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  UNTIL WE FALL

  A Falling Novel

  Jessica Scott

  Also by Jessica Scott

  THE FALLING SERIES

  Before I Fall

  Break My Fall

  After I Fall

  Catch My Fall

  Until We Fall

  * * *

  The HOMEFRONT Series

  Come Home to Me

  Homefront

  After the War

  Find My Way Home

  * * *

  NONFICTION

  To Iraq & Back: On War and Writing

  The Long Way Home: One Mom’s Journey Home From War

  BOOKSHOTS

  Dawn’s Early Light

  COMING HOME SERIES

  Because of You

  I’ll Be Home For Christmas: A Coming Home Novella

  Anything For You: A Coming Home Short Story

  Back to You

  Until There Was You

  All for You

  It’s Always Been You

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Excerpt from BEFORE I FALL

  Chapter One

  Noah

  Chapter 2

  Noah

  A Message from Jessica Scott

  About the Author

  UNTIL WE FALL

  A Falling Novel

  The darkness never forgets…

  Caleb Gregory has spent ten years hiding in the dark, refusing to speak about the night his young life was destroyed. In his anger and his rage, he drank and fought until he drove everyone away until he had no one left.

  * * *

  The light casts a long shadow…

  * * *

  Nalini King has devoted her post army life to her passion: using yoga to heal her fellow soldiers. In doing so, she’s worked to forget the night her life burned down around her.

  * * *

  An unexpected storm…

  When a storm forces them into the darkness together, these two wounded souls must face the demons of their past.

  * * *

  Because it is only in the darkest night that we can truly see the light.

  * * *

  THE FALLING SERIES

  Before I Fall: Noah & Beth

  Break My Fall: Abby & Josh

  After I Fall: Parker & Eli

  Catch My Fall: Deacon & Kelsey

  Until We Fall: Caleb & Nalini

  * * *

  Note – these books are fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidence

  * * *

  Learn More At…

  http://www.jessicascott.net

  Follow Jessica on Twitter

  Like Jessica on Facebook

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  Prologue

  Durham

  Two Months Ago…

  Caleb

  When you hit rock bottom, there’s really nowhere to go but up. Dragging your ass out of the hole you’ve fallen into isn’t even the first step.

  It’s recognizing that you’re in a hole in the first place.

  Right now, I’m not in a hole, so I guess that’s something. I’m up against a wall. One that’s hard and cold and damp. Something stone, if the cold and damp pressing against my back are any indicators. Maybe brick. Possibly concrete. I’m not entirely sure.

  “Comfortable?”

  I blink hard but my eyes aren’t working right. The light—and I’m not sure if it’s daylight or street lamps or something else—feels like shards of glass piercing my retinas and stabbing my brain so I squeeze them shut again.

  “Not really.” At least, that’s what I think I’ve said. My eyes are still refusing to work right, and those shards of glass that were just stabbing my eyes? Now they’re trying to break out of the back of my skull.

  “You need to get up.”

  That voice is rough. I frown and even that tiny gesture feels like it might kill me. Not that I’ve got a clue who the disembodied voice is attached to but then again, that’s not really my problem, is it? I don’t have to play nice.

  I’m about this close to telling this dude to go fuck himself. Just as soon as I get my eyes working.

  For some reason, “Rooster” by Alice in Chains starts playing in my head. They ain’t killed me yet and all that, right?

  “What time is it?”

  That voice again. Fuck me, it’s rough on the nerves. Oh wait. That one is mine.

  “It’s not about what time of day it is. It’s about keeping your sorry ass out of jail.”

  Well, damn, that’s got my attention. I summon the willpower to open my eyes. “What th’fuck are you talking about?”

  I don’t know who the man is in front of me. He’s old enough to be my dad. At least, I think he is. I have deliberately had very minimal contact with the sperm donor over the last decade.

  I’ve ignored the last few times he’s called.

  I don’t even miss him.

  I swallow a lump of something I’d rather not contemplate and push myself upright. My head feels like it’s going to explode with the movement as the pressure shifts radically.

  “Who the fuck are you?” A sound that’s something like a groan and a curse escapes from the depths of hell. “And what the fuck happened?” How many ways can you use fuck in a sentence. Well, Alex, let me count the ways.

  But it will have to wait until after I get the world to stop spinning. My stomach is none too happy about that fact.

  “Well, you decided to cross the line between hoah and stupid, and picked a fight over the goddamned Army football team with a guy who works for one of the big mercenary companies. Turns out, he played for Navy and decided to take offense to your jokes.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know Navy sucks their own—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Caleb.” How does this guy know my name? And who the hell does he think he is? “This has to stop.”

