask the obvious question, “What’s wrong?”

  Because he already knows. He’s the only one who ever will.

  I pull myself to my feet. He picks up my backpack and puts his arm around my shoulders. I stiffen, resisting the contact of his body with mine, but his grip tightens. Again, it’s either him or the dark.

  This time, I choose him. He guides me to the door.

  The chilly night air washes over my hot face. I’m still shaking so hard my bones rattle, but blindly I let Cole lead the way back down the hill, his footsteps secure and certain, the solidness of his body and weight of his arm an unexpectedly welcome relief.

  “D-don’t you want my flashlight?” I ask through chattering teeth. “You can’t see anything.”

  “It’s easy once you know the way.”

  The comment brushes against a deep part of my memory, but I can’t shape it into anything meaningful.

  We reach the parking lot. He pulls open the passenger side door of my car and urges me inside. Clutching the flashlight, I climb into the seat. Though the light is still dim, at least I can see better now. My breath eases.

  Cole gets into the driver’s seat and slams the door, rummaging through my backpack for the keys. I press my hands to my eyes and gulp back a sob. So much for I’ll never let him see me vulnerable again.

  “I’ll take you to your sister’s.” He shoves the key into the ignition.

  “No.” I lower my hands. “She’s visiting a friend in Portland through the weekend. I don’t have a key to the house or the alarm code. She wasn’t expecting me until the end of next week, and I didn’t know she hadn’t gotten the cottage ready yet. Hold on.”

  I take my phone from my backpack and swipe the screen. No response from Vanessa.

  “She probably won’t get my text until morning.”

  “You talk to her much?” Cole shoves the gear shift into reverse.

  “No.” Old regret mixes with my lingering panic. “But that’s part of the reason I came back. She’s pregnant.”

  “I heard.” After guiding the car out of the parking lot, he heads onto a two-lane coastal road leading away from town. I can’t bring myself to turn off the stupid flashlight. He hasn’t turned off the car’s interior lights either.

  “She’s due in early September.” I fiddle with the strap on my backpack, not sure why I’m telling him this. “Her husband ran out on her. That’s why she moved back to Castille. I’d have been here sooner, but I had a job I needed to finish.”

  Cole frowns. “So you came back for your sister.”

  “Partly, yes.” I stare at my pale reflection in the window. “I’d been thinking about the mural for a while, and then when Vanessa moved back, it seemed like the perfect time.”

  He glances at me. “Why did you offer to paint the mural?”

  “In honor of my parents.”

  His eyes flash with shock. Brief, but unmistakable.

  Silence floods the space between us before he pulls up beside a wrought-iron gate situated within a high brick wall. He rolls down the window and punches an access code into an electronic panel. The gate opens, allowing him to navigate a driveway to an oceanfront mansion and cultivated gardens illuminated by floodlights.

  “W-where are we?” I stammer.

  “My house.” He cuts off the engine and grabs my backpack.

  Questions push past my exhaustion, but I can’t process any of them. I follow him out of the car. He takes my suitcase from the trunk and heads to the front door, pushing a series of buttons on another electronic panel.

  Light explodes everywhere. Flooding the porch, filling the tiled foyer, seeping from the multiple rooms. I register the airy, beautiful interior—a curving staircase leading to the upstairs floors, crown molding, wall sconces, an inlaid marble floor.

  He leads me to the kitchen, an expansi
ve space of warm maple cabinets and quartz countertops, with a window looking out to a lighted pool surrounded by a rock garden and waterfall.

  “When did you move in here?” I can’t quite believe he lives in this place, but looking at him in his expensive suit and tie…

  “I bought it a few years ago.” He takes two bottles of water from the refrigerator and cracks one open before handing it to me.

  “You’ve been back in Castille for that long?”

  “Eight years.” He tilts his head back to swallow some water. My gaze shifts involuntarily to the movement of his strong throat. “I moved back when my father was diagnosed with lung cancer.”

