Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (61 page)

Bree shakes her head in either disappointment or embarrassment, I can’t be sure which. She looks to Adrienne questioningly.

“Yeah, we’ll take care of him,” Adrienne says, removing the ice pack from her face and placing it on the bar in front of her.

I’m a little concerned about leaving those three alone together after seeing what I just saw between Bree and Adrienne earlier, but I don’t have time to worry about it right now. Parker’s ready to kill and I need to stop him before it’s too late.

Bree

The wooden staircase at the back of the pub leads to an upstairs hallway with two locked doors at the end. The door on the left is the one Isabelle is leading us to. She places a key into the deadbolt and throws the door open.

“Bathroom is over there,” she says, pointing to her left.

I look around the tiny room. There’s a small dresser with a mirror on one wall, a tiny window overlooking the busy city street below, and a double sized bed that actually takes up most of the area of the room. Like Isabelle said, there is a small half bathroom to our left with a toilet and sink. The room is clean and well kept, but the pictures on the wall and blankets on the bed are incredibly dated. This isn’t a room that has been given much thought to over the years, it’s blatantly clear that it’s only used when needed, and it’s not here to impress anyone.

Evan walks over to the bed, or should I say, he stumbles over to the bed. “I just need to lie down for a few minutes,” he says, crawling into it and reaching for one of the pillows. He rolls onto his side, cuddles the pillow to his chest, and closes his eyes.

I notice Adrienne and Isabelle both trying to hide little smiles and so I let a tiny smirk escape my lips as well. He
is
adorable; I’ll give him that. In spite of all the anger I’m feeling toward him right now, seeing him lying in the bed like this makes my heart melt. In this moment, I see how innocent and vulnerable he is, and it makes me realize that it’s me who’s hurting him.

I was wrong in picking him, I know this, and yet I also know that my feelings for him are, in fact, very real. I
do
love him, just not in the same way that he loves me.

“If you need anything I’ll be downstairs until at least four. After that, my apartment is the door across the hall,” Isabelle says.

“Thank you,” I say with a polite smile.

“
Pas de probleme,
” she replies with a little wink before closing the door behind her.

Adrienne flops down onto the bed next to Evan, causing him to open his eyes. “Do you mind?” he grumbles.

“Not at all?” Adrienne replies gleefully. She turns to me, “Bree, do you mind?”

I stifle a laugh and shake my head. She’s terrible.

“Ok, so I’m just going to go ahead and state the obvious here. That girl has been with Parker. Everyone who agrees with me, raise their hand.”

As much as I hate to admit it, I think she might be right; there is more than a simple friendship there. I mean, she keeps this room for him when he’s in town, for crying out loud!

Adrienne throws her hand up in the air as I slowly raise mine. From the corner of my eye, I see Evan’s hand rise as well.

“I knew it!” Adrienne exclaims. “Do you think Skylar can tell?”

“No question,” I reply without a doubt.

“And Bree would know,” Evan slurs. “She’s obsessed with her
girlfriend
, Skylar.

Adrienne slaps him across the leg. “Low blow, Ev,” she says. “That’s your girlfriend you’re talking about,” she reminds him.

I’m not surprised that he needs the reminder after everything we’ve been through. And, to be honest, he’s right about Skylar, I’ve done nothing but obsess over her relationship with Parker since the minute I found out about it. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.

“
Is
she my girlfriend?” he asks sarcastically.

“Evan, we need to talk,” I say, standing awkwardly in front of him.

I watch as he closes his eyes in what appears to be defeat. He shakes his head sadly. “No we don’t.”

“I chose you,” I say desperately.

He shakes his head again. He rolls onto his back but doesn’t open his eyes. I can tell that in spite of his drunken state, there isn’t any part of him that’s not calm right now. All the humor, that he had possessed earlier, has now been replaced by a deep seriousness. His facial features are relaxed and he seems to have made a clear choice. And I’m desperate to ignore that choice, to sway his thoughts back to where I want them to be. With me. With us.

I look to Adrienne helplessly, and I see how sorry she feels for me. She reaches out to my hand and gives it a quick, supportive squeeze before getting up off the bed and walking over to the bedroom door. “You two need to talk and I need a drink. I’ll be back after.”

Evan doesn’t acknowledge her words, but I give her a little smile as she’s walking out the door.

The room stays quiet for a few minutes and I begin to wonder if he’s fallen asleep. I shift my weight from one leg to the other, before taking a seat on the bed next to him. I lie down on my side so that I am facing him and begin to run my hands through his hair gently. His eyes flutter open the instant he feels my hand touch his head.

“Don’t,” he says with pain radiating from his voice. He brushes my hand away from his hair gently.

“Evan,” I say.

He rolls over onto his side, facing me. I can see the drunken stupor in his eyes, but it doesn’t take away from the serious expression on his face. “I’m not right for you,” he says finally.

“But I want you to be.”

“I know you do. That’s why it has to be me to do this,” he says, and even as he’s saying the words, they don’t feel real. This isn’t really happening, this can’t actually be playing out like this after everything we’ve had.

He brushes a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and then lets his fingers linger on my neck for just a moment. “I would love you all of my life if it were right, but I can’t hold you to something like that. It’s selfish, and I don’t want to be selfish anymore.”

“But I want to be with you,” I say, tears beginning to well up in my eyes. “You’d be good to me… and I’d be good to you too. I swear.”

“I know you would be,” he replies, “but this isn’t about that. This is about you and what you need… from me.”

“But I love you. That’s not made up, it’s real. I want to be with you,” I tell him hurriedly, trying to stop what I can tell is coming. He needs to see that what he’s thinking about doing isn’t what’s best for me and it’s not what I want for us! He doesn’t want to do this. I know he doesn’t.

