All Amity Allows (Fall for You Book 2)

by Irwin, Michelle

  The sensible part of him told him that he was wrong. That she was obviously just drawing such shallow breaths that he couldn’t see the movement. He moved closer, desperate to know she was okay.

  “Amity?” he said, trying to rouse her.

  He crossed the room to her side and lifted his hand to press his fingers against her carotid artery. Before he could touch her, she sat bolt upright with a sharp indrawn breath. The movement sent Drew tumbling backward onto the floor.

  “Fuck! You scared the crap out of me!” He sucked in a breath and as he blew it out, he was able to slow the beating of his heart. At least a little. “Are you okay?”

  Amity dragged her fingers through her long hair, playing with the ends rather than meeting his gaze.

  “Am, are you all right?”

  Her eyes finally lifted to meet his. “Am?” she asked. “That’s new.”

  “Sorry, I just thought . . . if we’re friends and all.” It almost hurt him physically to say the word friend. This is crazy! he thought. It wasn’t even two weeks ago that I was mad about Becca. I really do need to get away from women in general for a while, at least all the women I might actually care about. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt to give you a nickname. If you don’t like it, I’ll stick to—”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” she cut him off. “I’ve just never really had a nickname before.”

  “Are you okay?” He moved closer to her as he asked her again.

  She looked a little perplexed by his question. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because . . . well . . .” He wasn’t sure how to best broach the subject of her not breathing when he came into the room. He decided to drop it and just keep an eye on her. Maybe she had sleep apnea. It wasn’t exactly an uncommon disorder after all. Pushing the worst of his worry out of his mind, he offered her a weak smile. “Listen, I was thinking about doing something a little different tonight.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dinner at my father’s place.”

  She smiled brightly. “Oh, that sounds really nice. I’d love to meet him.”

  He ran his statement through his head again and realized exactly how it could sound like he was inviting her along too. It hadn’t been his intention, but he couldn’t disappoint her by telling her the truth either. That he’d planned the evening to specifically not include her.

  “When do we leave?”

  He shrugged. “As soon as you’re ready.”

  She stood and smoothed her clothes with her hands. “Let’s go then.”

  “Okay, just let me—” He pointed behind him. “Keys.”

  When he went to get the car keys, he pulled out his phone and sent his father a quick text to let him know dinner would have to be for one more. He led Amity to the car and held the door for her.

  “About earlier,” she started before faltering as he climbed in the driver’s seat. She twisted in her seat to meet his gaze. “At the diner, I didn’t mean to offend you or hurt you. I just didn’t plan for this.”

  He froze, captured in her gaze. “Plan for what exactly?”

  “For feeling this way about you,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt . . . so . . . so much for anyone before.”

  Drew could hardly believe his ears. He’d hoped there was a possibility that she felt the same way, and here she was confessing to that fact, despite her clear affirmation of the just friends stance a few hours earlier.

  “It’s ridiculous that you can make me feel this way because I’m—” She sighed and looked away.

  “You’re what?” Drew’s heart was in his throat as he considered the many ways that sentence could end, each worse than the last. Gay. Married. Leaving.

  “It’s hard to explain, but I just can’t . . . I’m not allowed to feel the things that I really want to let myself feel.”

  Drew’s heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn’t even concentrate enough to drive. He pushed the key into the ignition, but then his hands fell to rest lamely in his lap. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just that I might have made a mistake, today I mean, and I wish I could have a do-over because I’m sure I would handle it differently.”

  He ignored all pretense of trying to start the car and turned to look at Amity instead. “Do you mean that?”

  She looked down at her hands. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m scared, Drew.”

  “Of what?”

  She scoffed. “Of everything. This is all so new. I don’t really know what to do.”

  “Look at me, Am,” he murmured. Every ounce of desperation he felt for her was clear in his voice.

  She twisted in her seat and the genuine fear in her eyes made his heart ache.

  Amity wished she’d kept her mouth shut. It would have been so much easier dealing with everything if she’d just kept quiet. She knew her words had driven Drew’s hopes through the ceiling. She could feel his every emotion echoing through the tiny cabin of the car. It was stifling and made it almost impossible to breathe—it was hard to keep up the pretense of being a normal human without that small action.

  When, at his insistence, she’d turned to look at Drew, her heart felt like it had stopped beating. He just stared at her for a moment. The desire and hope in his gaze was so intense that she was frozen like the proverbial deer.

  She swallowed down everything that was bubbling inside of her, turning her insides into a tumultuous mess. “What?”

  He smiled. The sight was dazzling, almost as if the clouds that had rested upon his brow since the day she’d first seen him had finally parted to allow the real Drew to shine through. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.”

  “Drew, I—”

  He shook his hand to silence her. “Before you say anything else, I just wanted to say thank you. I don’t think you will ever realize how much you have done for me just by being at my side.”

  He reached forward and brushed her hair behind her ear. With the movement, his fingertips stroked across the curve of her cheek and she was struck by the same pleasant jolt she’d felt when he’d drunkenly kissed her.

