by Lisa Daniels
“Not your brother?”
“Silas will let him know. Since Jason seems to listen to Silas more than me, he can get his news that way.”
“That’s a little petty, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, but it makes me feel better.”
Emery shook his head but didn’t say anything else. Once she hit send, they drove for a while in silence.
Finally, Emery asked, “They don’t have anything to say to your message?”
“No.”
“That’s surprising.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Deciding not to push for an answer, he changed the subject. “Hungry?”
Her stomach growled in response.
“Alright, there is a nice little place nearby that is still open.” They didn’t speak again until they got to the restaurant.
Chapter 9
The Analysis
The pair sat down at the booth. Cora opened the menu and began to look over it as Emery headed to the bathroom. When he returned, she told him what she wanted to eat, then headed to the bathroom, too.
When she slid into her seat a few minutes later, Emery spoke to her, “Placed your order. It should only take about 15 minutes.”
“Alright,” she muttered to her hands.
“So shall we talk now, or do you want to eat first?”
“I would rather not talk.”
“Okay, then you can sit there and listen. I told you that you remind me of my brother. How he and one of my sisters were close growing up. He was a bit like you, although not as much as I had originally thought. Eventually, my sister got herself in so much trouble that some guys came to make her pay for her mistakes.”
“You mean like police?”
“No. She played a couple of local gang leaders, and one of them was smart enough to figure it out. My brother got caught up in it and ended up getting shot. Even if he had been a shifter, the wound was too severe, and he died the next day.”
“I'm sorry,” Cora continued to look at her hands.
“I was the only one there when he passed, and he begged me to look after our sister. She was the reason he was killed, and yet he still only thought of her. I tried to do what I promised, to help her get better, but I failed. She ended up in prison, and I haven’t heard anything from her since then. No one in my family has. She blames herself for his death, and doesn’t want anything to do with the family. Even though I’m the only one who knows what happened, so she wouldn’t have to worry about anyone making her feel guilty. I failed her, but worse, I failed my brother. If I could have just understood him better, have seen that he wasn’t alright, that he was hiding the fact that she was being hunted. I failed him, and he died.”
“I can understand the impulse, but I don’t think that you can blame yourself for not being able to stop your brother. He chose to help your sister.”
Emery shook his head, his eyes on the table. He rose them slowly and looked Cora in the face. “I knew enough that I should have said something to my parents. I should have done something, but I didn’t. I failed to act.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. If you feel guilty about it, there must be a reason.”
“Do you really think so?”
Cora looked him in the eye, knowing full well what he was trying to say. Without hesitation, she nodded at him, her gesture meant to let Emery know that he was to blame. He was clearly trying to draw an analogy to her constant blaming herself. In this case, she was prone to agree with him – he was at fault.
A vague smile crossed his lips. “Do you know how old I was?”
Cora shook her head, “How could I know that?”
“I was seven when he died.”
“What?” She frowned and looked at him. “That’s a bit young.”
The waitress arrived and started to put the food down. The pair waited until she left to continue talking.
Cora leaned forward, her hair dangling over her food. “I know what you are trying to do. You are trying to prove that if you weren’t at fault, I’m not at fault. But there is a huge difference between what happened with a 7-year-old and what I have been through.”
“You mean there is a huge difference between a 7-year-old and a 12-year-old? Because I don’t think so.”
Cora opened her mouth to object, then closed it. “How did you know how old I was the first time?”
“All of the clues were there. I just found them and put them together.” He leaned forward and pulled her hair back. “Please go ahead and eat. I’m not trying to starve you.”
Cora swallowed, then looked down at the food. Suddenly she felt the full effect of having eaten very little all day. She began to eat as Emery continued, his fork hovering over the food. “You started feeling guilty about not saving people ever since you were 12. It’s become so ingrained that you can no longer see anyone else as responsible for things that go wrong. You blame yourself for the incident a few months ago.” Cora looked up and glared, but she did not object because her mouth was full of food. “You need to let that go. It really isn’t your fault. Yes, you could have refused to let her go or insisted that the plans be changed, but how would that have made Serenity feel? She also could have listened when you told her that you didn’t think it was a good idea. You were the first to voice concern over a novice going, and only Ryland continued to doubt that she should be there. He could have insisted she not go, but he didn’t. Instead he thought he could protect her. Both of them are far more to blame for what happened. Honestly, I don’t think anyone believes that you fell out of the raft on purpose. Certainly, not at that point in the rapids. You grew accustomed to blaming yourself, and now you can’t allow anyone else to take the blame.”
Cora swallowed, then looked up at him, her head tilted to the side. “You being injured is my fault. You going to deny that?”
“God, no! That one is all on you. Mostly on you. Okay, half on you. I can’t say that I blame you for running off. It was certainly better than you pushing me over the edge.”
