Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1) Page 8

  Then I got pregnant, and my parents had him arrested for statutory rape, since he was older than me. I was sent off to have a baby I would never know, and by the time I returned my parents had settled in another state.

  I never wrote to James, didn’t try to find out where he was. I left that painful part of my life behind. Or so I thought. But he lingered in my heart, and one day I decided I needed to find him. He had died a long time ago, a bitter drunk. I wondered if I could have made a difference if I’d found him earlier.

  We can’t go back, Mia. We can only go forward. But sometimes the past haunts us. Watching you and Raleigh making a sandcastle together, laughing at the childishness of it, I saw myself and James again. The light in your eyes, the smile of a girl who’s not only in love but loves. And I saw James in Raleigh, a boy who needed a girl to look at him as if she saw only good when the world saw bad.

  I doubt your parents ever told you that Raleigh drove to Atlanta to see you right after the accident. He checked himself out of the hospital, borrowed a car, and drove for hours. Without taking pain pills, because he didn’t want to be impaired. I was there when he dragged himself into the lobby: desperate, his bandages soaked with seeping blood, looking like an extra in a zombie movie.

  What I saw was a man who loved you beyond reason. I tried to talk your father into letting him at least see you through the ICU window, but he refused. Raleigh, overtired, in pain, made quite the scene, and security took him away. I went to the police station and persuaded them to drop the public-nuisance charges. There wasn’t much I could tell him about your condition. It was pretty dicey just then. I promised to keep him apprised, though, and I did. His letters are in this box as well.

  You also may not know that Raleigh saved your life that night. He dived into the flames and pulled you out, burned his hands pretty badly.

  I’m sure you’ve figured out that I left you and Raleigh the house for more than financial reasons. Maybe you’ve moved on. I do know that Raleigh devours every bit of news about you. Every picture. It’s in his eyes—regret, pain, and those feelings I saw that day at the beach. In a way, I’m sure you’ve both moved on. And, in a way, I bet you haven’t.

  So work on my home together, get it ready to sell. Just promise me one thing: Keep an open mind. And an open heart.

  Love,

  Grandma

  Mia let the letter settle on her lap, the words settling much heavier inside. She’d never heard about Grandma’s pregnancy. Maybe her dad didn’t even know that he had a half brother or a half sister somewhere out there. She ached for her grandmother’s losses. Then her mind came around to her closing words.

  Mia thought she’d moved on where Raleigh was concerned. Sure, she reminisced about her summer romance. Her first love. He should be only a fond memory, perhaps a mellow ache.

  Unable to resist, she sifted through the opened envelopes clearly marked from an inmate. Even read a couple, short letters about benign incidents at the prison and the things he missed most. Pizza. Freedom. Swimming in the Gulf. He thanked her for the updates on Mia’s medical progress.

  She shoved everything back into the box and stuck it on the shelf. She didn’t need this when she was about to embark on the next phase of her life. A safe, low-key life.

  And there was nothing safe or low-key about being around Raleigh.

  Chapter 6

  It felt oddly domestic, choosing paint colors at the hardware store with Mia. Raleigh handed her a strip of colors in the yellow family. “How about this one for the living room?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It looks like pee.”

  “Only if it’s someone with a kidney problem.” He pointed to the one below it. “This one?”

  “Like darker pee.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  She met his gaze, and dammit if he didn’t feel it right down to his bones. “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” Impossible to work alongside and not want to—

  “I like this shade,” she said, grabbing another strip altogether. “It’s bright and sunny.”

  “All right.” He chunked his strip back into the slot.

  “You wanted that one, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I don’t care. It’s not like I’m going to live there. I won’t even see it again once it’s sold.”

  Shoot, had that sounded a little sad? Probably. But it wasn’t the house so much as the lady who’d resided there.

  The guy behind the paint department’s counter programmed the codes and readied the cans to be put into the shaker.

  “Let’s get brushes and stuff,” Raleigh said, touching her back as he led her to the aisle, a subconscious gesture that seemed so natural.

  He filled his hands with a couple of those all-in-one roller kits. Brushes, gloves, rags, and tarps joined them in the cart. By the time they returned to the counter, their paint was ready.

  He had the whole weekend open. It had been only a small fib that he was between projects. He’d called his next client and put him off for two weeks, knowing that he could likely lose the job. But the client said that Raleigh was worth the wait.

  Mia charged everything, keeping the receipt to deduct from the account. He pushed the cart out to the parking lot. “Where are you parked?”

  “Over there.” She assessed the stuff piled in the cart. “But it doesn’t have a lot of room in the trunk.”

  “Convertibles usually don’t. We can pile everything into the trunk of my car.” He pushed the cart toward the right. “I could have a party in there.”

  They probably looked like any other couple, preparing for a weekend of house maintenance. Mia walked at his side, her fingers resting lightly on the edge of the cart. As they neared his ‘Cuda, she stopped.

  “I’ve seen this car.” Her narrowed eyes widened. “You drove by Grandma’s house the night she passed, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I figured it might be my last chance to sit out on the deck. Process her being gone. But I saw that you and your parents were there, so obviously I nixed the idea.”

