Everly After (14 page)

He spins me so we face one another as the beat climbs and climbs. The synth winds around me until I feel like I’m flying. I twist against his body as he dances with me. Maybe I’m moving too fast, but it seems like he’s trying to catch up. His T-shirt is soaked, and he’s staring at me, his blue eyes intense. I close mine and melt into his hands as they run over my bare back and tangle in my hair.

I get lost in us, the possibility of us. I don’t realize he’s righted me. It’s hard to tell upside down and right side up and in between right now.

His lips press against my ear, and at first I only feel his hot breath there. Then his lips are on my cheek. I turn my head and kiss him because I’m greedy. I want to be pulled into the black hole that’s Beckett Reid and his ever-present calm. His mouth is hungry like the other day. His tongue flicks against mine as I sigh. It’s all lost in the drumming beat of the savage bass. It’s drumming me alive—so fucking alive as I kiss Beckett in the middle of the blinding lights and alternating blackness. I think I have a leg curled around him as his hand slides up my back. I swear he’s saying something, but I only kiss him back.

He’s nothing like Hudson. I only feel numb with that asshole. I thought he made me feel, but my body against Beckett’s, his lips caressing mine are what make me feel. I feel fucking everything, and I want more.

I try to say something, but my words are stubborn, too slow to get out of my mouth as my mind races ahead.

“Come home with me,” he yells against my ear.

I reach underneath his T-shirt and rake my fingers over his skin, trying to get closer. I feel myself climb higher, if that’s even possible, and the sensations swell inside me until I want throw my head back and scream into a room that will swallow me up.

“Everly,” he yells again.

I open my eyes, and he’s blurry under the lights flashing around us. The whole room is ebbing—one giant, loud heartbeat. If I leave, I’ll wreck all of this. I don’t want to feel so alone. I don’t want this to end.

I shake my head and pull him closer. At least we have this. If we leave, we might go back to what happened before, and we’ll fall apart. I don’t want us to fall apart.

“I have to go,” he yells.

I shake my head. He’s trying to pull me off of him, but I’m not sure if I’m moving. I can’t feel much except the empty thrumming in my body and his heat against my skin.

“I can’t,” he mouths, shaking his head.

I blink, unsure of what he can’t do. He can’t be here? He can’t be here with me? He can’t be with me?

When I blink again, he’s lost in the crush and I’m lost in the music. Except it was never the music that made me feel so alive. I close my eyes and sink back into the darkness, hoping that if I keep them shut long enough, I’ll wake up and be someone different.

Beckett

The sun beats down, baking me alive in my flak jacket. Gunshots and shouting echo around me, and my ears won’t stop ringing. Dust rains down in the aftermath of the blast, and I smell seared flesh. I try to move, but everything feels so heavy, crushing me down to the ground.

I turn my head and see lifeless eyes staring back. I reach out my hand, but it’s too late. A foot kicks me and then the butt of a gun strikes my back. I reach out for the solider in front of me because I don’t want to believe he’s dead. I know he is, but I can’t…

Hands flip me over, and a shadow yells at me in Arabic. I pretend not to understand. I think I motion to my reporter sleeve, but that doesn’t matter. I’m tied up, duct tape is stretched over my eyes and mouth, and then I’m shoved into the back of a truck.

I startle awake in the middle of the living room with one of my Chucks still on and a brown paper bag stuck to the side of my sweaty face. I prop myself up on my elbows as my stomach rolls and almost revolts.

Fuck me.

“Didn’t make it to your bed, tosser?” Ollie asks with a laugh from above. If I wasn’t lying on my stomach, I’d kick him. Instead, I lower my head back onto the floor and close my eyes. A little more sleep and I’ll be fine. I keep telling myself that, and one day, it might be true.

