Halfway Down (The Boys of Horseshoe Lake Book 1) Read online

  Halfway Down

  B. Ripley

  Halfway Down

  Copyright © 2022 by B. Ripley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, businesses, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover art by B. Ripley

  Edited by Raven Quill Editing LLC

  Formatted by Ben Campbell

  Additional thank yous to Shelby, Aster, Jamie and Greg without whom this book would not exist.

  Contents

  Content and Trigger Warnings

  Dedication

  1. Alex

  2. Robin

  3. Alex

  4. Robin

  5. Alex

  6. Robin

  7. Alex

  8. Robin

  9. Alex

  10. Robin

  11. Alex

  12. Robin

  13. Alex

  14. Robin

  15. Alex

  16. Robin

  17. Alex

  18. Robin

  19. Alex

  20. Robin

  21. Alex

  22. Robin

  23. Alex

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Content and Trigger Warnings

  This book contains depictions of suicidal ideation (intense depiction of suicide crisis episodes), mental illness (major depressive disorder), suicide attempt/suicide death (drowning - graphic detail), traumatic childhood events (kidnapping, molestation, murder – mentioned in passing throughout novel however referred to with minor graphic detail on one occasion), and the death of a character within the narrative. It does end with hope, love and a happily ever after for both of the main characters, however the author would be remiss if the above was not mentioned. Should any of this content cause issues for you, please take care of yourself and reach out to supports local to you if needed. Self care is never selfish.

  For You who should still be here. The sun still rises without your heartbeats but it hasn’t burned the same since.

  For You, who are gripping to life with weary fingers. I see you. I know you. I love you.

  For You, who saved me when the water called my name. Thank you.

  Alex

  Tomorrow when I wake up, I’ll eat breakfast.

  I’ll have coffee.

  Get dressed.

  Take my medicine.

  Leave the house and get the mail from the mailbox.

  Tomorrow when I wake up, I’ll walk the dog. Robin always walked the dog, but I could do it tomorrow.

  I would do it tomorrow.

  Beneath the spill of moonlight creeping through the curtains of our bedroom, my fingers traced the lines on Robin's broad back, his sleeping form entirely unaware that he was being touched. A small chuckle left my lips. Robin slept like the dead, he’d once joked that a whole herd of buffalo could race through our room and he wouldn’t even notice unless they sat on his head. Even then I wasn’t sure. He’d probably slap them away and snort a bit in his sleep at them until they left, tails drooping at their misfortune of not having woken the sleeping giant. In the morning, he’d be none the wiser.

  That was just Robin.

  Solid.

  Present.

  I laid my cheek down against his shoulder blade, feeling the heat of his skin against my cool flesh. I always ran cold, Robin was my space heater and despite the protests he made about cold toes on his spine, I knew he enjoyed it.

  The clock ticked over to 3:04 a.m. and I sighed. I had gone to bed when Robin had, but sleep eluded me. I wished that I could bottle up his ability to sleep anywhere, anytime and inject myself with it on nights like this. The tossing and turning killed me, and I knew that despite having nothing to do tomorrow, it was going to be a bad day.

  I wrinkled my nose at that. There were things to do tomorrow. They weren’t important things, not really, but they were things.

  Tomorrow when I wake up, I will go to the pharmacy and ask about sleeping pills.

  I skimmed my hand down the naked planes of Robin's body and pressed a kiss to his back. He was beautiful like this, even though he’d wrinkle his nose at me and scowl if I said as much out loud. He hated being beautiful, or at least hated when I commented on it. He was soft and warm in places I could snuggle into, but when he looked in the mirror, all he knew was mountain, unyielding and solid. He saw himself Everest and I was but careless mountaineer, traversing his peaks and praying that the gods that had built him deemed me fit to climb, unconcerned with crevasse and avalanche. I trusted he would never topple and take me down, make a casualty of my body in ways I hadn’t already explored by my own hands. He saw me delicate, but he had learned that avalanche was man-made and I had the capacity to devastate more than mountain could muster. Beauty turned to brutality in my feeble hands, the stones crashing between us into the chasm I’d crafted with my own words and deeds, cutting Everest down to its knees without care that once it had lived in the clouds and knew the caress of unfiltered sun on its broad face.

  I was monster, yet mountain welcomed me all the same.

  Robin had always insisted that I was the beautiful one as though only one of us could achieve that lofty title and the other was doomed to a life of mediocrity, bathing in the glow of the shining star among us. I used to disagree, citing the evidence that my upper lip twisted in the middle, the cleft repaired shortly after I was born dashing any hopes of being the beautiful baby my parents had wanted. My brother Cooper had told me they’d screamed when I was born, my split lip accompanied by a cleft palate that left the roof of my mouth gaped open like a valley. I didn’t believe they’d actually screamed but there was a picture in my baby book of my mom holding me in the hospital, her cheeks reddened by tears so maybe there was truth that the monster inside had existed since the day I was conceived, twisting ugly in the womb that had cradled me. If my parents were still around or if Cooper was still alive, I’d ask them, perhaps, if they’d known what I was from the first ragged breath that had whistled through the hollows of my broken face.

