Falling (Fading Series) (49 page)

A couple hours pass, and Max leaves us when the band takes a break. I catch Candace standing a few feet away from me, leaning over the bar, whispering something to Mel and making her laugh. She looks incredible in her dark jeans, fitted grey v-neck sweater, and her hair pulled up on top of her head from the heat of all the people in here tonight. She’s simple and stunning. She doesn’t even have to try, she just is. When she turns and catches me ogling her, she shoots me a smile before walking over to me and into my arms.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Staring,” I give her blatantly as I lower my lips to hers.

She smiles up at me, and the band returns to the stage, playing their next set. It’s loud when I tell her, “Hey, I need to run up to my office to grab some papers for Mel before I forget. Do you want to stay down here?”

“I’ll go with you,” she shouts over the music.

Max hasn’t come back, so I grip her hand and pull her in close as I start pushing us through the crowd. She clings tightly to me as we bump shoulders with nearly everyone we pass, and I know she must be freaking out with the contact. I pull her a little when I feel her stumble, but then her body goes rigid and she starts shuffling back against my hold.

“What are you doing?” I holler over the crowd.

Her eyes are focused on something, but I can’t figure out what it is in this chaos. She tugs against my arm, and when I turn, she falls out of my hold and onto the floor. Terror streaks across her face, and she panics, stumbling back on her hands. I grab her, and when she makes it to her feet, she turns and starts to bolt. Quickly, I link my arm around her waist from behind, leaning over her shoulder, shouting, “Babe, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Jack!” she yells in a panic, trying to pry my hands off of her to get away.

“Who?”

“Get me out of here!” she shrieks, thrashing to get out of my hold. “I can’t breathe! Get me out of here!”

I don’t even question her; I tuck her under my arm and rush her, as fast as I can, to the door. Spotting Jase through the mass of people, I call out to him, “Jase!” but I don’t wait to see if he heard me or not because all I’m focused on is getting Candace out. She has her hands clutched to my arms that are holding on to her.

Making it past the door and outside, she’s shaken and barely breathing when she breaks away from me and runs to my jeep.

“Babe, what the fuck happened in there?” I ask, when we get to my car, her whole body shaking. “Who the fuck did you see?”

She falls with her back against the side of the car and grabs on to my shirt as she’s crying, gasping for a decent intake of air.

“Jack is in there. We have to leave.”

“Who’s Jack?”

“Him! Jack is . . .” Her cries are strained when I see Jase approach, asking in shock, “Candace, what happened?”

“Jack’s inside.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Who the fuck is Jack?!” I scream, confused as fuck with what’s playing out in front of me.

“The guy that attacked her,” Jase tells me.

Everything stops.

Grabbing on to Candace’s shoulders, I demand, “Get in the car. Now.” I pull my keys out of my pocket and hand them to Jase, yelling at him, “Get her in the fucking car!”

Everything tunnels as I turn from everything good in my life and walk away.

One second. That’s all it took.

Suspended in a false reality where actions and consequences no longer exist. Where rage boils so deep inside your veins that you’d do almost anything to drain them. I’d bleed it all out for her.

Chaos. I’m in it when I slam through the doors and bark out, demanding only the way a feral animal would, “Where’s Jack?!”

When the guy to my left points him out, I come unleashed.

Without a conscious thought, I grab ahold of the hair on the side of his head and drive him with unrelenting force as I smash his face into the brick wall, blood splattering everywhere. The screams around me are nothing but hollow echoes as I keep my hand fisted in his hair and with one fluid movement, jerk him back and throw him to the floor, hearing the crack of wood as his head clips the edge of the table on his way down.

I watch his eyes roll back with heavy lids as I slam my fist into his face. Over and over. Blow after blow. I’m ravaged with hate, feeding this guy his own blood as I knock another punch into the side of his jaw, giving him only a small piece of what he gave my girl. I’m blinded by the rage that pounds in my chest. I’m gonna fuckin’ kill this piece of shit as I ram my fist into him until I’m suddenly pulled back.

I can’t feel anything besides the strain in my muscles, tense with fire.

“Breathe, man!” I hear Max yelling in my ear from behind me. His large hands are clamped to my arms, pinning them to my sides as I try to jerk out of his grasp. When I peel my eyes off of the sorry fucker lying there, spewing blood, I see Mark in front of me, hands against my chest, holding me back. Everything moves in slow motion around me when suddenly the noises start to filter in clearly. No more static. Everything in full force around me.

“Get the fuck off of me,” I seethe at Max.

“What the hell is going on?”

Yanking myself out of his grip, I turn and lean into his ear, forcing out the words, “He raped Candace.”

His head snaps up as he looks at me, and I see the fury in his eyes grow.

“Get the fuck outta here, man,” he tells me in a low growl.

Looking down, the guy is starting to come to, when I say, “No way, man.” I’m not even close to being finished with him. “This guy’s dead,” I spit out, and before I can propel myself on him again, Max pulls me back, and says, “You left her outside. Go!”

“Dude, she’s outside, hysterical!” Mark shouts.

That’s all he needed to say to grab me. To suck me out of this tunnel.

Looking at Max straight on, I give him my hard words, “Finish him off, and throw this piece of shit out by that dumpster.” I feel my tears well up as he nods at me. “I’m not fuckin’ kidding, man!”