Cora was caught off guard and spit out some of her food as she tried not to laugh at the other reaction she could have had. “I’m so sorry!” She started to clean up the mess she had just made.
Emery smiled at her, “I’m sorry if I was too harsh. I went based on the information Ryland and Silas had given me. Should have known better. People always have a bit hidden away. And the people who appear to be happy are almost always hiding the most.”
Cora shrugged, “There’s no reason to let people know about my darker side. Look at my brother and how overprotective he is of me because of it.”
A hand slid over hers. Cora looked up into Emery’s dark eyes. “There is a reason to share your darker side. It is destroying you.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that a couple of people are so willing to drag other people in to make me face it.”
“You say that sarcastically, but it is a good thing. But I don’t think that is what bothers you. What is eating you is that they are asking others to take care of you instead of talking to you directly. Almost like they think you are a doll and they are afraid of breaking you.”
Cora stared at him for what felt like forever. Here was a man whom she had not known 24 hours ago putting his finger on exactly what bothered her the most, and wording it in a way that helped her see exactly what the problem was.
“I think… I think you are right. It does bother me that they don’t really try to talk to me. And neither does Jason. It’s why I was able to get them to leave me alone so easily. I know that it doesn’t mean they are indifferent, that they are just uncertain how to talk to me. But that hurts. Am I really so difficult?”
The concerned look slid off of Emery’s face. “No. It is just very difficult to know what you are thinking, and they are all worried that they will say or do the wrong thing.”
“Kind of like you did?”
Emery let go of her hand and laughed. “Yeah. Fortunately, I am accustomed to being brough
t in to make people face the things that they don’t want to face.”
“Why?” Cora began eating again.
“Because I am the most perceptive of emotions and environment. I can usually figure people out in a matter of minutes. You took a good bit longer. Probably because you are quite good at hiding the real problem since you refuse to talk about it. Or because you didn’t even realize exactly what it was. ”
“So why are you bothering with me like this?”
Emery looked up from his food, which he still hadn’t eaten. “I could lie and say it was all because of your friends.”
Cora stared at him, waiting for him to say more. When he finally took a mouthful of food, she realized he didn’t want to say what had caused him to talk to her. Deciding to drop it, she finished up everything on her plate.
Emery ate less than half of his food and asked for a box when the waitress brought the check.
“I can’t let you pay for me,” Cora said as he picked up the check.
“You don’t have a say.” He put a bill on the table and slid it under the napkin holder. From where she was sitting, Cora could see that he had put more than double their meal on the table. Shaking her head, she sat back and waited for him to finish boxing up his food.
“Ready?” He smiled at her when they finished.
She nodded. Together they got up and headed for the door.
Chapter 10
The Confession
When they got outside, the truck they had been in was gone and a nice-looking car was in the parking space.
Cora looked around. “How are we supposed to get home?”
Emery walked toward the car. “I’ll drive you back.”
“You can’t go around stealing vehicles.”
He laughed, “Don’t worry, this one is mine.”
“You have a Tesla?”
“They are better for the environment.”
“How did it get here?”
“I asked for it to be delivered.”
Cora crossed her arms over her chest. “How did you do that?”
Emery opened the passenger side door, then looked at her. “I used my phone. Called someone to help me while you were in the bathroom. You didn’t notice when the truck was towed?”
Cora’s mouth almost dropped open at how focused she had been. It wasn’t like the truck had been out of sight from where they were sitting. “I didn’t notice.”
“Come on. Let’s get you home.”
Cora nodded and sat down in the car.
Once they were seated, she took a deep breath before asking, “And what is the truth?”
She watched as a smile graced his face. It was different than the other smiles she had seen; this one looked real and it lit up his face. “The truth is that I have been interested in meeting you ever since Silas started talking about you. For the longest time he thought that you guys would end up together. If I had to guess, when he realized that it was just a friendship, he started to change. He started hitting on women trying to replace what he felt he lost.”
“He was never interested in me like that.”
“Oh, he most certainly was. Up until you guys were in high school. He would talk about your kids and what life would be like. When it didn’t work out, his future suddenly changed.”
“He never said he was interested.”
“We don’t feel interest the same way humans do. For us it is more immediate and much deeper. When a shifter takes an interest in someone, the shifter can’t see being with anyone else. I’m not saying that Silas disagrees with you, but realizing that he felt the same way you do – that there wasn't anything romantic – that was hard on him. It didn’t help that you like Alaric and Ryland instead of him. But he got over it.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Cora felt bad that she had never noticed how her friend had felt.
“He knows, and he has come to terms with it. For Silas, it is weird to not have someone to rely on, so it makes him a bit obnoxious around women. Once he finds someone, that will stop.”