  Though his voice is flat, I sense all the emotions simmering underneath that statement. Kevin Danforth had been publicly admired and popular, but in private he’d been a horrible, abusive man. Cole had despised him. Even now, I can’t believe he’d have returned to nurse his father during his illness.

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. “I didn’t know.”

  He shrugs as if it doesn’t matter. A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I bought the Iron Horse shortly after he was diagnosed. He died not long after that.”

  Shocked, I lift my head to stare at him. “You own his brewery now?”

  “No. I shut it down. I own a company I started after I left Castille. Invicta Spirits. We produce a number of brands of distilled liquor.”

  Confusion knots my chest. Back when we were together, Cole had been determined to break away from his father and everything Kevin Danforth stood for. He’d hated his father’s company, the brewery, even the smell of beer. He’d been all about the ocean, working out on the water in the heat of the sun.

  And now he owns a liquor company? Based on this house alone, obviously he’s been hugely successful, but I don’t understand how or why he took such a path. I’m not sure I want to know either. We both changed drastically after what we endured—how could we not? But to think he’s also become a completely different person on the inside than the boy I once loved so wildly…

  I grip the water bottle in both hands. I hadn’t expected any of this. I’d hoped I could just avoid him. Now, already, too many old emotions are pushing at the armor I locked around my heart the day he left me.

  Cole sets his water down and bends to pick up a slender cat that I hadn’t seen enter the room. Spindly with a tufted gray coat and comically large ears, the cat butts his head against Cole’s hand. He obliges by scratching the animal under the chin.

  For the first time, his demeanor is unguarded, his features even softening slightly. A sudden litany of questions bubble into my mind.

  Do you still like navigating by the stars? Do you still fold your pizza before you eat it? Do you still watch The Three Stooges and eat your sugary breakfast cereal while standing by the sink?

  Another image rises, but slowly this time, like a treasure coming to the surface of a lake.

  Cole is bare-chested and wearing only a pair of loose drawstring pajama pants, with a bowl of Lucky Charms cupped in one hand. He’s leaning back against the kitchen counter, the sun falling through the window behind him and burnishing the smooth muscles of his back.

  I stop in the doorway, drinking in the sight of his sleep-rumpled hair, the half-moon nail marks I’d left on his shoulders last night, the ladder-like ridges of his abdomen and the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath his waistband.

  He looks up and catches my eye. The warm smile that blooms on his face electrifies me with love and lust. I cross the room to fold myself against him, and our lips meet in a kiss that softens every part of me.

  A shiver courses unexpectedly down my spine. My hostility toward Cole, rather to my chagrin, has never eradicated the memory of our sex life. Of him. I’d lost my virginity to him, and the hot, fulfilling encounter had set the stage for our future physical relationship.

  Young and eager, we’d done everything together. He knew every inch of my body, all the sweet spots that made me tingle, all the right places to touch me. He’d fit inside me with smooth, easy perfection.

  Even with my insomnia and nightmares, my subconscious hasn’t forgotten. On rare occasions, an erotic dream has made its way into my broken sleep—our naked bodies rubbing together, his cock easing into me, our lips clinging, open and hot.

  And my outright fantasies…

  Heat flushes my cheeks. I’ve never been able to reconcile my resentment with the explicit images of him, of us, that I’ve indulged in over the years. But given the darkness of the rest of my life, I figure I’m entitled to a bit of raw heat every now and then. Even if I’m still alone.

  Especially if I’m alone.

  Clearing my throat, I refocus on the cat Cole is still holding. “What’s his name?”

  “Curly. Found him down by the docks a couple of years ago.” He sets the cat down and picks up my luggage. “You can sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight.”

  Aside from the fact that it would be rude to refuse, I have no strength left. I certainly can’t drive myself anywhere else tonight.

  I follow him up the winding staircase to a lovely room with cream-colored walls and a white four-poster bed covered with a fluffy peach comforter and pillows.

  Surely he doesn’t live here alone. The thought twists inside me like a corkscrew.

  “Bathroom’s through that door.” Cole puts my ratty old suitcase and backpack on a polished wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. “Where’s your cell?”