  I push up to my feet, using the cold brick wall behind me to keep myself standing. “I’m sorry but who the hell are you?”

  “I’m your fairy fucking godfather.”

  The man in front of me looks like a cross between my eighth grade priest, Father Silvio and an extra from Orange County Choppers. He’s sporting a red bandana, rolled up into a headband – a headband that’s not really necessary considering the massive bald spot. The handlebar mustache makes him look like Hulk Hogan when he turned into one of the bad guys in the WWE. And I’m honestly not sure if the patches on his vest mean he’s in a biker gang or just got a discount on cross stitch at Hobby Lobby. It’s hard to tell these days. I mean, if I was a biker, I’d probably know but I’m not. I’m just some dude with a tattoo fetish and too much time on his hands to drink his liver into submission every night.

  Father Biker really does look like a goddamned biker priest. Which is a really weird combination when you think about it. Who the hell is saving souls on the back of a Harley Davidson? And sure enough, there’s a Fatboy at the end of the alley. Because of course this nightmare includes a Harley. Why wouldn’t it?

  Time for this nightmare to end. I need to drag my ass home and sleep off the rest of this hangover. Army football i
s playing tonight and I don’t want to miss the game because my liver is a fucking pussy.

  “I don’t need a fairy godfather. Or mother.”

  I look down at the black rose on my forearm, encased in thorns. I need to get the thorns finished. The brick scrapes my palms as I push off the wall.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. See, at the end of this alley is a cop, waiting to take your happy ass to Durham County. Since I built a table for his wife for their twentieth anniversary, he’s doing me a favor by not dragging your ass to jail.”

  “Why the hell do you care?”

  “Because it’s time for you to stop drinking yourself to death every night.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know more than you think. I know why you drink. It’s time to put away childish things.”

  His words are dark and laced with authority.

  Turns out, I have a problem with authority. Ten miserable years in military school didn’t break me of that.

  “Hey, you know what?” I push off the wall again. The light from The Pint behind me spins wildly and black stars start to dance in front of my eyes. “How about you go fuck yourself, okay?”

  “That’s actually not anatomically possible, and it’s oh so much more fun with a willing partner. But I wouldn’t expect you to know that, whiskey dick.”

  I sway dangerously but I’m not backing down from this fucking guy. And if I can’t beat Grandpa in a fight, well, then maybe it’s time for me to turn in my man card. “I don’t know if you think you’re getting a blow job or a Good Samaritan award but I don’t need or want your help.”

  I push off from the wall for the last time and start walking away from my wannabe savior, hoping I’m not as unsteady as I feel.

  Until his words send a chill racing over my skin. Like a ghost has walked over my grave.

  A ghost I know. A ghost of someone I miss more than life itself.

  “Where are you going, Caleb?”

  1

  Two Months Later

  Caleb

  I used to think storms in Texas were bad. Then I moved to North Carolina and got exposed to a whole new world of violence, courtesy of Mother Nature. Of course, in Texas, I drove everywhere and I usually didn’t find myself out in said storms.

  I’m regretting my life choices, the ones that made me decide to stop driving everywhere when I decided to stop drinking. I only live a few blocks from Bruce’s shop and a few blocks from the main strip in downtown Durham so I can easily walk everywhere. But it turns out, I should have started keeping track of the weather reports, especially when I’m out late working in Bruce’s shop because, well, sleep is overrated.

  Right now, his rule that no one sleeps with the power tools is a real pain in the balls. He closes the doors to his Maker studio at midnight every night, right when my insomnia is just kicking into high gear. So tonight instead of sleeping, I decided on a fresh tattoo.

  A reminder that I’m still lost somewhere on the road to Hell. And by that I mean sobriety.

  I’m about two months late on step two of the keep-my-ass-sober plan.

  Step One was Stop drinking. Step One B was not to kill anyone or myself while doing it.

  Step Two is Try to do normal things. Because working for Bruce’s contract company and building furniture on the side in his Maker Space—which is basically a glorified arts and crafts studio for men getting in touch with their crafty sides but with 3D printers and power tools, and I should just make a Tim the Toolman grunting noise at this point—and getting tattoos in the middle of the night are totally normal things for Army vets to do as ways of avoiding their PTSD, right?

  It’s taken me a really long fucking time to get to Step Two. And contrary to popular belief, getting a tattoo is something normal, especially for Army dudes. Maybe not officers but, well, I’m not an officer anymore. This tattoo is something that makes me feel like I’m still me. I’m still here.