  I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth, imagining I could feel the scar tissue from where the doctors had sewn me together. There was a ridge there but Robin said that was normal. He’d opened his mouth wide once and taken my pointer finger, placing it on the hard palate inside, letting me feel the bumps and grooves that lined the bone covered skin. When I had conceded that yes, maybe he was right and my mouth wasn’t that different, he’d nipped at that finger tip playfully, delighted in the squeak of surprise that had burst from my lips. He’d chuckled and pulled me in close, brushing my patchwork lips with his own perfect ones before murmuring that it didn’t matter if I still believed I was abnormal, he couldn’t tell the difference when he was buried in my throat.

  Tomorrow when I wake up, I will shower with Robin.

  We hadn’t done that in such a long time. When we first moved into this house, our morning routine always involved a shower together before he’d go get ready for his early start at work and I’d go make breakfast for us. We used to have sex in the morning, the remnants of sleep clinging to the edges as we’d tumble and roll in the bed together, lighting candles in our bodies that would burn the whole day.

  Tomo
rrow when I wake up, I will have sex with my boyfriend.

  It had been a while. Robin had tried, I thought, a few weeks ago to brush up against me in that way he always did, but my body wouldn’t respond, a side effect of my antidepressants that my doctor assured me could be a passing thing. Were the pills working otherwise? I didn’t know. Medication was always a bit of a guessing game where I held the questions on my tongue and the answers were written on my bones in hieroglyphics. The true nature of what the capsules and tablets would mean for me was hidden until the rosetta stone of my mind would unlock the secrets and divulge whether or not they would help more than they harmed. Though he’d looked disappointed at the time when I rebuffed his advances, Robin didn’t say anything about it, accepting my apologetic smile with one of his own. He’d gripped my hand tight in his and kissed my knuckles before releasing me and letting me go back to the office I kept on the upper level of our home. Robin was like that even though I wished he’d be mad and demand more of me. This relationship felt one sided sometimes and the guilt of it ate at me like poison in my veins, festering and bubbling beneath the surface. On the occasions my body could muster a small semblance of arousal, it often faded before release leaving me feeling bereft in an ocean of inadequacy. I had tried to poke at Robin once, my own disgust with myself spilling over and ruining the peaceful moment we were having simply because he’d gotten hard behind me and my body wouldn’t respond. I’d demanded that he suck my softness into his mouth deep and force my body into response, knowing he craved that of me despite his protests that he was fine without sex. When he’d refused, I’d cried like an infant and railed at him for giving up on me, beating his massive chest with my small fists, hot and angry in my grief, until he’d wrapped his arms around me, rocking my body as the sobs died down. I’d never demanded anything like that of him again, but every time I touched him for the next week, he’d stiffened like he was ready for another battle.

  I hated that I’d done that to us.

  Robin stirred in his sleep, a rare occasion, and made a move like he was going to roll over. I lifted my head as his left his pillow, his brown locks tousled about his head like a halo.

  “Sleep?” he murmured as he rolled onto his back.

  “Can’t.”

  He yawned and slapped his chest with a broad hand, closing his eyes again. Scrambling as fast as I could, I crawled on top of him, stomach to stomach, tucking my face into the crook of his neck and tangling my legs with his. This never lulled me to sleep anymore, but I’d never say no to spreading myself along his height, feeling my toes tickle against his upper calves and dip into the hollow behind his knee. He twitched as I brushed him in that ticklish spot, not meaning to wake him up but needing to touch as much of him as I could.

  “Tomorrow when I wake up, I will eat breakfast,” he whispered, tightening his arms around my back and pulling me down into his warmth.

  “I have that one,” I whispered back, letting my body sink.

  “Tomorrow when I wake up, I will put on those cute blue sweatpants Robin bought for me.”

  I smiled against his skin, delighted in the familiarity of the game I played with myself every night and his willingness to play along. I would forget it all by morning, as we both knew, but at the moment the list of things mattered. “Thank you.”

  “Get some sleep, okay?” he murmured back, his voice fading away into slumber before I had a chance to answer.

  I kept silent, nose pressed against the cords in his neck, feeling his broad body move beneath me with each breath he took. This rumbling mountain of a man who treated me like a delicate piece of china and fucked me like I was made of unbreakable stone. My heart had never desired anyone quite like it longed for Robin Booth.

  Tomorrow when I wake up, I will be better.

  Robin deserved better.