  “It’s funny, but I thought of you when I saw this car.”

  He unlocked the trunk, and they loaded everything in. Their fingers met as they both reached up to push the lid down. Both pulled away as though they’d been burned.

  Shit. Way to act like an awkward teenager.

  “Meet you at the house?” he asked.

  “Sure. I bought some lunchmeat and sodas this morning. I wasn’t sure if you still didn’t drink, so I didn’t get any beer.”

  “Soda’s fine. Water’s better.”

  He was paranoid, but he also knew that alcoholism was genetic. His father had been one, and his father’s father, too, before choking to death on his own vomit. Raleigh wasn’t taking any chances.

  He followed her through town to the beach, grinning as he watched her reach up and secure her floppy hat more than once. The convertible suited her. He wished he were sitting beside her.

  They didn’t talk as they unloaded the trunk and made two trips to bring everything in. It was already warm, but a brisk breeze cooled things down considerably. He unwrapped one of the tarps, and she wordlessly took half and stretched it along the wall they were going to tackle first.

  Raleigh tucked it up against the baseboard with his shoe. “Don’t be surprised if Cody comes by to help. I told him I wouldn’t be able to take him fishing, but I think he was just as excited about helping to paint as he was about catching fish.”

  “He seems like a good kid.”

  Raleigh felt a swell of pride, though he really had nothing to do with that. “Yeah, he is. I’m on him all the time, though, about his grades, keeping his nose clean. Don’t want him to end up like me.”

  “You didn’t end up so bad.”

  He met her gaze, seeing her teasing grin. “I quit high school to work full-time. Got my GED, but still. Didn’t even think about going to college, other than a course on high-performance-car engines. Then there’s the ex-con
thing. I want better for him.”

  “But you knew what you wanted to do. You love working on cars. I remember watching you at the garage. The way you’d be so focused, checking the engine, tweaking, checking again, making it just right. Hearing something I sure couldn’t. And you needed to work full-time; you were living on your own. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Warmth spilled into his heart the same way the sunlight slid between the blinds in the mornings. “You always did see more in me than I did.”

  “And you always saw less than you are.” Was there a tiny bit of admonition in her voice? If so, she breezed right past it by saying, “Besides, that ex-con thing works for the ladies, you said.”

  “Pfft. Not any kind of lady I’d want to be with.” He tore the cellophane from the painter’s tape and handed it to her. “Run this along the baseboard so we don’t drip on it.”

  She unfurled a long stretch of it, knelt down, and started pressing it along the ridges of the baseboard. “Are you dating anyone these days?”

  He made the pfft sound again as he opened another roll and stepped onto the short ladder to tape the ceiling seam. “With my schedule? I barely have time to sleep.”

  Mia murmured a “Hmm,” as she tore off another section of blue tape. Had she been fishing? Or merely curious? The truth was, he didn’t want a long-term relationship. He and Pax sometimes headed up to Panama City Beach and blew off some steam. It never took long before they were chatting up a couple of party girls out for a weekend of drinking and casual sex. He never even promised to stay in touch when they parted, having no desire for anything deep.

  He watched Mia stretch to press the tape into the corner, and now—now—that desire flickered to life. Shit. Her ass wiggled in jean shorts. Her legs seemed even longer than before, but shapelier now. He could see faint scarring along the side of her right leg.

  He forced himself to focus on his own task before she turned and caught him again. “How about you?”

  She popped up, bracing her hands on her thighs. “What, Nancy didn’t tell you all about my flourishing love life?”

  Damn, he actually felt the words like a rock thrown up by the car ahead and chipping his hood. “No, she must have forgotten to mention that.”

  Had that come out as tight as it sounded?

  Mia grabbed for the roll. “It was hard to even keep a straight face when I said ‘flourishing love life.’ ” She pointed to her smile. “See? Did you believe me?”

  Yeah, it obviously had sounded tight. And, obviously, his discomfort showed on his face as well. Great. Because he really had no right to be jealous. “Why not?”

  She gestured toward her face. “Look at me.”

  “I am. You’re beautiful.”

  Now she made that scoffing sound. “Yeah, right.”

  Then he remembered that she’d never believed she was beautiful, even before the burns. When he told her, she’d always kid, “You just want to get in my pants.”

  He had, but that wasn’t why he’d said it. Ever.

  “You are beautiful, Mia. And, no, it’s not because I want to get in your pants.” He smiled, hoping she remembered it. Because otherwise he’d sound like a dipshit.

  Her smile said she did. “You only see me with my makeup on. It’s the kind actors wear, heavy and thick.”

  “Let me see you without it, then.”

  She shook her head so hard that her hair broke free of the clip. She dropped the roll and fixed it, though he wished she would let it stay loose. He’d loved her hair, silky and thick, and he would love it even more now that it was long enough to wind around his fingers as he—

  Stop that.

  He set his roll down. “Tell me what happened after the crash. I never knew exactly what you went through.”

  “Why? So you can beat yourself up with it?”

  He had to think about that. “Maybe that’s part of it. But it’s more—”

  “Curiosity?”

