Take the Fall (Take the Fall, #1)(7)
I don’t want to take my time. I want everything to fast-forward and be over with already. I want it to be next week. A year from now. Any length of time that would put distance between me and death…and Seth.
“Thanks,” I whisper before she walks away. Turning my attention back to the grave, I struggle to maintain my composure. The workers are already at graveside and pulling away the blanket of Astroturf covering the mound of dirt beside it.
The world seems to shrink. The thought of all that dirt falling in on her…I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and then open them again, only to find Seth’s gaze on me.
My feet start moving before I can stop them. His eyes widen slightly, and my chin goes up. I can be the bigger person. I can talk to him like it’s no big deal he’s here after being gone for so long. That it’s no big deal he cut me out of his life without a real explanation.
My hands clench into fists, and I stuff them into the pockets of my winter coat before he sees them. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say, inwardly relieved at how controlled my voice sounds.
“Thanks,” he replies in a gruff voice I’ve never heard before. I want to cry at the sound of it. I want to slap him, too. I want to know why and what the hell’s his problem. Most of all I want his stupid, muscular arms around me while he whispers, It’s okay.
He starts to leave, but I stop him by stepping slightly in front of him. “How long are you staying?” The question comes out more sharply than I intend.
Seth gives me a look and runs the side of his thumb right under his bottom lip, just like he did when we were together. “I’m not sure.”
I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hold myself together. If I don’t, my heart is liable to fall out and onto his feet, where he can grind it into the ground once more. “What do you mean you’re not sure?”
Seth
Distance and time are supposed to dull feelings and memories, but seeing Rowan like this, so beautiful and vulnerable, brings them back to the forefront in an instant.
Only years of military training and discipline prevent me from touching her, when all I want to do is take this beautiful girl in my arms and hold her. All I want to do is kiss her sweet lips and say that I’ll do anything for her, so she won’t ever cry sad tears again.
During the funeral, I couldn’t bear to take my eyes off her. She’s what kept me grounded when the preacher began to say the words I knew were coming. Over and over, I mapped the new curves and planes of her face, a face that had changed from that of a fresh-faced teenager into a proud and strong woman’s. When her eyes met mine, baby blue like the ocean, full of salty tears I knew she refused to let fall, I nearly lost it.
My hands are still clenched into tight fists. I relax them, stretching my fingers and feeling them pop.
“Seth—how long? I have things to do besides wait for you to grow a set and speak to me,” she snaps and I bite back a grin. That’s my girl—direct and ballsy as hell.
“As long as it takes,” I say. Yeah, so I have less than two weeks right now, and that’s not enough time to convince her to forgive me—hell, the timing’s all wrong, but what can I do, other than stay the course? I don’t expect Rowan to give me another chance. Nah, I don’t expect it, but I’m going to do my damnedest to convince her to see things my way.
There’s something about war that makes a man feel like a mortal instead of a god. There’s something about the bodies and wounds and lack of second chances that everyone who died over there didn’t get. For me, it was enough to make me question my nursing of this hatred for Rowan and her brother. It was enough that I realized all I thought about was her—seeing her, touching her…making love to her again.
War and death give you a perspective like nothing I’ve ever experienced, not even prison.
“Care to elaborate on that?”
“We can talk later, sure.” I’m not here to talk about the past right now, or the future. I’m fully in the present, burying my grandmother. Later, when it’s just the two of us and we’ve had some space to calm down after our first meeting in years, I’ll apologize for f*cking up her life. For wanting her to suffer and for discarding her like a used piece of tissue. Self-loathing washes over me, coating me with guilt. So much damn guilt.
From all the letters and phone calls with my grandma, I know Rowan was special to her, that Rowan made her days and nights easier just by living there. My grandfather died a few years before I went to jail, leaving us alone. He had been a good man, a man who worked with his hands and had started an auto repair shop with my grandmother. Funny enough, she was the one who taught him about engines.
As an only child, my grandmother had learned about engines and cars from her dad. She had become fascinated with torque, and horsepower, and the way a piston forces expanding gas into the cylinder.
She loved NASCAR and Sunday dinners. She loved laughing and dancing with my granddaddy, and most of all she loved my mom and me. Or at least that’s what she would tell me at night, after she tucked me in when my mom had to work late.
I believed it, though. I believed it even though I knew they weren’t my real grandparents. They had taken pity on a single mom and her child and let them stay for as long as it took to get back on their feet. I believed it even when my mom didn’t come home from work one day, and left my five-year-old self with two people who’d never been able to have kids of their own. I’m not really sure how my mom met the Gardners, but they had given her a job at their auto shop. I guess she handled the responsibility of a child for as long as she could. From what I gather, she was pretty young herself—she’d had me when she was a teenager. They ended up adopting me when it became clear my mom was never coming back.