Just Fall (The Fall Series) Read Free Page A

so much
to us if you could come.”
    Fuck!
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
    Remember
when I said my instincts told me to answer the phone? Until now I’d considered
them finely tuned, sharpened even, from my experience at the poker table, but
in this case they’d failed me miserably. I mean The Grandview Inn? Really? That
was the last place on earth I wanted to go. Remember my cardinal rule? Yeah,
well that’s where it all began.
      How
can I get out of this? Think, think…
    “Listen,
Aunt Mary, as much as I’d like to…” That was as far as I got. The woman had a
way with words, and I had a hard time saying no to her. By the end of the
conversation it was settled. I was going to Michigan.
    As
I stood there naked, the phone still in my hand, I heard noises coming from my
bedroom. I should be in the middle of that right now. Before that phone
call I would’ve been, before my mind went back to The Grand and all the
memories of her started flooding my brain.
    She
was the first girl I ever loved. Hell, she was the only girl I ever loved. I
could still picture her bright hazel eyes with ribbons of orange scattered
through them. I’ve never seen eyes like hers before. They would glare at me
with sexy determination over something I said or did, and sometimes I would do
things on purpose just to see her look at me that way. She could always see
right through me. She was beautiful, smart, funny and incredibly complicated. Wonder
what she’s like now?
    I
was eighteen the last time I saw her. If she only knew how she ruled my world
back then, how many nights I spent lying awake thinking about her, or how many
times I challenged her just to see her fiery spirit come to life. Not to
mention how many hours I spent with dirty magazines trying to relieve my pent
up and painfully unfulfilled desire for her.
    But
like I said, I was only eighteen. I didn’t know how to deal with what she did
to me. So instead I provoked her, teased her and tormented her until she pretty
much hated my guts. It was my defense mechanism, my survival instinct I guess
you could say. Not the best strategy I’ll admit, but the only one I could think
of at the time.
    Sometimes
it was worth it. I mean, seeing her so frustrated, so confident. Fuck! It was a
turn-on. She would get this look on her face, and I didn’t know whether she
wanted to punch me or rip my clothes off and fulfill all my secret fantasies,
and I was willing to take either. Anything to put me out of my misery. I’ve
never met another woman like her. She stood up to me, challenged me right back,
and sometimes she won. Other times I let her win.
    Like
the time I bet I could swim to shore faster than her. We dove off the boat at
the same time, and when I surfaced her bikini top was floating on the water.
She was so determined to beat me she didn’t even notice she’d lost it.
    That’s
when I got the brilliant idea to let her get ahead. I’ll never forget the sight
of her standing on the beach with her hands on her hips waiting for me. Her
chest was heaving with every breath. Strands of her long blonde hair stuck to
her face and dripped down her tan body. Her nipples were fully extended from
the cold water and adrenaline. She had me so worked up I had to stay in the
water for an hour waiting for my hard-on to go down.
    Seven
years later the thought of her had the same effect on me, but only now it was
mixed with regret. Everything changed that summer her mom got sick, and I
decided I would never see her again. Maybe I was a coward, or I was just too
young and immature to realize what she meant to me, but knowing that her mom was
dying, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save her from the pain,
was more than I could take. So instead of facing her, I didn’t go to Michigan.
In fact, I never went back, and I convinced myself she was better off without
me.
    The
regret still gets to me from time to time, but until now I’d managed to block
it out, justify it even, and my lifestyle