When He Falls

by Michelle Jo Quinn

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When He Falls

  Michelle Jo Quinn

  Copyright © 2017 by Michelle Jo Quinn

  www.michellejoquinn.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express

  written permission of Michelle Jo Quinn.

  Cover Design: Rebecca Norrine

  Interior Formatting: Queen Formats

  To my loving parents

  Contents

  Important Note to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Michelle Jo Quinn

  Important Note to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  When He Falls is a love story, but it is also a story about two young souls who find their way to their true selves.

  However, please be advised that there are possible trigger warnings in this book: When He Falls contains references to past spousal/parental abuse and traumatic effects on the family.

  Thank you for choosing to read this book,

  Michelle Jo Quinn

  Chapter One

  Maggie

  "I have something to say!”

  I stood ramrod straight with a hand stretched up to the ceiling of the musty all-purpose space. The room hushed. I supposed I should turn down the eagerness a notch. I was distraught after all.

  "You have something to share?" I nodded at the elderly woman at the front, named Hazel. "Come up then." She waved me to the podium.

  I took a tentative step forward. My throat was drier than the Gobi Desert. I shouldn't have drunk that stale coffee when I came in. Caffeine always made me jittery.

  "This is a necessary step toward one's growth," I muttered to myself as I made my way to Hazel.

  She stepped aside to make space for me. "Go on, dear." She had the kind of smile only grandmothers could offer. I stretched my lips to try and match hers. I'd always been a bit awkward with trying to connect with people.

  Maybe that was another reason for June to leave me. The thought saddened me. The list had been getting longer and longer.

  I promised myself that today was a new day. I cleared my throat, facing a diverse group of people before me.

  "Hi, my name is Maggie Stewart." I paused to take a big gulp of air in, ready to express my own feelings to these strangers. "And I'm a jilted bride."

  Twenty something pairs of eyes stared at me. Stared. Not gawk, or glare, or leer.

  Did they not hear what I just said? Did they not see what I had just done? I opened myself up. Something my mother had been trying to get me to do for four weeks now. I cleared my throat again. Maybe they didn't hear me.

  I continued on in case they did hear what I’d said. Others might have thought that I'd lost my marbles. Huh, if only that was all I'd lost!

  "I was supposed to get married to my fiancé, June, last month, you see. Then on the day of our wedding"—the day that had completely changed my life—"he didn't show up. He sent a text to his sister, who's also my friend and my bridesmaid, five minutes before the ceremony started to say he wasn't coming." I played with my fingers, uneasy with the looks I was getting.

  "Then I find out he’d run away with my bestest girl friend, Delaney. We grew up together. All of us." I counted off the names with my fingers. "Delaney, June, May, me. Delaney was supposed to be my maid of honor too." I shook my head in disgust. "The bitch!” I bit my lip, uncomfortable with the term I didn’t normally use. “How annoying is that?"

  There wasn’t any reply from the crowd. I glanced back at them, realizing this time around, the eyes that stared earlier were now clearly confused eyes.

  "Excuse me, dear," Hazel's old-lady voice grabbed my attention from my right side. I turned to her, sitting in a rickety folding chair—curly short white hair, plump aging body stuffed in a white blouse and long floral dress, paired with white orthopedic shoes. "You do know that this is Alcoholics Anonymous?" I glanced at my audience again, then back to her and nodded. "Well, are you an alcoholic?"

  Was I an alcoholic? I had never even tasted beer. "No," I quietly told her and everyone, "I don’t drink. I thought I'd..."

  "I'm so sorry dear, but that's what this meeting is for. And we don't just accept those who had been labeled as such. We accept everyone who had problems with any kind of substance abuse." Wrinkles multiplied around her eyes as she drew her brows together.

  Substance abuse? "Does this mean I have to go?"

  "You can stay, sit, and listen." To reiterate, she nodded her head, got up from her seat to usher me away from the podium.

  I relented, "But I just need a few seconds more." She had a death grip on my arms. Why were old women so strong? A few other people from the front row stood too.

  Great, just great. Not only was I left at the altar, now I couldn't even tell my story to anyone who would want to listen. Maybe I should become an alcoholic... or smoke weed...or...no, I couldn't do all that.

  I had more secrets to share. A reason why I couldn't just pick up a bottle of beer and drown my sorrow. A reason that made my ex-fiancé and my ex-best friend's betrayal harder to swallow, more difficult to accept. The reason why at eight o' clock at night, I found myself wandering the streets, looking for someone who would listen.

  I thought Divine Intervention had pushed me to this church, where this group met.