  I take my phone out of my backpack.

  “Put my number in.” He rattles off his phone number. “Text me so I have yours. I’m on the next floor up.”

  After texting him with my number, I place the phone on the antique nightstand. Though I loathe having to ask, my need for the truth outweighs my embarrassment.

  “Do you live here alone?”

  “Yes.” He pushes back his cuff, which glints with a silver cufflink. Wrapped around his strong wrist is a leather watch with a gold-edged face that looks like one of those ridiculously priced European brands I’ve seen on wealthy art collectors.

  “I’ll call a contractor, tell him to go to the cottage tomorrow morning,” he says. “He’ll get the electricity working and do whatever other repairs are needed. I’ll text you when he’s done.”

  Resistance stiffens my spine. I don’t want to be indebted to Cole for anything, least of all repairs to my mother’s old cottage.

  “It’s not for you.” As if sensing my urge to protest, he lifts a hand. “I don’t want you staying here any longer than necessary.”

  Pressing my lips together, I try to deflect a stab of pain. I don’t want to stay here even one night, so his remark shouldn’t hurt. But it does.

  “You can take the key,” I reply shortly. “I have a spare. I should be able to reach Vanessa tomorrow. If the repairs can’t get done, I’ll figure out a way to stay at her house.”

  He strides to the door. Before pulling it open, he drags in a breath and turns back to face me. His expression is unreadable, his jaw tight. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yes.” I rub my forehead. I owe him an explanation, if nothing else. “I…I have nyctophobia. It’s a pathological fear of the dark that also causes my insomnia.”

  He frowns. “When did that start?”

  “A long time ago.” I avert my gaze, hating that I have to tell him about my phobias. “Therapists have told me my inability to remember the accident triggered my fear of the dark. That’s why I freaked out up there. I didn’t know Vanessa hadn’t gotten the electricity working yet. I’ll be okay if I can keep the lights on.”

  Something painful flashes in his eyes—an old memory, torn like regret. He gives a short nod and starts toward the door again.

  “Cole.”

  He stops and looks at me.

  “Thank you.”

  He grabs the door handle, his body stiffening with tension.

  “Don’t thank me, Josie. I never wanted you to come back to Castille. And the sooner yo
u leave, the better.”

  He walks out, closing the door behind him with a hard click.

  Chapter 3

  Josie

  * * *

  Ten years ago

  * * *

  I woke in the dark. I was sitting up in the hospital bed, my head propped on a hard pillow. The curtains and the door were both closed. Only the lights of the machines gave a faint eerie glow. Shadows crawled up the walls.

  My breath stuck in the middle of my chest. I fumbled for the nurse’s call button and couldn’t find it. Panic slithered into my veins, turning my blood to ice. I couldn’t move.

  The door opened with a soft click. Then his voice, a whisper barely audible over the beep of the machines.

  “Josie.”

  Tears flooded my eyes and spilled over. A sob choked my throat. I sensed him hesitate, hovering uncertainly in the doorway. I hadn’t seen him since…

  He’d been taking a picture of me and my family in the foyer of the Seagull Inn as my parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary party was winding down. I remembered the smell of wildflowers and the flash of the camera.

  Then my mind yielded nothing. An empty wasteland of blackness. A week ago, I’d woken up in the hospital, and my sister told me about the car accident I’d survived but couldn’t remember. The one that had killed our parents and brother. In the days since, Vanessa had barred Cole from visiting me.

  Somehow I managed to lift my hand toward him. His breath escaped in a rush before he stepped into the room and closed the door. Then his hand closed around mine, big and warm. I turned to face him.

  “Lights,” I whispered.

  He turned on the lamp beside the bed. He was ashen, gray, his face edged with hollows and black smudges of despair. Everything about him was hunched, caved in, destroyed.

  “I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.” The words were scratchy and rough. “I had to sneak in.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  I hadn’t known if I wanted to see him either. My wishes for us, for our life together, had always centered on the way we were before, the place to which we could never return. For a week, thousands of questions about Cole had boiled among all the others.