Page 9 of Fall Into Me

I cleared my throat and looked back to her father. “Themines…”

“Are closed,” Cali supplied, rather unhelpfully, and I felt my eyes almost fall out of my face. I clenched my jaw at the same time her grip on my arm tightened, nails digging in.

“The mines you worked at in Australia closed?” Dallas frowned at us, pushing off the door and looking for all the world like the concerned sort of father I always wished I had.

“To me,” I added quickly. “Closed to me. As in, I no longer work there.”

“That’s right.” Cali’s head nodded so furiously it looked like it was about to come off, an unhinged sort of grin plastered on her face. “They fired him.”

“Or.” I knew she could feel my glare. “I quit.”

“You know,” Dallas shook his head, taking off his hat to run his hands through his dark peppered hair before replacing it. “You two are really made of sterner stuff. What’s it been, Cal, a year and a half?”

“Almost two,” she mumbled, and I still couldn’t stop looking at her.

“Almost two years.” He whistled low and long before clamping a hand on my shoulder and shocking me back into the conversation. Dallas wasn’t a small man, but I had a few inches on him in height and width.

It had always felt weird, lookingdownat her dad.

“Yep.” I nodded, reverting to the monosyllabic dickhead from before.

“Real happy for you guys.” Dallas pulled Calista into a tight hug with a kiss on the top of her head. “Glad you can finally start your lives together.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.

“So, I’ll tell your mom to set another plate for the table, but I’ll let you surprise her. Sound like a plan? Six thirty sharp.”

“What a plan!” Cali half raised her hands in the air like, somehow, it would help with making her sound less like she was in pain. Dallas just stared at us with a big grin on his face, like he was waiting for something. That’s when she looped her arm through mine and leaned her head on my arm like her touching me wasn’t a big deal. Like I hadn’t thought of her every day, of every month for the last six hundred and fucking thirty-nine days.

“Great plan.” I nodded at him as he delivered a double thumbs up and headed for the door, the little bell sounding too light and peaceful for the way my heart was thrashing in my chest.

Cali didn’t move for the next handful of seconds, and I might have imagined it again, the way her fingers flexed on my bicep before she pulled away and turned to face me.

“So,” she said, not meeting my gaze, “You’re going to laugh at this.” She sounded like she’d rather yell the words at me, but the situation demanded she at least attempt to be civil.

“Okay.” My voice came out rough. Filled with everything I was feeling. Panic, curiosity, wonder, confusion, concern. A mild amount of hysteria. A fucked-up little bit of hope.

“When I moved home…” Her eyes flicked up to mine and then away, but it was enough for me to see the jagged edges of pain that still remained. “No one had expected me to show up alone.”

I was glad she wasn’t looking at me because she didn’t see the way I flinched at her words. Every single one of them was like aknife she’d flung right at my chest. Not even needing to look to hit the bull’s-eye.

“When they asked where you were…” My eyes darted from her face to her throat, and I watched the way she swallowed once. Twice. Then she shook her head and dragged her eyes from the floor to meet mine. It was like seeing a completely different person.

There was not an ounce of the pain I saw before. So much so that I was half convinced I’d made it up. Wanted it to be there so much, maybe I imagined it.

All I saw was…nothing. She looked at me withnothing.

“I wasn’t going to break my mom’s heart more than it already was, so I lied. I told them you were tying up some loose ends in the city. I thought they’d forget about it, considering my love life was nowhere near the most important thing going on right then.But…after a few months, my dad asked about you. Instead of breakinghisheart, I told him you were in Australia.”

“Working in the mines,” I clarified, my heart still thrashing, my lungs burning. All while I was coming to the realization that if I was going to get through the next few months, I would have to seriously change my approach.

Cali didn’t just feelnothing. I could see it,feelit. Right to the very center of me.

She hated me. She had every right to, I wasn’t debating that. I just hadn’t expected it to rip the air from me the way it had. Like the last little bit of hope I had just disappeared.

“I figured it would be a good reason to tell them eventually that it didn’t work out, but…” She pushed her finger up the center of her nose again, and I finally figured out why she kept doing that. Cali wasn’t wearing her glasses. “I could never bring myself to do it. So, here we are.”

I nodded. Only because I wasn’t entirely sure what else to do.

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