by Tessa Layne
The realization hits me as my body freezes. I can’t imagine my life without Emmaline. Somehow, without me even noticing, she crawled under my skin and into my cold, hard heart and took up residence. She makes me… feel. More importantly, I care about her happiness, her well-being. It happened so slowly, I didn’t even realize that the focus of my day is making her smile. And yes, of course, my days are absolutely about making money and growing my empire, but it means less if she doesn’t smile, if her untamed blue eyes don’t sparkle with laughter, or turn hazy and soft in the aftermath of a mind-blowing orgasm I’ve given her.
And not once has she asked for anything in return. She’s stayed a gentle presence while I’ve wrestled with my demons. And on the nights when I’ve awakened sweaty and shouting from a nightmare, she’s soothed me. With a quiet word of encouragement, a glass of water, sometimes even her body. Grim determination settles over me as I juggle takeout, wine, and flowers while working the key to the deadbolt. Tonight, I bare my soul, even though my pulse is already racing at the thought of sharing things I’ve never told anyone. Energy pulses through me as I head up the stairs, palms tingling. My chests squeezes so tightly, I feel like I’m having a heart attack. I drop the groceries on the cutting table and brace my arms pulling in deep heaving breaths. I wish Emmaline kept whiskey up here, or vodka, or something. I crack open the wine and pour a heavy glass. My hand shakes, and I nearly spill it all over the table. I take an unnaturally large gulp and focus on the tannins puckering my cheeks. It doesn’t burn on the way down like whiskey does, but it steadies me enough that I’m able to set out dinner - spaghetti and meatballs again - and put the flowers in a vase. I check my watch. Seven-thirty and still no Emmaline. I kick off my shoes, remove my jacket and tie, and release the top buttons of my shirt. I lie down on her bed, shutting my eyes and focusing on slowing my breathing.
The room is much dimmer when Emmaline shakes me awake. “I’m so sorry I’m so late,” she murmurs. I take her face and pull her into a kiss. I’m ruthless with her mouth, claiming it, greedily devouring every recess, as if I can somehow kiss away the wolves that are baying at the door of my psyche. And god love her, she melts into me, kissing me back with equal fervor, as if she needs this as much as I do.
I slide my hands over her, wanting to feel every inch of her. I need to reassure myself she’s really here, and in one piece. To my delight, she’s wearing a dress. I ruck up the skirt, sliding my hands underneath the panties that I can tell by feel are silk lace. I knead and squeeze as she presses into me, fingers ruffling my hair. Then she’s helping me remove her panties. I land a smack on that beautiful ass. She twitches with a little moan, biting down on my lower lip.
“That was for being late.”
“I’m so sorry I was late,” she murmurs as she kisses me.
“I was worried,” I scold, landing another smack on her bottom, and trailing open-mouthed kisses down her neck.
“I know,” she soothes. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“You should have called. Or texted.”
“You should have, too.”
She’s absolutely right. I should have. And that is what I hate about our arrangement. That we give each other so much personal space. Too much space. I sit up and arrange her on my lap, pulling down the strap of her dress to plant kisses across her shoulder. “Emmaline,” I say with a rough burr. “I can’t do this like this anymore.” I take a deep breath and lay another kiss on the curve of her shoulder. “I want more.”
She goes statue still, not even breathing. “What do you mean?” she whispers.
“I mean I need more. I need there to be no more secrets between us, that if you’re going to be late, I want to be the first person you call, not the last person.” More words pile up at the back of my throat, but I don’t have the courage to let them out.
She lifts her eyes to mine and I catch my breath, heart pounding. I’ve never seen her look this way before. It’s not the look of a woman who already knows my soul and is waiting for me to bare it, and there’s no judgment or condemnation. What scares the shit out of me is the fear I see in my confident fearless Emmaline. “What if you don’t like the-the secrets of my heart? What if my burdens are too much for you?”
“They won’t be,” I vow recklessly. “Nothing you can tell me is too much. I promise.” I don’t make promises lightly. I don’t make promises ever, but I can’t bear the look in her eyes. I’m supposed to be the one stoically carrying my burdens, not her.
