How could I say no to that? We spent several songs wrapped up in each other. Even though my brain’s initial reaction was to fight it, I couldn’t get past the sense that it seemed right just to be held by him.
“Do you know how much I missed you?” he asked me as we swayed to one of the slower songs.
I buried my face in his neck to hide the tears. “Then why’d you leave?” My voice broke at the end of the sentence, and Luke ran his fingers through my hair in a calming gesture.
“Because I was stupid,” he stated matter-of-factly. “I loved you so damn much, but I thought I was no good for you. I really did think I was doing the right thing for you, Emmy.”
I pulled out of his neck and stared up at him in shock. “You loved me?”
He smiled down at me as he trailed his fingers down my cheek. “I still do, baby girl. You’re the only reason I came back.”
I shook my head in disbelief as more tears fell. Luke wiped them away and pressed his lips to mine. I didn’t bother pushing him away. I wanted the kiss as much as he did, and I was done denying it.
We stayed that way until someone cleared their throat from behind us. I pulled back and looked over my shoulder to see all my girlfriends and Trevor staring. Savannah looked a little concerned but the rest of them all had shit-eating grins on their faces, Trevor included. He could be such a chick sometimes.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Trevor said with a chuckle, proving he wasn’t sorry at all. “But we’re heading to the bar. Y’all feel like joining, or you gonna stand here and suck face longer?”
Luke took my hand and started leading me to the bar with the others. “You want a place to live?” he asked Trevor as we walked.
“Just feelin’ the love, man. That’s all.”
“Feel it silently.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the interaction between Luke and Trev. At times, they seemed like an old married couple.
We got to the bar, and I glanced over to Savannah. It wasn’t lost on me that she was being unnaturally quiet. I started to pull away from Luke but his hand tightened on mine. I looked up and saw the question in his eyes. “I’m just going to talk to Savannah.” He gave me a smile and let go, but not before delivering a bone-melting kiss.
When he finally released me and my legs started cooperating again, I made my way over to her. “Hey, sweetie. What’s on your mind?”
She plastered on a fake smile. “Once I get a beer, not a damn thing.”
“You really want me to call you on that lie?”
“No,” she said on a sigh. “Look, I’m really trying to be supportive of this whole Luke and you kissing thing. I just can’t help but worry, you know?”
I gave her a big hug. “I know babe, believe me. But I tried ignoring what’s happening between me and Luke, and it just didn’t work.”
She squeezed me back tightly. “I know, Emmy. And I’m happy if you’re happy.”
I gave that statement some thought. “You know, I am.”
We talked for a few more minutes before her smile dropped and her happy demeanor turned vicious. “Can we have just one night without that walking STD ruining it?”
I turned to see what she was talking about and saw Allison draped over the front of Luke and Trevor looking a little scared. In Luke’s defense, it appeared that he was trying his hardest to detach her talons before I noticed.
“Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled before calling out. “Hey Luke, you’ve got a little bit of trash stuck to the front of your shirt.”
I caught Luke’s lips quirk up and Trevor choked on his beer then busted out laughing. Allison wrinkled her nose at me and turned away.
Lizzy joined in on the fun. “You might want to get your hands off her man before she breaks your fingers,” she told Allison as I walked up next to Luke and slipped my arm through his.
“Her man? You have got to be joking. Luke, please tell me you have better taste than that.”
Luke removed her hands from his shirt and stepped into me. “You need to move along, Allison.”
“Oh my God. I guess there’s no accounting for taste,” she said in my direction. “Luke, when you’re done slumming, you have my number.”
She started to turn away but I just couldn’t help myself. “You know Allison, if you quit doing your makeup like a two-dollar crack whore, maybe guys would quit banging you doggy style and actually look you in the eye.”
Allison turned around slowly and cut her eyes at me. “Oh, that’s hilarious coming from you.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up on ends. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“At least I’m not so pathetic that I’d purposely get pregnant to try and trap a man into a relationship.”
