Page 52 of Don't Fall

Silence sets in for a brief moment of peace before the next question hounds me, begging to be verbalized.

“So, am I like a rebound thing? Is that what the whole nothing more than sex thing is about? Because you know it’s not real anyway?”

His arm wraps around me loosely, his fingers lazily tracing up and down my spine. “You’re not a rebound.”

“How do you know? I mean, it seems logical. Everyone does the rebound thing even though no one ever recognizes it for what it is while it’s happening,” I reason. I kind of want to be his rebound, if only so that I can label this thing and understand it better. And, naturally, feel as though I have some sort of control over all of it.

“I already did the rebound thing. That’s how I know.”

I lift my head to look at him. “You did? When?” Jules flashes in my mind for one horrific second, then I watch him grin, his eyes still closed like he’s hardly bothered by any of this.

“Right after the whole wedding fell apart. Our wedding planner, Jaelynn, and I were spending all this time together, canceling everything and trying to salvage whatever finances we could. It just kind of happened.”

It takes a second for me to fully understand what he’s saying. “You dated your wedding planner?”

He chuckles. “I know. It sounds bad. But she was like my one ally when everything was falling apart all around me. For a split second there, I think we both believed it was fate or something.” He shakes his head, eyes squinting open to catch my gaze. “Like you said, no one ever knows they’re doing the rebound thing while they’re doing it.”

“Huh.”

The hand traveling up and down my back catches a strand of hair and tugs it. “What? More questions?”

I shake my head. “Nope.” At least none I have the balls to ask anymore.

“You sure?”

My fingers trace the outline of a mermaid displayed in full color on his lower arm and the want to know outweighs my reasons not to. “Your tattoos. You have all this amazing art all over your body. It’s stunning and unique and so much of it is so clearly a part of you, but then you wear the most boring clothes known to man and cover them all up. What’s up with that?”

He shifts around under me and I get the sense I’ve made him uncomfortable. “Are we back on the khakis you don’t like?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be against burning those, but you seem to like them so far be it from me to try and talk you out of wearing them.”

Lane’s chest steadies beneath mine again and his breathing settles into a calm rhythm as he contemplates my question. “I started getting them when I was seventeen, because I knew a guy. Of course, that meant keeping them hidden from my parents was a given. Even after I was of age, it was easier to just pretend I didn’t have any. Wasn’t until I was twenty and had the first full sleeve done that they ever saw me in a short sleeve shirt and realized what I’d been doing to myself.”

“Seriously? They never saw you in short sleeves until the whole arm was covered?”

He shrugs. “I was away at college. They hardly ever saw me anyway, so it was easier for them to miss than you might imagine.”

“So then what? They freaked out?”

He laughs, but it’s resentful. “Um, sure. We could say they freaked out. It was kind of a shit storm, and the tattoos were only the beginning. Turns out they pretty much hated everything I was about. My father couldn’t stop telling me how disappointed he was in the man I was becoming. How I was his only son, and how I better step up and make the right choices, because I’m the legacy he leaves behind and as it stood, he’d rather have told people I died, than claim me as his own.”

“Holy shit,” I mutter. “I thought I had bad parents.”

His arm curls around me again, holding me close. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not even a little bit.” I lift my head, chin propped on his chest so I can see him. “So, did you?”

“What?”

“Make the right choices?”

He squints, staring off across the room, “For a while. In the end what’s right for him, might never be what’s right for me. And I haven’t figured out yet how to make that work us.”

I almost press the issue, follow my desire to dig deeper into the past he’s so set on ignoring. Thankfully, there’s a loud knock before I can open my mouth again and Lane scrambles off the sofa to pull on a pair pants and get the door. Saved by the Chinese Takeout Guy.

Lane

When I notice Tessa get up and leave the room to go put clothes on, I’m almost sorry I told her eating together was a roommate thing. Then, when she comes strolling back out of her room, hair tied loosely in a messy braid over her shoulder, a worn out, nearly see-through white tee-shirt casually hugging her curves until they meet the waistband of her leggings, I’m not so sorry anymore.

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