She takes my face in her hands, the fierce light that peels back my armor, back in place. “I love you Declan. I don’t ever want to hurt you.” Before I can respond, her mouth is on mine, kissing me with a frenzy that borders on desperate.
I kiss her back, because… duh, even though my mind reels with her declaration. I push it out of my mind and give her what she wants, what we both need - my body. Because whatever demons are chasing us down, we both seem to be able to hold them at bay when we make love. I lie back, pulling her with me, then roll her onto her back, pinning her to the bed. “Tell me what you need, sweetheart.”
“You. Inside me. Now.” Her hands are at the buttons of my shirt, moving so fast she pops one. I don’t even care. I work off my pants, my cock rapidly swelling at the sight of her so needy, so wanton. In one fluid motion, she pulls off her dress and lies back, legs splayed wide open, cunt on display in its dark pink splendor.
I reach down to cup her sex and my palm comes away wet. “Your cunt’s so hot and needy, isn’t it?” I slide a finger through her slick folds, and around her clit, protruding like a little mountain, eager for my touch.
She reaches for my shorts, pulling and yanking on them until I shake them off my ankles. Her hand is at my cock, stroking in long smooth pulls that make my ears buzz. “No talking. I want to fuck.”
I can’t help but smile before I kiss her. “Your mouth is so dirty, it’s going to earn you more spankings.”
“Good,” she retorts, a wild light in her eyes. “After fucking.” She guides me into her sweet heat and cries out as I settle myself fully. “Yes. I need you,” she declares with a hiccup.
Fuck. Is she crying?
“Are you okay, honey?” I ask, sweeping her hair away from her face.
She gives me a watery smile. “Just feeling a bit emotional. I’m okay.” She wiggles her hips and squeezes around me. It feels so good, so right, that for a second my mind blanks from the goodness of it.
I begin a slow rhythm, but she drives me on, kissing and squeezing. I lift her knee and when I drive in, we both moan when I touch her womb. I know without a doubt, I have experienced heaven on earth. Our bodies become slick and heated as we build to a frenzy that can only be described as half-mad with need. Our eyes lock as we rocket toward an earth-shattering climax. I see the world in her eyes, the depth of her feeling, and I don’t shy away. My heart swells as I meet her gaze, and I try to give her everything I can’t verbalize. Our mouths meet in the middle and as our tongues thrust in time with our bodies, we cry out together, breath mingling as we rise into sweet oblivion.
Chapter Nineteen
We lie quietly, limbs entangled, breathing slowly returning to normal. She brings her fingertips to my face, tracing the ridge along my eyebrows, down across my cheekbones, coming to rest by cupping my cheek. I study her as she does this, seeing for the first time the lines of exhaustion around her eyes. Have they always been there, but I haven’t noticed? My conscience jabs at me. And while she’s not looking at me, daring me with her eyes to open my heart, I can see the weight of carrying a heavy emotional load in her eyes.
Fucking hell. Where have I been, that I haven’t noticed this?
I cover her hand with mine, turning my head to give her palm a kiss. “Emmaline. What is it?”
She turns her troubled eyes on me. “A secret for a secret?” she asks with a waver in her voice.
“All of them.” A horde of butterflies launches in my chest, wings beating frantically against my ribs.
Her fingers trace little patterns down my neck and across my clavicle, coming to rest on the identical circular scars near my armpit. She traces the outline as she talks. “My father went after our next-door neighbor, Pete, with a shotgun when I was fifteen.”
Nothing like a heavy opener to get the conversation moving. “And?” I don’t need to say more. All the garbage is coming out, the dirty laundry hung. Pick your cliché.
“A year later, he wielded a knife at my mother.” She takes a deep breath, fingers pausing in the divot left by the burn. “That same year, he found my notebook of nude sketches. He’d forgotten he’d given me permission to take figure drawing at Kansas State University. He chased me around the living room, trying to beat me with a broomstick, and I fell, and split my head open right at my eyebrow. I needed six stitches.”