All of the blood drained from my face and I couldn’t move as Luke looked at me wide-eyed. “What the fuck is she talking about, Emmy?”
“BITCH! You did not just say that!” Savannah dove for Allison before anyone could react, punching her in the face. The two of them hit the ground in a pile of hair and flailing limbs. Allison shrieked as Savannah connected with her jaw.
My legs finally started working again and I ran for the door. I knew Luke wasn’t far behind but I had to get out.
“Emmy! EMMY!” Luke shouted as he ran after me. He latched onto my elbow and spun me around. “What the FUCK is she talking about?!”
I couldn’t form a sentence as Luke stared down at me, seething with anger. I tried pulling my arm away but his grip just tightened, causing me to wince in pain.
“Let her go, Luke. Right now.” I was so out of it that I didn’t even notice all of my friends following us out of the bar. Brett came up next to me and tried to get Luke’s attention. “I’m serious, man. Let her go.”
“Luke, come on buddy.” Trevor was standing behind him trying to coax him down, but Luke wasn’t having any of it.
“Who got you pregnant, Emmy?” His hushed tone scared me more than when he was yelling. “Answer me!”
“I said back off!” Brett shouted.
“This is none of your fucking business, Brett. This is between me and Emmy.”
“Not when you’re yelling at her like this, man. Just calm down.”
Luke looked at Brett then back at me. “Fuck calm! Who got you pregnant, Emmy?”
I tried to speak past the lump in my throat. “You did,” I whispered.
Luke took a step back like I’d slapped him. “Where’s my kid, Emerson?”
That caused a sob to break from my chest. Savannah must have finished her fight with Allison at some point, because at that moment, she stepped up next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “Luke, you need to relax, okay? This is not the time for this conversation.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Not the time? Not the time?! Are you fucking kidding me? I just found out she had my kid, and I never fuckin’ knew it! Where the fuck is my kid, Emmy? Did you get rid of it?”
All the fear I previously felt left my body and was replaced with cold numbness. The fact that he could accuse me of getting rid of my child told me exactly the kind of guy he really was. He hadn’t changed at all; he was still as much an asshole now as he was then.
“Stand down, Luke, before I knock you on your fuckin’ ass.” Brett might not have been as tall as Luke, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in bulk.
“Did you get rid of my kid, Emerson? Just pawn it off on someone else? I swear to Christ, if you gave my child up without my permission, I’m taking your ass to court.”
That was it. Brett’s patience snapped with that one statement. The only sounds were those of flesh hitting flesh and the grunts coming from Luke and Brett as they went at each other. I just stood there watching as two of the people I’d known my whole life beat the hell out of each other. I vaguely recall the screams of my friends begging them to stop as I stared at the destruction in front of me.
Trevor and Jeremy finally pushed their way in, and pulled the two of them away from each other.
Brett was sporting a busted lip and Luke had a nasty looking gash through his left eyebrow. Both of them had bruises that were swelling up all over their faces.
“Calm down!” Gavin yelled, trying to get the two men to stop lunging at one another.
“I’m gonna kill you, you motherfucker!” Brett shouted. “Don’t you ever talk about her like that. Do you hear me?!”
Luke struggled against Trevor with everything he was worth. “What the hell do you expect me to think, Brett?! I get back after eight years, and find out she had my kid and I never knew.”
Brett stopped fighting against Jeremy, and I could see his grip loosening. “Whose fault is that, asshole? You never picked up your phone or answered any emails from any of us. You wanna know where your kid is, visit Cloverleaf Cemetery.”
“Brett,” Savannah said with a whisper. “No.”
Everyone around me froze, including Luke. “What?” he asked as all the fight drained out of him.
“You threw out accusations without even stopping to think about what that girl suffered after you up and abandoned her. You don’t deserve her forgiveness, but she gave it to you anyway, and you repay her like this? That baby was the only thing that got her through you leaving, and once she lost it, we were all certain we’d lose her too.
