“No hospital, no nothing?”
“Oh no. There’s no way you could ever get Momma in one. She definitely had a concussion, and the next day, she was covered in bruises. But otherwise, she was fine. I don’t know how after a fall like that.” Her voice dipped and went shallow. “But every time I set foot on that staircase, I hear her screaming at me. I feel that drop in my gut like when we started falling. I see her falling.” Catching my stare, she whispered, “Yesterday, I felt her grabbing and pulling me.”
“Emma, I’m sorry,” I said just as softly. “For what happened to you, for yesterday, all of it.”
“You weren’t the one who did it,” she said dismissively.
“I grabbed you.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should’ve just let you walk away.”
Her brows lifted and eyes widened. “Hey, now there’s a thought. Almost like I’ve been telling you to do something similar since I met you.”
“Maybe one of these days I’ll actually listen to you,” I lied as I pushed to my feet.
A breathless laugh left her. “I wish you would.”
Now if that wasn’t the sweetest lie.
I held my hand out to her and helped her up, my entire body buzzing when she lingered for a few moments before pulling away. I was so wrapped up in this girl that the simplest touch from her had my head spinning.
Because her touch meant everything.
It meant trust, and if I knew anything about her, I knew she didn’t give that to many people.
Clearing my throat, I said, “I’ll run to the hardware store tomorrow, get everything to fix your door. But you can get in and out of your room now.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to. I can get it figured out.”
“You called me to take care of something. I’m going to take care of it.”
“I texted you,” she whispered, her mouth tipping into a teasing grin at the reminder.
The power flickered and then went out completely, submerging us in darkness. The only sounds were the rain outside and our deepening breaths. That tension that wound between us grew thicker and stronger until I had to physically fight against it to stay in place.
“Happens with these houses when we have a lot of rain,” I murmured, voice pure gravel.
“Convenient.”
I swallowed past everything screaming to be said and choked out, “I should let you get some sleep.”
“Right. Right, because it’s late, and you’re here and you shouldn’t be.” Everything was said almost as if it were a question. Everything was said like she was trying to remember why I should go.
And it made me want to stay.
“Tell me you don’t feel it,” I nearly begged. “Tell me you don’t feel this.”
“Reed . . .”
That was it. Just my name said as a plea, wrapped in everything else I was feeling.
“Hold out your hand.”
She sucked in a quick breath when the tips of her fingers collided with my abdomen, and I hurried to collect them in mine. Bringing them up, I placed her palm flat against my chest, against my pounding heart.
“Tell me I’m the only one feeling this.”
Instead of a response, her breaths quickened and grew heavier.
“Can I take a step closer?” I asked quietly, studying her silhouette in the dark.
The tips of her fingers curled against my chest as her soft Yes filled the space between us.
I placed one of my hands on the wall for support and leaned my head toward hers, bringing us within a breath of each other, and said, “Tell me any of those things, Emma. Lie to me.”
“You’re the only one feeling this,” she breathed, longing and confusion wrapped around each word. “You should go.”
My head listed to the side as a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “You lying?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she said honestly.
In an instant, that energy between us spun and spun and wound so tight that I could hardly breathe.
“Emma Wade, I’m gonna kiss you unless you tell me not to.”
“Oh God.”
I slanted my head closer until my mouth was hovering over hers. “Tell me not to, and I’ll leave this house right now.”
When only the sound of the rain hitting the roof and windows met me, I leaned forward and swept my lips across hers once . . . twice . . . before pressing my mouth to hers in a slow, gentle kiss.
Taking my time with what I knew was more important than any act I had ever done before.
The next breath that left her shook my goddamn soul.
I teased the seam of her lips with my tongue and groaned when she opened for me. Without hesitation, without reservation. Slanting my mouth over hers, I claimed her slowly, teasingly, letting the kiss build until we were both breathless. Releasing her hand, I traced the line of her jaw, tilting her head back and taking control of the kiss. Then my hand was in her hair, and she was grabbing at my shirt, trying to pull me closer, and I was trying to figure out how a kiss could be so good.
“Stop.”
The hushed word registered in my mind a split second before she said it again.
“Stop,” she wheezed, the word twisted in a horrible mixture of reluctance and self-loathing. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this, stop.”
But I already had.
I’d already pushed away from her and pressed up against the railing before the second stop had finished leaving her lips.
“I’m sorry.” I cleared my throat, trying to force back the need to pull her into my arms as that reluctance in her voice tugged at every part of me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Would you stop?” she nearly begged. “Would you stop being so nice? Would you stop just . . . God. There is so much about my life that you don’t understand.”
“Trust me, I got that.”
“No, you don’t,” she said gravely. “You don’t because there are so many things you can’t begin to fathom. And what would happen if you could?”
I went still at the blatant challenge.
Lungs aching as I waited, silently begging her to let me in a little more. To give me another piece of her life that I was dying to know.
