Watch Me Fall(30)

“If I can come up with one, would you consider it?”

“Like what?”

“I have an idea. Let me think on it.”

She shrugged. “I’m open to anything, I guess. I don’t want to leave. I just feel like I don’t have a choice.”

“You know my highest wish for you is that you’ll find what I have. You deserve it.”

She waved that off. “No one can put up with my crazy for long.”

“Hey,” Brian said seriously. “Ghost found someone to put up with him. You should be a cakewalk. Just stop with these assholes who don’t know shit about how to treat you, or even realize what they have in you. Whatever you’re looking for, you won’t find it there.”

She knew that. At last, she knew that. Jared made her feel like no one else ever had, like her heart had been ten sizes too small and it was finally catching up with the rest of her. But she couldn’t be around for Brian and Ghost and everyone else to watch that fall to pieces too. For once, she had a little hope, so it was going to make it that much more humiliating if it didn’t work.

As if this moment wasn’t humiliating enough. But at least it was done. The weight she’d carried all these years should be gone, but it was crushing her more than ever. Now she had to go. A chapter in her life was closing. Brian would tell Candace—he wouldn’t keep something like this from her. No matter how sweet and understanding Candace was, she wouldn’t understand this. She wouldn’t be sweet about this.

“Well,” Brian said finally, after silence had stretched for too many long, uncomfortable seconds. He sounded lost, disillusioned, more than a little bewildered. “Keep me informed.”

“I will.” She couldn’t get out the door fast enough, leaving him staring after her.





Chapter Fifteen



Brian Ross yawned as he slipped out the side door of Dermamania. It wasn’t late enough to be yawning, at least not in his old, pre-baby life, but it didn’t matter anymore—a six-week-old didn’t give a shit what time it was, and he and Candace had been up most of the night before. Lyric liked to party all night and sleep all day, and Candace didn’t have it in her heart to keep him awake during the daylight hours so he would sleep at night.

But his bone-deep weariness wasn’t all due to sleep deprivation. Of all damn times for Starla to drop such a bomb on him. Now he had that to figure out, and he dreaded the fallout. Candace was fairly easygoing and certainly secure in their relationship, but he didn’t know how she would react to this. It wasn’t something he’d dare keep from her; he only hoped it wouldn’t kick up a big shit storm when he proposed his solution. He also hoped it wasn’t an idiotic solution. It would leave them fucked at the shop for a while, but it might be good for Star if she would go for it.

His brain was exhausted from mulling it over, so he shifted his thoughts to Candace and Lyric waiting for him at home. It was always the greatest sight to walk in the door to Candace’s sweet, tired face beaming with new-mother pride over Lyric’s tiny, miraculous perfection. Candace had sent a text ten minutes ago: Come on home, baby. Lyric and I miss you. He hadn’t been able to get his shit together fast enough. Being at work and away from his family was the absolute last thing he wanted. How did people do it? The tiniest sound could remind him of Lyric’s heartbreaking cry, and his damn concentration was right out the window from thinking about his son and his wife and how much he missed them. And they were only across town.

He’d often grumbled about his love for Candace turning him into a sap. It was nothing compared to what his love for Lyric had done to him. That little boy had unlocked an entire new world of emotion in Brian’s heart. He’d never been so happy and tired and so fucking freaked-out in his life. But it was all good.

As he walked to his truck in the dark parking lot, he pulled his phone from his back pocket and shot a text back to Candace: On my way, sunshine.

If he hadn’t been focused on doing that, he might have noticed the shadow creeping on him from the side. Too late. All he saw was a movement in his peripheral vision—quick, too quick, something, someone attacking, and all he had time to do was throw up his left arm before blinding pain sliced through his lower back.

With a roar of shock and agony, he lashed out, his right fist sinking deep into the motherfucker’s nose, crushing it, and he was rewarded with a yelp of agony and a string of curses. Mask, the guy was wearing a black ski mask. Black clothes. He recognized that voice, fucking hell…

White light in his head. His strength poured out, and he fell. This is it, he thought, seeing the flash of a bloody blade in the guy’s gloved hand, this is it, he’s going to finish it and Candace is waiting for me at home and I won’t get there. For what seemed like an hour but was probably only a few seconds, his assailant stared down at him, eyes twin pools of darkness that seemed to be sucking him down. Brian stared back, hanging on to what consciousness he had left. The guy lifted his hand to his mask and his shattered nose. When it came away, it dripped. Brian watched the red drop’s descent all the way to the pavement, then glared back up at him.