Fuck. And I thought I had a shitty home life. “Where is it?”
“You can barely see it.” She traces the hairline scar with her finger, and she’s right, you can’t see it unless you know to look for it. I’ll never not see it again.
“How did it end?” I wonder briefly if he killed himself and that’s why no one talks about it.
“After the knife incident, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And shortly after, we had to move him to full-time nursing care. It became too much, and too dangerous for him to be at home.”
I pull her into an embrace, caressing her hair. I’m at a complete loss for words. “I’m sorry doesn’t seem to cut it.”
She sighs heavily, and I know she’s lost in a myriad of memories. “It was awful, seeing him fight it, seeing the anger that burned inside him because this was happening. He became something he wasn’t. Before he got sick, he was the best dad.” Her voice trembles, and she sniffs. “He used to be the minister at the Lutheran church, so we lived… modestly. More so, once he got sick. My mother took in sewing. She mended, but every now and then, she’d get asked to make something new, and she made the most beautiful dresses. She taught me to sew.”
I can hear the pride in her voice, the love - and also the deep sadness.
“I won a scholarship to France for a year after my father died. I didn’t want to go, because we were buried in bills, but she insisted. I think she thought it would help.”
“Did it?”
She lifts a delicate shoulder. “I apprenticed in a wedding atelier. So yeah, I guess. But I missed her. It was… different when I came home. I think the Alzheimer’s had already started to set in. Although we didn’t know it for another year.”
“What then?”
“I planned to go to design school, but between the bills and her deterioration, I never went.”
“So you started your own shop, here.”
She nodded. “At first, mama helped me. But it got to the point where… she just couldn’t.”
Even though we’re lying side by side, my heart drops like a stone, because I know what’s coming. All the unanswered questions that have been floating around in my head drop into place like a slot-machine lever pulling triple cherries.
“Two years ago, I had to move Mama to full-time care.”
I squeeze her tight. All I can do is hold her. My heart aches with her pain, and with the guilt that if it were my own parents, I probably wouldn’t be as devastated. I kiss the top of her head. “And this is why the secrecy of Madame M?”
“I promised Mama. She never said so, but I think it broke her heart to learn most of my income - most of what was supporting us was coming from scandalous lingerie.”
“How anyone could be disappointed in your success is beyond me.” Of course, all I have to do is look to my own family to see the same thing. Maybe it’s more common than I thought, parents putting unreasonable expectations on their children.
“One thing you have to understand about Scandinavians, is that we’re very independent. It’s a sin to brag, and it’s a sin to ask for help. Even if we need it.”
“So offering to let you live here rent free would be a bad idea?” It’s probably not the smoothest way to segue into my confessions, but it seems like a good place to start.
Her brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
I clear my throat, suddenly uneasy at the prospect of revealing to her that I’m her new landlord. “One of the things I’ve been meaning to tell you is that I purchased some real estate here in town.”
The look on her face is half shock, half horror. Not exactly the reaction I was looking for. I clear my throat again, heat bursting in my chest. “So, I’ve made most of my fortune in real estate investments. Separate from the Case Family Winery name. I… ah… I learned in college that I had a pretty good head for real estate. And… in my efforts to make a name for myself separate from my family, I got really good at spotting deals and market trends.” She’s looking at me in a way that makes my stomach flip-flop. “It hasn’t been all rosy - I’ve lost money, too. Lots of it. But… since I was here, and there were some good investment opportunities…” My stomach turns over again. I squeeze my temples with one hand, drawing my fingers in to squeeze the bridge of my nose. “At any rate. This building was for sale at a good price.”
“So you bought it,” she says in a flat voice.
“Yeah. I bought it.” Why is this a bad thing?
Her voice becomes razor sharp. “And you thought I might keep sleeping with you in exchange for free rent?”
“NO.” Fuck. I’ve made a holy mess of this if that’s what she thinks. “Not at all. I just thought if it would help, you’d get the “my boyfriend owns the building” discount,” I say making air quotes.
She glares at me. “After I just told you how important it is for me to stay independent? And you’re my boyfriend, now?”
