Fear of Falling (42 page)

“Probably because she took one look at you and your table of bleach blonde cum dumpsters and left,” Dominic nearly growled, taking a step towards me. “I swear to God, if you fucking hurt her, if she shed one fucking tear over you, I will…”

“I didn’t do shit, and you know it,” I interjected before Dom’s mouth started writing checks that his pretty boy ass couldn’t cash. Yeah, he may have been stockier but I was a good two to three inches taller and known for my quick fists. Besides, if anyone was worth fighting like hell for, it was Kami.

Shit.

I should’ve fought for her. I should’ve stayed and made her see that she had nothing to be afraid of. That being with me—loving me—could never hurt her.

SHIT!

I
had
hurt her. Instead of staying by her side, despite the bullshit she spewed to push me away, I got drunk and let her witness a couple of grab-happy broads damn near dry-hump my leg. I had let her down. I had proved to her that men couldn’t be trusted. That
I
couldn’t be trusted. I had to change her mind. I just hoped she’d hear me out long enough to let me do just that.

I wanted to book it to the apartment as soon as we parked, but I needed to be patient long enough to get past the doorman. However, he was nowhere to be found, and a few food delivery guys were waiting to be buzzed up. That should have been a red flag. I should have sensed something wasn’t right, but I was anxious to get upstairs to Kami and plead my case. Anxious to just be in her presence again.

An inexplicable sense of dread twisted my stomach into a giant knot as we approached their door. That should have been the second sign. That should have put me on high alert and made me barge into the apartment, figurative guns blazing. But I chalked it up to alcohol and nerves. I had to make this right. Knowing that I had a small window of opportunity had me worried as hell.

“Well, playboy, it’s your funeral,” Angel sniggered as she placed her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll just come back after Kam is done making earrings out of your nuts. I’m sure she’ll want to go shopping for a matching handbag.”

What happened next was beyond incomprehensible. Not because the scene in the living room was something out of a horror film. Not because there was a man perched over Kami with his dingy pants around his ankles while she lay on the ground, lifeless, in a pool of her own blood. And not because the stench of death instantly permeated our skin and clothing.

It was because I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t describe what I did to that sick fuck that had tortured her. I couldn’t express the feeling of holding her still, limp body in my arms as I cried into her blood-matted hair, apologizing for leaving her. For not saving her.

There was blood on my hands. Blood everywhere, saturated into the cream carpeting and blanketing the side of the leather couch. I looked over at Dom who was just as coated in the red, sticky substance as he spoke to a police officer. I didn’t know why he was speaking to him, his horror-stricken eyes red and puffy. I couldn’t remember.

“She’s fading fast. We have to get her to the hospital.”

“I’m riding with her!” Angel cried, her body shaking with uncontrollable sobs. She was covered in blood too. Her hands, her clothes, her…knees? Like she was kneeling in it. Like she had been on her knees in a pool of blood. Cradling her. Begging her to wake up. Crying her name over and over again.

“Ok, but only one of you can. We have to go now.”

I wanted to go. I wanted to be the one to ride in the ambulance, but I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t do much of anything. I sat in my own slow motion sequence while the rest of the world zoomed by me on hyper speed. I looked down at the blood covering my hands. Felt the ache in my knuckles as I flexed them.

I needed that pain to remind me. To remind me of her.

“Sir, I need to get your statement.”

I looked up to see that the officer was now in front of me. Dominic stood beside him, his bloodied fists shaking at his sides.

“Sir? Your statement?”

“Sure,” I nodded.

“OK, your name?”

“Blaine. Blaine Daniel Jacobs.”

“Relation to the victim?”

The victim.
Victim.

Kami.

It all came crashing in like a wrecking ball, demolishing the single slice of sanity I had left. The knot of emotion in my throat swelled and erupted, spilling its bile down into my stomach. I felt sick. Dizzy. Out of control and unable to get a grip on reality.

“He’s her boyfriend,” Dom spoke up, gripping my shoulder to steady me. He gave me a reassuring nod before mouthing
“Breathe.”
I did as I was told. Breathing was all I
could
do.

“Hey, can we do this at the hospital? We need to hurry up and get there,” Dom asked the police officer.

He gave us both a sympathetic look and nodded. “Sure. I’ll meet you guys over there.”

Less than twenty minutes later, we were racing through the entrance of the emergency department, demanding that a nurse, doctor, technician,
anybody
direct us to Kami.

“She’s in surgery,” we were told soon after we found Angel pacing in the waiting room.

That’s all we were offered. We weren’t family. No. Her
family
was handcuffed to his own hospital bed, courtesy of Dom and me. Her
family
had abandoned her when she needed them the most.

We
were her family. Hell, at least Kami was ours.

“We should call her mother,” Angel said, fishing her cell phone out from her bag.

“What the fuck for? That woman wouldn’t know what to do. Do you think she’d even care?” Dom scoffed.

“But it’s her mother,” Angel tried to reason. “Of course, she’d want to know what happened to her daughter.”

