Fall Back Skyward (Fall Back #1)

by Autumn Grey

  I take deep breaths to ease the giddiness infecting my brain. My stomach tightens and my boobs do this tingling thing. I can totally empathize with my girls. Cole’s focus on them is the most attention they’ve gotten since. . .well, ever. Unless you count my hands, body wash and my washing sponge. I had a boyfriend a while back. Our relationship lasted a month. His stare wasn’t anywhere close to being as potent as Cole’s.

  “Drool-alert. You need to wipe your mouth, sis,” my fourteen-year-old sister, Elise, whispers beside me with a giggle before she walks toward the house.

  I laugh and follow her, carrying two small boxes, and almost topple over when Josh bounds out of the house.

  “It’s great to have a redhead in our neighborhood.” Josh flashes me a bright smile and winks, then walks back out to the moving truck.

  I set the boxes on the porch and wait for Cole to come out. I want to get a good look at his butt. It’s cute in those cargo shorts he’s wearing. It’s not saggy at all, just tight, grabable. Just because I’m keeping my distance doesn’t mean I can’t look.

  The thought of seeing him makes my heart beat irregularly and my palms clammy. Definitely not attractive.

  What the hell is wrong with me? This is the first guy to cast a look anywhere close to resembling interest and I’m behaving like an idiot.

  “New neighbors,” a woman says in a sultry voice.

  Startled, I turn around to face a woman with dark hair and blue eyes whose feature are strikingly similar to Josh and Cole’s. As she walks up the path leading to our house, she freezes mid step and pales as her gaze meets my dad’s. My father stiffens and I swear I hear him gasp, but I might be wrong. My father never gasps. Nothing fazes him. Nothing ever shakes the almighty Lieutenant Blake.

  But this woman’s voice did.

  His shoulders lift as he takes a deep breath, recollecting himself one piece at a time, before turning to face the newcomer.

  “Stephen?” Her voice is almost a whisper as she utters that name.

  They know each other?

  “Maggie,” my father says her name with familiarity. Reverence. The hard, dominant edge of his voice gone. “How have you been?”

  He doesn’t sound surprised at all to see her. Maggie, on the other hand, looks like she’s about to faint.

  “You moved. . .here?”

  He straightens, his lips pulling into an easy smile. The look is so alien on his face, it’s disturbing. “We just got here.” He turns to look at me and clears his throat. I’ve never seen him nervous. A red flag is waving madly inside my head.

  Who is Maggie to him?

  “Eleanor, go inside. I’ll be there in a second.” The hard edge in his voice returns, and with it, the coldness that always sends me running. The faded scar running diagonally across his right cheek tightens as he narrows his eyes at me in warning when I fail to follow his orders.

  My curiosity prompts me to swivel on my heel and directly face Maggie, momentarily ignoring my father. It’s a stupid move and I might pay for this later, given the muscle twitching on my father’s hard jaw. I’m too intrigued to care about the repercussions. Maggie eyes me warily, clutching her heaving chest with one hand. Her fingers fiddling with the silver necklace around her neck with the other.

  I retrace my steps down the path and stop in front of Maggie. “I’m Nor.” I stick my hand out to her in greeting.

  She hesitates at first, her gaze shifting briefly to my dad and then back to me, nervously. “Margaret Holloway.”

  I step aside when Mom joins us. They shake hands, but I don’t miss the tension, which has heightened rather quickly in the past five seconds.

  Turning away, my thoughts spinning, I head back to the porch then grab the two boxes and straighten.

  “Oomph!” A set of hands grab my shoulders to stop my backward descent. “Watch where you’re—” I manage to utter the words, but my body does that annoying shivering thing again, making me aware of the body plastered to the front of me.

  “Sorry. Are you okay?”

  The shock of hearing him speak jolts me upright, bringing me face to chest with him. His voice has a somewhat husky, breathy quality to it, and it softly curls around some consonants. I can’t really describe it, but I can definitely say it needs a little getting used to.

  God. He is tall. And his gaze is completely focused on my mouth.

