Page 2 of Accidentally Falling
“Please?” I ask, leaning my elbows onto the darkly polished wood and pushing my boobs up as far as they’ll go because desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.
“Your tits are great, but the answer is still no.”
Huffing, I sit back, and I swear his lips twitch in amusement. “So, then what do you want from me?”
“Waitin’ for you to tell me what’s wrong.”
We stare at each other, my heart racing at how ridiculous the whole thing is. “My parents went on a date tonight,” I blurt out, the words breaking me open like water through a dam.
And I can’t stop it, every fear and insecurity pouring out of me as my eyes cloud with tears. The room goes dark as sobs rack my body, the sound of Jude’s footsteps heavy as he rounds the bar.
As he comes closer.
A million thoughts race through my mind until he’s close enough to touch.
That wild burst of anticipation of what’s going to happen next.
One breath.
Two.
And then his arms are wrapping around me, pulling me up from the stool, my legs barely long enough to hook my ankles together at his back. “Shh, I’ve got you,” he murmurs, his breath hot on my skin.
I gasp, sucking in a lungful of air…a lungful ofhim.“I’m sorry, I just needed?—”
Gripping my hair, he tilts my head back, his eyes wild and intense in the dark. “You don’t need whiskey, Arden…you needme.”
1
ARDEN
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a little girl, I would look up at the clouds and give the shapes life—a penguin going to a gala or a knight racing across the sky to rescue a damsel in distress.
Stacks of notebooks filled my room, the need to create and explore the only thing keeping me grounded in this world. My mom was always supportive, encouraging me to chase my dreams, to learn the how and why and all the things in between.
In no time at all, that love of writing blossomed into somethingmore. I soared with every creative writing assignment, cherishing the freedom to go beyond the usual constraints.
And then I took a journalism class in high school, fell head over heels for the questions and the desire to uncover all the intricacies of the story, and never looked back.
On my love of writing at least.
My personal history was another story entirely.
There was no shortage of love in my house growing up. My mother was, and still is, my hero and my biggest fan. She never made me feel like my father’s absence had any bearing on thesuccess or happiness of our lives—and for the most part she was right.
I’d never met him. Hell, she never even spoke about him until the eve of my twentieth birthday when I’d finally been brave enough to ask the question.
It started with a name.
Evan Mills.
I’d imagined something grander for the man who never even tried to reach his daughter, but my mother wasn’t done.
She talked of a whirlwind romance with a man who had just come out of a loveless relationship, and who had swept her off her feet. My mother and Evan had been in love, yet when his ex-girlfriend told him she was pregnant,with my half sister,he tucked tail and ran back to her.
My mother had been devastated, a fairytale turned into a nightmare.
But a few weeks later, when she realized she was pregnant with me, she went to see Evan, to tell him the news, but awomananswered the door. She’d been cruel and my mother didn’t stick around, vowing to protect me from whatever vile thing lurked behind those walls.