“What would happen if you knew exactly why I need to hate you? Why I do?” Her words dipped and broke even as she struggled to put her razor-sharp strength behind them. “You would very quickly realize you don’t want this. That you should’ve left this alone and walked away that first night.”
“I fucking doubt that.”
“You can’t say that when you don’t know,” she snapped, then covered her mouth with a hand as her back hit the wall in the darkened hall. After a shuddering breath, her hand fell away with a weighted sigh. The sound sad and full of regret and confidence. “Because there is no getting past you. And there will be no getting past what you learn about me.”
“Then tell me, Emma. Tell me everything, so I can prove you wrong.”
“I can’t.”
I stepped toward her without thinking, but she didn’t try to stop me. “You can,” I assured her, voice soft and low. “You do what you did tonight. Give me a part of your world so I can know you. So I can show you not every guy is what you’ve encountered before. As I said earlier, you’ve been around the wrong people . . . clearly, if you’re telling me to stop being nice. I’m not being fucking nice, Emma. I’m apologizing because I know better. I may not know who you are yet, but I know you. I know you need to go slow. I know you need your space, but I still pushed you because I want you in a way I’ve never wanted anyone.”
“Reed, I can’t,” she said weakly. “There is—” Her hands lifted, hovering just over her head for long moments before falling heavily. “I’ll never be able to let myself. You have to understand that.”
The regret in her voice and the tension swirling between us, so thick and alive, made that impossible. But I’d already pushed her too far, and I knew if I pushed ev
en the slightest bit more, this extremely rare, vulnerable moment with her would vanish.
Stepping back, I bent to grab my tools, then searched her darkened features, trying desperately to ignore the pull between us. “Whatever happened in your life doesn’t scare me. I’ll prove that to you someday.” Before she could try to solidify any of her walls between us, I murmured, “Goodnight, Emma,” and left the house.
“That you, Emma?” Lala called out as soon as I set foot in the house the next day.
I’d come to love the way Lala always called out, asking if it was me.
Because I now knew it could literally be anyone else. Any of the other people in town, coming to check on the woman they loved. Anyone coming to pay a visit.
I still didn’t love that she kept her door unlocked, but she’d told me one afternoon that her door and kitchen were always open, to friends and thieves alike . . .
I’d rolled my eyes, she’d told me to go change, and that had been the end of that.
However, today, I didn’t want her greeting. I didn’t want to respond. I hadn’t slept at all after Reed had left the night before, replaying that kiss and every word, every emotion, every fear.
I was fairly certain I’d barely made it out of the store with my life after drowning in a sea of book-filled boxes—and we still had more coming. I was exhausted, my brain was mush . . . I just wanted to climb into bed, never leave, never speak to anyone, and never see another book again.
“Emma?”
“Ugh,” I groaned overdramatically.
An affectionate laugh filled the kitchen and drifted to where I was pressed to the front door. “Come get you something to eat.”
I managed to stumble into the kitchen. The moment I fell into one of the chairs, my head dropped to the table and my eyelids slid shut. “I’m falling asleep . . . right here.”
“Don’t you dare drool on my table,” Lala said in warning as she slid a plate onto the table. “Tell me about the day and get this into your stomach, then you can go sleep.”
I lifted my head to look at her when she sat beside me and briefly wondered if my head was always this heavy. “Half of the books came.”
“Oh, how thrilling!” When I narrowed my eyes at her, she lifted her brows. “Was something wrong with them?”
“There were so many books. So many.”
“Oh, I see.” She lifted her hand to her mouth as if trying to solve a problem, then sighed. “I hate to be the one to tell you this—really, I do—but you work at a bookstore.”
“You’re funny,” I said dryly, then took a bite of the sandwich she’d made. “I feel like I could sleep for a week. We didn’t even make a dent, and the other half of the shipment is coming tomorrow.”
“Well, Nora and I will be there for that. I just had my things to do today.”
“No. No, don’t do that. Donna and I have it.”
“And miss an opportunity to tell you what to do?” She scoffed.
“Donna tries,” I offered.
“Tries,” Lala shot back. “She doesn’t know you.”
Affection pulled at my mouth. “Lala, you should’ve seen her today, she was . . . God, she was so happy. When they finished delivering the shipment, she went from stack to stack, touching them as if they were precious. Then she looked at me with the sweetest smile and said, ‘I wish I had my old record player,’ and started doing this cute, little dance.”
Lala laughed. “Oh, she’s darling.”
“It gets better,” I assured her. “I asked what she would have played, and she just looked at me like I’d grown another head. ‘Well, the very best song in the world, of course.’”
I dug through my bag for my phone and opened the music app to play the song I’d had on repeat for Donna.
“Did she tell you what it was?”
I nodded and pushed play on You Can’t Hurry Love by The Supremes.
Lala pressed a hand to her chest. “I love this song.” Halfway through, she said, “Look at what you’ve already done for her.”