  “Eleanor?” Cole says.

  I look away, flustered by his attention and mumble, “I’m good.”

  I feel his hand on my cheek, turning me to face him, the entire span of his palm covering the left side of my face and right there, I decide I love his hands. Big and strong and calloused. Those hands are made for doing things like carrying heavy stuff and gently cupping faces.

  “I need to see your lips to understand what you’re saying. Are you okay?”

  Oh crap.

  “Sorry. Yes, I am.” I quickly take a step back, moving away from his space so I can bring my racing heart under control. “Thanks for . . .um. . .breaking my fall.”

  He nods and drops his hands before spinning around and striding purposefully down the porch, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He leaps over the little fence that separates our houses and disappears through his front door.

  I NEED TO GET MY shit together. How can a girl I’ve never met before shake me to my very core like Nor does?

  I take off toward the little white fence which separates our houses and hop over it, leaving Mom, Josh and Nick to get acquainted with our new neighbors. Besides, I’m not sure what to think of the way Nor’s dad, Stephen, was staring at me. Scary as shit. I wonder what he said to Nor’s mom. She clearly seems afraid of him.

  Right off the bat, I don’t like him. But that doesn’t stop my fascination with his daughter.

  Nor.

  Other than their height, she resembles her mother right down to the freckles on her nose and the red hair. It’s jarring how similar they look. She’s the shortest of the three sisters.

  Once I’m inside my room, I shuffle to the window and just stand there, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

  I’m not disappointed.

  She steps out of the door with Josh in tow. He’s leaning close, staring at her. Smiling easily. Checking her out. Shit. He’s flirting with her. I know his moves and I know when he’s interested in someone. I notice him blatantly checking out her rack, and then pretending to cough into his folded fist. I roll my eyes in irritation.

  I can’t blame him. Nor has the most amazing tits I’ve ever seen on a girl. I lick my lips, my throat suddenly parched and bang my head on the wall twice to get my thoughts in line. If Mom got wind of my thoughts, she’d glare in disapproval that I forgot my manners. But Jesus. . .my eyes couldn’t stop gawking at her bra and the soft rise of her boobs.

  Nor laughs at something Josh says. If there was a time I’d have wished to be able to hear a sound, it would be now. I would have sold my soul to the devil to hear her voice. Her laughter. I settle for watching her speak to Josh. The way she slants her head to the side as she listens to him, giving him all her attention. I stare transfixed at how her hair falls over her eyes, and then her hand, fragile and small, sweeps it off her face.

  My eyes take in her little, hot body. She can’t be more than five feet tall.

  The breeze sweeps the yellow dress she’s wearing, tangling it around her hips and ass, framing her curves.

  Holy. Shit.

  New neighbor boner alert.

  I’ve never met a girl like her before. She makes me feel both guarded and aroused at the same time.

  My gaze drifts to her arms as she lifts them up above her head in a stretch.

  I can’t get those white scars I spotted out of my head. She didn’t seem self-conscience about them until she saw me staring at her arms like a fool. The look she sent me froze me in place. It was fierce and challenging, especially the defiant lift of her chin. It has been a while since a girl got that reaction out of me.

  I didn�
��t have anything to say, though. My brain had been trying to understand what I’d seen. I’ve never met anyone who harmed themselves. What would make her hurt herself?

  Josh says something to Nor, wearing a stupid grin on his face. I want to grab it and rip it from his face. She smiles at him, that little dimple I noticed before on her right cheek making an appearance. She pushes the hair off her face and quickly slaps her skirt down when a stronger breeze blows it up.

  Jesus. I’m jealous of my brother. Jealous of the breeze. I wish I was the wind so I can have the pleasure of touching her. Ripple gently on her skin.

  Touch her? Where the hell did that come from? I have known her for all of three minutes and now I’m having all these thoughts about touching her invading my brain. I need to get a grip on whatever this is.