  Taking the seat I had occupied a moment ago, I fiddled with my thumbs as the suffocating emotions came crashing in. Shivers overcame me, and I suddenly felt sad and so alone.

  How could June do this to me? We’d waited so long to get married. We’d made a promise to each other.

  And Delaney? Of all the guys she had batted her eyelashes and swayed her cellulite-ridden ass at, why had she gone for my fiancé?

  I sat silently until Hazel announced another break, and I snuck out of the room without bothering to say bye to anyone. All they would see was the product of more heartach
e.

  By midnight, I was back in my mother's house. My feet ached, my heart was still broken, and my whole story was untold. I could certainly wake up Mother. She would listen, but I didn't think she would like what I would tell her. I crept into the kitchen, careful not to wake her and Frank, her boyfriend number four this year, as I made myself a cup of tea.

  Could you believe that? My mother was with boyfriend number four, and I couldn't even get husband number one to show up at our wedding. As I passed the fridge, I saw that my Mother had taken down a few photos off it and cropped others. Like any other fridge door, my Mother's was full of memories—photos of family, friends, vacations, birthdays, parties.

  In recent months, it had been filled with photos of June and me. One picture, in particular, was from when June had proposed to me last year. He had gone down on one knee and presented me with half a karat engagement ring in front of our families. My mother had cropped him out of that and replaced his head with the Taco Bell dog’s. Same treatment was done to Delaney's photos, except Mother had glued a snake on hers.

  I glossed my hand over the current and old photos of me, Mother and Frank, of May and me in our Thing 1 and Thing 2 Halloween costumes from the previous year. She would have listened to my tales of woes if I could stomach picking up the phone and calling her at home.

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket as I opened the freezer door and took out a tub of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey. Who could be calling me at midnight? I checked the name of the caller: May Jansen. I answered right away.

  "May! Oh my god, I was just thinking of calling you."

  "Maggie, where are you?" It sounded like she was covering the bottom of the phone.

  "I'm at home." For some reason, I whispered back even though I was alone in the kitchen.

  "Good. Meet me at the park."

  "The park?" I dropped the ice cream on the counter.

  "Yeah, hurry up. I'm getting cold. Come now."

  I contemplated the situation. I‘d been hoping to talk to someone, and May just happened to call. "Why don't you come to my house?"

  "I can't." Her voice got even lower. "They're tracking my phone. Please come now. I have something very important to tell you. By the slides. Bye." She hung up.

  Mindlessly, I took out a spoon for the ice cream, scooped out a good amount and popped it in my mouth. Darn, she did say she was getting cold. I pulled the spoon out of my mouth, licked it clean and threw it in the sink. Not caring that it made a loud clattering noise that could wake up the whole street.

  I dashed to the garage and brought out my bicycle, hopping on it quickly. For a second, I thought it could be dangerous for someone in my condition, but May was getting cold, and she had sounded desperate on the phone.

  May and June's dog Pinto had just finished doing his business by the oak tree when I arrived by the slide. I dismounted the bike like how we had when we were younger—flinging one foot over to the other side, ditching the bike and letting it clatter on the ground—and I continued to walk to where May stood waiting.

  She had a dark sweater on, the hoodie pulled over her blonde hair. I raised an eyebrow at her. "What's with the covert look?" I couldn't help but glance around the area, even though I knew no one would be around this time of the night. I sat at the bottom of the slide, tucking my sneakers into the sand.

  "Took you long enough to get here."

  "Good to see you too. My life has turned to crap lately, thanks for asking. You going to tell me what's up?" I didn't mean to be grumpy, but I was tired and hungry. I should have brought the ice cream with me.

  "Shit. Sorry, Mags." May squeezed her little butt beside me and leaned her head on my shoulder. "She's pregnant."

  A bird squawked in the distance and spooked Pinto.

  "Pregnant?"

  "The whore." May released a heavy sigh. "Delaney. June got her pregnant."

  My heart wrenched at the news. "What?"

  "Yeah, Mags. She's pregnant. I think that's why he did it."

  Bile churned in my stomach. I leaned my elbows on my knees and draped my head between my legs. A sob escaped from my mouth. May rubbed my back trying to soothe me.

  I couldn't believe it. How could he have done that to me? June and I had been together for so long, since before dating was a thing to anyone else. Everyone thought we would be with each other until our hairs turned silver. We had a plan. We had made a promise to each other. I loved him. I trusted him...with everything.

  And he broke me. He broke us.

  "How pregnant is she?" I asked May between heaves. However, not a single tear rolled out of my eyes.

  I sensed her hesitation, which meant it was worse than what I had been thinking.

