Page 19 of For Emery

I focused hard on the girl who walked in beside Flip.

Her blonde hair hung past her shoulders and a loose braid was twisted across the top of her head before disappearing into her waves. Her eyes, the lightest shade of blue I’d ever seen, searched the room. They stopped when they landed on mine, widening on contact.

Emery.

It was as though a large dose of electricity zapped through my body. My thoughts swirled in a hundred different directions as I stared across the room at the girl who’d disappeared from my life without a trace four years before.

My breath whooshed out of me.

She was alive.

She’d grown.

She was taller. Curvier. More beautiful.

Her entire face lit up and a huge smile spread across her lips.

It had been a long damn time since someone looked at me that way.

She didn’t hesitate, rushing forward and weaving anxiously around the bodies separating us. She finally stopped in front of me. We weren’t quite at eye level, so she tilted her back to look up at me with big twinkling eyes. “Hi.”

I said nothing, just stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. I breathed in her fresh-scented shampoo. “You’re real.”

Her body shook with laughter.

I stepped back and stared down at her. “You’re really alive.” It wasn’t my drunkenness talking. When her stepdad disappeared, I expected the worst. I had nightmares he somehow found them. Those dreams lasted for two fucking years.

Sadness shone in Emery’s eyes. Hadn’t she realized that’s what I would’ve thought since she never contacted me? “Jordan. I—”

“Emery?”

We both turned quickly, realizing we were in the middle of a very loud and crowded room.

Flip stood there staring at Emery. “What are you doing?” he asked before draping his arm around her neck.

Vomit crept up the back of my throat. Why the hell wasn’t she brushing his arm away?

“I…” she began, her eyes jumping between us.

Confusion grasped hold of my drunken brain. Then hatred stronger than anything I’d ever felt before spread through me, the white-hot searing kind that made you do irrational things.

The Emery I knew didn’t hang out with assholes.

The Emery I knew didn’t let guys hang all over her.

The Emery I knew…walked out of my life four years ago.

Then, as if I wasn’t standing right there, Flip turned them away from me and walked toward the kitchen.

Emery glanced over her shoulder and mouthed, “Sorry.”

Flip pointed left and right to people I had no clue he even knew who pointed back at him.

Oh, hell no.

Emery wasn’t walking away from me again. Especially with him. I needed to talk to her. I needed her to explain what the hell happened. Where she disappeared to. And why the fuck she was with Flip.

I wove around the people crammed into the hallway, bumping them left and right without apology, until I reached the kitchen. Flip filled a red cup at the keg and handed it to Emery.

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