  Beneath me, he moved in his sleep, his thick tree trunk arms tightening reflexively around me like he needed to be sure I was still there, and my heart ached. He never used to do that. He never used to have to check for me, his body reaching out towards mine unconsciously in his sleep as much as his eyes watched me during waking hours. There were rules now, unspoken between us, but as real as the air we breathed. Before I left the house alone, his eyes would scan my body like his brain was taking a snapshot of my clothing. He would hand me my phone, but not before checking that the GPS was on, and then he would stoop down and kiss my forehead, inhaling the scent of my shampoo like he hadn’t quite committed it to memory yet.

  I had broken him in so many ways I didn’t think I could ever make right again but I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying. I nuzzled my nose into the hollow between Robin’s throat and shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent that clung there, pure and uniquely him.

  Sleep wouldn’t come for me, I knew. Not with my head so full of my failures and the forgiveness I didn’t quite deserve, but I wouldn’t leave his embrace. I’d lay with him until the alarm went off, my body an apology on his skin, my brain willing thoughts into his dreams.

  I’m here, Robin.

  I promise.

  Robin

  Sometimes I would catch myself watching Alex as he sat in the corner of the leather sectional in our living room with his knees pulled up to his chest, scribbling words into the tattered notebook he carried around with him like a security blanket. The cap of the pen he wrote his journal with would be clutched between his teeth as he huffed and sighed and had small breakthrough moments of joy where his eyes would light up at his own brilliance. In those moments, those tiny little perfect moments, he was the Alex I loved without question, and I would wonder at the times I had believed him to be a stranger, a ghost, carving out a space for itself in the hollow shell that was his body.

  It was hard to pass by those moments that drew my eyes to him without comment, but the one time I’d said something, interrupted his train of thought to tell him that he looked almost happy, his eyes had gotten so sad at the recognition that his default mode now didn’t include such things as happiness that I had regretted opening my mouth. It didn’t seem to take much to send him crashing into the memories of the water he’d delivered his precious body into, somehow believing that the world would be a brighter place without his light in it.

  So I sat and watched as he rolled through moments of clarity, joy, frustration and happiness like I was watching a stage play, a passive member of the audience in the story of Alex McNamara, though I wished it was the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At least I knew how to play along with that one, had a bag prepared with all the props I needed and the cues memorized. Alex had no such cues. There were no signs to tell me how to react and respond to the things he’d say and do now that the word “suicide” had entered our vocabulary, and I felt myself flailing like I was the one who’d escaped into the water to drown and left him behind to pick up the shattered pieces of his heart.

  There had been a change the moment the police officer had shown up at our door to let me know that the person I’d reported missing only a handful of hours before had been found two hours away from our home and taken to the hospital. He had been alive but barely, unconscious though resuscitated by a passing traveler who hadn’t anticipated that her drive home would include the recovery of a body playing at being corpse from the lake she’d watched him step into.

  I had never known a fear so bone deep that it had rattled every part of me until that moment.

  The shift in how we did things happened as naturally as they could have now that we were playing a completely different game. Now that Alex was out of doctor’s direct care and back home where he belonged instead of settling into routine as it had always been, we circled each other like sharks around a feast we couldn’t quite reach with our teeth, instead of hunting together like we used to when both of us had been on the same page of the book we were writing titled, “Our Love Story.”

  There was love here still though, I could feel it rushing between us like electricity when he’d clear his throat and tell me that
he wanted to come spend a night with me, sitting in the corner of my office while I sat at the computer, doing the paperwork for the dog rescue I operated from the comfort of home instead of wasting hours away from him hidden in the back office of the building that housed the dogs. He’d sit in silence, scratching his words into the lined pages, while I worked my way through spreadsheets and budgets, the thudding bass drum of whatever music he’d throw onto the Bluetooth speaker built into our home making both of us move individually in our seats to the rhythm. Sometimes, if the beat struck him just right, Alex would drop his notebook to the ground and drag me out of my chair, making my body move alongside his as he clutched me tight around the waist and rested his head against my shoulder. He’d sing to me if he knew the lyrics, his voice not perfect but perfect to me in every syllable, the slightly nasal tone left behind by the repair of the cleft falling out of his scarred lips and hiding itself in the deepest part of my heart.

  Yes. There was love between us still and that was enough to keep me holding on, even though some days I felt like I was doing so with weary fingers and heavy heart. It wasn’t easy loving Alex anymore, the carefree moments of the last two years were shadowed by doubt that I would get stuck on, replaying memories like I was Sherlock Holmes hunting for clues, wondering the answer to the question that he still had not answered in the six months since he’d tried to kill himself.

  Why?

  I could feel hands skating down my thighs, tickling gently at the soft spots between them until my reflexes kicked in and spread my legs apart, trying to move away from the too soft touches. I mumbled something, half awake, and felt lips brush my knee making me startle and jump.

  “Robin,” Alex murmured from between my legs. “Relax.”

  I lifted the sheet covering us as his tongue trailed a line up my inner thigh, stopping at the crux of my hip. A smile greeted me, Alex’s eyes bright for likely having not slept a wink and his pink tongue darted out, flicking at my ballsack.