Falling into You (Falling #1)(27)

“Going up?” Colton asked. I nodded. “Coming back?”

I shrugged. “Probably. I couldn’t sleep any more if I tried.”

Colton left my side to screw the cap on the bottle of Jameson. I waited until he was next to me again, and then we made our way up the path. When I started to veer left toward my house, Colton tugged on my arm.

“Mom and Dad have a bathroom in the basement. It’s a walkout, so you wouldn’t have to go up any stairs.”

I knew this from years spent shuttling between my house and Kyle’s, but I didn’t say so.

He went in ahead of me, turning on lights. Waited for me outside, and helped me back down to the dock, offering a silent, stabilizing presence when my feet slipped in the wet grass.

We settled back into our chairs, and he picked his guitar up, strummed a few chords, then began a play a song. I knew the song within a few chords: “Reminder” by Mumford & Sons. I thought he’d only play, so I was stunned when he took a breath and began to sing the words in a low, melodic, raspy voice. He didn’t just play the song as it was, though. He twisted it, changed it, made it his. Already a beautiful, haunting song, Colton’s version touched something in my soul.

I closed my eyes and listened, feeling the pressure lessen, just a little. I didn’t open my eyes when he finished. “Will you play something else? Please?”

“Sure. What do you want to hear?”

I shrugged, leaning my head back against the chair. Colton strummed a few times, then cleared his throat. I heard the liquid glug as he took a shot from the bottle. I felt the cold glass touch my hand, and I took it and drank without opening my eyes. The burn was welcome, now. I was feeling a measure of peace, tipsy and floating. The guilt and the grief were still there, banked coals burning underneath the alcohol haze.

Colton began another song, and I recognized this one too. “This is ‘Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ by Simon and Garfunkel.” The way Colton announced the song and artist made me think he’d done this before, that he was falling into a habit. Was he a performer? He again seemed just too big, too rough, too primal and hard of a man to sit in coffeehouses behind a microphone playing indie folk songs. Yet…hearing him play and raise his voice to sing the high opening notes, it seemed only natural.

I was stunned by the rough beauty of his voice. He turned the song into a poem. I wished desperately, in that moment, to find my own bridge over the troubled waters of my grief.

But there was none. Only the raging river of unshed tears.

When the song ended, Colton shifted into another song, one I didn’t know and he didn’t announce, rolling and low and soft, a circular melody that drifted up and down the register. He hummed in places, a deep bass throb in the bottom of his throat. Something about the song struck through the alcohol and the numb armor around my grief. There were no words, but it was an elegy nonetheless. I couldn’t have explained it, but the song just exuded grief, spoke of mourning.

I felt thick heat at the back of my throat, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to contain it this time. I tried. I tried to choke it down like vomit, but it came up anyway, spurting past my teeth in ragged whimpers. I heard myself gasp, and then keen high in my throat, a long, tortured moan.

Colton clapped his hands over the strings, silencing them. “Nell? You okay?”

His voice was the the impetus that pushed me over the edge. I shot up out of the chair, hopping away off the dock, limping. I ran, hobbling desperately. I hit the grass and kept going. Not for the house, not for the road, just…going. Away. Anywhere. I ended up in the sand, where my feet sank deep and slipped. I fell to my knees, sobs clattering in my throat, shivering in my mouth.

I crawled across the sand, pulled myself the softly lapping water’s edge. Agony bolted through my arm as it slid over the sand. Cold liquid licked my fingertips. I felt tears streaming down my cheeks, but I was silent still. I heard Colton’s feet crunching in the sand, saw his bare feet stop a foot away, toes curling in the sand, rocking back on his heels, digging deep as he crouched next to me.

“Leave me alone.” I managed to grate the words past my clenched teeth.

He didn’t answer, but didn’t move either. I dragged deep breaths in and out, fighting to keep it in.

“Let go, Nell. Just let it out.”

“I can’t.”

“No one will know. It’ll be our secret.”

I could only shake my head, tasting sand on my lips. My breathing turned desperate, ragged, puffing into the grit of the beach. His hand touched my shoulder blade.

I writhed away, but his hand stayed in place as if attached. That simple, innocent touch was fire on my skin, burning through me and unlocking the gates around my sorrow.

It was just a single sob at first, a quick, hysterical inhalation. Then a second. And then I couldn’t stop it. Tears, a flood of them. I felt the sand grow cold and muddy under my face, felt my body shuddering uncontrollably. He didn’t tell me it was okay. He didn’t try to pull me against him or onto his lap. He kept his hand on my shoulder and sat silent next to me.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. I’d let go, and now the river would flow un-dammed.

No. No. I shook my head, clenched my teeth, lifted up and let myself fall down hard, sending a spear of pain spiderwebbing out from my arm. The pain was a drug, and I accepted it greedily. It was a dam, stemming the tide of tears. I panted, a whine emitting from my throat. I forced myself up, scrambling in the sand like a madwoman, hair wild and caked with grit. Colton stood up, caught my arm and lifted me to my feet. I landed hard, too hard, and I couldn’t stop the cry of pain as my ankle jarred. I fell forward, into Colton.