Fallen from Grace by Leigh Songstad

simple. Now everything is...”
    “Real,” he offered.
    She nodded. “Yeah.” She took another drink of the wine. “Anyway, long story short, things got really bad. After Cade graduated, he went to art school and fell into a bad crowd. He started doing drugs. He’d hated the medication our parents forced him to take. My dad is also a psychologist, and had this theory he could fix him, but it only made Cade rebellious. Our parent’s inability to accept him for who he was ultimately drove him to ecstasy, cocaine and even heroin. He started drinking a lot, and it all became a part of this downward spiral that ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of twenty-one.” Grace wiped the tears from beneath her eyes.
    “What happened?”
    She swallowed the lump in her throat. “One night, he got into a really bad fight with my dad. I didn’t even know it was going on because I was studying for my stupid exam. When I came out of my room, my parents were freaking out. Cade had come home and told them that he was finished with them and moving out. He’d packed his bags and told them that he hated them. That they were the reason he was so messed up and if they could have just accepted him for who he was, then he could have stayed. The final autopsy showed he was under the influence of ecstasy, cocaine and alcohol when he hit a guard rail going a hundred miles per hour and flipped his car. He wasn’t even wearing a seat belt, Judas. I think he killed himself on purpose.”
    “Oh, Grace,” Judas uttered and pulled her onto his lap. She pressed her face to his chest and cried. “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could do.”
    “If I wouldn’t have been wearing my headphones,” she sobbed, “I would have heard him, and I would have been able to stop him from leaving that night.”
    He shook his head. “No, you can’t blame yourself for his death. Life is a gift, and it isn’t our place to make judgments. My mother used to say that only God has the power to judge us, no one else.”
    Grace wiped her face and glanced up at him. “What do you mean, used to say?”
    Judas shook his head. “There’s been enough talk of death. Please, some other time.”
    Grace guided his gaze to hers. “I told you my sad story. Please, I want to understand you, Judas. Talk to me.”
    “My mother, she’s...” He stopped and looked away. “I can’t do this right now. You’ll hate me.”
    “I could never hate you, Judas.”
    “You don’t know that for certain.”
    “I do.”
    He ran a hand through his hair, “Please, not now. Not today.”
    “Why?”
    Sighing, he finally said, “Because it’s the anniversary of her death.”
    “What?” She gasped. “How long has it been?”
    He broke her hold as he rubbed his face, then thrust both hands through the sides of his hair. “Ten years.”
    “Have you ever spoken to anyone about it?”
    “Like a therapist?”
    Grace tilted her head. “Seriously, don’t undermine my profession straight to my face.”
    Judas laughed. “Please accept my apology, Dr. Winters.”
    “I’ll think about it, Counselor.”
    Judas rolled Grace onto her back. “You know, it’s pretty damn sexy when you get all terminology technical on me.”
    “Oh yeah?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I kind of like it when you get all alliterative on me.”
    Grinding his growing erection against her, he asked, “On you? Or in you?”
    “Are you going to alliterate your way into my vagina?” she asked, teasingly scraping her nails against his back and pulling his t-shirt over his head.
    His lips twitched. “I could try.” He glanced away as if deep in thought, then looked back at her with a confident smile spreading across his lips. “Finally found forever for Frankie.”
    Grace laughed. “You named your penis Frankie?”
    “Well, Frank...you know teenage boys. We were fishing out on the bay, and joking around, but Frankie sounded so much better in this