If You Fall (Brimstone 1)

Maybe I would go with Casey to a VA grief counseling session one of these days…

Finally, Colm showed up and gave me a bear hug when he saw me at the bar.

“Daniel,” he said, his face beaming. “You’ve finally come by to see your old uncle. It’s about bloody time.”

“It’s been too long.”

He sat beside me at the bar and nodded to Mike. “Pull us some Guinness,” he said despite my protest. I really didn’t like stout but it was an Irish thing.

Mike poured us each a glass of stout and we toasted each other.

“So Dana tells me that you lost your partner, Graham? Tell me.”

I nodded and proceeded to tell him about Graham being killed while over in Malaysia, due to a suicide bombing in a crowded market square.

“I’m selling the brownstone to help with finances until I can find another partner or investor.”

“Go to Donny,” Colm said and frowned. “I know you don’t like the way he runs the business, but it’s your money, or it will be one day.”

I shook my head. “Gonna keep my hands clean,” I said firmly. “I’ll make it work.”

We chatted for a while and then went into the dining room for dinner. Much beer was consumed, and we were treated like kings by the staff.

I left much, much later that night after a few more shots of Irish whiskey and a few more toasts to everything and everyone Colm could think of.

I flopped into bed and tried to sleep, but thoughts of Miranda kept me awake. Instead, I took out my collection of photos and, like a pathetic stalker, I stared at them and remembered our time together.

One of the happiest times in my recent life.

I fell asleep with her picture in my hand, the flatscreen TV on the wall across from my bed droning the latest news.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Miranda

Thinking about Beckett sent me into a funk.

I had hoped that because I had so much to do before classes started on the 25th, I would have barely any time to think about him and the whole mess in Topsail Beach and at the memorial, but I was wrong. I went around with a sick feeling in my gut and a sense of loss I hadn’t felt since Dan died. All I could think of was Beckett and why he’d lied.

The first few days back in Manhattan were exhausting as I got moved in, and my room set up. I was glad that I had a few days to get things all in order before classes started on Thursday. Leah was going to study at Columbia and she had a space in the student housing there, while I would be going to CUNY and had a room in The New Yorker, which was student housing specifically for John Jay students.

I had a single enhanced room, with my own washroom and tiny bar fridge along with a single bed, desk and wardrobe as well as a window overlooking the street. The cost was high, but I had a combination of scholarship and savings that allowed me to live there for the year. I’d be so busy during that week, getting back into the whole student life, I wouldn’t have much time to think.

Before he died, Dan had joked that we used to sleep on his tiny bed in his mom and dad’s house in Topsail Beach or in my tiny bed in residence. One day, when we had the money, we’d rent an actual apartment in Queens, closer to my granddad’s and I’d take the train in to school. But that was a year or more down the road, when I finished my degree and joined the FBI. Dan was supposed to be in for three more years, and then he’d get out and do his certification to become an EMT. My income with the Bureau and his as an EMT would be enough to get a big enough apartment that we could have a king sized bed instead of the twins we were used to.

So, while the paperwork and moving and everything else kept me busy, not to mention the start of classes, my nights were still hell.

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I laid awake for what seemed like hours each night, thinking of Beckett and why he didn’t tell me right away that he had my letters. What difference would it make that he had them? He could have given them to me and then still asked me out for a drink. Was it because he was involved in some undercover work with the DEA? Assuming that he was in fact working with the DEA… At that point, I had no idea what to believe.

When Leah and I got together after classes for a slice of pizza, we sat in the park with our slices and drinks and of course, I went over it all again.

“I suppose I’m driving you crazy with this,” I said, laughing ruefully.

She smiled and then rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “What? You driving me crazy talking about Beckett again? Never…”

We laughed, but there was an ache in the pit of my stomach that no amount of pizza or Rocky Road ice cream could assuage.