Read The Effects of Falling (The Weight of Rain Duet Book 2) Online
Authors: Mariah Dietz
The Effects of Falling (The Weight of Rain Duet Book 2)
The His Series
The Weight of Rain Duet
Copyright © 2016 by Mariah Dietz
All rights reserved.
Visit my website at
http://www.mariahdietz.com
Cover Art by DreamaCamphuysen with
Ink Doodle by Dreama
Cover Designer:
Hang Le with
By Hang Le
Interior Design and Formatting by Jill Sava with
Love Affair With Fiction
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13:
978-1-944206-02-4
For Sarah Pinkerton who has taught me all the best things I know about being a friend. I am so grateful for you and all the joy, compassion, love, and beauty you bring to my world and so many others. Thank you for being my best friend.
And for my boys who continue to teach and amaze me daily.
I love you guys!
“
D
UDE, HE’S GOING
to seriously hurt himself,” Parker mumbles before wincing, indicating I shouldn’t look.
It’s not because blood bothers me—I have had my fair share of scrapes and burns, or bacon, over the years, creating an entire network of scars—but watching King hurt himself from pure negligence inflicts a pain that makes my chest physically hurt. While many believe a girl can’t have a male best friend, I know they’re wrong because I have two—Kingston and Kashton Knight.
“Shit.” I flinch, and push off the wall, hurrying to King’s limp form.
The front tire of his bike is still spinning from where it lies beside him because of the speed he gained from trying to make a turn he shouldn’t have considered, especially not today with where his head has been.
“You know, if you break both arms, I’m not going to wipe your ass for you, right?” Parker says.
King shoots him a glare, grumbling something unintelligible, before rolling to his side and standing. Blood runs down his shin, circles his ankle, staining his sock and shoe as well as a path along the concrete floor as he pushes his bike to the standing metal rack. He roughly shoves it aside and disappears through the door his older brother, Kash, is entering with a smile.
“Where’s he going?” Kash asks, jerking a thumb behind him when King doesn’t return his greeting.
If this past week wasn’t filled with so much bloodshed, I’m sure he would instead be asking what in the hell happened. The brothers are experienced BMX riders, and neither is a stranger to bacon, but it’s rarely a daily occurrence. They spend most of their waking moments on bikes and have since long before they met me.
Kash looks to me for an explanation, and it’s visible in his deep brown eyes that he’s relieved his brother is taking a respite, though it’s clear he’s worried there is some kind of additional problem or issue. I can read his silent thoughts as easily as I can my own. Eleven years of knowing someone and seeing them daily does that.
When I met Kash, he was only twenty-two, one year older than me, and had gone pro three years prior. We all used to ride at the same indoor facility, and then he became the proud owner of a pretty sweet setup for riding—here, at his house. It was equipped with rails and paved banks—the hills that many refer to as ramps—all covered by a large roof set high enough that we rarely had to consider it when we were doing air tricks, but living in Oregon, the cold made it pretty brutal several months out of the year, and the additional pains of rain and sleet made it dangerous for a few more. Not to mention the encroaching moss that forced us to bleach the surface several times a year. So, last year Kash decided to have the old layout demolished, and set to work on designing the new shop with higher ceilings, multiple drop points, larger banks, and longer rails. The shop is a kingdom for people like us who live and breathe BMX riding.
“Hopefully to bandage that wound. I think he left a pound of flesh across the floor. You need to install some heavy-duty hoses in this place.” I glance at the blood smears before looking back to Kash.
His dark gaze nearly instantly moves from mine, settling on Parker, before he shakes his head. “He’s got to chill out. I know Lo being gone is messing with his head, but he needs to figure it out, or he’s going to ruin every chance he has with going pro.”
“He’ll be all right. They’ll give him a few additional chances since he’s your brother. He just needs to find his rhythm. We’ve all been there.” I take a few short steps toward where he’s standing beside Parker, but he doesn’t acknowledge me.
Kash has been ignoring me for a couple of weeks now. It’s the Knight way—ignore the problem long enough, and maybe it will go away. Eventually, they will learn that the saying actually goes, ignore it long enough, and shit will blow up in your face, bigger than if you had initially spent a few minutes fixing it.
Parker glances at me and then Kash. “I think he should take some time off and go to New York. Hell, I would.”
I would too, but I’m not going to voice my thoughts because Kash still isn’t looking at me, making me feel as though he doesn’t care about my opinion.
He has no reason to be ignoring me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I want to scream these same words at him, but I refrain with only seconds of my patience remaining. The problem is, I’ve been in love with Kash since I first met him. Because of him, I fell even more in love with riding, and was inspired to pick up photography—which is now a main aspect of my job which includes traveling with Kash and photographing his rides, working on his marketing and promotional tours, and helping develop routines for competitions—because I wanted to capture every single moment of his riding after seeing his perfect stance, impeccable timing, and complete lack of fear. I was immediately in love with him, and I hated it. And this was all before I’d even seen his face or learned that he was Kashton Knight, upcoming BMX star who had recently lost his girlfriend, Arianna, in a tragic car accident, leaving him as a newly single father to his daughter, Mercedes.
Those last two attributes should have had me running away. My own father had remarried a younger woman and had a couple of toddlers who made his house seem more chaotic and harried than a Tarantino film.
However, watching Kash seek out his daughter after completing a move that left me gaping with shock and intrigue, and seeing him hold her with an attentiveness and adoration that was unparalleled to anything I’d ever seen, soon had me yearning to be on the receiving end of his attention.
Call it serendipity or blind luck that he began training with my same coach—my Uncle Toby—leading us to meet nearly daily. Things have never been awkward with Kash, but at the beginning, he was quieter, sometimes lost in thought, likely ones of the girlfriend he’d lost, whom all of Portland and the BMX world had mourned. I didn’t know how to broach the subject of her passing with him or even what to say, so I didn’t. Instead, I pushed the limits and my abilities to prove myself to a guy I only knew because I’d stalked him on Google and rode beside him.
It took three months before we had an actual conversation that didn’t consist of a tip or comment toward improvement. I had crashed hard, bending the frame of my bike, and Kash had stopped and rushed over, worry clear in his eyes and lips that were stretched with concern. I had fractured both my fibula and tibia. My leg was in a cast up to my knee for eight weeks, and I’d spent each and every one of those days in the large shop—or box, as we called it—where we held practices, watching Kash and the few others who trained with us, because my coach/uncle required our attendance regardless of our physical state.
A couple of weeks into riding the bench and trying not to go crazy, Kash sat beside me with a heavy thud and passed me a package of black licorice. I hated black licorice, but I ate every bite.
Lame.
Pitiful.
Ridiculous.
Yeah, I know, but I’d do it again. In fact, I still do.
He asked me to spot him, hoping I could see why he’d been doing a double rather than triple rotation. When I gave him my feedback, I had to keep my arms pressed tightly to my sides because I was sweating with nerves that had me feeling even lamer than eating the licorice I hated. But Kash didn’t seem to notice that my tongue felt like it was tripping over my lips and teeth as I averted eye contact, unable to hold his bright stare. In fact, he’d hugged me and then ruffled my hair, confusing me more than any prior crush.
