A Safe Place To Fall (The Fall Book 1) (20 page)

“
No,” Tracie cried as she
pulled away from Lana. “He's got issues, but there's no reason
to kill him. I broke up with him.”

“
I can think of a couple of reasons
to kill him,” Drew countered, leaning against the closed door.
“I haven't forgotten that he cornered Lana at the coffee shop.”

Oh crap.

Lana had assumed Chris had kept his
promise about not saying anything to Drew about that. Of course he
would have told Drew, they were roommates.

Lana got up and moved to where Drew was
standing. She had to calm him down or, there was no doubt, he would
go after the other guy.

“
Babe, he didn't do anything to
me,” she promised him. “Tracie's right. You can't go
and kill him just because he tried something he read in a magazine.”

Drew scowled.

Lana stood on her tiptoes and kissed the
fierceness off of his lips. “Besides, he's a blip on our
radar.”

He rested his hands on each side of her
hips. “Doesn't mean I like not doing anything about him.”

“
I know.”

Truthfully, Devin needed kicked straight
to hell. The fact that he had hurt her friend, even if not meaning
to, had Lana seeing red. Killing him, no matter how tempting, was
not the answer.

“
I shouldn't have come here,”
Tracie said.

Lana turned to face her friend, who was
wiping tears from her eyes. “I'm glad you came here. Stay for
dinner. I made spaghetti and who knows when Chris will get in
if
he comes home tonight.”

Chris had been spending more time out of
the house these days. Lana had her suspicions that he was with
Tammy. Drew refused to even consider his roommate could be spending
that much time with his sister. As far as he was concerned his
friend was out having one nightstands with different women every
night.

“
Are you sure I'm not interrupting
anything?” Tracie asked nervously looking from Lana to Drew and
back again.

“
Well...” Drew began.

Lana elbowed him in the rib to shut him
up. “No, you're not interrupting anything. I made more than
enough.”

***********************

Drew kept his phone hidden under the
kitchen table as he sent secret messages to his sister. Tammy was
helping him plan a secret birthday party for Lana; things had to be
perfect for his girl. With everything going on he was willing to bet
she thought he would forget about her birthday.

Tammy:
I
got the location for all day next Saturday. :)

He looked over at his girl, who was
playing with the food on her plate as she talked to Tracie about the
girl's ill-fated relationship with Devin. Neither girl had really
eaten anything.

Drew:
Great!
She has no clue.

The next text took him by complete
surprise, it also had him a little bit more than worried. He
wondered if his sister had completely lost her mind.

Tammy:
I put Chris
in charge of the decorations.

Drew's grip on his cell phone tightened.
Putting Chris in charge of decorations could only end badly. The guy
was a perverted playboy.

He sent his roommate a quick text.

Drew:
Just
remember this is not a bachelor party!

The reply was almost instantaneous.

Chris:
Dude, don't
worry! I got this!

Chris had it covered? Yeah, right! Drew
had a feeling he was going to regret asking his sister for help with
this party. What was she doing enlisting Chris in the party planning
process anyway? Drew couldn't think about that at the moment though.
He only had a week to pull off the best surprise party for his girl.

So far, Tammy had been able to secure the
back room of a club that his band often played at. It hadn't been
very hard; Lucas, the owner, owed him for all of the times the band
had agreed to play without payment. The club would also be in charge
of preparing all of Lana's favorite food.

Lana needed to have one perfect night
that was just for her. Every day that went by that the stalker
remained free he felt his girl slipping further into the black hole.
Going out had all but become a thing of the past. If his band had a
gig, she stayed behind with Chris, or had been at the hospital with
Ricky. Most days she ran straight home after class. She hadn't
returned to work when they had come back from the cabin.

Even the gym had been tainted by the
stalker. The only truly safe haven she had been able to have so far
was this apartment, getting her to leave lately had proven to be
difficult.

“
What
are you doing?” Lana directed at him.

“
Just
some band stuff,” he lied.

It
wasn't wrong to lie to your girlfriend in order to keep a surprise
from her.

“
Tracie's
going to crash on the couch tonight,” she informed him, as she
got up from the table to take her half-empty plate to the sink.

Damn
.

There went all of his naughty plans for
the night. Nothing would be happening with her friend asleep on his
couch. He began to dislike that Devin guy even more.

************************

Chapter
21

“
I
can't believe Drew agreed to this,” Lana said, staring at her
friend.

Tracie shrugged. “Chris is the
bouncer at the club tonight.”

“
I
don't know if this is such a good idea,” she protested.

Chris or no Chris, going to a club seemed
like a bad idea. The police were no closer to discovering who her
stalker was than they'd been weeks ago. Now her friend wanted to
drag her to a club for a girls' night out and Drew supported the
idea?

Nothing
about this plan seems wise
.

Tracie
put her hands on each side of Lana's shoulders. “You need
this. I
need
this.”

Lana eyed the dress Tracie had draped
over the back of the couch. It was only a couple of hours, Chris
would be there and he would die before he let anyone touch her. What
could it hurt?

She sighed. “Fine!”

Her friend squealed and grabbed the
dress. The girl darted of to Drew's bedroom as if the devil were
chasing her. “Makeover time!”