“Your blood’s at the scene, motherfucker,” he ground out. “Good luck with that.”

The asshole turned and bolted.

More than anything, Brian wished for the strength to chase him down, and even made a feeble attempt to get to his feet and do so before stumbling back down to the ground. No chance. Gritting his teeth until he thought they would break, he reached for his lower back and felt for the source of the pain. His shaking hand came away covered in sticky hot blood. Covered. Covered.

Cursing with the effort of putting one elbow in front of the other, he dragged himself toward his phone lying on the ground a few feet away. It was dark, there was no one out here, and if he lay here too long, he was going to fucking bleed out and die, and he couldn’t leave her like that. He couldn’t leave his son. Not now, not now, please God, not like this…

Making a grab for his phone, he only succeeded in pushing it farther away. His fingers were uncoordinated. He’d expended the last of his energy to reach his lifeline, but somehow, he dug deep into the only reserves he had left and shoved himself forward one more time. For Candace. For Lyric. His palm landed on the phone and his hand shook as he lifted it. It could’ve weighed a metric fuck-ton, and darkness was coming for him. Even breathing caused a blowtorch to sear into his wound. He fought it, focusing all his remaining faculties on getting his fucking phone to cooperate with his clumsy, blood-slick hands, had to get someone, anyone at this point, anyone who could get some help…

But the darkness, it was winning. His phone clattered to the pavement. He had time for one last desperate glance at the shining lights inside Dermamania before they blurred before his eyes and blackness pulled him down and didn’t let go.



***



Fucking nicotine fit. Starla fought it for as long as she could, but it had its claws firmly in her, and with all her drama lately, it was worse than usual. She’d been smoking like a freight train, and everyone noticed.

“Damn! You fiend,” Ghost commented as she grabbed her smokes from her purse and headed toward the back. “Your lungs haven’t shriveled up and blown away yet?”

“Go fuck a cactus,” she told him cheerfully.

Yeah, yeah, she needed to quit. She would. Someday. And someday might come a lot sooner if people would quit hassling her about it, damn. Besides, it was too nice a night to be stuck inside for more than an hour. That was another convenient excuse, and it wasn’t like she was busy tonight or anything. Two of her appointments had canceled on her last minute.

Stepping out the side door facing the parking lot, she pulled a cigarette from her pack with her teeth and glanced up at the sky. What were Jared and the girls doing? She missed them more than she liked to admit to herself. Missed the calming atmosphere at his place. Maybe if she called—

Wait. Why was Brian’s truck still here? Frowning around her cigarette, she glanced down at her watch. He’d left almost ten minutes ago.

When she looked back up for a closer inspection, her cigarette fell from her mouth, forgotten.

A dark shape huddled on the ground just a few feet from one of the security lights, a dark crumpled shape in a pool of red. Red, the only color she could discern in a spectrum of darkness.

“Jesus Christ.”

She reached him at a full run, falling to her knees, heedless of his blood getting on her clothes. “Brian!” she shrieked, wanting to touch him but terrified she shouldn’t move him. He lay mostly on his stomach, and she could see now that the trail of his blood extended for several feet, as if he’d fallen, and he’d crawled…

“Help!” she screamed back toward the shop. She screamed Ghost’s name, she screamed Janelle’s, she screamed until her throat was shredded by her own voice and she thought she might have to get up and go back in there to get help, but she didn’t know if she could walk. They probably couldn’t hear her for the music. Desperately surveying the scene in front of her, though she didn’t want to look, she didn’t…she saw that Brian’s phone rested only inches from his limp hand. It too was covered in his blood. She snatched it up and dialed 911, knowing that she had to find out if he was alive and not wanting to. She didn’t want to know, oh fucking hell, she didn’t. But the dispatcher would ask if he had a pulse, if he was breathing. How could someone lose this much blood and live?