I waved off her words. “She’s done more for me by giving me a chance.”
“There happen to be a few people in this world who can see through that diamond-tough exterior you wear.”
I rolled my eyes, but the corner of my mouth was tipping up in a smile.
“We’ll just be thankful that Donna Morrison is one of them.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Speaking of people who can see through that exterior of yours . . .”
Oh no.
“Reed stopped by this morning.”
I tried to appear unaffected, but I knew Lala saw right through it. “Did he?”
“Sure did. Would have been nice if a certain granddaughter of mine had told me about the whole doorknob incident before she left this morning.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I was . . .” Consumed.
Wholly, completely, thoroughly consumed in a man, and trying like hell to get out the door before he could show up again.
“It slipped my mind,” I said lamely.
“Uh-huh.” She clicked her tongue and continued as if she weren’t interested to hear every single detail that I knew she was dying to get her hands on. “Told me about last night, how you messaged him from my phone.”
“You always leave it on the counter,” I choked out because it felt like my heart was in my throat as I waited to hear if Reed had told her about the kiss.
“Said he couldn’t believe the way the doorknob had been hacked off, but he got it all fixed just fine.” When I only nodded, she deliberately added, “He asked about you, asked if you were here.”
My gaze shot to hers. “Did you tell him where I was? About the bookstore?”
“No. Sure didn’t.” She fluffed at her hair that was more gray than blonde as her eyes bore into mine. Waiting. Prying. “But when I said you weren’t here, everything about that boy changed. I’ve never seen him so disappointed in the time I’ve known him.”
A noncommittal hum sounded in my throat.
The hand that had been playing with her hair smacked down onto the table. “Don’t hmm me, I can see the two of y’all trying to hide something from me because you went flying out of here this morning without so much as a hello, and he came in here looking all hopeful before I went and crushed him.”
A strangled sound crawled up my throat as I admitted, “He kissed me last night.”
Excitement broke across Lala’s face. “Emma Wade!”
“You kissed my Reed?”
I turned, eyes wide at the unexpected voice. But one look at the betrayal on Nora’s face, and I knew I was going to regret ever wishing for her silence to end.
“Why did you—you can’t,” she said firmly, her hands balling up into fists close to her chest.
“Nora,” I began softly, but she continued.
“I knew it, I knew it! He wants to talk to that one more than he wants to talk to me when he’s here,” she said to Lala. “That one’s taking my Reed from me just like she took my mom!”
“That is not—”
“You can’t take my Reed!” she screamed over Lala.
“Nora,” Lala snapped, pointing away from the kitchen. “Upstairs now.”
I watched as Nora stomped away and Lala went after her, my chest and stomach tight with unease. After a couple minutes of indecision, I pushed from the chair and followed until I was up the stairs and hesitantly stepping into my old room.
“You can’t take my Reed,” Nora said when she saw me from where she sat on her bed, face red and wet with tears.
Lala tsked. “What did I just say?”
But Nora just looked away and rubbed at her tear-stained cheeks.
Sucking in a shaky breath, I asked Lala, “Do you think Nora and I could talk?”
Lala’s brows lifted in surprise, but after a moment, she nodded and stepped out of the room as she said, “I’ll be downstairs if y’all need me.”
“I don’t like you,” Nora said soon after.
/> I lowered my head in acknowledgment. “That’s okay. You don’t have to like everyone.” I shrugged and stepped deeper into the room. “I kind of resented you when I first met you too.”
Nora looked around, her chest jerking with her shuddering breaths. “What does ‘resented’ mean?”
“Um . . .” Embarrassment flared in my chest as I admitted, “It basically means I was angry with you.” I shrugged as I met her confused and hurt eyes. “But it wasn’t fair because you didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
She stared at her comforter for a while before her curiosity got the best of her and asked, “Why are you angry at me?”
“I’m not,” I said quickly, “but I was. I was angry because you didn’t have to know our mom. Our mom was a really, really bad person. I had a terrible, scary life because of her. And it made me angry that she let you have a normal life with Lala when she refused to let me have that.” I lowered myself to the floor and sighed. “But the thing is, I never should’ve been angry with you because all of that was her fault and her decisions—not yours. I’m also really thankful you never had to see that terrible, scary life, and I would do anything to keep you from it and from her. But that doesn’t mean I took her from you. I already told you, she left me long before you were born.”
“But you got to know her.”
“Nora, I can’t imagine what that’s like for you, but I wish you knew how lucky you are to be raised by Lala. To know her, and to have people like Reed.”
“You’re trying to take my Reed,” she cried out, chin wavering.
I studied her for a while before asking, “He’s really special to you, isn’t he?”
“The most special.”
“You’re incredibly special to him too—he told me.” I watched as she wiped furiously at her face and said, “Nora, no one can ever take Reed from you. But he might find someone one day that he wants to date and marry, and you’re going to have to be okay with that.”
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