“I really hope so.” Cora pursed her lips. “So Ryland…”
“Yes?” Emery was almost smirking as he said it.
“He always felt that toward Serenity? Ever since he first saw her?”
“Months before that.”
“What?” Cora turned to look at him. “How is that even possible?”
“Serenity and Alaric had been in contact for about a year before she came out this way.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Ryland told me that. It was obvious from the first time he talked about her that he was interested.”
“Had he seen her?”
“No. For Ryland, looks really don’t have anything to do with it. I suppose that is to be expected when you spend that much time around good-looking people. You get numb to it.”
Cora nodded, “Makes sense. I always knew that I never compared to the people he saw on a regular basis.”
“That had nothing to do with it. You guys would have been bad for each other, much like you and Silas would have been a bad match.”
“Did you say you thought we would have been a good couple?”
Emery looked at her from the corner of her eye. “I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t actually hiding feelings from yourself.”
“That’s insane.” She flopped back, annoyed.
“It was necessary.”
“And what could make that necessary? Trying to get me to admit to feeling for a guy that–”
Emery didn’t let her finish. “I wanted to know for myself.”
Cora froze, not sure that she had heard him correctly. She began to fidget.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything apart from take you home. You barely know me, and it is quite obvious that you already have a lot to think about without me adding more to it. I just…” His voice trailed off almost like he wasn’t sure why he had said anything.
“You just what?” Cora didn’t feel like letting the idea drop without him at least trying to make some kind of sense of what he was about to say.
“I don't know. I felt like telling you, even though I knew it was a bad idea. I tried to let it drop, but you didn’t forget. So when you brought it up, I couldn’t help myself. Call it a moment of weakness.”
Cora looked over at the man whom she had known less than 24 hours. Despite the short period of time, he knew her better than almost anyone else in the world. And he knew how to read her in a way that not even Jason could. “Why?”
“Everyone is weak–”
“No. I mean why would you want to know for yourself? What do you want to know about me? I’m nothing special.”
She saw him look at her out of the corner of his eye. He bit his lip to hide a smile. “Well, I know two men who have known you for a long time who would vehemently disagree with you. They may not know how to read you or how to help you, but they both think of you like family.”
Cora smiled at her hands. “It’s weird not to get upset about Ryland feeling I am more like a sister.”
“It’s a good thing, to be sure. Good that you are alright with it.” He seemed to feel it necessary to clarify what he meant.
Cora smiled, “You know, you should hate me after everything I put you through.”
“And you should have refused to come with me after the way I treated you and the danger I put you in.”
“I think I put you in more danger,” Cora wrinkled her nose at him.
“You only did the initial work to get us in trouble. I managed to make it so much worse by leading us to a drug ring. The smell intrigued me, I just didn’t realize what it was until we were close. Now I know how meth smells. Not sure that makes me happy, but there it is.”
“So you are all shifters?” Cora had avoided talking about it, mostly because it meant finding out that Silas and Ryland had never been the people she had thought they were. The fact that they weren’t even human was mi
nd-boggling.
“Believe me, what you have been through would come as just as much of a shock to them as them being a shifter does to you.”
Cora became instantly nervous at the mention of what she was hiding. “You aren’t going to tell them, are you?”
He chuckled, “Oh no, not even a chance of me telling them. It gives me an advantage that they don’t have. An advantage that in time I hope to use in my favor.”
Cora felt her cheeks flush at the implications, but she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about what Emery had admitted. He had angered her so many times, and worse, she hadn’t had any trouble letting him know that. She did not feel that was a good sign.
Almost as if he could read her mind, Emery said, “I am glad that you feel you can actually show your real emotions in front of me. They have been largely negative so far, but who else has gotten to see that?”
“I don't know if that is a good thing.”
“You never show your real emotions for long, and you sure don’t explain how you feel to anyone. Granted it is much easier to do around someone you don’t know than someone you do, but judging by the way you have hidden it from new friends, I take it as a compliment. You feel comfortable around me. Or at least that is what I would like to think it means.”
Cora turned and watched him drive for a few moments. He cleared his throat, “I’m not entirely comfortable with you watching me, though. It makes me feel very self-conscious.”
“Sorry. I’m just not quite sure what to think of you.”
“Understandable. You only just learned about me this morning.”
Cora furrowed her brow. “What about your injuries? Don’t you need to get some form of care?” She knew that there was no point in suggesting the hospital.
“It’ll be fine. I can just shift back into a bear when I get home, and it will be little more than a scar in the morning.”
“Really? It disappears that quickly?”
“Not being human has its distinct advantages.”
“That must be nice. What about your life span?”
“It depends. I think you know that Silas’s parents are dead. They were killed by poachers back when he was really young. Of course, my brother died incredibly young, even by human standards.”