Before We Fall by Courtney Cole Read Free Book Online Page A

can count on. Because so few people in life have ever been that to me. And if anything changes with Brand and me, everything will change, and I can’t deal with that on top of the rest of this mess.
    With a sigh, I head up to my little bungalow, kicking off my shoes along the way.
    I unlock the door to my tiny one-bedroom place and jump into the shower to wash away the feeling of the jail. I can’t help but feel gross, like the feeling of the jail cell has burned into my skin and there’s only one way to get it off. To scrub until my skin is bright pink and almost raw.
    When I finally feel clean enough to towel off, I pull some underwear and a T-shirt on and collapse into bed to get a few hours of sleep.
    The problem is, sleep doesn’t come.
    I was arrested tonight, for god’s sake. Not only that, but I was arrested with one of the most famous actors on the planet. Dominic’s smoldering green eyes refuse to stay out of my head, his expression taunting me.
    It’s like he
saw
me. He saw that someone died because of me. He saw that there’s something so fundamentally wrong with me that my own parents don’t want anything to do with me. That I’m flawed.
    He saw all of that. He looked into my eyes and saw it. And then he turned away and left me to rot in the jail cell alone.
    He’s a fucking asshole.
    I might be a horrible judge of character, but even I can see that.
    I toss and turn in my Egyptian cotton sheets. I’m horrible with money, and I always seem to spend it on things I shouldn’t. One of my splurges is always good sheets. But even they don’t help me sleep tonight. Or this morning, I mean. I glance at the clock. Five thirty A.M.
    I know Gabe’s up. He usually gets up and goes for a run at five. Because he’s just that into self-torture. I sigh and grab my phone, punching in his number. I might as well tell him and get it over with. It’ll be better if he hears it from me instead of Brand.
    “What’s wrong?” he answers quickly, only slightly out of breath and without bothering to say hello. He knows something’s wrong if I’m calling this early.
    “Don’t kill me, okay?” I ask. I hear him sigh.
    “No promises,” he mutters.
    It all spills out and by the end, there’s a long pause.
    “Jace, it’s a good thing you’re there and I’m here,” he finally says. “Or I might kill you.”
    “I know.” I sigh. “But seriously, Gabe. The drugs weren’t mine.”
    “That’s not the point,” he tells me tiredly. “You’re still at Saffron, and you always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’ve got to pull your shit together. I don’t know what else I can do for you.”
    “That’s what Brand said.” I shake my head, even though Gabe can’t see it. “I’m
trying
, Gabe. It seems like I take two steps forward and then one step back all the time.”
    “You’re going to have to keep moving forward.” He sighs. “It’s the only way you’re going to get anywhere.”
    He’s quiet for a second. “I can’t come out there, not right now. Maddy’s due in a couple months, work is insanely busy, and I’m trying to get a lot done so I can take off for a bit when the baby’s born. You’re going to have to handle this on your own. I’ll call around and get you a lawyer, but you’re going to have to go see him on your own. Can you do that?”
    I try not to get pissed. Of course I can handle it. I’m not an imbecile.
    “Yes,” I finally answer. “Surely it won’t be that big a deal. It’s my first offense. I’ll get my own lawyer and everything will be fine because I didn’t do it. It wasn’t mine.”
    “Tell that to the judge,” Gabe mutters as he hangs up.
    That’s exactly what I do six days later as I stand in front of a judge in a dingy Chicago courtroom for the first time in my life.
    As Dominic Kinkaide sits behind me flanked by four lawyers compared to my one, I tell the judge everything, how I’m certainly not guilty and how the pot wasn’t mine.