by Toler, B N
Bea glanced at me then back to Miles. “The nose and chin I think.”
“We’re about the same height, too,” I added.
We did share similar features, though style-wise, we were polar opposites.
As Bea and I had gotten to know one another, it was hard to deny Stanley Jennings had, for the most part, been an excellent dad, despite his secret. Like me, Bea had grown up confident, with the same the world is my oyster attitude my father had instilled in me. She’d started her own fashion line at sixteen, a bohemian style of dresses and purses she’d later sold to a major retailer for a pretty significant sum. With her minimalist nature, combined with smart investing, the money from the sale had grown to a small fortune, allowing her the freedom to do whatever she wanted, wherever she wanted to do it.
To Miles’s credit, he rolled well with the surprise visitor and kept the interview light hearted. “Let’s play a game to see how much alike you are. Answer my questions immediately. Coke or Pepsi?”
“Coke,” I said.
“Pepsi,” Bea answered and we both chuckled.
Miles continued. “Chris Hemsworth or Jason Mamoa?”
“Mamoa,” Bea droned, her blue eyes widening with delight, like it was the only possible answer.
“Hemsworth,” I responded, grinning when she looked at me like I was insane.
“Dude,” Bea said, shifting in her chair to face me directly. “Mamoa on Game of Thrones.” She put her fingers to her mouth and kissed them. “Nothing beats that.”
“Uh, hello,” I argued back playfully, “Thor. Thor is a god. You can’t beat that.”
Miles smiled. “Beer or liquor?”
“Both,” we answered in unison before we shot our gazes to each other and laughed.
I had to hand it to him, Miles had us feeling comfortable by the time the minor chit-chat ended and he moved into the main event.
It was brutal, but having Bea there with me made a world of difference.
“When the world sees Alyssa Myers, we’re seeing the singer and performer. What can you tell us about the incredibly talented woman behind that dolled up persona?” Miles asked Bea.
Bea tilted her head thoughtfully, then said, “She’s so brave. A lot braver than she thinks she is. I can’t imagine doing what she does, putting herself out there for everyone to judge. That takes courage.” I hung my head, touched by her sentiment, but not believing it. She had no clue that I was really a coward.
He probed for more details for a bit, but eventually he took in a deep breath and met my gaze, his expression serious as he said, “One final question. After learning of the truth about your father, discovering you both have had a sister all this time, how do you feel?”
Bea twisted her mouth as she turned her piercing blue eyes to me, resting her hand on mine. “I feel pretty fortunate, actually. I mean, here is this woman who’s been wandering around, thinking that Coke is better than Pepsi, and that Hemsworth trumps Mamoa. Clearly, she’s in need of some perspective. I think I got to her just in time.” I laughed quietly as Bea squeezed my hand before turning back to Miles. “But seriously, we found each other. That’s all that matters.”
Miles bobbed his head, pleased with her response. I could see the wheels turning about how he’d edit it to make himself look like some deep journalist that brought out the vulnerability in us, but it didn’t matter. He had his story, and I no longer had the truth hanging over my head.
When it was finally over, Miles stood and straightened his jacket.
“Thank you,” he told me, his tone genuine.
“You’re welcome.”
He reached in his pants pocket and pulled out a thumb drive, handing it to me. “The photos of the Kepners, as promised.”
I took it and watched as he strode down the steps and toward his car. He turned back, suddenly and met my gaze. “Which of your parent’s suggested you become Alyssa Myers? I mean, was your father the one to suggest you change your name? Maybe to hide you from Bea and her mother?”
I stared blankly at him, unwilling to let him know he’d managed to throw me after all.
When it became clear that I wouldn’t answer, Miles shook his head and exhaled loudly through his nose. “Either way, I really like Emalee.” Slipping his hands in his slacks, he turned and continued to his vehicle whistling tunelessly.
