Page 11 of Fall Into Me

Her voice sounded closer to me, like she did take that step.

“I remember the way,” I mumbled, not bothering to turn around.

I was so fucked, but I knew this was nothing compared to what would happen when she realized why now, after all this time, I’d finally found my way back to Darling.

4

Calista

After

I stared right at the spot Fane had been occupying only seconds before for an unhealthy amount of time.

I stared so long that by the time I locked up to head home, I was certain he was a mirage that I’d hallucinated on the grounds of smelling too many coffee beans.

The drive home was done on one hundred percent instinct. I couldn’t even recall the turns I’d made or the signs I stopped at, but pulling onto my gravel drive, the sight of the little cottage was like a balm to my always-aching heart.

My house was perfect. So, so perfect.

I mean, sure, it was falling apart, and I didn’tactuallyown it, and I was also pretty sure I was paying way too much for it. Mrs. Antinello was my landlord, and she was (respectfully) so old I’m certain no one had actively celebrated a number for her birthday since I was in single digits.

She also lived directly across the street and loved to swat literally everyone on the ankles with her cane.

To put it plainly, she frightened me. When she told me the rent, I smiled super wide to make sure I didn’t cry and shook her hand, which felt like if I gripped it too firmly, it might detach from her body.

In saying all of that, shedidallow dogs. And that was really all that mattered.

Most people might’ve had someone on speed dial to call and immediately talk to about hallucinating their ex. Not me.

I hadn’t had a real conversation with my sister in years. When Mom got sick, I ran home, and she ran for the hills, which just about sums up the pair of us.

Delilah might have been my person once, but that was before I came back a stranger—to myself and everyone else.

Not anymore, though, and that was all on me.

My reality was that I lost every single person that I relied on all in the same night. All for different reasons, but I lost them, nonetheless.

But then there was Jerry. My big, beautiful, pony-sized Great Dane.

“Oh, Jerry!” It would be a cold day in hell when he peeled himself off his couch and met me at the front door like any other regular dog.

Yes, Jerry had his own couch. Mainly because he was too damn big to share one with me, and after the third time he launched me onto the floor with a firm kick to the spine, I decided enough was enough.

His groan of delight reverberated through the house, along with the solid thumping of his tail. In what I was sure was every dog trainer’s nightmare, I answered the call of his unspoken demand to come hither and practically threw myself onto him.

With his big head between both my hands, I smothered him with kisses, his tail picking up speed with each forceful smooch.

Jerry was supposed to be a gift for Fane.

I know.I know.But we were a few weeks past our two-year anniversary, and Fane had always wanted a dog. More specifically, he wanted a Great Dane named Jerry. I searched high and low for this incredibly large canine, and the moment I saw his little gangly frame at a gentle and pure two months old staring at me from the other side of a plexiglass wall, I knew.

He was the one.

That was the night my dad called me.

“Invasive ductal carcinoma.” My dad’s exhausted voice cracked through my phone like the words weighed a thousand tons. “She’s got breast cancer, darlin’.”

That was the first and last time I ever heard Dallas Grey cry, and I hadn’t even been there to hold him. To be someone who could carry that weight with him, so he knew he wasn’t alone in the fear that he could lose the love of his life.

---