Dom snorted and continued his incessant pacing. I resumed looking at my hands. No matter how hard I scrubbed them, I couldn’t get the blood off. It had seeped into the tiny cracks of my cuticles and stained my fingernails. I still felt it all over me. Still smelled the metallic scent on my clothing and skin.

Kami’s blood.
His
blood.

And while I knew they were genetically linked, I hated that his blood had tainted hers. That he had touched her.
Abused
her.

And I had let him.

If it hadn’t been for me leaving her apartment, he would have never been able to get inside. If it hadn’t been for me getting drunk with a bunch of bar sluts, Kami would have never left Dive and gone home alone.

This was my fault. I had failed Kami when I had vowed to protect her. To never hurt her. To never leave her. I failed yet another woman that I cared about.

I didn’t save my mother from the sickness that ate away at her sanity. I didn’t save Amanda from her weakness. And I didn’t save Kami, the woman I loved more than I loved myself.

I had failed.

I didn’t deserve her. I knew that now. I would just keep hurting her. Would just keep fucking things up. Kami deserved someone who could protect her. Someone to love her enough to heal her. And I had proven that I wasn’t equipped to do either of those things.

Without a word or look in Angel and Dom’s direction, I stood up and walked right out of that hospital. Away from the woman I loved. Away from the woman I failed. And I didn’t look back.

“Young lady, what the hell is this?”

I stepped all the way through the front door while trying to steady my wobbly legs. Holy fuck, I was buzzing. Shit! But at least I wasn’t late for curfew.

My mother stood before me, her face screwed into a scowl, one hand on her hip, the other holding up a little white rolled piece of paper.

“Well? You want to explain what you’re doing with marijuana in your room?”

I walked farther into the room, making sure to kick my shoes off first. That was a must. My mom could care less about the nightmares I had every night, but all hell froze over if I wore shoes in the house.

I shrugged and tossed my purse onto the couch. “Not really.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said ‘Not really.’ I don’t feel like explaining it. You don’t care anyway.”

“
Langga,
you know that isn’t true,” she deadpanned with a flat voice. Even the use of the term of endearment was more out of habit than anything else. There was no emotion behind it, no truth.

“Mom, give it up. You don’t have to pretend to care. Not now, when you didn’t care when it counted.”

She rolled her eyes and let out an annoyed breath. “What are you talking about?
Of course I care.”

“Really, Mom? Did you care about my 4.0 GPA for the past six semesters? Or my early acceptance letters to half the colleges I applied to? Or how about the fact that I missed my class trip to the water park because I am freakin’ terrified of what could happen? Did you care about any of that?”

“Don’t try to turn this around on me. You still need to explain why I found a joint in your sock drawer.”

“It’s not mine,” I lied. I was just glad she hadn’t found the rest of my stash. Lately, it was the only way I could get through the night without jerking awake from another nightmare.

“And what were you doing in my sock drawer?” I glared at her.

“Never mind that,” she said, her accent sounding thicker than usual. “You can’t get out of this one,
Langga.
You can’t manipulate me like you do everyone else.”

“Manipulate you?” I glowered. “Like everyone else? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Mmm hmm. Want to make everyone believe your lies. Want them to think I’m a bad mother. Now you’re on drugs? And don’t think I don’t smell alcohol on your breath every weekend.”

I rolled my eyes. She was doing it again. She was imagining things, being paranoid. Sometimes I thought she was seriously delusional. “What lies? You aren’t making any sense.”

“I see how they look at me. I see your friends’ mothers whispering about me. You’ve told them. You’ve told them about me, haven’t you? You can’t say things like that. We’ll have to move again. Is that what you want?”

I took a step towards her with the intention of soothing her. She really was losing it. “Mom, I swear. I haven’t said anything.”

She turned from me to make her way back to her bedroom. Back to her side of the apartment where she could wallow in her misery alone and forget the burden of my existence. Before she made it to the doorframe of her room, she looked back at me and shook her head, disgust and pity in her slanted, brown eyes.

“You’re just like him,
Langga.
Just like your father.”

Slow, concentrated pain surrounded me at every angle. I couldn’t escape it. It held me prisoner and refused to let me go, sluggishly creeping over every inch of my body. The shit just wouldn’t pass, just wouldn’t move on. It just kept slowly driving its way deeper into my skull, making the task of opening my eyelids seem flippin’ impossible.

“She’s waking up!” I heard Angel gasp. “Dom, go get the nurse. Hurry!”

Light pierced my eyes, its intensity serving as tiny, razor-sharp daggers to my retinas. I wanted to cry or at least cringe, but even that hurt.

“The lights,” I hoarsely whispered. God, my throat was sore. “Kill the lights, please.”

Once the lights were comfortably dim, I slowly peeled open my eyelids. The room was bare. Sterile. Cold. I was in the hospital.

Angel looked at me with a hopeful smile. She looked horrible as if she hadn’t slept nor groomed in days. If she looked like that, then I must’ve looked like Death with PMS on a Monday.

“What happened?” I managed to croak. What the hell was wrong with my throat? It wasn’t just scratchy; it was sore and stiff.

“You don’t remember?” Angel asked with horrified eyes.