Page 50 of Break My Fall

She kept her mouth closed and waited for Gray to remember why he came by. Because she seriously doubted it was to tell her that a motorist had died.

“I didn’t get back to the office until five thirty this morning. At that point, I went home, showered, and crashed. When I woke up, I started to head to your place, but I saw your 4Runner so I stopped here.”

“Okay.” It was a lame response, but what did he expect her to say?

Gray leaned back in his chair. “There’s no way for you to know this, but every time I see you and Mo together, I have to fight off a twinge of jealousy. If my sister had lived, I think we would have had something similar to what you and Mo have.”

Gray laced his hands together and stared at them as he continued. “Her name was Jasmine. She was three years younger than me. We lived in a not-so-great part of Chicago. It wasn’t the worst place in the city, but it wasn’t safe. Our mom ... she couldn’t afford anything else. She tried. She worked two, sometimes three jobs. Kept us fed. We didn’t have the coolest clothes or the latest styles, but we never went hungry.”

He didn’t realize he’d stopped talking until Meredith shifted in her chair. He made eye contact, then looked out the window.“She was eleven. Gang violence broke out in our neighborhood. Drive-bys and random shootings. One night, they shot up our house. She ran into my room. Took a bullet to the chest.”

Meredith gasped.

“She died in my arms. Mom was at work. I held her until Mom got home.”

Meredith was crying now.

“We never slept another night in that place. Mom moved us in with a guy from one of her jobs. Samson offered, and she said yes. I figured out pretty quickly that he was romantically interested in Mom, but she’d never given him the time of day. I had never known her to date anyone. Jasmine and I were her priority.”

Meredith grabbed a tissue and blew her nose.

“I still don’t know if she felt forced or coerced, or if she developed feelings for him, but she married Samson nine months later. He was okay, except for when he went on a bender. It didn’t happen often, but he was a mean drunk. He liked my mom, and I didn’t think he’d do anything to her. But I could tell he was just waiting for me to be gone. So I went to school and worked and stayed out of the house as much as I could.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Maybe it was worse than I realized. I was a teenage boy. My brain wasn’t fully formed. My heart was broken. I missed Jasmine and the friends I had where we used to live. I don’t know, but I know I wasn’t paying attention.”

He closed his eyes as the scene unfolded before him. Coming home late from an evening shift to a police barricade. The neighbors outside. The look on the officer’s face when he came out to tell him that his mother was dead.

“Samson shot a cop when they tried to intervene. The cop survived. But the other cops returned fire and Samson died. Whenthey got inside, it was too late for my mom. He’d beaten her to death.”

He couldn’t look at Meredith. He could see her in his peripheral vision. Her hands were over her mouth and tears streamed down her cheeks, but if he looked at her, he would fall apart. And he couldn’t do that.

“They put me in foster care, which sounds bad but wasn’t. The family they put me with was amazing. John and Leslie were Christians. Their own kids were grown and none of them lived close by, so they decided they would foster older teenagers. I was their first placement. They helped me get my grades up, helped me decide about college and the military. Led me to Christ. I owe them so much.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and tried to slow his heart rate. The wounds that he’d thought had scarred over? Turned out they could still bleed if he picked at them enough. He’d expected telling Meredith to be uncomfortable. He hadn’t been prepared for it to hurt so much.

“I was a senior in college and had already signed my life away to the Marine Corps when John showed up at my apartment. I could tell he’d been crying. They’d fostered two more boys after me. One was a sophomore in college. The other was a junior in high school. Leslie had been taking him to an SAT preparedness class and got caught in a high-speed chase. The driver hit her head-on. She died instantly.”

Meredith was crying so hard her entire body shook.

“I’ve been to too many funerals, Meredith. The women I love? They die. And not of old age or natural causes. They die horrifically. And that’s why I can’t fall in love. Ever.”

Meredith didn’t speak for several minutes. Gray had no idea what else there was to say. He’d dropped a lot of heavy information on her, so he sat there as she processed what he’d said.

Then she looked up at him, her eyes red and puffy, mascara tracks on her cheeks, and whispered, “Three women you loved died, Gray. That’s unbelievably awful. And if you told me that was why you’re afraid of love, or had kept yourself from forming close relationships in the years since, I would understand that.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re acting like you’re cursed or something.”

“Maybe I am.”

“That’s a load of horse manure. You’re no more cursed than anyone else is. Youdecidedthat you didn’t want to fall in love. Fine. That’s your prerogative. But if you thought coming in here and telling me your tale of woe would make everything okay between us, then you’ll be leaving here sorely disappointed.”

She wiped her face with a tissue. “Your experiences are heartbreaking, but you’re a grown man. And youknew. You knew how I felt, and instead of coming to me and telling me right up front, or at the very least, explaining it to Cal and having him tell me, you let us carry on for a couple of years. Years, Gray! Wasted years, apparently, when I thought you just needed some time. That was cruel. And the worst part is, it’s all a lie.”

Gray’s pain had morphed into anger. How could she be so insensitive? “Not one word of that was a lie.”

“Oh, I have no doubt that you believe this curse is real and that you’re doing all you can to avoid any more deaths. There’s just one problem.”

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