Page 3 of Free Fall

My stomach squeezed — It was clear the ring was important to Luca, I’d recognized it was him that night because of it, but to learn that happy little show he was putting on with his wife was fake? I pulled Cole closer.

“You had it?” Cole muttered, his brain whirring behind his eyes. “I know where he lost it. What he was doing. I assumed some skank from the club had sold it on by now.” He toyed with the ring between our palms, the metal warming from our combined body heat.

“What do you mean?” I whispered.

Cole used his other hand to grab my chin, push my head back, to study me. Movement from the others tried to pull my focus, someone was marching over. Alison, Luca’s wife, yelled at her son to let me go, but he squeezed harder, tilted his head.

“You’re the puppet. I saw you.”

I gasped as Cole was shoved away from me. But I’d been leaning into him, had no balance of my own. The cold water slammed into me as I crashed through the surface of the pool, my screech of surprise caught in my throat. I floundered, my mind whirring and my body shocked — but then I was at the surface, coughing and spluttering, treading water with ease. I almost laughed at the metaphor of it all.

“What the hell!” I shouted, my vision focusing in time to see Luca helping his son stand back up with tension through all of his muscles. Everyone else had crowded round in the few seconds I’d been under the water. My dad looked ready to dive in and help, but I was okay. “I’m fine,” I sighed, beginning my short swim to the ladder. I caught myself, though.Shit,I still had the ring. Cole had lost his grip on it when Luca shoved him, but I’d wrapped my palm around it.

“You sure?” my mom asked when I froze. I nodded, and snap decision, dropped the ring in the deep end. It had a black tungsten edge, so it wasn’t too reflective, and no one would be in here — willingly — for months. There was time to figure my shit out. What to do with the jewelry.

Dad was there with a towel when I was back on dry land, wrapping it over my shoulders. Luca was arguing in whispers with Cole, both gesturing to me. “What’s going on?” Dad asked, rubbing the rough fabric up my arms. Mom and Jules crowded too, Alison and Jesse watching the commotion and sipping their drinks. Neither seemed willing to step between Luca and Cole.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I don’t know what Luca's problem was. Cole wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“It looked like he was choking you,” Mom muttered to me, her hand reaching to cup my cheek. I dodged it. He wasn’t choking me, just holding me by the neck… very firmly. Her concern remained on her face, but she said nothing more.

“It looked wrong, then. We were just chatting.”

“About?” Dad asked, his intense gaze heavy on mine as he tried to wrangle a confession from me. That might have worked at twelve, but ten years later he had no chance. I still didn’t have a suitable answer for him, though. Maybe Luca would for why he’d taken such offense.

He was still arguing in muttered breaths with his son on the other side of the pool. Hushed words but big gestures. Mom and Dad did the same, bickering about what to do. I watched them all, shivering, uncomfortable.

Then Luca and Cole both turned to look at me at the same time, and I froze.

Cole’s mouth formed something that looked very much like ‘puppet’ and ‘ring’ — and it was that moment I realized for sure there was no time for any more games. He knew I knew. I could see it in his eyes. The shock, the anger, the twisted-up excitement making his brown irises twinkle. The butterflies in my stomach turned into cannonballs, slamming down on my gut, hammering through my nerves.

I dragged my gaze from son to father, unsure of what I would witness. Bitter anticipation hurt my stomach. Luca looked at me like he had plans. He wasn’t done with us. We weren’t finished with each other.

I hated him. For what he’d done, for how he made me feel. But as our eyes stayed locked, and the world fell away, I knew with painful certainty that this wasn’t over.

Two

Luca

Itwasn’tunusualforme to crash at Henry’s, and after the fiasco by the pool earlier, we needed to talk. The Summers’ basement pull-out had only ever been used by me. We often stayed up late, discussing work projects, venting about life, and indulging in various substances.

So it was easy to kiss Alison goodbye at the door, telling her I’d be home soon when we both knew I wouldn’t be. She would be alone in our bed tonight. Something that was no doubt for the best, considering where my thoughts were lying.

Cole had pushed too many buttons this evening. Seeing him manhandle Zelda almost shattered the last of my resolve and before I knew what I was doing, he was on the ground and she was in the pool. I fucked up. Shown my cards.

Seeing Henry the day after Halloween was a mind-fuck, but I’d become better at squashing it down, separating the two parts of my brain. Best friend. Deviant. Just hours before, I’d abandoned his daughter, thoroughly fucked, on the floor of a sex club. I could still smell her on me when he handed me a bleary coffee, laughing about the night he’d had too.

We shared stories. I made mine up. No talk of the cute little puppet I’d shoved my whole fist into. Nothing about the way she’d whined and whimpered as she gagged on my dick. Henry was my best fucking friend and I was horrified at my actions toward him. Not Zelda, him. To Zelda, I just wanted more.

Watching him parent her, wrap that towel around her shoulders to warm her up, gave that guilt in my gut a boost, especially when she peered at me with such confused eyes.

She knew.

Cole told me everything in hurried whispers after I yanked him up from the ground I’d knocked him onto. He said she’d confessed. She had my ring and was plotting some kind of revenge. The ass had looked gleeful at my reaction. Something had twisted up in him at some point between birth and fifteen — and it had never come back. He was dark, the pleasure he gained from messing with people his favorite thing.

I knew him, though, and he would not tell his mother. He enjoyed having a secret over my head more than he wanted to see her reaction. And he’d always been too damn nosy for his own good. It didn’t even surprise me that he knew about the puppet from Halloween, the bastard had probably been a few steps behind us the entire time. I was just glad I’d shut the door behind us before wrecking her. He might have seen the before and after, but not the chaos in between.

He’d been joining Henry and me on our quarterly trips to sex clubs. After following us to one a few years ago, knowing we were up to something, he made it plain he would always attend with us, or he’d spill the beans. Even though our wives and us had an arrangement, they wanted to be unaware of just what we did. It would create havoc if they knew what we got up to. So, we agreed, and rules were, no dicks or kinks out when we were together, but otherwise, have at it.

---