Page 112 of Catch Me When I Fall

I winced as he let out a startled grunt, his upper body jerking away from mine. Adrenaline surged through my veins as I put my hands on the shelves and shoved, pushing him off me. I heard him stumble back and crash into something. Without turning, I bolted, heading for the front of the store, my feet pounding against the tile as my curls flew behind me.

“Jimmy!” I shouted. “Jimmy, help!”

I came to the front of the store, surrounded by bins of produce to find Jimmy’s eyes wide as he came around the counter. “Carrie! Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

He raised his hands to reach for me, but a gunshot sliced through the air.

Screaming, I whirled to find the man shooting at Jimmy. I looked back to the counter to find Martha emerging from the tiny front office in a rush. We both watched in horror as blood flew from Jimmy’s leg and he collided with the floor, multiple bones cracking as he went down.

Martha jumped forward, only caring for her husband. I screamed again. “Martha, no!”

She ignored me, still moving. “No! Jimmy—”

Another shot rang out, and I dove for the floor. I looked up to find Martha staggering back, blood streaming from her shoulder now, staining her cream sweater. Gasping, she fell backwards, hitting the tile behind the counter with a thud. My eyes sliced to Jimmy’s. He was just an old man. His wrinkled face was twisted in pain, the blood stain on his leg growing by the second.

“Jimmy!” I cried, scrambling to crawl to him.

“Oh, no you don’t.” A hand wrapped around my ankle, and I was dragged back. Instead of trying to crawl away from him, I reached into my pocket.

Grayson. I had to call Grayson.

I yanked the phone out of my pocket, my fingers quivering as I unlocked the screen. The man was pulling me out of sight now, away from the windows. If anyone had been walking by, they would’ve heard the gunshots, but I couldn’t rely on that hope alone.

A sharp pain shot through the back of my head, and then the man’s boot was in front of my face, stomping on my wrist, holding my arm in place. I cried out in agony, trying to pull my arm free as his weight crushed my bones. My hand released the phone, and he quickly snatched it up, tossing it somewhere I couldn’t see. A crash sounded in the distance as he kicked me in the face.

“You stupid bitch,” he snarled, fisting my hair and yanking me up. He dragged me into the next aisle and threw me back against the shelf. Head pounding, I looked up at him, shaking in fear. My vision was blurred but I could see his finger pointed at me as he towered over me. “You need to fucking listen to me, or you’ll be dead before I can get my fucking payday.”

“Who are you?”

The man ripped off his hat, revealing brown hair, a straight nose, and a mildly handsome face. A face that seemed all too familiar. If I wasn’t about to die, I might have thrown up. “R-Robert?” I whispered, blinking as my vision began to clear.

I was seeing a ghost.

This had to be a dream, right? Some horrible nightmare, my demons crawling their way back to the surface just to torture me. I shifted, fisting my hands so my nails could dig into my palms.

The man slowly tilted his head to the side, giving me a sinister smile that made goosebumps skate across my skin. “Do I look familiar to you, Carrie?” he hissed, dropping down to his haunches in front of me as he pulled a syringe from his coat.

My eyes dropped to it. “Robert? What the—”

“Damn, I must’ve kicked you a little too hard, huh?” He chuckled. “I’m Brandon, you stupid whore.”

I shook my head. “I don’t—who?”

The cocky smile fell from his face then, anger taking over. He scoffed. “So big bro didn’t tell his fat little wife about me? Figures.”

“Robert didn’t have siblings,” I said in disbelief.

Brandon shot me a look. “He didn’t tell you a lot of things.” He sighed and shrugged. “I’ll tell you what, before you leave this Earth, I’ll tell you all the things Robert forgot to mention.”

In a flash, his hand shot out, gripping my hair as he yanked my head back, bit off the lid to the needle and spit it out. “I’ll start with this,” he began, bringing the needle to the sensitive skin of my neck. He leaned closer, the smell of tobacco on his breath, his eyes filled with hatred.

“Robert never fucking loved you.”

I felt a prick in my neck, and before I could get a word out, I began to fade.

As everything went black, Grayson’s voice echoed in my mind.

“I love you more than anything else in this world.”

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