Never Let Me Fall

by Abbie Roads

  She opened her mouth to tell him to go away, but hesitated. He didn’t deserve her voice if he was going to—

  The shower curtain was yanked back so violently, the material ripped.

  Adrenaline tore through her. She startled and turned and tried to cover the awfulness of her body with her hands. Indignation and hurt were naked on her face, but she didn’t bother to hide them.

  A gun. Pointed at her heart.

  A gun? Why would he have a gun on her? Had he found out about her? In slow motion, her gaze traveled up the dark-blue coat sleeve—why was he wearing a coat? Up his shoulder and on up his wrinkled neck…wrinkled neck? This wasn’t Thomas.

  Finally, she looked at the person’s face.

  A woman. An older woman.

  Recognition was a nuclear bomb in her brain. Everything inside her felt weightless, as if she’d just been thrown out of her reality and was waiting for the crash landing.

  Mrs. Ellis.

  Rory’s mom.

  Once upon a time, Helena had loved this woman. Mrs. Ellis had been cool. Fun. Perky. Beautiful. Time had not been kind to her. Her face bore deep grooves of sadness. Her hair used to be rich, reddish brown and always fashionably styled. Nothing like the faded gray, shaggy mess that currently topped her head. Her once-trim body, plump.

  But the thing that hadn’t changed was the anger and grief radiating off her. The same anger and grief she’d worn every day since Rory’s death.

  Flashes of thoughts and feelings from the past came over Helena.

  No one listening. Everyone blaming.

  Truth denied. Lies believed.

  Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

  Hatred sparked in the woman’s eyes. Even the Sisters had never looked at Helena with such single-minded malice.

  “It’s not fair”—Mrs. Ellis’s chin trembled as she spoke—“that Rory died and you lived.”

  None of this was fair.

  It wasn’t fair that Rory died.

  It wasn’t fair that she’d been convicted.

  It wasn’t fair that the Sisters decided to hate her.

  Life didn’t care about fairness.

  Helena should have been frightened. She was standing there naked with a gun aimed at her chest. But she felt disconnected. As if none of this mattered. If Mrs. Ellis shot her, would that be so bad? Hadn’t she wished for death hundreds—no, thousands—of times over the past decade? Hadn’t she wished that each attack by the Sisters would be the one she couldn’t bounce back from?

  Maybe this was as it should be. She’d gotten to visit Rory’s and her grandparents’ graves. She’d gotten to see the house, spend time here. She’d had great sex with a good man.

  Oh God. Thomas. Had Mrs. Ellis hurt him? Helena looked beyond Mrs. Ellis and out the open door into the bedroom. Empty.

  Thomas. Wherever you are, don’t come in here. Keep yourself safe. She sent the thoughts as if they were a psychic email and hoped he would get them.

  “A parent isn’t supposed to bury their child. You know why? Because they carry most of your heart inside theirs.” Mrs. Ellis beat her chest with her fist, thumping her breastbone loudly. “Every day, I live only half a life. The other half is in the ground. Because of you.” Her words were a wail of heartache.

  I didn’t do it. Helena screamed the words in her head. The same words she’d screamed a million times during the trial. And just like back then, no one—except her grandparents—believed her.

  “The Sisters were supposed to take you out on your first night in Fairson.”

  Take you out on your first night in Fairson.

  Almost as if it was set on delay, Helena’s brain plugged into what the woman had just said. A deep hurt resonated through her body, heating her face. Mrs. Ellis knew the Sisters? Knew they’d tried over and over to kill her?

  “I wanted you punished.” Mrs. Ellis spoke the last word through teeth gritted so hard, Helena could hear them grinding. “I want to see what they did to you.”

  Helena hesitated to remove the shield of her own arms and hands. But what did it really matter? Mrs. Ellis was so lost in her suffering that nothing Helena could say or do would ever change the woman’s opinion of her. She dropped her arms and stood up straighter. Let the woman look at the damage her hatred had bought.