  “Yeah, but not in a morbid way. I just need to know. But only if it’s not too painful.”

  “Like you telling me about the crash?”

  “Yeah. I guess it’s not fair for me to ask.”

  She settled back on her heels. “I was in a coma for a week. The next few weeks were hazy. They treated me for the burns, scraping off the dead skin cells, treating the new skin.”

  He searched the right side of her body. “Where were you burned? How badly?”

  She hovered her open hand down the side of her face, her arm, and waved it over her waist, hip, and thigh. “I had second- and third-degree burns on twenty percent of my body. I was in the Atlanta burn hospital for a month, then they transported me home to Minneapolis to continue treatment. I had several surgeries over the next year—skin grafting, physical therapy. And counseling. I started getting tutoring for my senior year of school, desperate for something to focus on besides the next procedure.”

  He couldn’t imagine her daily life during those months. The pain she’d gone through. It twisted in his gut, tore at his heart. Nancy hadn’t gone into a lot of detail about that time, patting his hand and telling him that she’d survive because she was a strong girl. But he had done online research and knew the grueling process burn victims endured.

  “Were you not able to return to school?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t ready to face the kids who knew me as I looked before. The thing was, I didn’t know a lot of people anyway. I missed a bunch of school during my cancer treatments. When it came back the second time, they decided it would be best to have me homeschooled until I was clear. I had a stubborn cancer; it took a while. I’d only just returned to school the year before. I never really fit in, you know. The kids saw me as ‘that poor girl who has cancer,’ and I sort of withdrew, because, in reality, I was the poor girl whose cancer could come back again. There weren’t the books and TV shows about kids with cancer back then. It scared people, like maybe it was contagious.”

  “I screwed up your senior year.”

  “You didn’t. That asshole did. Raleigh, you need to make that distinction. I watched you race many times. You were careful. And an excellent driver.”

  He blinked at her curse word. He’d never heard her use language like that. “I was proud of you, walking across the stage.”

  “I wanted the symbolism of having made it.”

  “Then you went to college.”

  “University of Minnesota. They have a mix of online and actual classes, so it was a good way to step out into the world a little at a time.”

  “You’re a nurse now. Is that because of your experience in the hospital?”

  “Yes. I had some amazing nurses who made the ordeal so much better. I feel like I was spared twice for a reason, and maybe that reason is to help others who are going through what I did. I’ve been working with burn victims at a hospital in Minnesota since graduating last year.” She gave him a dismissive wave. “But you knew that. And probably about my new job, too.”

  “At Hennepin County Medical Center, specializing in pediatric burn care.”

  She emitted a soft sigh. “Yep, you know about me.”

  “I liked hearing about your life.” He started to tape again. “You must have dated. A little, at least. Don’t feel weird about telling me. I’d like to know that I didn’t totally ruin your life.” He didn’t want her to have dated, either, which he knew was psychotic. Unfair, at the very least. “I mean that Cassidy didn’t ruin your life,” he added when she frowned at him.

  “I joined a support group for disfigured people where I met a guy who’d been burned in the service.”

  I met a guy…it sounded serious. Was she still seeing him? Was he, even now, back in Minnesota waiting for her? Did they talk every evening, conversations that went late into the night?

  She tossed the tape onto the tarp-covered couch and moved closer. Looked up at him, two steps up. “It was different than with us. We were, like…” She shook her hands and shot them up into the air like fireworks.
“Madly crazy. Like love was our drug, and we were high all the time. With Stewart, well, I doubt he’d check himself out of the hospital and drive, bleeding and in pain, for hours to see me. I doubt he’d cause a ruckus in a hospital lobby.”

  The words registered one by one, along with the soft way she’d said them. “Oh. That.” He came down the steps to her level, not wanting to tower over her.

  “Oh, that,” she mimicked. “Like it was nothing.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, it was something, all right. I think I went a little insane. Eight hours in the car, stopping to sleep when I couldn’t take the pain anymore, then pushing myself, scared to death I’d get there and find out…no, I couldn’t think about that. I just needed to see you, talk to you, even if you couldn’t talk back.” He dropped his hand, fighting the impulse to take hers. “When your father refused, I tried to find you myself. It didn’t go well.”

  “I imagine you were a little insane. From the pain, no doubt.”

  “Yeah. The pain.” But not just the physical pain. “It wasn’t one of my best ideas, but I needed to know you were all right. No one was telling me anything.” He’d been scared, desperate.

  Maybe she saw it in his eyes, because she said, “I’m sorry. I’m sure my parents weren’t helpful.”

  “I won’t repeat how unhelpful they were. But I didn’t blame them. They were angry and scared, just like I was. How did you find out?”

  “Grandma left me a letter. I found it a couple of nights ago.”

  “What else did she say?”

  She shrugged. “Just…stuff. About how you wrote to each other when you were in prison. Her life.”

  He could tell there was more, but he wasn’t going to push her on it. None of his business. Neither was her relationship with this Stewart, but he needed to know more. If she was committed to some guy, especially a military guy, that would make it easier for him to stand back. “So, you and Stewart helped each other.” He could well imagine just how they’d helped each other.