A small smile tugs at Emmett’s lips. His eyes soften as he stares at me.
“She is real,” he says, his voice low. “She is the most real thing in my life. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without her. What I do know is that I am deeply, madly and ridiculously in love with her.”
Beside me, Jackie gasps and kicks me under the table.
But I can’t feel anything at all.
Because it’s all a lie.
It’s a lie I want so desperately to believe.
“I tell her this all the time,” he goes on, and each word is like a kick in the teeth, “how much she means to me, how much I love her. Sometimes I don’t think she hears me, or knows it, but it’s true. She has my heart and always will. And there is nothing more real than that.”
The worst part of this all is the way he’s saying it.
With so much passion and conviction and disarming tenderness that it’s rendering me stupid. It’s fileting me apart. It feels so fucking good to hear him say this.
And the reality of it all, of how cruel this is, is too much to take.
“Will you excuse me,” I say and abruptly get to my feet, leaving the table.
I don’t know why but the urge to cry and run and scream has taken over.
I’ve got to get out of here.
I head straight out of the house and up a ragged path that skirts the hill. I’m gulping for air, the sagebrush and desert shrubs pulling at my dress as I walk.
Everything inside me feels hollow and sick and I keep rubbing my chest, my stomach, trying to make the feeling go away, the horrible, misleading, teasing feeling that keeps building and building.
I know I shouldn’t have left, I should have just stared back at Emmett and given him the fake smile and gone on pretending as I have.
But I’m so fucking tired of pretending.
I don’t want to do it anymore.
I’m so close to the end but being with Emmett in this way is starting to kill me.
“Alyssa.”
And there’s his voice.
I figured someone would have come to check on me, but I thought it would have been Jackie. I wanted it to be Jackie.
Instead it’s him.
I stop and turn around and see him approaching me, his eyes wild and filled with concern.
“What happened?” he asks me. “Back there, what happened?”
I shrug. “Wasn’t feeling well.”
He grabs my arm, his eyes growing more intense by the second. “Why are you lying to me?”
“Why are you lying at all!” I yell at him. “Why did you have to tell my mother that?!”
“Because I wanted her to see that you were happy. That you had someone. And that I wasn’t like your father.”
“But you are like my father!”
He balks at that, frowning, pissed off. And rightfully so. “What? Do you have any idea how insulting it is to hear you keep saying that? Look, I don’t know your dad but it’s more than unfair to keep comparing us.”
I can’t help it, even though I know he’s right.
“Do you want me to be like that?” he asks. “Do you want me to be the player, the playboy, the manwhore? Is that the box you want to put me in?”
I shake my head, wrapping my arms around my chest. “No.”
He places his body so he’s right in front of me. “Because I’ll tell you one thing,” he says. “The more you tell someone what they are, the more they’ll believe it.”
I glare at him. “Is that a threat?”
“Fucking hell, Alyssa? Why does everything have to be so complicated with you?”
“Because I’m complicated!” I yell. “You’re complicated. We’re complicated. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says, placing both hands on my shoulders and wrangling me in place. “Okay, so we’re in a complicated situation. But if you just…talk to me, tell me how you feel.”
“Why?” I cry out. “Why would I tell you how I feel? What good would that do?”
“Because I care about you,” he says. “So much. I want to know how you feel and I especially want to know how you feel about me.”
“Why? You decided you may go back to London and you didn’t even tell me.”
He closes his eyes and exhales loudly. “Look, that was just…I was just thinking. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you. I don’t know what you want. And to be honest, I am not used to being in a relationship. I’m not used to the way it works, to sharing my life with people.”
“But this isn’t even a real relationship.”
“You keep saying that,” he says bitterly. “And the more you say it, the more I think that’s what you want. That you’re trying to convince yourself that it’s been fake from the start.”
“I don’t know what’s real!” I cry out.
“I’m real,” he says. He takes my hand and places it on his chest. “My heart is real. What I feel for you is real. It always has been. Only the formalities have been fake. But every single word I’ve said to you, in public or not, has never been a lie.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat but I can’t. “What about what you said back there. To my mother. About me.”
His mouth lifts, a soft smile. “It wasn’t a lie. That was real.” He puts his palm to my cheek, rests his forehead against mine. “I love you.”
Everything inside me dissolves.
I’m both floating and drowning and flying all at once, my heart pulled into so many directions that I don’t even know how I feel.
“I love you,” he goes on, his voice choked with emotion, “I love you and it’s terrifying the shit out of me, because I’ve never loved without losing before, but I love you. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever felt in my life. And I know that no matter what happens, I’m not going to let go of it.” He pauses, runs his thumb over my lips. I’m absolutely breathless. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you either. You don’t have to say a word. But I can’t let you go on thinking that what we have isn’t the one true thing. Passion over performance, remember? There’s only passion here. Only truth. Only you and only me.”
Tell him you love him. Tell him you love him.
But for some reason, I can’t even speak.
I’m just so damn overwhelmed with it all.
I’m free-falling so far off that cliff that I don’t know what side is up.
“Emmett,” I whisper to him, my fingers digging into his shirt. “I…”
“Don’t say it,” he says. “Just feel it.”
Feel it and be free.
He kisses me softly. “Let’s go back to the dinner. I think your mom is worried sick.”
I nod, almost dizzy from it all. I manage to swallow. “Yeah. Yeah…sorry about her.”
He laughs gently. “She’s quite the handful. I can see where you got all your thorns and prickles from. Armor against her.”
“Pretty much,” I tell him.
He loves me.
He loves me!
Now it’s starting to sink in for real.
Now I can’t stop smiling.
I let out a soft laugh, staring at Emmett with new eyes.
Every single cell inside me is warm and glowing. I’m made of a million sunbursts.
I’m about to tell him that I don’t even think I’m hungry anymore when I hear a snuffling sound from behind me.
In unison, both Emmett and I turn around.
There’s nothing but trees and sand and yellow flowers and brush and rocks and…
A raccoon pokes his head around a ponderosa pine and looks at us.
At me.
That masked fucker looks me dead in the eye.
We don’t spend any time figuring out if this is the desert-dwelling cousin of Cyril Sneer or not.
Emmett grabs my hand and looks at me. “Run.”
We both start running down the hill, leaving the raccoon in a cloud of dust.
* * *
The drive back to the cabin after dinner is quiet. Jackie is the designated driver, so she’s concentrating on the directions from Siri. Will wasn’t sure how to handle my mother while Emmett and I were gone, so he had a lot of wine and is now snoring lightly in the front seat.