  Mrs. Ellis’s eyes widened as they roamed over Helena’s body, taking in all the destruction. “Turn around.” Her voice straddled some elusive line between satisfaction and hatred.

  Helena turned in a circle, warm water hitting the cold side of her body. Then she faced Mrs. Ellis again.

  “Good.” Tears welled in the older woman’s eyes, then slipped down her cheeks. Grief came off her in typhoon-sized waves, threatening to drown Helena. “All these years, I always thought the Sisters must be pansies for not killing you that first week, let alone over the past ten years. But now I see they tried. Boy, did they try.” A terrible smile stayed on her lips. “When Arnold would get home from work, the first thing he’d do was tell me about your day.”

  Arnold? Wasn’t CO Holbrook’s first name Arnold? So Mrs. Ellis and CO Holbrook were…together? And responsible for the past ten years of her suffering? She should feel outraged, wronged, kicked-while-she-was-already-down, but there was a place beyond those emotions…a place where none of the past mattered, because the future would never exist and the present was about to end.

  “There were days you went on about your life as though you hadn’t killed Rory. And there were days you should’ve died. Arnold couldn’t believe that you just kept on surviving. Twice over the years, he made certain you’d die. But you didn’t.” She sucked in a resigned breath. “The past ten years of your life taught me one thing: You want something done right, do it yourself.”

  In slow motion, Helena watched Mrs. Ellis squeeze the trigger.

  The gun went off. The sound thunderous. The impact devastating.

  Helena’s body slammed back against the wall. Why didn’t she feel anything? As if answering her question, pain exploded in her chest, a deadly mushroom cloud that devoured all sensation, leaving nothing except abject agony.

  Her legs folded beneath her. She fell, banging her temple against the rim of the tub on her way down. Lights and colors glittered in front of her eyes, but she didn’t feel anything beyond the misery in her chest.

  She stared at the white porcelain. Her bathtub was going to be the last thing she saw on earth. It reminded her of that white place in her dreams. If these were her last seconds alive, she wanted to remember the good things. She thought of her grandparents. The way Grandpa always smelled of pipe smoke even though he swore he’d quit smoking. The way wrinkles and age spots didn’t dim Grandma’s beauty, because love always shone in her eyes.

  Best of all, she remembered Thomas as she’d last seen him. So innocent in sleep. There was goodness in life. And she’d found it in him right before she died.

  Thoughts became harder to think, fraying and dissolving before she could form them. The end really was near. She could feel it this time. Feel death’s warm arms wrap around her and lift her from the tub. Holding her, hugging her, comforting her, taking all the pain away.

  * * *

  Thomas burst through the back door on a dead run. Each footfall a jackhammer of sound. Stealth didn’t matter as much as getting to Helen.

  He didn’t remember running through the house and up the stairs, but suddenly, he burst into the bathroom she’d been using. He skidded to a halt. Helen lay in the bathtub, curled on her side. Water rained over her nakedness. She wasn’t moving. Didn’t seem to be breathing. And somehow, he was seeing in color again—a garish river of scarlet gushed from the massive wound in her chest, pooling as it waited to slip down the drain.

  His organs, his muscles, and his bones all pressed against the barrier of his flesh, trying to force him to go to her, gather her into his arms
, and save her. He took a step toward her, but almost as if his brain decided to feed him information one small bite at a time, he noticed the woman standing over Helen.

  In all the scenarios he’d imagined, none of them contained a woman as the perpetrator.

  Gray dominated her fading auburn hair. Frown lines bracketed her mouth, and deep grooves furrowed her forehead. At one point in her life, she had probably been pretty, but time wasn’t an equal-opportunity ager.

  Even though he only saw her in profile, a look of pure, unadulterated satisfaction lit her face and charged the atmosphere with her glee. That’s when he noticed what he didn’t see.

  The woman carried no shadow of death. What was going on that all of a sudden, he’d met two people who had no shadow? Almost as if the universe were answering his question, the air around the woman wavered and morphed into a thick, slate-colored fog that vibrated with her excitement.

