Page 39 of Catch Me When I Fall

Why did I call?

What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice laced with concern.

“Of course,” I responded, shaking it off. “I just needed to update you, that’s all. I’ll call you when we’re on the road.”

He was silent for a moment. “You don’t sound like—”

“Enough,” I growled, silencing him. I wasn’t getting into this with him or anyone—ever. As soon as she was back where she belonged, the better. I didn’t have the fucking time for this shit. “It was just a fucking update,” I told him.

“Roger that. Just an update.”

I ended the call and tossed the phone without a second thought before shoving my hands into my hair, chest heaving as I stared into the night.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

Why did I fucking care about this fucking woman—this stranger?

My mind drifted back to the details of her husband’s murder, the reports of her screaming for him in the hospital in the middle of the night. I bent my head, closing my eyes as pictures of her slashed wrists flashed in my mind.

After a few minutes, I lifted my head again, staring at the journal as I wondered—if I wasn’t extracting her tonight, would she have written about me? The stranger lingering in the dark, staring back at her?

“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing a hand down my face. I needed to get my shit together. I straightened her laptop and journal to how she had it before I invaded her privacy and made my way downstairs, taking a seat on her couch in the darkness.

Then, I waited.

Chapter 11

Carrie

I pulled up to my house, my mind not on the last hour or Leo. No, my mind was on the shadow man by the docks. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that half an hour had passed as I stared back at him. When I’d arrived at Sarah’s, I checked her clocks to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken. She thought nothing of it, laughing it off and wanting to know about my time with Leo.

The entire conversation, I struggled to even tell her about him. All I could focus on was what the shadow man looked like. My stomach curled each time I thought about his stance, his broad shoulders, the casual way he leaned against the lamppost, like he didn’t care whether I knew he was watching me.

In the end, Sarah pried all she could out of me and gave me her stamp of approval. She didn’t make me feel guilty, which was a relief. She told me how good of a man Leo was, how the only reason why he hadn’t settled down yet was due to his father passing away. Sarah told me he was finally in a place where he could breathe. I tried to “gush” with her about how exciting all this was, because it was. I should be excited.

But I wasn’t.

Instead, I was worried about whether I’d see the shadow man again.

I shut the car off once I was under my car port and let my head fall back, waiting for something—anything to hit me.

Grief? Guilt? Anything?

I stared at the tan ceiling of the car for some time, the neighborhood dark and quiet around me. “Am I a bad person for no longer missing my dead husband?” I whispered to myself.

The truth was, I stopped missing him after three months, two months after my failed attempt.

Absentmindedly, I rubbed my thumb over my left wrist, trying to remember how the scar once felt. I was blessed with good skin, something I got from my mother. My wrists healed fairly quickly and the scars faded quicker than normal due to the products the staff rubbed on my wrists every night after I was chained to the bed. That wasn’t my choice. No, that was a choice made by my father before he was exposed as the sick monster he was. After his arrest, the staff didn’t bother changing their regimen. Over time, the pink scars faded into white ones, and now, you could only see them in a certain light.

“Am I a bad person for wanting to be happy again?” I asked the empty car, bending my head to look at my wrists.

A painful lump grew inside my throat as I inspected each one, remembering the looks my old friends had given me when they came to the hospital. They weren’t of judgment—just ones filled with an overwhelming pity, so much that I was drowning in it, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe for days. I don’t think the Oasis boys left me alone for an entire week before I was transferred to rehab.

As the question lingered in the air, a quiet sigh left me, and I grabbed my bag, my camera, and keys before I exited the car and locked it. The summer night air was cool against my skin as I climbed the steps to my front porch. The light was off, the sight of the darkened porch causing me to stop in my tracks.

I left that on.

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