“You never should have come back. You’re fuckin’ toxic.” With that, Brett turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 24
After Brett walked away, everyone just stood there staring between me and Luke. Savannah and Lizzy had tears in their eyes. Jeremy just shook his head then hung it between his shoulders. Gavin and Stacia held on to each other, and Trevor shuffled from foot to foot. Luke stood without blinking for what felt like years before he finally addressed me.
“Emmy, I...”
I moved to stand directly in front of him. “I didn’t ‘get rid’ of your kid, Luke. You never had a kid. I did. You lost all rights to my child when you refused to answer my calls or emails so that I could tell you I was pregnant. I had a baby that I loved more than anything in this world, and I lost her.”
“Her?” he asked, tears welling up in his eyes. “It was a girl?”
“Yes,” I answered coldly.
He raked his hands through his hair and hung his head. “Jesus Christ. Emmy, baby…”
He reached for me, but I took a step out of reach. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “From this moment on, you don’t touch me. You don’t look at me. You don’t fucking talk to me. I want nothing to do with you, Luke. You’re nothing but poison for me, so as far as I’m concerned, you no longer exist.”
“You don’t mean that. Please, Emmy…”
“I mean it.” There was no emotion in my voice. I felt nothing, and it reflected in my tone. I was so through with Luke, it wasn’t even funny. “I could never possibly hate a person as much as I hate you. Accusing me of getting rid of my child just proved to me what a piece of shit you really are. You and Allison deserve each other. You’re both bottom feeders.”
I turned and walked away, not giving him a chance to say anything else.
“Emmy, sweetie, wait up,” Savannah called as she ran after me. “Emmy, are you okay?”
I opened my car door and climbed in as I answered. “I’m done with this shit, Van. I’m going home.”
Her eyes were frantic. “Let me come with you. Please, Emmy. You don’t need to be alone right now.”
I placed my hand on her arm to try and calm her down. “I’m okay, Savannah. I’m not going to do anything stupid, I promise. I just really want to be by myself.”
“Are you sure?”
I gave her a sad smile and responded. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
I could tell she didn’t want to let me go. She was afraid I’d sink back down into the dark place I was in right after I lost my daughter. I was in a bad way, but I’d never let myself go there again. I was stronger than that. I just had to show her.
***
LUKE
By the time I got my shit together and ran after Emmy, I was too late. Her car was just pulling away and Savannah was staring after it as tears streamed down her face. I came to a stop as she turned to me. “You son of a bitch! I knew you’d do this to her!” She slapped me so hard my head shot to the side and I saw stars, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but stand there. I deserved every bit of her hatred.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered pathetically. I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re sorry? Oh, that just makes everything better, doesn’t it? How in the hell could you think she’d give up her own baby?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” I replied. “Fuck! I know she wouldn’t do something like that, but I jumped at the first scenario that popped into my head. How do I fix this, Savannah? I know you hate me, but you have to help me fix this.” I’d never felt more desperate in my life.
“I’m not helping you with shit. I told you that I knew you’d do this again, and you just proved me right. You are the worst human being on the face of the Earth, Luke. Stay the fuck away from Emmy.”
She started to walk away, but I grabbed onto her arm. “I’m begging you, Savannah. Please, at least tell me what happened.”
She stood silent for several seconds, but when she didn’t walk away, I knew she’d at least tell me what happened. “The doctor called it placental abruption. She was nine-months pregnant when she started bleeding heavily.” Savannah’s face went pale as she talked, and her voice started to shake. “I tried to get her to the hospital as fast as I could, but we didn’t make it in time. The baby died, and we almost lost Emmy because of all the blood she lost.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. Now you see why you need to get the hell out of her life? Everything about you is a reminder of what she lost.” She pulled her arm out of my grasp and started walking again. I didn’t stop her this time. “You aren’t good for her, Luke,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away, leaving me standing alone with my thoughts. That wasn’t a good place for me to be at the moment.