“You were screaming again.” He shoves his boot into my ribs, and I swear to God I’m going to rip his head off when I finally stand. “How much longer are we staying in Paris?” I roll over and stare up at the ceiling as Ollie leans over me. “I mean, it’s been fun hanging around, but…” I raise my eyebrows. It’s as though he wants me to kick the shit of him. He might be a Royal Marine, but I’m in no mood to be crossed. “Well, besides the funeral mess.”

“Yes,” I say bitterly, “the whole funeral mess.”

“Fucking hell, Beckett. I didn’t mean it like that. You know I miss her, too.” He bends down, rips the paper bag out from beneath my head, crumples it up, and tosses it at my face. “I’m only on leave for a few more weeks. I should go to London, see my mum and sis.”

I don’t like to think of what Ollie so casually calls “the funeral mess.” It’s one thing to know your aunt’s dying of cancer, but another altogether when you finally lose her and are left alone in the world. And to find this out when you can’t do anything, when you’re helpless and stuck in another country, is extra-shitty. I should have been in Paris taking care of her. I should have been at the hospital with her when things started getting bad, not half way around the world.

I can’t fix that now, though.

If I had my way, I’d be back on assignment, suffering in the fickle weather of Afghanistan or some other hellish spot in the Middle East. I could lose myself in my work, then, like I’ve been losing myself in writing my book. It’s the only way I’ve passed my time in Paris. Other than Everly. I guess I’m losing myself in her now as well. Or was, at least.

I guess I’ll get back to that novel, another fruitless pursuit. Like I’m going to write the next breakout masterpiece. As if I have something important to say to the world.

I stand and push past Ollie, ignoring the smug look on his face that says he knows I’m thinking about Everly. Of course he knows. He’s the one who dragged me out of my room last night and insisted we go out, that the only cure for a broken heart is to get smashed.

I might be an overachiever, but I only managed to check off one of those things last night. For the record, a hangover does nothing for a broken heart. Which is a problem because that means what I feel toward Everly isn’t going to be easily fixed.

I shuffle into the kitchen, blocking out his fucking nagging voice. I don’t care about the chit he picked up last night or what happened to the one he tried to push on me, either. I brace my arms on the counter, faced with a sink full of dirty dishes, defeated. I should probably wash them. I should tidy up my flat. I should do laundry and function like a normal adult. I’ve been on my own long enough to get my shit together and not let things fall apart. I’m better than this.

Ollie strolls in with a glass of Pepto and some aspirin and shoves them at me. “Here.”

I narrow my eyes at the guy who’s been my best mate for years and let him hold onto his supposed cure. It’s a nice effort but not the right fix, either. I just need some grease in my stomach. Maybe some coffee. I turn to the refrigerator and grab eggs and bacon, then fuss with the overpriced coffeemaker Nadine gave me when I returned a few months ago. I think it was a gesture, a way of saying sorry, but coffee won’t make up for what I’ve lost. Just like Pepto won’t fix how I’m feeling now. Just like struggling to tame the story swelling inside me won’t put my life back together.

“At least you didn’t shag her and then find all this out.”

I haven’t found anything out except that she’s involved with a fucking junkie. That she is more than wild, more than a girl who’s set on exploring the world. She’s lost, living off time that will run out soon if she doesn’t wake up and realize what she’s doing. I’ve made plenty of mistakes—fuck, Everly’s probably one of them—but I’ve realized she’s still the girl who’s flirting with pushing off that ledge.

I stop from smashing the egg over the frying pan. I like my scrambled eggs without eggshells. “Yeah.” I feel like I have to agree with him, even if I don’t. “Why are you here exactly?”

“You don’t need the drama.”

I don’t need a lot of things, including Ollie grilling me on my lack of a love life. He doesn’t have the best track record himself. Namely, a broken engagement that’s still largely unresolved because he’s too much of a chicken shit to win Gemma back.

“I have nowhere else to be.”

I crack an egg, transfixed on the way it sizzles from translucent to white. “Not with the girl you brought back from the bar?”

“Oh, I kicked her out of my place as soon as we were done.”