“I hear you, boss,” he says when I turn to Jack, draw my foot back, and kick the living shit out of him, cramming my boot into his balls. The pained shriek that rips through his throat is the last sound I hear as I storm out, fists still clenched when I spot my girl sobbing in the front seat of my car.

“Keys,” I quietly demand as I pass Jase.

Hopping into the car, I keep my eyes to the front. I’m still fuming, and my racing heart is making it hard to take in a solid breath. I need to get the hell out of here before the cops show up, but all I want to do is go back and destroy every little piece of that sack of shit.

I know I’m scaring Candace; I know how sensitive she is, but I also know that if I open my mouth right now, I’ll probably really upset her. So I stay quiet and focus on bringing my heart rate down and calming myself. I don’t even realize how firm my grip is on the steering wheel until I feel the blood from my knuckles running down the back of my hand.

By the time I pull up to the loft, my breathing has slowed, and I’m in a daze with all that just happened. Everything that I never wanted to do in front of her, I just did. And without a single second thought. Completely shut down, letting my anger get the best of me. I wouldn’t have been able to control it even if I wanted to. And the sick thing is, I’m still not satisfied.

Parking the car, I get out and walk around to her door. When I open it, I see her reddened face, soaked with tears. I grab on to her hips and turn her towards me as I drop my head onto her lap and cry. It hurts too much to keep it in, so I let it out. I feel her body as she leans down and drapes it over mine.

I hate every piece of me that I got from him. Pounding my fists into someone else to try and make myself feel better when all I feel is worse. It’s as if I could stand in front of a mirror, and the reflection I’d see would be that of my father.

Candace holds on to me, hands threaded in my hair, but not even her touch can take this misery away. Knowing that I can’t escape what’s in my blood. I hate that I scared her, but I don’t hate what I did to that guy. I’d do it again, and worse. I just hate that this asshole has infected what Candace and I have. That he holds this power over both of us and has the ability to stir up so much pain.

When her grip loosens on me, I lift my head up, and I can see the torment in her eyes as she wipes the tears from my face. There’s blood on her fingers as I reach for her hand to hold, and I know it has to be Jack’s, so I walk her inside and straight to the bathroom. As she cleans her hands in the sink, I hop into the shower and watch the muddled, red water running off of me, taking his blood down the drain.

I can hear Candace crying, and my heart just crumbles to have her so upset. I’m terrified to see what this has done to her. She’s always been nervous of crowds because she’s always feared running into him. Now that it’s happened, I’m worried she’s going to shut down. Worried about what this has stirred up and awakened inside of her.

I quickly finish up, throwing on a pair of boxers, and slide into bed with her where she’s curled up, crying into her pillow. I scoop her in my arms, and it isn’t but seconds before I feel her tears running down my chest. Sliding us down in the bed and under the covers, I hold her close, and her loud cries begin to soften.

She draws her head back and then presses her lips to mine, but my stomach is in knots so it’s hard for me to do much of anything aside from keeping myself still.

“Make love to me,” she whispers before covering my lips with hers again.

I can’t do this. Not now.

“Baby, you’re crying.”

“I don’t care,” she says when she tugs me in and starts kissing my neck, but I don’t want to do this. It feels wrong, and she’s so upset. Pulling back to look at me, tears still spilling out, she says, “Kiss me.”

“Candace, you’re upset.”

“I need to be close to you right now. I want to get him out of my head, and you’re the only one who can do that for me.”

I roll on top of her, hating what I’m about to do because it feels so wrong when she’s hurting so bad. “Are you sure, babe?”

“Yes.”

The thought of making love to her in the shadow of him makes me sick, but if this is what she needs, I won’t deny her. As soon as I slip my hand under her top and take her breast in my hand, she starts pulling my boxers down. Rushing.

“Candace,” I plead, wanting her to slow down.

“Please, Ryan.”

Hearing her desperate voice, I take off my boxers and then sit back as I remove her shorts. She quickly strips her top off and pulls me down to her, urging me, so I go ahead and slide inside of her. Nothing about this feels right. With her eyes closed, she grabs my hips, wanting me to move faster, so I do. As she clings to me, and I give her a part of me that I never wanted to experience with her. She won’t look at me, and I don’t feel like I could even ask that of her. Holding on to my hips, she encourages me to thrust myself inside of her. I never wanted it to be this way with us. So disconnected and too fast.

I watch as she cries. She’s cried while we’ve made love in the past but for completely different reasons. It kills me to know that it isn’t me behind her closed eyes; it’s chaos mixed with me. It’s
him
, it’s that night, it’s this night, it’s everything I never wanted to bring into our bed.

Moving at the speed we are, it doesn’t take long for both of us to come, and when I roll off of her, I pull her close to me and cling to her, hating what we just did. My chest is heavy, and my throat is achingly tight. I reach down and find her hand, locking my fingers with hers.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers on a broken voice. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

And even though I never want to do that again, I would if it was really what she needed, so I tell her, “Don’t be. You take whatever you need from me,” because I’d give it all no matter how much it hurt me just to take away an ounce of her pain.

Waking in the middle of the night, I open my eyes to see light filtering from underneath the bathroom door. Candace isn’t in bed with me, and when I walk over to the closed door, I can hear her soft cries on the other side. Slowly, I open the door to find her sitting on the edge of the tub with her head in her hands.