If You Fall

Forty Three

It turned out that Amanda had been around before Reed. She was six years older than he was, making her thirty-one, and he and Dane both looked up to her. She had been with them when they found Ari and when they found Dane. Of course she was French, so when they'd first thought Ari was French, she had spent a lot of time with Amanda.

I liked her right away. They got back from the hospital and she was kind to Bella, who even at two in the afternoon reeked of liquor. 

It was raining and Amanda went into the kitchen and made hot chocolate from scratch, which both of the guys sat down and drank as if they did it every day. She was calm, and sure, and motherly, and she grounded both of them somehow, which was nice and also something they desperately needed. 

I found myself talking to her later that evening, when Bella had gone back to my house and Reed was at the hospital with Don. Arianna had yet to wake up.

Dane was asleep on the other couch, snoring a little.

"Man, this is a real mess," Amanda said, putting her feet up on the coffee table. She was drinking a coffee cup of wine.

I had my laptop out and there was an old comedy on the TV. It seemed like a rhetorical statement, so I didn't say anything.

"I remember the day we got you out," she mused, and suddenly had my full attention. She smiled a little at my reaction. "The night before, when that guy was showing him your picture, and he came home . . . " she shook her head, losing the smile. "Seventeen and ready to take on the world. I thought he was going to have a stroke. He was so angry. I always worried he wouldn't be able to get a grip on it, you know?"

She had a light French accent that I found comforting. Go figure. "I know," I said quietly. "He has, mostly. Except when it comes to grave injustices. Or his sister."

"Right? That sociopathic bitch." She made a rude noise. "Finally where she belongs."

"Seriously."

She shook her head, reminiscing. "I could have killed him. He upset Ari so much she hid for a week in her cubby room in the back of her closet. I'd made so much progress with her over the eighteen months we'd had her, and he undid pretty much all of it in half an hour of raging. Not that he could help it."

"Jesus." I felt even worse about it, which was surely not her intention, but still.

She shrugged. "She got over it. They brought Dane home like six weeks later so he became her project. Which she totally needed." She looked at me and smiled. "It really is wonderful to finally meet you. It sucks it's under these circumstances, but still. You must know you mean the world to Reed."

My cheeks warmed and I focused on my screen, shrugging a little. Not in the way she seemed to mean.

"Just because he . . . " she hesitated, and I looked at her, holding the mug of wine with her pinky out. It was endearing. "I know all the damage he's sustained keeps him from being everything he wishes he could be. I hope it's not, I mean, that it doesn't get in the way much. Of you loving him."

I didn't even hesitate. "I could not possibly love him any more than I already do." I didn't mind her knowing. She was familiar to me, like I already knew her, and it was a rare feeling. I enjoyed it quite a lot. "But we're not really, like, together like that."

"Not yet," she agreed, and didn't I wish.

"People like to ship us," I said casually, as if it didn't matter.

She drank some wine. "Sometimes it is easier for people to see something you can't, non?" She put the cup down on the table and sighed. "To look at him now, you could never imagine the ten year old street urchin he was." She was going for lighthearted, but her voice betrayed her grief. "Mon Dieu. We got a tip about the foster house he was in, and went to see. It was even worse than expected. He was hiding in an old treehouse in the back. It had no ladder left, and no branches leading to it, but you know him."