In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(68)

Casey didn’t ruin me. He didn’t set me back. He pushed me out of my nest and is probably partly responsible for the tiny fire I found to dye my hair and climb up on the stage at Paul’s a year ago. Fuck him was my mantra—in your dreams, Casey Coffield just sounds better in a song.

But lying in my lap, drunker by the second, reformed with age and wiser with time, perhaps—or maybe just broken and never whole with a family so cold compared to mine—Casey wants to tell me he’s sorry. And since he never broke me in the first place, I let him have this release, because right now it’s what he needs, and it isn’t a dying father and a house full of women who are probably blaming him for everything that’s going wrong.

“You’re a good man,” I say, and I can see so many things fall away behind his eyes.

A cocktail of forgiveness and redemption, however warranted he may believe, is tucked against my hip. If he weren’t drunk. If my father weren’t walking up the driveway with a cardboard carrier full of cones and sundaes. If this were another life—I’d lean forward and kiss this sweet boy on the head to show him just how far he’s come.

I wish for the perfect time and place, and smile with tight lips as Casey snuggles into me like a lost soul and my father quirks a brow above his glasses.

“He’s going through something difficult,” I whisper, nodding down toward the chuckling head in my lap. He’s amused by something—the kind of thing an hour and the equivalent of six shots makes amusing.

“He can’t drive like that,” my father says, looking down, his glasses at the tip of his nose.

“I agree,” I say, moving one hand away, but bringing it back when Casey starts to pout.

“Casey came over—sweet!” Lane shouts, taking long strides up to where my father stands.

“He’s not feeling very well,” I say, eyes wide and head shaking. My father chuckles, but corroborates my lie, promising Lane he can catch up with his friend in the morning.

My mom furrows her brow and hands me her melting cone as she crouches down next to me. “For god sakes, Casey,” she says, sliding one of her arms under his and helping him to stand so I can join them and help her walk him inside. “You’re making me regret telling you where to find my daughter in the first place,” she scolds.

My mother’s brothers are all alcoholics. Grabby ones at that. But that’s not what this is. This is the moment when denial comes calling and the heart runs full tilt into acceptance. It’s duty and refusal facing off. Either way, Casey is going to lose in the end. What matters now is what scars he wants to live with.

We get him to the hard sofa just inside the door. It’s furniture that’s only there for decoration—a pointless room my father’s been begging to put a pool table in for more than a year. I’m glad the sofa is here now, though. It’s the only room that Casey can be left alone in. It’s a place for him to sleep it off while he hides.

My mother comes back from the hall closet, her scowl even deeper and her lips pursed. She’s about to lay into him when I reach for her arm and whisper in her ear.

“His father’s dying—he has cancer,” I say.

She freezes, and I see her look at him differently all of a sudden. Casey tries to work himself to a sitting position, but his eyes are so heavy and red I know that it will take little convincing to make him fall asleep. I hush him and take the seat at the end of the sofa, pulling his head back into my lap—the one place that seems to give him peace. My mother throws the blanket over us both, and I meet her gaze and nod that I will be fine.

She leaves the room, turning out the lights and joining my father and brother in the kitchen. I look on from the darkened room, my hand stroking this broken boy’s hair until his breathing changes course. I remain there until I dream.





Chapter 13





Casey


It takes me exactly six minutes to figure out where I am. I know because I count the soft ticks hitting my ears from a clock sitting on a nearby end table and round the seconds up to minutes.

My eyes hurt, and the blanket I’m weighed down beneath is scratchy, and I think…I think maybe it smells like mothballs. Were it not for harmony being sung by Lane, I would have sworn the humming from the woman making breakfast in the kitchen was coming from Houston’s mom. Jeanie and Joyce would be good friends, I think.

I’ve been thinking about sitting up for the last ten minutes. Everything looks stranger from this horizontal view. Curio cabinets house precious saucers and teacups, and cross-stitch images hang framed on the walls. There is sunlight peeping through the slats in the blinds, and every so often, I catch a glimpse of Murphy, moving plates and bowls from the table to the sink and back again. I let another minute pass, willing my legs to shift so my feet hit the floor, but Murphy beats me to it, and when I see her round the corner, I give in to the embarrassment and press my face into the couch pillow while I remain cocooned in the world’s ugliest blanket.

“It’s not a very comfy couch, I know,” she says, her voice low and soft. Thank god. “But in my defense, you’re freaking heavy, and this is as far as you’d let us carry you from the porch.”

Us. Her whole family had to deal with me.

“Ugh,” I moan into the foam cushion. The harsh fabric scratches my nose. “I’m…” I twist my neck so my face is forward, and I find her kind eyes waiting for me where she sits on the coffee table in front of me. “I’m so sorry I showed up and dropped all this on you. That…that wasn’t the plan.”