Reluctantly, Lana followed her friend
into the bedroom. It was like dead man walking, put that needle in
her arm because she was pretty sure she wouldn't survive this.

Tracie dumped a bag of makeup onto the
bed and immediately started matching eye-shadow, eyeliner, and lip
gloss to the dress. The girl was in her zone. Even though Lana
hated being a living doll to dress up, she would do this to make her
friend smile. It had been a while since she had seen Tracie act like
her normal self.

“
Sit down,” Tracie demanded,
pointing at the bed. “I'm going to make you look so hot.”

Lana rolled her eyes. She was pretty
sure Drew liked the way she looked without having to go through all
of Tracie's torture. Lana reminded herself that tonight wasn't about
Drew or even herself. Tonight was about her friend. Tracie needed
this night.

Knowing she would do anything at the
moment to keep a smile on her friend's face, Lana sat down on the end
of the bed. It was just a little bit of make-up and a dress. She
could do this!

She held her breath as she saw the eye
pencil coming closer to her eye. This was the worst part. Trying
not to blink, she focused on anything that wasn't sharp and headed
straight for her eye.
Tracie
had better appreciate this!

“
Get that look off your face.”
Tracie laughed causing the pencil to shake. “It's not like
I'm going to stab you.”

If she kept shaking that dang pencil
around it was a very good possibility that she would stab Lana right
in the eye.

“
You never did tell me why you left
last week without saying a word,” Lana said, needing to
distract herself from the dreadful pencil.

Tracie's hand paused and allowed the
pencil to rest on the skin under Lana's eyeball. “I made an
awful mistake. I was just trying to get everything off of my mind,
but I wish I'd chosen someone else.”

Lana pulled her head away before the
pencil could slide right into her eyeball. “What are you
talking about?” At the guilty look on Tracie's face she
narrowed her half made-up eyes. “Or, who are you talking
about?”

The other woman dropped her hand, holding
the eye pencil, to her side. “I slept with Chris. Are you
happy? I don't know why you had to make me say it.”

Lana recalled the noises that had come
from Chris' room that night. Ugh. She had heard him doing her
friend. That just made her skin crawl.

“
Don't judge me,” Tracie
said, going right back to applying the eyeliner. “I needed to
remind myself sex was a good thing.”

She wanted to plug her ears. Why must
her friend be so open about her sex life? The last thing she wanted
to hear was the details of Tracie's experience with a guy she had to
see every day.

Tracie replaced the pencil in her hand
with an eye shadow wand. “Close your eyes.”

Lana closed her eyes and prayed that the
sex talk was over.

“
It was good,” Tracie stated,
brushing the shadow across Lana's right eye, “for me anyway.
He just seemed like he didn't get that much out of it.”

It wasn't over, but at least it was
starting to get a little interesting.

If someone wasn't completely into sex
with someone that normally meant they were into someone else. Could
Chris possibly have someone else on his mind? If that's the case he
needed to pull his head out of his butt and go after what he wanted.

*****************************

The pressure was on. Tracie promised
Drew she would have Lana here by 8:00 P.M. They only had two hours
before Lana would come walking through that door.

Drew stood on a ladder hanging a strand
of white Christmas lights across the ceiling. He was beginning to
think Chris had more help with the decorations than Tammy was willing
to admit. There was no way Chris picked out all of this girly stuff
on his own.

“
Told ya I had this all handled,
dude,” Chris said from a ladder on the other side of the room
where he held his side of the lights. “She is gonna love this
starlight crap.”

He hoped his friend was right. The
closer they got to the time of the party the more nervous Drew
became.

“
Relax,” Tammy demanded from
the center of the room. She was fussing over a candle and flower
center-piece. “She loves you no matter how this party turns
out.”

This wasn't about winning Lana's love.
He had that, or at least it felt as if he had that. The party was
about giving her something she could look back on and smile. She
needed a reason to smile right now.

************************

Lana stepped out of the bathroom feeling
self-conscious. The little black dress fit like a glove. It wasn't
really her style, but Tracie was set on her wearing this precise
dress. At this point, she did not care what she wore; she had bigger
problems to worry about.

All she wanted was to drag Drew out on
this girls' night with her. The only way she would feel safe would
be if he was right there with her. What if her stalker followed her
tonight?

“
Damn, girl,” Tracie said
from her spot on the couch. “I knew you were going to be hot
but damn.”

Lana tugged at the bottom of the dress
trying to cover more leg, all she managed was to show more boob. “I
really don't think I should wear this.”

The other girl looked panicked. “Oh,
this is definitely the dress. You have to wear this dress!”

“
Drew will kill me if I go out in
this dress,” she argued.

Blame it on the boyfriend. Who can
argue with that?

“
Trust
me, Drew would love seeing you in this dress,” her friend
promised.

The fact Tracie thought Drew would be
okay with Lana going out dressed like this was a problem. A very big
problem.

“
That's
it, I'm not going,” Lana stated, turning back to the bathroom
to put her normal clothes on.

“
Wait,”
Tracie hollered coming after her. “You have to go, and you
have to wear that dress.”