Page 18 of Meet Me in Ivy Falls

‘Hey, Beck! What’s going on?’

All I muttered was, ‘I totally fucked up.’

Chapter Eight

TORRAN

Thanks For The Heads-Up, Captain Obvious.

The song blaring from my phone almost knocked me out of bed. A burst of laughter followed by singsong children’s voices bounced off the walls of the small guest room. I understood now why my nieces had acted so guilty when they handed back my phone the other day.

They’d changed my ringtone to the theme song of their favorite cartoon, and now a chorus of young voices chirping about playing in a magic garden and defeating an old witch knocked around inside my skull. In their small and clever little minds, they’d considered this payback for missing dinner the other night.

Thankfully the song quieted and I rolled over. Not two seconds later, it started again. This time I swiped the phone off the bedside table and growled, ‘Hello.’

Diego’s strangled tone made me sit up. There was only one reason he’d call on a Saturday morning. The house was going to be mine. I knew Beck would flake.

‘Tor, there’s been an accident at Huckleberry Lane. My kids and wife are sick and I can’t head over there…’

Before he could say anything else, I hopped out of bed and yanked on a rumpled T-shirt and a pair of semi-clean jeans. I tucked my hair under a baseball hat, grabbed my keys off the table near the front door and raced out to my truck. My head filled with visions of Beck. His body bloody or twisted at odd angles. I shouldn’t have cared about him, but the tether to our past, the way my heart beat out an unsteady rhythm when I saw him again, made me push Sally Mae’s gas pedal to the floor.

It took all of five minutes to get to Huckleberry Lane from Tessa’s house. I parked in the driveway and sprinted to the front door. After twisting the knob several times, the lock wouldn’t give. I jumped off the porch and sprinted to my truck for my tools. When I was back in front of the door, I used a small flathead screwdriver to depress the notch under the knob and worked it back and forth until it came free. Once the internal screws came loose, I pushed my way inside.

The house still reeked like a combination of shit, warm garbage and rotten eggs. I tried not to gag as I climbed the rotting staircase to the second floor. A chunk of ceiling coated the moldy brown carpet. Little white dusts of drywall hung in the air like a thick fog. His legs dangled from the ceiling like one of those string puppets.

‘Who’s there?’ Beck’s muffled voice rang out.

A part of me wanted to shout up at him. Tell him what an idiot he was for not paying attention to the aging state of the house. How every part of it was practically a wall-to-wall tetanus shot. But if I said anything he’d hear the tremble in my voice. How I was terrified that the rest of the ceiling was going to give way and send him crashing to the floor.

I quietly climbed the attic stairs. Once inside the damp space, my gaze landed on Beck. His arms were splayed out on either side of the hole. Sweat trickled down through the light stubble on his chin. Even in his precarious position, he was still the hottest man I’d ever seen.

And a total fucking idiot.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Beck? Climbing around a clearly unstable ceiling is dangerous.’

His eyes widened. ‘Thanks for the heads-up, Captain Obvious. I was trying to check out the state of the place, when this’ – he nodded to the open hole surrounding him – ‘gave way.’

‘How long have you been hanging there?’ I asked.

‘About four or five minutes.’

His arms shook beneath his long-sleeve black T-shirt. A shiny patch of skin covered a small part of his wrist. I was about to ask how he got the scar, but by the way his entire upper body trembled it was clear he couldn’t hold on for much longer.

In all the times I’d thought about him over the years, I never imagined him being in this position. Him needing me. When we eventually crossed paths at something like our high school reunion, I’d expected we’d mumble through small talk and lie about how good it was to see each other. We’d linger a few seconds too long. Let the past wash over us before we realized we were strangers who could do nothing more than discuss the bad decorations and the state of the weather.

‘Torran! A little help please,’ Beck yelped.

The vulnerability in his voice melted my defensive armor. If I didn’t fix this fast, he was going to get hurt. No matter how twisted my feelings were, I couldn’t let that happen.

I inched into the narrow space with spindly pink insulation crawling over the floor and walls. There was hardly enough space for one body, much less two.

My mind raced with panic. I couldn’t lift him out on my own. He weighed twice what I did, and there was a chance if I moved even an inch more, the floor would go out from under me too. A half-dozen options flew through my head until an idea hit me.

‘I need you to hold on for two more minutes. Can you do that?’

He shifted his body an inch and grunted out an answer that sounded like yes.

I took the attic steps two at a time, sprinted down the stairs and out the front door. Untethering the tall ladder from the back of Sally Mae, I carried it inside. Once I was in position below Beck’s legs, I climbed up.