“I like her, too,” I murmured, even though he couldn’t hear me. I remained where I was watching until his car disappeared down the long driveway. As the dust from the car began to settle, I turned and went inside, leaving Pepper to supervise the cleanup. Wordlessly, I climbed the stairs and moved stiffly down the hall to my mother’s room. When I opened the door, she was propped up, a mug of tea resting in her lap between her hands.
“How did it go? she asked.
I studied her for a moment, looking for any indication she knew what I was about to ask. Seeing none, but not trusting anything anymore, I stepped in the room and quietly closed the door before meeting her gaze. “Mama…why did you want me to change my name?”
It was nearly sunset when Emalee and Pepper knocked on our door. Emalee’s braided hair fell over her bare shoulder, emphasizing the oversized top she wore over black tights. She looked stunning.
“Hey,” I said, my voice sounding more relieved than I’d meant it to. “Did you get my messages?” I stepped out on the porch as Bailor climbed the porch steps to join us.
“We did. We also received a lovely photo of your brother. It’s really a great shot,” Pepper said condescendingly. “Real classy, him sitting there holding a shot gun while wearing a dirty wife beater.”
“I told him to wear something nice. He just wouldn’t listen,” Bailor quipped.
Pepper ignored him. “Tell me,” she twisted her features, “Is Joe trying to create head shots to be a model for guns weekly, or what?”
“Pepper,” Emalee groaned, but Pepper didn’t let up.
“I mean the only thing that could’ve made it scream hillbilly more was if he’d had a crying, snotty-nosed, half-naked toddler sporting a soggy diaper holding a baby bottle filled with Kool-Aid.”
Bailor’s grin grew so wide it made my face hurt. Pepper shot her lethal glare to him when she realized he was laughing. “It’s not funny!”
He attempted to contain himself, though poorly. “It’s…a little funny.”
“Do you know what Em had to do to keep him from pressing charges?”
Emalee shook her head and held up her hands. “Okay, Pepper. Enough. It was going to happen anyway, and at least it’ll keep Joe out of trouble.” Pepper harrumphed as she crossed her arms and looked away as Emalee peered up at me. “Miles won’t be pressing charges. I made sure of that.”
I narrowed my gaze. “If you had to pay him off to do it, we should be the ones paying for it.”
“No, nothing like that. Don’t worry.”
A tense silence crept in as I waited for her to elaborate. After a few moments, Bailor cleared his throat and turned to Pepper. “You look like you need a drink. Come see what I’ve been working on today and I’ll pour you a whiskey.”
Pepper darted her gaze between us before taking a step back. “Yeah. I think I need something hard.” When she turned and started down the stairs, Bailor bit his knuckle to stifle the remark he wanted make. There weren’t many things Bailor couldn’t twist into a sexual innuendo.
We laughed quietly as they walked off, before Emalee’s gaze wandered to the bare fields. We’d finished the harvest a couple of months ago, and we were letting the soil settle before beginning the next round of planting.
“I’m sorry about Joe.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Everything happened so fast and that guy was being a dick.”
“Joe could’ve gotten in a lot of trouble,” she noted before one corner of her mouth lifted in a half-smile. “I still wish I could’ve seen that asshole’s face when Joe fired on him, though.”
“He looked like he wanted to piss himself,” I told her with a smirk. She was
quiet for a moment. “What did you have to agree to, to get him not to press charges?”
Hugging herself, she dropped her head. “He wanted a story; one that exposes my father as a liar.”
I took a seat on the banister, facing her so I could see her as she spoke. “What’s the story?”
She didn’t answer my question, instead asking one of her own. “Do you believe people can do bad things with the best of intentions?”
I raised my brows as I thought about it. “You mean like Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor?”
She twisted her mouth as she fidgeted, twisting her braid. “Sort of, but more personal. Like, what if your best friend was madly in love with someone and that someone cheated, and you found out, but you knew if you told your best friend they’d be crushed, like life-altering crushed.”
“Does Pepper—”
She raised her hand interrupting me. “It’s hypothetical, I promise. Pepper doesn’t have a boyfriend or anything.”