  "Four months."

  I turned my head, glared at her through dry lashes. "Four months? But that means..." I couldn't take it. I kicked the sand and let it spread in the wind, causing some granules to stick to my face and land on my hair. "They've been going at it behind my back for that long?"

  May stayed quiet, hanging her head.

  "How could they do this to me? How could he do this to me? I knew he knew all this time that Delaney slept around. Why would he do that? Did I make him wait too long? Was that it? He could have told me, May. He could have told me!"

  "I know, Mags. I'm sorry. I'm disgusted as much as you are. He was probably drunk or something," May offered an excuse.

  I brushed my hair to one side, letting it hang over one shoulder and swiped at my whole face. "Now I'm going to have to get checked."

  "Why?" It was a legitimate question. "Why do you need to do that? Did you guys have sex?" I looked away. "I thought you were waiting until after you got married?"

  "Yeah, and look what happened.” I slapped my hand down the lip of the slide, then pushed myself up. "We were getting married, so I thought, I figured why not just do it."

  "Oh my god, Maggie."

  "This is so screwed up."

  "Did you use protection?"

  I leaned forward toward May. "We were getting mar-ried. We bought wedding bands, I had a dress, he had a suit. We sent out invitations!"

  "No need to yell at me. I only wanted to tell you because I didn't want you to find out from anybody else." May crossed her arms over her chest.

  "It would have been great if it had come from June!"

  May gaped at me, staring right up through her long lashes. "He wanted to tell you in person, but..." I knew the exact reason, but I let her continue, "Delaney wouldn't let him go near you. I overheard her saying she was going to march to your house and tell you herself."

  That fiancé-stealing wench! Not only had she stolen my boyfriend, the man I was supposed to marry, I was ready to marry, she had also gotten pregnant by him, and she'd have the audacity to tell me in person? What an idiot! Didn't she know I was this close to kicking her ass?

  And June... What a douche! A cowardly douche.

  "Did it happen more than once? Maybe you should get checked soon."

  I shook my head. "We did it just that one time." And that apparently had been enough to cause more problems. "You better go home. It's late."

  May stood, pulling at Pinto's leash. "How about you?"

  "I'm going now too." I picked up my bike off the ground. "I'm sorry for yelling at you, May, you didn't deserve it." I knew if June wasn't her twin brother, she'd see me more often. She'd rally for me more.

  May walked up to me and gave me a tight hug. "I'll see you around. I'm sure this will all blow over, and you and I can start hanging out again."

  "Yeah that would be nice," I said, returning her hug back. "And thanks for telling me."

  I watched her walk to the other side of the park, her shoulders slumped forward, her feet dragging. She felt sad. She felt bad. She felt sorry. Just like everyone else I had encountered for the past month.

  I was angry at June. I was humiliated in front of almost two hundred people who had shown up on my wedding day. I was betrayed by my best friend, whom I had considered a sister. I
felt lonely. I felt sick. And I was afraid.

  Not knowing why had been bad. Now knowing the truth was beyond painful.

  Just my luck, the dark heavens opened up, and the rain soaked me to the bone. The roads had turned slick, and it became too dangerous to ride. Even though I shivered non-stop, all I could think of was that tub of ice cream in the freezer. Was this what it would be like? The cravings? No matter what other problems I had going on in my life, would I only make these cravings first priority?

  I returned the bicycle back into the garage, and I entered the kitchen through the mudroom, taking off my wet shoes and socks. The water from my clothes created a wet trail. I would have to mop that clean. After the ice cream.

  Opening the freezer door and taking out the tub again, I felt lost. I could have told May that possibly contracting any communicable diseases from sleeping with June might not be the only problem. My stomach grumbled, and I patted it.

  Staring out the window into the ominous, rainy night, I stuck my finger in the ice cream and scooped out a dollop and ate it. As I sucked my frozen finger, I wondered, how would June react if I told him Delaney wasn't the only who could be having his baby?

  Sleep evaded me. I listened intently as my mother and Frank stirred awake around six in the morning. My mother would be checking on me any second now. So, I stayed still, closed my eyes, and kept my breathing steady. I wasn't prepared for her, yet.

  I waited until they both left for work an hour after before jumping out of bed. Nausea hadn't set in. I’d read about what might happen during first trimester pregnancies, and I'd been lucky. I remembered how my sister, Nica had been when she was pregnant with my niece, Amiee. She had horrible bouts of nausea and morning sickness. And our mother constantly reminded her that she had gone through the same ordeal when she had been carrying Nica, but it had been entirely different when she was pregnant with me.