Page 23 of Falling

“You’ve got to take this seriously,” she whispers.

“I am,” I say, “I will. Let’s just talk about it.”

“We need to make some ground rules.”

I nod. “Okay. What else?”

“You can’t tell anybody we talked about this and what we’reconsideringdoing,” she says, her tone sharp and authoritative.

“Okay. Are you going to sit down so we can talk some more, or are you just going to stand?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ve got to go and—” Her phone vibrates in her bag, and she fishes it out, groaning when she sees the caller ID.

“Is it your nightmare ex-boyfriend?”

I don’t know why I ask. For all she knows, I don’t know anything about Augustus, but after all the boyfriend talk, I’m curious. I don’t know why they broke up, but from what I found out, they were dating foryears.He’s a fucking fool for letting her go. If I had Wren Hackerly for real, she wouldn’t spend a second doubting if I really cared about her. I’d worship the ground she walks on. I already do.

Her body stills at my question. “What do you know about Augustus?”

“Nothing. I just know you two broke up.”

Her shoulders drop. “Right.”

“What? What was that? Why’d you say his name like we’re talking about Voldemort?” I quiz, searching her features. Her walls are back up again, her green eyes growing darker. Anger unfurls in my stomach, and my fists grip on to the arm of the chair. “What the fuck did he do to you?”

“Nothing, Jesus. There’s no need for you to go all caveman on him,” she says, patting my shoulder, but it doesn’t help me relax. She could just be making excuses for him. “Kennedy’s got in my head about the whole social media thing. Pages like NoCrumbs spread some shit about me and Augustus. Just…” She takes a deep breath. “Just don’t believe everything you read, okay?”

“You’re not secretly a murderer, are you?”

“If I were secretly a murderer, you would have been dead already.” I hold my hands up in surrender, and she laughs. “It’s just my mom. I’m going to meet her and get some older and wiser advice about life. You know, the usual.”

“I bet Hacks gives the best advice,” I say.

She flashes me a sarcastic smile. “The best.”

“We’ll talk later, yeah?” I don’t know why the question makes me feel anxious. It really shouldn’t. I know I’ve been clingy, almost desperate to get her to talk to me, but it finally feels like we’re stepping in the right direction, and I don’t want her to pull away from me. I want to see where this goes.

“Yeah. We’ll talk soon. Bye.”

When she leaves, a rush of air leaves my lungs before they fill back up again.

This might finally be the thing to pull me back to the surface after months of feeling like I’m drowning. I’ve tried everything to get rid of the aching in my chest, and nothing has worked. I’ve played mind games with myself so I could get back onto the ice without having a panic attack. I thought I’d be better by now, but apparently it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just snap my fingers and hope that everything will be fine just because I’m telling myself it is.

As I’m about to clean up the mess the girls made, my phone rings in my back pocket. I take in a deep breath when I see Clara’s contact name fill the screen. I don’t remember the last time I spoke to her. The few days after I found out about my mom cheating were a blur of heated conversations and memories I’ve tried my hardest to block out. Honestly, not talking to my sister every day has been hard.

We grew up almost like twins in the weirdest way. There’s a seven-year age gap between us, but we did everything together. I think my parents were worried that we’d make the gap too large, so they pushed us into doing everything together the second I could walk. It felt like a treat to hang out with my cool older sister who showed me how to skate and would take me to the Ski Village that she worked at.

My parents worked a lot, and it gave us more time to hang out with each other. My mom teaches at a middle school, and my dad is a radio host for one of the local channels. I always thought it was a weird combination, but they made it work.

Until they didn’t.

Apparently, my mom had been cheating on my dad since I was in middle school. She managed to convince him that she was just working it out of her system as if she hadn’t been married to my dad for almost thirty years. Clara knew, and she didn’t tell me until after Carter’s funeral. I spent a whole seven years of my life without the knowledge that the person who has always preached about loving their family and being loyal has been fucking my dad over for years. And he still stayed.

I pushed myself further and further away from the three of them while I tried to wrap my head around it, and I’ve still not come to terms with it.

“Miles, what the hell are you doing?” is the first thing my sisterasks when I answer the phone. I have to close my eyes and feel my chest rise and fall, allowing it to calm me down before speaking.

“Hello to you too, sister,” I deadpan, knowing that if I sass her in some way, she might save us both the torture of pretending that everything is fine. “I’m just having coffee in a cute café on campus.”

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