“Well, we’ve been fucking for over a month and a half, what would you call it?”
She rolls onto her back and lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. That, I guess.”
“You just told me you loved me, where does that put us?”
She looks at me through pain-filled eyes. “This is so complicated.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe love is the simple thing in the middle of everything else that’s complicated.”
“But you do know that Alzheimer’s strips away love? The capacity to love?” A tear leaks out of her eye. “The ability to even understand what love is?” She sniffs. “How is that not complicated? How is that not a robbery of everything that has meaning?”
I feel my heart squeezing into a million pieces. She’s in so much pain, and I’m powerless to take any of it away. “Em…” I reach for her. “I don’t know what to say.”
Her tears are flowing freely. “Just hold me. Please.”
I gather her close. I hold her tight as her body shakes, as she pounds on my shoulder, as her sobs fill the room. My throat closes. My pain no longer matters. Because, fuck this. She’s torn apart. She cries until she’s spent, until her eyes are red and puffy, and I’m pretty sure there’s snot on my chest. And she’s still the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.
“What happened today, Em?” I ask when the tears have subsided and her breath has returned to normal.
She wipes her eyes and takes a couple of irregular breaths. “When I visited my mother today, she didn’t recognize me. She had no idea who I was.” she says in a rush, voice hitching at the end. “So even though I didn’t know it at the time, when I saw her yesterday, it was the last time I’ll ever hear her say my name, and smile at me. And I didn’t even know it.”
She breaks down into a sob and I pull her right back into my arms. Most of my life I’ve worn the poor little rich boy cloak like a badge of honor. Stoically moving through life, keeping my hurt, my heartache locked away in the deepest recesses of my soul. Holding everyone at arm’s length. But my pain is nothing compared to Emmaline’s. Nothing. It’s immaterial, a blip, and so filled with self-righteousness, self-centeredness, that it’s not even worth talking about. Yes, I grew up with an asshole brother who beat
me and mind fucked me. So what? I’m alive. And he has no bearing on my life anymore. I’ve made sure of that. And I’ve done a good enough job protecting myself that I’ve never experienced true heartache. Not like this. It’s never been clearer to me than now, that I’ve been a self-centered ass.
And lying here, holding her, I want to be better. I want to be the man in her life. Her rock, and her soft landing place. I can at least do that, because Emmaline is truly alone in the world. “Whatever you need, sweetheart,” I vow. “Tell me what you need.”
She pushes away from me and arranges herself cross-legged on the bed, then takes my hands, fiddling with them. “Promise me you won’t fall in love with me,” she murmurs, barely above a whisper.
“What?” I say too sharply.
She winces, then repeats herself a little more strongly. “I mean it. Promise me you won’t fall in love with me.”
“No,” I say flatly. Fuck, I’m already there, I just haven’t had the balls to say it. That stops now. “I love you Emmaline,” I say fiercely. “I’ve loved you from the moment we locked eyes at Jason’s wedding. And nothing you say to me will stop me from loving you.”
She shuts her eyes, face grimacing like I’ve punched her in the kidneys. Or pulled out her fingernails. She looks at me with the most horrible eyes. And I brace myself, because instinctively, I know that whatever she says next is going to turn my world upside down. She huffs out a sharp breath, then starts speaking in a robotlike tone- as if she’s practiced saying it over and over. “I carry a mutated PSEN2 gene. One of three genes that guarantees early-onset Alzheimer’s.” Her eyes are flat, devoid of emotion, as if there’s nothing left inside her. “I’m going to die from Alzheimer’s.”
Chapter Twenty
They say that faith is the ability to believe in things unseen. What if the thing you’ve never seen is love? Can you have faith in something you’ve never experienced? Can you hope to embody that thing you’ve never experienced without royally fucking it up? Or delivering it badly? Because you’ve never experienced it, and you don’t really even know what it is, or how to do it? And what role does forgiveness play? To be able to forgive is to love in spite of being hurt. But that implies that one must have experienced love to begin with, doesn’t it?