  He dropped his hand to her side and leaned forward out of his seat, pressing his lips to the place his fingertips had just left. Amity closed her eyes and did what she could to hold her emotions in check as he did. His breath tickled across her cheek as he moved his mouth and touched his lips to the corner of hers. She instinctively jerked away from the contact.

  He stiffened at her reaction and pulled away as well. “I’m sorry. I must have . . . I thought you meant . . .” He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. “I really shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t. You don’t. It’s just—” She released her breath in a rush before burying her head in her hands and releasing a frustrated growl. After that did nothing to help her, she looked back at him. “When I said I wish I’d handled things better, I meant that I wished I’d explained better why we can’t do, well,” she brushed her fingertips over the spot where he’d kissed her, “that.”

  Drew turned away. “I’m an idiot. I’ve misread every fucking sign you gave. You must think me pathetic.”

  “No.” Her voice was earnest, and she hated that she’d let them end up in this place. The bubbling mess inside her was no better than his emotions, so she was being buffeted from outside as well as within. She reached out to touch her fingertips to his cheek, guiding him back to look at her.

  She met his gaze and held it. He needed to know how she felt, deserved to know the truth—or at least what version of it she could give him. “I feel those things. God, do I feel them! It’s just that, us being together, it’s not a good idea, Drew.”

  He placed his hand over hers, holding it against his face. “Why not?”

  “Because one day, maybe one day very soon, I’ll have to leave. And I don’t want to hurt you when I do.”

  He leaned forward, his gaze piercing and full o
f longing. “I’m willing to take that risk.”

  With as much care as she could, she extracted her hand from his hold. “I’m not. I can’t start anything more than the friendship we already have.”

  She hated the words even as they came out, but she was already too deeply and personally involved in Drew’s case. She had to hurt him to help him, or there would be no escaping unscathed for either of them.

  “Isn’t it my choice whether I want to take that risk?”

  “It’s mine too,” she argued weakly. “I—I don’t want to get hurt either.”

  “I think it’s too late for that, don’t you?” He reached for her hand, drawing it back to his face, her palm to his lips. Although the pain she’d experienced each time they’d touched still buzzed through her, there was an undercurrent of something different—something new.

  She’d never been more scared of any simple movement before. All of the walls she’d built over the millennia erected themselves anew as her skin brushed his, but there was a tiny chink in her armor. He pressed his lips to her palm in an open-mouthed hiss, his eyes closed as if in prayer. The action, combined with her failing defenses was enough to let him penetrate her armor, and before she realized what she was allowing him to do, he pulled at truths he was never meant to see. She tried to stop the information from leaving her in a rush, but with her grace wrapped so tightly around his damaged soul, with her body and mind tuned so innately to his, it was impossible to stop.

  “Drew,” she uttered in a broken whisper at the look of horror that crossed his face when he dropped her hand.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Drew's chest tightened as an influx of information flooded into him. He could barely believe what he was seeing—couldn’t understand the sheer enormity of the information.

  Flashes of truth raced through his brain, one after the other. Him, his face, Becca, Evan, Rose—who's Rose—Evan, loss, death, cupid, angels, Heaven. He gasped for air as voices filled his head—voices that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. He yanked himself away from Amity. His head pounded and he panted with effort to draw in any oxygen.

  He heard Amity’s voice, but he couldn’t focus on the words she said. What was running on repeat in his mind instead was the fact that Amity had lied to him. She hadn’t stumbled across him in the bar, she’d stalked him there. She was in Flint for one reason, and one reason alone—him. The truth of it choked him, made him anxious to be gone. To be anywhere but in the car beside the one who had betrayed him.

  Fat tears rolled down Amity's cheek as she watched him carefully. She opened her mouth to talk again, but he held up his hand to stop her. He didn't want to hear more. Not now. Maybe not ever. She'd lied to him. She wasn't a personal trainer. Wasn't a life coach.

  She was a fucking angel—an actual, real-life, Heaven-dwelling, haloed, winged angel—and he had no idea how to even begin to process that.

  Was everything a lie?

  Gasping down another breath, he twisted around to face the front of the car and his fingers found the keys in the ignition. He wasn’t sure what he was doing—where he was going—he just knew he had to get away. Far away. He had to escape from the noise echoing through his head. Had to escape from Amity and the way she looked at him with fearful eyes like she was just waiting for him to crack—not that he could escape her entirely while she sat in his car. All he could do was hope that if he ignored her for long enough, she’d get the hint and disappear—like she apparently could if the images in his head were anything to go by. Suppressing a shudder, he pushed his focus back onto the car and tried to plan where he might go.

  The fierce concentration on his possible route only lasted a few seconds before his anger grew to ridiculous levels. He'd just been thrust smack-bam into the middle of a Heavenly shit-storm without warning or consultation, and he was supposed to be fine with it? He'd had his heart stomped on all because he'd developed a crush on someone who was apparently pre-ordained to fall in love with someone who died fifty years ago. Then the one person who could have actually been his salvation—who he genuinely thought was helping him to heal—had lied to him. She’d made him believe that there was the possibility that she might feel the things for him that he was starting to feel for her and it meant nothing because it was all make-believe.