  Shoving those thoughts away, I sigh and rub my forehead with my palm. I saw the fascinated look on her face when Josh turned to sign to me, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I’m not about to assume she’s interested in me. I’ve been down that road before. Made fun of because of my ‘weird voice’—whatever that means—and gotten burned. It didn’t stop me from speaking, but I swore if I ever got involved with a girl, I’d make sure she accepted me with all my faults. I’m not about to get involved with this girl or any other girl for that matter.

  Stepping away from the window, I walk over to my desk. On top of it sits my sketch book, trace paper, pens and pencils, and scales. The latter was a birthday gift from my parents when I turned seventeen last year.

  I drag out the chair and sit down and flip through the pages of my sketchbook until I find my current project. I want to show it to my dad, but need to attempt a few final touches before it’s ready. I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. Two years ago, I took a five week drafting course during summer, which was being offered at Eastern Lake University to students who wanted to pursue a Bachelor in Architecture program.

  My dad is my mentor. He has been working and encouraging me since he realized where my passion lies and that I had a talent for drawing when I was ten. And to motivate me, my father has been using my sketches—after making improvements on them—to send out proposals to real estate developers. This gave me more confidence and made me believe that my work wasn’t bad at all.

  I blink at my current project—a four story town house—in front of me and blow air through my mouth. It has a long way to go before it’s done.

  I close my eyes and all I can see are the green eyes and red hair of the new girl next door. Opening my eyes, I toss the pencil on the desk and yank the beanie from my head. I run my fingers through my hair, frustration knotting inside my chest like an angry beast.

  Two hours ago, this girl didn’t exist in my life. Not even as a figment of my imagination.

  Now, she’s this huge distraction to me. She’s larger than life, even though she’s hardly five feet tall.

  She reminds me of a snowflake, but the look on her face when she caught me gawking at the scars on her arms and shoulders, told me she was nothing close to a snowflake. It was fierce, almost angry. Challenging. Immediately, Shakespeare’s quote comes to mind: And though she be but little, she is fierce.

  I sensed right away that Nor has had more than her share of the kind of shit that life throws your way.

  The scars prove that she overcame whatever challenges she went through.

  I can’t stop thinking about her.

  I don’t want to think about her.

  I prefer my normal, but from the moment I caught her staring at me, I knew that normal would be a memory I’d remember fondly months from now.

  This girl is trouble.

  She is chaos.

  She is perfect.

  BY THE TIME I WAKE up the following day, my dad has already left for work. He was scheduled to start his new job today at the police station. As much as I would like to sleep in, I want to start ticking off the things on my to-do list, which include surveying the lawn to check on where I’d like to plant flowers, and unpacking the boxes in my room. I plan to visit my grandma because I haven’t seen her in ages. I promised her that I’d visit her when we got here. She’d promised me she would gift me a few lotus flowers as well as carnations and roses for my little gardening projects.

  After taking a shower, I slip on a knee-length yellow halter dress. I glance at the mirror on the vanity in front of me, my gaze automatically moving to the white scars on my arms, shining like a beacon. I don’t feel the same twinge of guilt or embarrassment I felt a year ago. If there’s one thing the past year has taught me, it’s that my past, no matter how troubled or perfect it was, doesn’t define my future. It doesn’t define me.

  I am who I am, and who I want to be. I am more than enough.

  I’ve also learned that, even though my mind is in a better place right now, it doesn’t stop the craving for the immense rush I used to feel, having a sharp object pressed on my skin. I just have to fight hard and avoid possible triggers that would send me tumbling down the thousand steps I’ve ascended thus far. Taking a deep breath, I focus on the wall across from me, where a poster of a doodle I worked on a few months ago hangs. The words self love stare back at me, reminding me to love myself first, an inspiring quote my therapist in Ohio used to repeat over and over until those words imprinted themselves on my heart.

  I pluck a lemon drop from the bowl on my desk, pop it inside my mouth and cross the room to my gramophone on top of my desk. It was a gift from my Grandpa from my mom’s side. My grandparents and my mother’s twin sibling, Sabine, died in a cabin fire on Christmas ten years ago in their cabin in Hawthorne. After several investigations, the reports confirmed it was caused by a candle they probably forgot to put out. Their death affected my mom so much, sometimes it’s a miracle she gets out of bed. Yesterday was a good day for her.