The question seemed odd, but I did my best to follow her thought. “So in this story, lying to the friend, or omitting the truth, is the bad thing for a good reason? Because doing that protects them from being hurt?” She bobbed her head a few times in confirmation and I took a deep breath. “Well, no one ever wants to hurt anyone. I mean, especially someone you love, but then again, really loving someone isn’t so much about protecting them from being hurt, as it is about being there for them when they are hurting. A mirage of a perfect life is just that—an illusion. Being deceived would hurt anyone, but I think what hurts people most is realizing they’d been drifting through the idea of what they thought was happening, only to find out they’d been duped. That someone they loved so deeply had hijacked their reality just to protect their own.”
“That was deep.”
I chuckled softly. “Just call me the philosopher of Kepner farm.”
“You know, there’s not a soul that’s existed that doesn’t feel some type of shame.” She expelled a deep breath. “I don’t care how noble you are, at some point we’ve all said, done, participated in something we wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. And sometimes we’ve had something done to us…something shameful. Something no one deserves.”
The muscles in my back and neck tightened as my mind ran away with her words. Had someone hurt Emalee?
“My father might be a shit for what he did, but my mother isn’t the saint I thought she was, either.”
“Em,” I said exasperated. “Out with it. What is it?” Her words had me thinking all kinds of unimaginable things that made me want to hunt her father down and beat the life out of him. I needed to know what she was talking about.
She let out a shaky breath. “It’s…awful, Cole.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. “Emalee, did your father…did he…” Damn, I couldn’t even think of how to word the awfulness I was thinking.
“No,” she stopped me. “He didn’t touch me, or anything like that.”
I let the air in my lungs seep out slowly and closed my eyes to clear my head.
“It’s not just what he did. It’s my mother, too. And me. I’m no better, really. Everything is a mess.”
She was rambling and not making any sense; I wracked my brain for what terrible atrocity she could have committed. Drugs? Adultery? “You can trust me, Em.”
Her lip trembled as she fought back the emotions rolling through her. “Do you remember I told you my parents were having problems that summer?”
I lifted my brows at her unexpected question. “Yeah, I remember.”
She let her head drop, clearly struggling with telling me. “My father has another family. Or, he had another family.”
My mind ground to a halt at the last words I’d have ever expected her to speak. “What? What do you mean?”
“Another wife,” she went on, her voice edging on angry. “Another daughter. I have a half-sister. Her name is Bea.”
I rubbed my hand down my face as a memory flared from the night I’d helped Emalee get her drunk father into the car outside the HoBo. So he had been thanking a ‘bee’ of sorts. “Uh…” I muttered lamely, at a loss for what to say.
“I found out a week ago, right before I found out about my mother’s cancer and came here. Mama found out about them that summer we were here, and she never told me. I had to find out from that snake reporter.”
I had always thought Betty was a good woman. I couldn’t imagine she would’ve hidden something from Emalee without a good reason. “Maybe she didn’t know how to tell you,” I offered.
Emalee sniffled before wiping at her nose with her arm. “I asked her back then, indirectly, if my father was doing something bad, but she told me I wouldn’t understand. And even though she never admitted it, I’d known it had to be another woman. It crushed her when their marriage ended.” She blinked several times, her eyes swimming with tears on the verge of cascading down her face. “She’d loved my father so much; still does, probably, but she had to leave him. He’d betrayed her.”
“So she hadn’t known there was another family?”
Emalee shook her head before clearing her throat. “When she left, just before Constance passed away…” she glanced apologetically at me “…she’d hired a detective. He’d found my father’s other wife and child, and she’d had to go and see for herself.”
I winced, my heart aching for Betty. That had to be a kick in the teeth. “I hate that you and Betty had to discover that about him.”
Her tear-filled eyes met mine. “Mama helped him hide it,” she hiccupped. “She’d told me I should use a stage name to help separate my personal life from my performer life, but she only did it to make sure Bea or her mother wouldn’t discover he was my father.”
“She told you this?”
“Said she was trying to protect me. I was on the cusp of my career, and she didn’t want the news to derail me.”