  It’s been about six years since I got my first tattoo, during my first duty assignment at Fort Hood. I went all in on that one. It took six weekends in a row, flat on my stomach while I marked my back with the crucifix my mother used to wear. Then there was the tribal First Cav patch on my right shoulder. Then the rose twisted in a tangled briar down my left forearm.

  I just need to figure out what normal is, without the alcohol.

  I’m not entirely sure I’m going to actually make it to Step Three, which involves finding a hobby and doing something that could marginally be called productive.

  I don’t know what that feels like anymore. Vega—the man in charge of making me look like a mental patient—takes one last swipe at my wrists, smears a thick coat of Aquaphor over them, and then wraps them in gauze. “Keep ‘em covered for a day. Wash gently. Don’t pick. Wrists are hard to heal because they’re so bendy.”

  Two bandages. One on each wrist. Yep, I look like a fucking mental ward escapee.

  And sadly, I know what that fucking feels like. I didn’t count on the little white bandages setting off a cascade of really shitty memories.

  My skin starts to crawl as I step out of the shade from the tattoo studio and right into an early morning storm. Fuck. I forgot about the weather rolling in.

  I walk past The Pint, the bar where I’ve spent the better part of the last two years, since I arrived in Durham, trying to murder my liver.

  It’s time to go, Eli said.

  And I knew that that was going to be the last time I set foot in the bar. He never told me I had to leave. Never told me I couldn’t come back.

  But somehow, being sober around him…it’s too fucking hard. Because he knows things that everyone else doesn’t and…I’m not ready to confront the reality of those things without being half in the bag.

  So I’ve been avoiding The Pint. And Eli. And everyone else.

  Because funny thing about being sober: you can remember all the horrible obnoxious shit you said when you were drunk and, well, it’s really hard to own up to that.

  I’ll get there. Maybe.

  I’ve gotten pretty good at burning all my bridges. All the guys I used to get hammered with are done now, peeled off and spending time with their significant others. Noah Warren was the first of our merry band of miscreants to get sober. Meeting Beth was what finally gave him the strength to try and get clean. Josh followed, though with a little less religious intensity than Noah. I’m pretty sure Abby is strong enough to keep Josh in line, though, and I was kind of a fucking asshole to her. She’s fucking terrifying and competent and she would have made one hell of an officer if she’d ever decided to join the Army.

  It sucks to wake up one day and realize that you’re the drunk that no one wants to be around but they’re too good to tell you that you suck. Not too many ways to earn your way back onto the island when your sobriety is questionable and…well, you get the idea.

  The rain is coming down sideways in sheets. Violence fills the sky, threatening to send roofs and mobile homes, clinging to the edge of civilization outside of Durham, over the rainbow.

  Tornado warnings in Texas always scared the shit out of me but at least I knew they were coming for miles—you could see them rolling in over the vast flat hill country.

  Not here. Storms in North Carolina come out of nowhere and bring with them a pounding that the entire field artillery corps would be proud of.

  Except that when you’re caught out in this shit, you’re not really thinking through how the concussion blast of a paladin would knock you off your ass. You really just want out of the damn rain that feels like razors on your skin.

  ’Course, I wouldn’t have this problem if I hadn’t decided to take the scenic route home. Past The Pint. Because I wanted to see if I could do it. If I could walk by and not feel the pull to walk in and ask Deacon to pour me a pint. To see if I could drink without being an asshole and drinking myself into oblivion. I thought I could handle it but the pull is still strong—still need twisted up with loss.

&nb
sp; This month is going to be a shit month full of shitty personal anniversaries, but I forgot that it was also The Pint’s five-year anniversary. At five a.m. the party is still going strong.

  It takes everything I am to keep walking, to ignore how bad I want to step inside and feel happiness for my former friends.

  The severe storm warning on my phone now includes hail. “Good times,” I mutter, seriously considering if I can make it back to my apartment before all hell breaks loose outside—but I’m not really that brave.

  I’m not brave at all, to be honest.

  I’ve risked my life for less, but I’m really not looking to get knocked unconscious by a random ice ball so I need to find a place to ride out this monster storm. Even if my apartment is only about six blocks away, when the rain is slicing at your skin, six blocks might as well be six miles.

  The only thing open is the yoga studio. I’ve walked past it a million times and never really paid attention to it until now, but I guess my options for getting out of the storm are pretty limited. What the hell kind of name is Arjuna for a yoga studio anyway? I thought they had to be named, like, Sacred Toadstool or some New Age shit. The sky explodes nearby and I try not to jump out of my fucking skin. “Fuck me.”