Page 75 of Break Your Fall

I fall back to my heels and look up at him, my face saying,You first.

“My dad hates me,” he says with the same unease I’d felt when I called myselfdramatic.

“He doesn’t hate you.” I shake my head, adamant in my argument. “He just doesn’t know you anymore.”

Tommy’s stare is faraway, off somewhere behind me. “Sometimes I don’t know if I know me anymore.” His eyes fall to mine. “I know what I want.” His gaze holds mine a second longer before it falls to the floor. “And what I don’t want.” When he looks back at me, his eyes have reddened, a dampness lining his lids. “It’s all we have, Reyna.”

Basketball.The thing he’s shared with his father since he was a kid. The only thing holding them together has now become Tommy’s burden.

“Then you’ll have something else,” I say as I reach up and pull him closer to me, my fingers curling through the hair at the nape of his neck.

He stares off again, but his hands find my arms as he leans into my comfort. “I’m losing everything. My parents, my future. My life is just. . .” His grip tightens, and I let him anchor to me, my own grip sturdy and secure. “All the plans I’ve made, everything I’ve worked for. . .” He shakes his head against the things he can’t say.

“You’ll find something else if you have to,” I assert, drawing his eyes back to mine with a press of my fingers. “If your dad doesn’t believe in you, you still have plenty of people who do. I’m one of them,” I remind him with a small shake that earns me a half-smile, my assurance chasing away some of his sadness. “And you need to be one of them, too.” He flicks his brows in acknowledgement as I add, “You’ll always have me. I’m always here, and I’ll help any way I can.”

“Always,” he reminds me back, his gaze now pointed that I haven’t come to him yet after letting him know I needed him, and now the focus has shifted.

He composes himself to move on to me as I reluctantly pull back and he catches my hands, giving them a squeeze as they slide through his.

“Rumor has it, you have a sister.”

I back up to my bed and drop down onto the foot, the movement jostling the box I’d finally managed to carry in here, and I push it aside like it doesn’t belong. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.” A ragged laugh spurts out of me at the look on Tommy’s face. “Don’t look at me like that,” I admonish halfheartedly as he sits next to me. My eyes find the stack of letters still scattered around inside the box. “He already has a daughter, Tommy.”

“And now he has two daughters,” he says, trying to encourage me with his statement and the letters as he pulls the box back in. “Reyna, he’s going to love you. If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot.”

I can’t help my smile as I play with my fingers, holding them back from the box. They defy me and reach in, snatching a letter from off the top. Even though I shook the letters around when I’d found them, I’m assuming this is the last one my father had written, or at least one of the last ones. I still can’t open them, read his words. I’d seen a few of his paintings and I’d had to paint. I’ll see his words and I’ll want to write. I’ll want to see him.

My thumb traces over his name.My last name should be Wescott.

Like Jessabelle’s.

“Even her name is better than mine,” I hear myself mutter as the last name I’ve claimed in my head blurs on the envelope.

“Her name isn’t better than yours,” Tommy argues with a confidence that makes me chuckle as I meet his eyes.

“Jessabelle,” I argue back, the name sounding like a sweet mystery, a pretty rebellion. “And she shortens it to Jessa.”

“Jessa isn’t a better name than Reyna,” Tommy pushes with more confidence than the first assertion, and now I’m full on laughing.

“Too much?” he asks with bent brows, his eyes alight with teasing.

“A little, yeah,” I say with the same expression. “But thanks.”

He nods at the letter still in my hands, the corner of his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, drawing my eyes there until he looks back at me with a small smile. “I mean it, though. Everything about you is perfect.” He inhales a quick breath and points to the letter, moving on before those words can linger. “You should read those.”

I toss the letter back into the box like his coaxing just set it on fire. “I don’t know what I should do. I don’t even know how I should feel. And that scares me. I feel things. I’m afeeler.” I look down at my dress, this one an older number, blue flower petals blowing across the white skirt. “What if he thinks I’m her? What if he looks at me and only sees her? He wrote me off before because of her.”

“You’re not her,” Tommy states, a soft press, never sounding sick of my comparisons to my mother. “You’re Reyna.”I know, I know.“And your dad literally tried writing youintohis life.” He gives the box a light shake. “All the answers you need are inside here.”

“I don’t know if I want this now,” I admit on a whisper. Whenever I pictured my father, seeing him for the first time, it was always me and him. Just us. I’ve had to compete for my mother’s attention my whole life, and I don’t want to go through that again.

“Everyone in my family is getting a new family or has a family of their own, and they’re forgetting about me,” I say half to myself.

“You’re being remembered, Reyna. And yeah, it’s lame that he’s reaching outnow. . .” Tommy trails off, scoffing a laugh. “Like he missed your birth so he wanted to make your graduation.”

“He missed that, too,” I say through a scoff of my own.A little too late.“He missed it all.”

“But now’s your chance to have that, too.”

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