The Spiral Down (The Fall Up #2)(66)

“I’m sorry. You should go.”

“His name is Henry Gilchrist,” she announced.

“I know,” I called over my shoulder, walking to the front door.

“He— Wait. What? He told you that?” she gasped.

I yanked the door open and motioned for her to go. “Yep. Weeks ago.”

A sinister smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, but she didn’t budge from the stool. “Now, we’re getting somewhere.”

“Any way you can get there faster? I have shit to do today,” I smarted.

“Sure.” She grinned confidently. “He loves you.”

My back shot ramrod straight, and as much as I wanted to deny it, hope swirled in my chest. “Don’t say that.”

“Why? It’s the truth. He loves you, Evan.” She tipped her head to the side. “I mean, he’s a dumbass, but he loves you. For the last week, I’ve been listening to him bitch and moan about how much he misses you. He hasn’t been out gallivanting around town or moving on to the next guy. There is no other guy for him.”

I raked a hand through my hair and tried to pretend that that little bit of information hadn’t ignited a spark inside me all over again. “I think you’re wrong.”

She pushed to her feet and lowered her voice to a scary whisper. “Did he tell you about Robin?”

“Yes,” I replied curtly.

Her brown eyes lit and the proverbial light bulb flashed over her head. “Did he tell you how he grew up?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, wow,” she breathed.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, equally interested in and dreading whatever she was going to say next. I was barely hanging on to what little resolve I had about asking her to leave. I hadn’t needed her “oh, wow” to make me curious, but it really f*cking had.

“Evan, that’s huge for him.” She walked over and gently pulled the door from my hand before swinging it shut. “You can Google all of that about him. It’s not a secret. But never, not once—including with me—has he voluntarily told someone about his past. He doesn’t trust people with it. He wants people to see the confident and successful man he is now, not the broken, insecure boy he still secretly harbors inside.”

I blinked. Henry had openly given me that. I’d had no idea what it’d meant to him at the time or I would have offered him the broken parts of my past too. However, now, I was happy I hadn’t.

“Can you just listen to me for ten minutes? I’m not wrong about this. He loves you, and after this conversation, I’m pretty sure you’re in love with him too.”

I clamped my mouth shut.

There was a massive difference between being in love and falling in love.

Being in love was like a never-ending flight through the clouds. Storms were likely. Turbulence a given. But they didn’t last forever. The clouds always returned.

Falling was more like a terrifying test of trust where you’re expected to leap from death-defying altitudes with nothing more than one flawed person with his arms held open, acting as your safety net.

Sometimes, you crashed, shattering into a million pieces, when the person you trusted wasn’t there to catch you. I’d learned that firsthand.

But, as I stared at Levee’s pleading eyes as she asked for ten minutes of my time to hopefully enlighten me about the man who had me plummeting in an all-out free fall, I couldn’t help but wonder if Henry was falling too.

And if he was…was I the one who was supposed to be catching him?





AS A SUCCESSFUL songwriter, I prided myself in not only the music, but the ability to transfer simple words into tangible emotions. Over the week without Evan, I realized something truly remarkable.

I didn’t miss him.

Not at all.

Because, according to the dictionary, the word miss meant to notice or discover the absence of something.

I missed how content I felt in his arms.

I missed the way his breath felt whispering across my chest as he slept at my side.

I missed his stoic smiles and their ability to fill my soul for no other reason than they were aimed at me.

I missed the idea of forever and the promise of a future.

No, I didn’t miss Evan at all.

Because you don’t notice or discover the absence of a man like that. That pain was engrained so deeply it was inescapable. It devoured me on a second-by-second basis and consumed my every thought—conscious or not. Sleep wasn’t even a reprieve.

I craved him on every level.

But especially the level where I got to walk into his house and have him wrap me in his strong arms while I hid from the world, or the one where I collapsed naked and sated next to him in bed, knowing that the mind-blowing orgasm wasn’t even going to be the best part of my evening.

I told myself that it was irrational to feel so strongly about a man I had only been seeing for a couple of months.

But, in reality, I knew that the only irrational part was when I’d walked away.

“Henry, where’s Carter?” Levee called from the doorway of my dressing room as I stared at my phone, willing it to ring.

Evan had stopped calling a few days earlier. It was for the best. It meant I didn’t have to have a nervous breakdown every time it rang.

“No idea,” I replied, pushing to my feet and walking her way. “Hey, beautiful,” I purred, pulling her in for a tight squeeze. “How’s my baby?”