Page 71 of Fall Into Me

“I don’t know what to say.” Her body swayed like she wanted to step forward or maybe retreat back.

“That’s okay.” I gave her another smile before I took my own step back. There wasn’t really anything elsetosay. Sometimes this is what it looked like to put the people you loved first, to putyourselffirst.

It looked like letting go and walking away.

I hadn’t expected her to rush for me, to wrap her hands around me. It shocked me so much that my arms were frozen in the air, and I twisted my head around to look at Cali with what I knew was overwhelming panic in my eyes. She mimed wrapping her arms around someone before pointing at my mom, so I did.

I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight while I felt her small, silent shakes. When she pulled back, she nodded at me, the violet eyes she’d given to me looking clearer. Focused.

“A clean break.” She nodded.

I didn’t say anything, this was her moment to work through what I already had.

“You’ll be okay.” It was a statement because we both knew I’d learned the consequences of what needing her looked like. Not for me, but for her. I hadn’t made that mistake again.

“So will you.” It had been a long time since she needed me too.

With that, she watched me for a second longer before gently picking up her flowers and walking back into her house, not looking back as she shut the door behind her.

Cali had tears running down her face when I got back into the car. She dove across the console, her face crushed to the crook of my neck. “Are you okay?” I could feel her tears seeping into the cotton of my shirt.

“Look at me.” I waited for her to pull back, my hand still running up and down the length of her spine.

“I have my whole world right here in this car.”

“But she’s yourmom.”

“And we’ll be better apart.” I swiped a tear off her cheek, my chest tightening at the heart of this woman, and how I was lucky enough to be one of the people she handed a piece of it to.

“Are you sure?” she whispered, the confusion on her brow a dead giveaway that what I’d just done wasn’t something she might ever be able to comprehend.

“It starts and ends with you, and I’ve never needed anything more than that. You’re it.”

That look didn’t disappear, but it was joined with another. One I was familiar with. That same one she wore when she told me that after a lifetime of never having a safe place to land, she’d be that for me. Cali nodded, wiping her eyes. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated, kissing her temple before she settled back into her seat and threaded her fingers through mine, not letting go the entire way home.

For the first time in my life, I felt free.

23

Calista

After

“This is ridiculous,” I mumbled.

Every time I looked in my rearview mirror, Fane started waving like a maniac, or blowing kisses, or holding up his hand in half of a heart.

Naturally, I just held up my middle finger back, but the gesture just seemed to spur him on. Like in his head, that was the equivalent of me holding half a hand-heart up back.

Two minutes into the seven-minute drive to the café, I caved and called him.

“Hey, baby.”

Fane’s rough voice wrapped around me. It was the equivalent of a soft landing, of hands moving through your hair. Of fingertips gliding up and down the bare skin of your back.

He’d answered the phone just like that—every single phone call for two years—and for a second I was thrust back to right then. Submerged completely in everything else that came with it.

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