  As if his presence in the room wasn’t all that important, the woman slowly turned her head to look at him.

  There was the gun in her hand. It was no pretty and petite ladies’ pistol. No, her gun was large and lethal and promised total termination of life. The woman’s gaze roamed his face. “She won’t hurt you anymore.” Her words were so inconceivable, so inexcusable that he had no response other than the truth.

  “She’s never hurt me.” His tone carried accusation and condemnation.

  The woman looked at him with genuine concern, as if he were Helen’s abused lover and suffered from Stockholm syndrome. “Oh, honey. I just saved your life,” she said as if trying to explain something serious to a small child.

  “You shot Helen.” His tone carried aggression.

  “I saved you.” Each word came out with the conviction of a true believer.

  He was done talking. Helen needed help, medical attention, him. He started to reach in the tub for her.

  “Don’t you touch her.” For the first time since he’d entered the room, the woman raised the gun at him. It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to prevent him from getting to Helen.

  A sound erupted from deep inside him, part growl, part shout. He charged the woman, shoving her and her gun away from the tub. As if he possessed superhuman strength, she slammed into the wall with impossible force. The gun clattered out of her hand, and she slumped to the floor, unconscious.

  Good.

  He scooped up the weapon, shoved it in his coat pocket, then went to Helen.

  Her face was an abominable shade of blue and gray and devoid of life. Water rained over her, swirling the blood leaking from her chest in mesmerizing streams. The wound was massive. Destructive. Deadly. Something no one could survive.

  Despair emptied him out. He became a shell of skin with nothing on the inside.

  He reached for her, but even though he stood as close to the tub as he could get, she seemed so far away, as if miles and miles stretched between them. Water rained over his head, drizzling down inside his coat, but he barely noticed.

  His hands didn’t seem like they belonged to him as he scooped her out of the tub. Her skin was slick and slippery. Her body limp and lifeless. “Helen.” His voice contained a vast desolation. Her head lolled awkwardly to the side, and wet strands of hair clung to her face in fat tentacles. Ribbons of blood leaked from the gaping wound over her heart, sliding over and around her breast, pooling in the bend of her stomach.

  A sick sense of dread filled all his empty places. The wound should be gushing, not dribbling. He was too late. She’d lost too much blood.

  No. No. No. Goddamn it. She couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t let her die. Not now. Not when he’d just found her. Helen needed to be alive. Even though they’d just met, he couldn’t live in a world without her in it. Didn’t matter if they were together or not, she just needed to be alive. That would be enough for him.

  His legs folded beneath him. He sat on the floor, leaned against the old tub, and held her. He grabbed her chin and shook her head gently, “Helen. Oh God. Helen, wake up.” This was wrong. So wrong. None of this should be happening. Not now.

  Never taking his eyes off her, he reached into his coat pocket for his phone and then dialed the number he called the most. Work. He pinched the phone between his ear and shoulder while it rang.

  “No news yet,” Lanning said when he picked up the call.

  Thomas opened his mouth. Only one word came out. “Helen.” His brain had clogged up, allowing only a trickle of thought at a time.

  “What?” Confusion dominated Lanning’s tone.

  “Helen.” It was just a name to Lanning, but to Thomas, she was everything. “Helen’s been shot. I need an ambulance. The police.” He let the phone drop and distantly heard Lanning shouting.

  Nothing in his whole life seemed as important as Helen. “You’ve got to fight.” A lump of some unnamed emotion rose in his throat. He struggled to swallow it back down. “You hear me? You have to fight to stay here with me. I know we just met. But you and me—there’s something between us. I knew it the moment I saw you. And you need to stay so we can explore this thing. Because it feels powerful. It feels destined. Like we are supposed to be together.”

  His voice hitched, and he struggled to keep talking around the fear and grief bubbling up inside him. “Just listen to my voice.” He smoothed wet hair from her face. Chilled skin met his fingertips. She was too cold. The tang of her blood sickening in the damp air. “Follow my voice. Don’t let it go.”