I closed my eyes finally linking everything. “She didn’t tell you the boyfriend had cheated because she was trying to protect you out of love.” Her hypothetical question now made sense.
“She’d told me she’d sold my grandmother’s house, but that was obviously a lie, too.”
“Did you ask her why?”
“She said she’d intended to sell it, but just couldn’t bring herself to do it; she’d never told me because she hadn’t known what she wanted to do with it.”
She angrily swiped the tears from under her eyes. “My father won’t answer my calls, and no one knows where he is. He’s hiding, leaving me to clean up his mess.” She covered her face with her hands and let out a loud groan.
I moved behind her and wrapped my arms around her, hating that such a personal family matter was considered good media these days. “I’m sorry, Em. I wish there was something I could do to protect you from all of this.”
She turned in my arms and peered up at me, her cheeks rosy and wet, her eyes gleaming.
“I’m so angry with my mom, but I don’t want her to go. Is it terrible I didn’t want to come here? That I didn’t want to see her? Like seeing her…here…made it real. Like, it’s the beginning of the end.”
Her body shook as she rested her head against my chest and let out quiet sobs. She was unraveling and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one thing I could say to help.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Cole,” she whimpered. “How am I going to let her go? How did you stay so strong going through this—through everything?”
I wanted to tell her it was day by day, a slow walk wearing cement boots through waist-deep mud that felt as if it would never come to an end. But it had ended, eventually, and part of what got me through was the woman now sobbing into my chest.
Scooping her up in my arms, I carried her inside and up the stairs. I had no idea if what I was about to do was the right thing or not, but once, when I’d felt like the world was ripping me to pieces, Emalee had pulled me back together by bringing me as close to her as she p
ossibly could. In my room, I set her on the bed and knelt down, slipping her shoes off. Her broken, teary gaze remained fixed on me. Pulling her up to her feet, I lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it behind me, my own shirt quickly following. As I took off the remainder of my clothing, I watched her face for any sign that she might want me to stop, but her gaze never left mine. Shifting closer to her, I grazed a tender kiss on her shoulder as I undid her bra and slid it down her arms, letting it drop to the floor. She leaned into me and a surge of confidence I was doing the right thing rushed through me. I inhaled deeply as I drank her in. Stunning. I peeled off her tights, kneeling before her and shimmying everything down her thighs. She was bare as I stared up at her from where I sat on my knees, the perfect place for a grateful man to be as he worshiped the woman he loved. I recognized the anguished look she gave me as she cradled my head with her hands; my own gaze had held that same look all those years ago. She was heavy with the weight of life.
“Put your weight on me, Emalee,” I whispered to her. “Let me carry it for a bit.”
Her eyes danced over my face before she dipped her head and brushed her lips against mine. Slowly, I stood and lifted her again, laying her on the bed, turning her on her side before I moved behind her, pressing my body to hers. When she felt me slide against her silken center, a quiet shudder escaped her. Slipping my hand down her belly to between her legs, I softly stroked her delicateness, determined to help her escape the pain.
“I’m here, Emalee,” I murmured in her ear as her breathing picked up and she writhed her hips with the rhythm of my fingers. “I’m a damn fool to have sent you away, and I’ve regretted it every day since. But I’m here now. I’m yours. I’m ready to be the man you need. You’re not alone. And I’ll never betray you. You’ll always know that I’m…that we’re real. No mirage.” She cried out—ecstasy skirting a broken sob. She twisted toward me, her mouth finding mine and she kissed me softly as she attempted to catch her breath. She arched her back before pushing against me, inviting me in. We both gasped as I guided myself inside her, and I had to still for a moment to collect myself. Being with her again, this way, made everything in my world feel right. Emalee was where I belonged. Taking my wrist, she wrapped my arm around her, pressing my hand to her chest. Her heart was beating so hard I felt it against my palm. As I moved, taking her, I caressed the delicate flesh of her neck with my lips and confessed to her over and over, I love you.