I crack the second egg and toss the shell into the trash. I scramble them up with the back of a fork. “How hospitable.”

“You know my rule—no breakfast.”

There was only ever one exception to that pigheaded rule. If I was feeling a little more like myself, I would point that out—that he’s wasting time here in Paris when he could be trying to win back the only girl meant for him. But I can’t shake this mood—it’s black and blacker, deep down to the pit of my stomach. I can’t get her out of my mind.

I can’t fucking breathe.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

Ollie rifles through a cabinet and pulls out a half-empty bottle of gin with a greedy smile. “Fuck yes.” He doesn’t bother pouring it into the glass; he just drinks straight from the bottle. “Good hair of the dog,” he says, coughing it down. He holds the bottle out to me. “Forget her, mate. You don’t need someone as broken and crazy as her. You’ve got your own shit to deal with.”

Is Everly broken? Sure, but so am I. We aren’t crazy, no matter what everyone thinks. We’re simply learning to live after losing pieces of ourselves. That’s the thing with getting older—parts of you wear off and sometimes they don’t come back. Sometimes you break into pieces, and everyone around you carries on like they haven’t suffered the same growing pains. But it’s a lie.

Finding Everly made me realize that everyone has their pieces, everyone is trying to pull themselves together and grow, learn how to pretend to be an adult. Some deal with it better than others.

The bacon crisps up in the pan, the edges blackened, and I’m pretty sure I’ve overcooked the eggs to taste worse than plastic. My attempt at coffee backfires when I pour a cup and see the grounds floating at the top. I forgot the stupid filter again.

I shove my plate across the counter toward Ollie, burying my face in my hands. “Have at it.”

His mumbled thanks is lost against my defeated groan as I trudge into my bedroom and throw off my other shoe. It ricochets off the wall and collides with a tower of books. They spill out onto my floor, next to the heaps of clothes that need to be cleaned. Tomorrow. I’ll deal with it all tomorrow.

I flop down onto the bed and bury my head under the pillow, biting back a long string of fucks I want to yell. Tomorrow I have to do something or I might finally have that nervous breakdown everyone is waiting for me to have.

Everly

I spend the majority of the day pacing my apartment, trying to read, trying to smoke, trying to focus on anything other than Hudson and the shitty words he said to me after he came back to his own a day ago. Or maybe three.

Shit, I can’t remember again.

I hear the front door shut from my bedroom.

“Everly?” Beckett calls out.

I take another long drag of my cigarette and nervously tap my mouth with my tomato-red nails. I have to face him sooner or later. I need to end this or let it crush me.

I was getting better before Hudson kissed me at the café. He’s going to kill me if I keep him in my life, even if I don’t mind sometimes. But that’s the part that scares me.

With Hudson, I live like I don’t want tomorrow to come, but there’s still a part of me that’s screaming to go on, begging for me to try. Pleading with me that, if I stay, I can figure myself out and be normal. At least with Beckett, there’s the smallest sliver of me that’s not dark anymore, that believes there can be good in others, that I might stand a chance of winning the battle against myself.

I shut my eyes and try to remember more than the words that have been nagging at my chest.
I can’t
.

I can’t remember a good enough reason for Beckett to leave me alone in that club. I guess we’re even.

It’s been a long string of hours since then, until I sobered up in my bed, sick to my stomach and ready to claw at the walls. Hudson was around because he’s always the wreckage that remains when my life falls apart.

“Everly?”

I hear a thud on my counter, and I wonder what he’s brought me. Food, maybe. I haven’t eaten since… I can’t remember that, either. I’m not sure I’m hungry.

I stand planted in my room, days away in my mind, until he repeats my name yet again, this time from the doorway of my bedroom.

“You should lock your door.”

“I should do a lot of things.” I force a smile and take another drag on my cigarette. “But I thought I had locked it,” I add weakly, pulling myself away from the window to walk past him into the living room. I grind my cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table and glance toward the counter.