  Thomas shifted Helen’s body until she was settled in the crook of his left arm. Blood pooled on her stomach, seeping into his coat.

  Without any reason or rationality, he pressed his hand over the bullet hole. A zap of static electricity blazed through him at the contact. Her body jolted, and then his hand suctioned to her chest.

  Everything changed.

  Inside his torso, a cool and pleasant sensation gathered, then rolled down his arm to his hand and poured into her. His eyes rolled back in his head under the waves of bliss pouring from him into her. Holy shit. Maybe he was losing his grip on reality, but some vital part of him—his essence, his strength, his soul—flowed into her. The ultimate act of giving. And it felt amazing. “You feel this? You feel me inside you? Making you better?” He sounded crazy. He’d worry about his sanity later.

  Underneath her delicate eyelids, her eyes rolled. For the first time since he’d picked her up, he noticed the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Blood no longer trickled from the wound. He stared at his hand mashed against her chest. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? Making him see what he wanted to see instead of reality?

  Did it really matter what was happening as long as Helen seemed to be improving? Everything inside him that had been so devastated perked up as if spring had arrived.

  She wasn’t dead. He knew that now. Knew it as surely as he knew he was alive. He slumped back against the tub and sucked in a giant breath.

  “You’re going to be all right. I’m with you. I’m inside you. I’m a part of you now.” His gaze traveled beyond his hand over her heart to her body. All the horror he thought was behind them reignited.

  Her chest and stomach were covered in scars. Her body told a story of misery unimagined, of incomprehensible suffering. And from last night, he knew there were more on her back that he couldn’t see.

  “Oh, Helen.” He hugged her tighter to him. What on earth had done that to her? “This is it. After this, all your pain is over. I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.” He kissed her forehead, sealing the deal.

  In the distance, sirens sounded—a reassurance that everything was going to be okay. He just needed to keep his hand on her. Keep himself flowing into her.

  Downstairs, his front door burst inward and pounded against the wall, the sound shaking the house. Far off, he could still hear the sirens—that wasn’t the police or paramedics down there.

  He ripped his h
and off her chest, pain stabbing through his palm as if it had been shot. An anguished gasp escaped his lips. He flapped his hand to ease the terrible sensation. But there was something more important than his discomfort. Her safety. He shifted her in his arms so her back mostly leaned against his chest and covered her injury with his other hand. Immediately, the pain vanished, and he felt the sensation of the most vital parts of himself pouring into her.

  He reached into his coat pocket and found the woman’s gun.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs, down the hallway, toward the bedroom and the bathroom they sat in.

  Thomas aimed the gun at the open doorway. Blood dripped from his fingers, but his grip was firm and steady.

  If anyone tried to harm her, he’d commit murder.

  Gun first, Kent Knight swept into the bedroom, looking around like he expected an ambush. His shadow was like a thick, white fog on a spring morning. The kind Thomas liked because it carried no malice.

  Kent froze when he saw Thomas and Helen. “Hey, man, I’m a friendly.” Kent was a BCI agent, but Thomas didn’t know the guy. He could be working with the woman. They could be partners.

  When Thomas didn’t say anything, just kept his gun aimed at Kent’s center mass, the guy lowered his weapon to the floor. Then he straightened and held his hands in the air.

  “Why are you here?” Thomas spoke slow and clear and didn’t bother to hide the suspicion in his tone.

  “Lanning called.” Kent raised his hands a bit higher.

  “Why would he call you?”

  “Because I live closer to you than anyone else. Told me to get my ass over here. It was life and death. Someone had been shot.”

  Kent met him stare for stare. The man’s dark-blond hair, square face, and hard jaw all gave him the appearance of someone trustworthy. Looks could be deceiving. Thomas knew that better than anyone—Malone looked like Mr. Hometown-Nice-Guy-Sheriff. But what Thomas did trust was the shadow. The shadow was light-colored and felt harmless.

  “How’d you know we were up here?” He couldn’t help asking.