  Grandpa and I shared the love of old records, and Sinatra. After grabbing a Sinatra record from the pile on my desk, I place it on the gramophone. By the time I climb down the stairs humming Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night under my breath, I’m grinning, ready to start my day.

  Boxes are still piled up next to the walls in the living room. A few are open, with newspapers used to wrap our stuff scattered on the floor. Voices drift from the kitchen, pulling me toward the room. Elise is going on about heading out to buy the stuff she needs for her next project. For a fourteen-year-old girl, she’s a ball of energy, positivity and ideas. Elon is finishing up her bowl of cheerios, with earphones tucked into each ear. Her head bobs to whatever music is playing on the iPod stashed inside the pocket of her shorts. Mom is standing at the sink, fiddling with the dishtowel in her hands, while staring vacantly out the window.

  Oh God, no.

  I know that look on her face. The look that screams, ‘I’m about to tumble down the rabbit hole’ where she stays for days and the only thing that perks her up is medication. Before we left Ohio, my mother had had bouts of absentmindedness. It has gotten worse over the past couple of years. My mom used to tell me stories about her career as a ballet dancer. She was nineteen when she met Dad and fell madly in love with him. The minute he proposed, she accepted and never looked back. I always had a feeling this wasn’t the truth. Especially when I’d find her pirouetting and singing, looking beautiful and untouchable and happy. Now, I can feel her slowly retreating back to the place she had been living in before we moved. I thought things would be better once we got here.

  Elon plucks the ear buds from her ears then carefully places them on the table, making sure the buds are perfectly aligned to each other. Only then does she stand up and carry the bowl to the sink. She wraps her arms around Mom in a hug. Mom startles as if she’s waking up from a dream. She drops the cloth on the counter and turns to return my sister’s embrace.

  “Oh my baby!” She shuts her eyes but not before a few tears escape. When she opens them again, they are back to their usual vibrant green. Clear. She pulls back and kisses Elon’s cheek. She waves Elise and me over and
we huddle together.

  This feels good. Perfect. I feel their warmth and love seep inside me and lock it in the place where memories live. These are the rare moments I treasure.

  We break apart and I raise to my tip toes and reach for a mug inside the cupboards above me and then fill it with coffee from the pot. The skin on the back of my neck prickles and I look up to find mom staring at me. Her gaze darts to the counter and mine does the same.

  “I’m over that, mom,” I say, eyeing the knife, glinting against the sun light spilling through the kitchen window.

  She nods, but looks away without saying a word. I hate when people do that. It makes me feel as though I’m being judged for the things I did in the past.

  Sighing, I take a seat on one of the chairs around the table and we talk about what we will be doing today. Thirty minutes later, I refill my mug and head out the door to survey the front yard in preparation of the flowers I’m planning on planting there.

  I squint up at the cloudless June sky and fan my face with one hand. Oh God. The heat around here is just too much. It’s hardly ten o’clock, but it feels like it’s past midday. Strolling along the little white fence that separates our house and Cole’s, I notice a white ladder on the side goes directly to the roof outside my room. Maybe the previous owner had a thing for climbing through windows. I’ve never done that in my life so I’m left with images of forbidden, adventurous nights.

  I sneak a look at the Holloway house. There’s no activity whatsoever. Maybe they have a thing for sleeping in until after midday.

  Taking a sip from my cup, I scour for a clue as to which one is Cole’s room. I’m utterly fascinated by that boy. I have no idea where the interest is coming from. All I know is that his quiet intensity captivates me like nothing else ever has.

  “Hey there!” a cheery voice greets me, pulling me away from studying the house where my current obsession resides.

  I jolt upright and see a girl around my age on the front lawn of the house across the street. The Walkers as per the name on the mailbox. She tosses the long braid of hair over her shoulder. Her brown skin glows against the sunlight. She waves and grins wide. I wave back, smiling. Her disposition is infectious.