“I know it’s real, that’s what makes this so damn hard. You’re hiding behind it
because
it’s real. And I know all I have to do is just let you and you’ll be mine. But that’s not fair. It’s not fair for you, and it’s not fair for me either.”

“Don’t do this,” I beg. I’m not ready for this.

“Bree,” he says, bringing his hand to my cheek and gently wiping a tear away with his thumb, “you’re gay.”

I suck in a deep breath of air and then after a moment I exhale it. “That doesn’t matter to me,” I say finally. “Love is love. I don’t care what sex you are.” I’m trying to sound convincing and comforting all at the same time, but somehow I don’t think it really comes across that way.

“
I
care,” he says in a shaky voice. “I’ll never be what you need.”

The pain in his voice breaks me. I need to stop it; I need to make that pain go away. So I do the only thing I can think of doing at that moment. I kiss him.

I don’t close my eyes right away so that I can see what the kiss does to him. I watch his eyes squeeze shut as he pushes his lips deeper onto mine, and for a moment I think that maybe he’s changed his mind. He inhales my breath into his mouth, seeming to need it as much as the oxygen in the air around us.

I close my eyes finally, and take in everything else that’s happening. He pushes his body closer to mine, sliding one arm under me and the other over me, in an embrace I’ve become very much accustomed to. And just like our very first kiss, he slides his tongue into my mouth and caresses mine ever so softly.

His mouth tastes like liquor, and I’m very much aware as he’s kissing me, that the taste of liquor on a kiss will forever remind me of this one. He runs his right hand up the curve of my back, then along my left arm, then across my neck until it’s resting on my cheek with his thumb placed just below our kissing lips. I keep kissing him, not wanting us to part, because it’s painfully clear to me that the minute this kiss is over, so are we.

After a few more moments, he eases his lips away from mine. The second he does this, I push in further, hugging myself closer to him. I do anything and everything I can think of, not to allow his lips to part from mine. “Not yet. Please not yet,” I beg, in a whimper.

“I’m really dizzy,” he says, pushing away from me abruptly and rolling onto his back.

I close my eyes and discreetly wipe the tears from my face. “That was goodbye, wasn’t it?”

“You know it was,” he says, and although I can tell that he doesn’t mean for it to come out so hurtful, it does.

I sit up in the bed and plant my feet firmly on the floor. I’m about to go downstairs when Evan jumps up and darts toward the bathroom so quickly that he knocks me aside, and I nearly fall onto the floor. He’s in the bathroom and has the door shut within seconds, leaving me pretty sure of what it is I’m about to hear. I press my hands to my ears at the exact same moment the hacking sounds emerge from the little restroom.

I remove my hands a few moments later but, unfortunately, the sounds are still radiating through the walls. I can’t listen to this, it makes me sick just hearing it. I get up and make my way down the stairs to the bar.

It’s gotten really packed since we’d gone up a little over a half an hour ago. Isabelle is still at the bar but she now has three new bartenders who’ve joined her, and nearly all the tables are filled.

I scan the room for Adrienne, and when I finally spot her at a little table in the corner, drinking a cocktail and scrolling through her phone, I walk over.

“Hey.”

She looks up from her phone and smiles, “Hey, sweetie. How did it go up there?”

I grimace, “It didn’t.”

She frowns, putting her phone down and reaching over to take my hand into hers. “I’m sorry,” she says sincerely. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s puking.”

Adrienne laughs, “That bad, huh?”

I let a small smile creep onto my lips in spite of how sad and drained I’m feeling. I know she can see that I’ve been crying, but she doesn’t let on. I’m grateful for that.

“Have a seat,” she says, gesturing for me to sit across from her. I hesitate for a moment before taking the seat. “Is it weird for you to be stuck here with me?” she asks.

I think over the question and roll it around in my mind for a little bit before finally replying, “I don’t think I’m stuck with you. That’s not the word I would use. But it
is
a bit weird, isn’t it?”

“I’ll tell you, if someone would have told me last week that I’d be at a bar in Madigan City taking care of my ex-boyfriend, with his beautiful current girlfriend, I’d say they were cracked.”

“Ex-girlfriend,” I correct her.

“That’s what I said.”

“No I mean,
I’m
his ex-girlfriend now too.”

Her smile distorts into a frown, “Oh, sweetie, you’re calling it quits? I thought you chose him.”

“He broke it off with me,” I reply, unable to hide my sadness.

She looks up at the ceiling and shakes her head in disbelief. He frustrates her. “He’s just drunk, tomorrow you’ll get to talk it all over again sober, and it’ll be a different story, I’m sure of it.”

I don’t bother telling her that I don’t think she’s right, or that deep down I think maybe it’s better this way. I don’t want her to know how fucked up and selfish I am. She seems nice, and I think she could be a good friend if given the chance, why would I throw that away by revealing something so personal so soon?

We continue to chat for another twenty minutes or so before she takes the last big gulp of whatever orange concoction she’s drinking and looks toward the stairs. “Well, I guess we should go back up there to check on him. He’s kind of a baby when he’s sick.”

Now that’s something I didn’t know. I probably shouldn’t have just left him there all alone for the last half hour. I wish she had said something sooner.

I notice that Evan still hasn’t returned to the bed when we re-enter the room, and that immediately concerns me. “Oh my God,” I say in a gasp, darting toward the bathroom door. “Evan?”

I hear what sounds like a low groan come from underneath the door, which tells me that he’s likely semi passed out on the floor.

I try to turn the knob, but it’s locked. “Evan, can you open the door?”

I hear a bit of rustling around and after about a minute, the door finally swings open and the entire upper half of Evan’s body tumbles out with it. He’s not wearing a shirt anymore, and his hair is wet and all over the place. What the hell did he do while we were gone?

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“I got my shirt dirty,” he replies without lifting his face from the floor.