  It was all bullshit!

  “Drew, what are you doing?”

  Amity’s voice was the catalyst he needed to actually move somewhere. Steadfastly ignoring her, he pushed the button for the garage door, put the car into gear and reversed out onto the street.

  “Drew, talk to me, please.” Amity pleaded beside him. “You're scaring me.”

  He scoffed, but still refused to acknowledge her with words. Even as he drove the streets, he wasn’t certain where he was going or why, but he knew talking was the last thing he needed to do. He needed to act out; to hit something—someone—and vent his frustration at the situation he'd unwillingly been forced into.

  “Drew, please?” Amity's voice was quiet, almost like she was in tears again.

  He didn’t risk a glance to check though, because if he did, his anger would probably simmer away and at that moment, his anger was all he had left.

  “I don't think you're coping with this very well.”

  He snorted. Of course he wasn't coping with it well. How on earth did anyone expect him to cope with it? The world had just grown a thousand times bigger and more confusing than he’d ever thought it could be. Heaven, Hell, angels and cupids; they were all concepts so far outside the scope of any of Drew’s limited imaginings.

  He tried to breathe and stop his chest from burning, but it didn’t stop his heart from aching. It was worse than when Becca had wordlessly confirmed she loved someone else. He scoffed, wondering what she would think if she knew the truth about the fucker who she fell for. Maybe he should enlighten her.

  Even as he had the thought, a horrific notion struck him. What if she already knew? What if that was the reason she’d left Drew for Evan? Maybe the little cupid could offer her something Drew just couldn’t.

  Drew shook off the thought. She hadn’t known . . . had she?

  He’d arrived at his destination before he’d even consciously planned where he was going.

  Amity reached for the steering wheel, yanking him off the road. The car struck the curb with a wicked thump.

  Just like the last time I came here, he thought. He knew the reason for that now of course, had seen it all in the flashes he’d absorbed of Amity’s life stalking him.

  “Don’t,” he snapped. He turned to her and snarled. “Don’t interfere. Don’t try to stop me. Just. Fucking. Don’t.”

  She shrunk away from him. From the information he’d gleaned from her mind, he knew that she had more power than he could imagine. She had the power to strike him dead where he sat, yet she cowered from his anger. Despite that, there was no desire to smite him for his deeds buried in her gaze, just genuine concern. It disarmed him a little; but not enough to stop the course that was set in motion the moment he’d seen the truth. He threw open the car door, not willing to repeat the fuckery that came with his last attempted visit to Becca’s house.

  Fuckery of Amity’s doing.

  He hit the pavement hard, striding toward Becca’s house with deliberate steps. He didn’t care that it was practically dinnertime. Or that he might be interrupting Evan and Becca doing any number of things in the privacy of her house.

  Serves him right if I do stop him from getting lucky. Drew even felt a little glee that the bastard who stole Becca from him might be about to lose her. It was like his hurt was vindicated by being able to inflict pain on someone else. The fact that Becca would then be available again barely registered with Drew—he certainly didn’t want her back. Not anymore. After everything he’d been through, he was just about ready to swear off relationships for life. Even if he wasn’t, a certain blonde had taken over every aspect of his desire at some point.

  With Amity right on his heels, he
marched down the street toward the little clapboard house that had, for a time, held some good memories for him.

  “Drew, stop.” Amity’s voice was compelling. It forced his feet to halt and his body to freeze mid-stride.

  He ground his teeth as he tried to will his body back under his control. Truthfully, he should have been concerned that Amity was able to compel him into action—or inaction as it was. It wasn’t his biggest issue though. The fact that she’d taken away his free will was more than he could stand. It reminded him of the first time he’d seen her, of the force pinning him in place and forcing him to notice her. The fact that it had been her the whole time was just fire on the flames of betrayal.

  His voice was dangerous and low when he spoke. “If you ever felt anything even remotely like friendship for me, you will let me go. Right now.”

  The force compelling him to remain stationery lessened and finally released him from its grip completely.

  “Just please don’t hurt them.” Amity’s voice floated to him from behind, a quiet utterance he almost missed completely. He turned back to confirm she’d spoken, but she was already gone.

  Good riddance, he thought. The moment the thought passed through him, he regretted it. Even though the relationship hadn’t been exactly what he’d thought it was, he had to admit that Amity had helped him—even if he admitted it begrudgingly. Maybe it wasn’t enough to avoid the sting of the truth completely, but for a time, she had helped.

  Covering the last of the distance to Becca’s house in a number of long strides, Drew became possessed by his mission. He pounded on the door with his fist and shouted her name.

  The door swung open to reveal Becca, dressed in a pair of flannelette pajamas, staring at him with brows pinched together in concern.

  “Drew?”

  No, it’s the fucking Easter bunny.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.” He pushed past her before she had the chance to argue or slam the door shut in his face.

  She let him pass without argument, but her confusion was clear and growing by the second.