When I got back to my car, I was surprised to see Trevor still standing there. “You okay, man?” he asked as I got closer.
“No,” I stated. “I’m so fucking far from okay, it’s unreal.” He nodded his head but remained silent. “Lizzy told you what happened, didn’t she? With the pregnancy?”
Trevor let out a long sigh before answering. “Yeah. When you ran after her, Lizzy filled me in. It was bad man. I mean really bad.”
“Savannah told me about the bleeding and Emmy almost dying.”
“There’s more to it than that. I didn’t get the long and drawn out of it, but from what Lizzy said, I gather that Emmy was in a real bad head space for a while after the baby died.”
I rubbed my hands over my face and looked up at the black sky. “Could this night get any fucking worse?”
“I don’t see how, brother.” Trevor walked up and placed a supportive hand on my shoulder. “Nothin’ more you can do tonight, Luke. Let’s head home. You can get some sleep and maybe come up with a plan in the morning.”
I looked at Trevor and let out a dry laugh. “I don’t see me coming back from this one, Trev.”
He shook his head and gave me a look of pity. “I hope you’re wrong, but I just don’t know.”
CHAPTER 25
PAST
Late Spring 2006
EMERSON
“Maybe you shouldn’t be standing up there. You said yourself that you were feeling a little pain.” Savannah was holding the bottom of the ladder for me as I reached up to paint the last white butterfly on Ella’s lavender nursery wall. I wanted to make her room as beautiful and girly as possible soft purple walls with white and pink butterflies strategically placed all around. The people who wrote the books on pregnancy weren’t joking when they said the mother started nesting near the end of her pregnancy. I was nine months along, and when I woke up that morning, I just had to finish up my daughter’s bedroom. I wished G
rams could have been here, but she was at the diner, so I called Savannah over to help me finish up the last of it.
I was so anxious to meet my sweet baby girl. I couldn’t wait to get Ella home and in her new room and see her swaddled in her pretty pink baby blanket. I could picture myself sitting in the glider as I watched her sleeping peacefully in her crib.
“It’s just Braxton Hicks, Savannah. The doctor said it was totally normal at this stage of the pregnancy. Now shut up and hand me that stencil.”
She huffed out a frustrated breath but finally relented and did as I ordered. I reached down to get the butterfly stencil when a sharp pain cut through my abdomen. It was so painful that I lost my breath. I clung to the top rung of the ladder so I wouldn’t fall. I thought I could wait out the pain, but after a second or two, it wasn’t subsiding.
“What’s happening? Emmy, what’s wrong?” Savannah asked in a rush, clearly freaking out.
It was almost unbearable, but I did my best to climb down the ladder and stretched out on the bedroom floor. I was trying to do the deep breathing I’d read about in one of my books, but the pain wasn’t getting any better “I don’t know what’s wrong, but this isn’t right. God, it hurts.” To make matters worse, when I looked up at Savannah and took in her ghostly white complexion, I knew something was wrong. These weren’t just normal labor pains.
“Oh God, Emmy… Is that blood? It looks like blood!”
“What?!” I tried to sit up to see what she was talking about, but the room started to spin around me. “Van,” I mumbled through the pain. “I need you to drive me to the hospital. We have to go right now.”
“Emmy, I need to call an ambulance. There’s too much blood.” Tears welled up in Savannah’s eyes as she spoke. At the sight of her fears, combined with my own, my cries turned into sobs.
“We can’t wait for an ambulance. That’ll take too long! Please just help me up, so we can go,” I begged.
She didn’t hesitate. She pulled me from the floor just as another stabbing pain ripped through my abdomen. It was a miracle that I made it to Savannah’s car without passing out, but the desperation to keep my baby safe pushed me to keep going. As I sat inside, I tried my hardest to keep my eyes open but it was impossible. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion, and my vision began to blur. The last thing I remembered before passing out was reaching down to stroke my stomach as tears streamed down my face.
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