Page 94 of Whistle

I pushed his hand away.

He reached for me again.

I gave in, defeated. Everything stung like a million tiny needles were piercing me all at once. Even my eyes burned like I was back in that cell with the too-bright fluorescent light. I longed for a bottle of Jack or vodka. Anything really. Anything I could swallow to numb the pain.

Emmett lifted me easily, and that hurt too.

I wanted to fight and yell, maybe claw out his gorgeous hazel eyes. He didn’t deserve them. They were far too good-looking to be in his face.

But that defeat, brah. It was gnarly. It made me weak, made me crave comfort.

How pathetic to want comfort from the man who’d just hurt me.

He sat on the sofa, tucking me into his lap and pushing my head onto his shoulder. My feet dropped onto the cushions beside him, and my hands went limp against my thighs.

I hated the way he smelled.

I hated how much it soothed me.

“Landry doesn’t know I’m gay,” he tried to explain.

It surprised me honestly. Emmett was such a force. So strong and in control. It seemed out of character for him to hold back something like that. For him to not own who he was.

“Maybe you aren’t,” I replied.

“You can say that even after last night?” he countered.

I didn’t want to think about last night. It had quickly become this perfect thing to me, something good and hopeful after a year of epic disappointment, and it was ripped away… just like everything else.

I didn’t even get to keep it very long.

“Well, your daughter is sort of walking proof that you aren’t gay. Unless she’s adopted.”

“She’s not.”

“Sperm donor?” I tried again.

“No.”

Yeah, that’s what I thought. “So you slept with her mother.”

“That was different.”

“Well, your dick went into her vag and you made a baby, so…” I countered, jealousy rousing the anger inside me. “Fuck this,” I muttered and swung my legs around to get up.

He pulled me down, my back colliding with his chest, my ass right there in his lap.

“I was caught off guard and didn’t know what to do,” Emmett confessed. “It’s freaking five a.m., and you step into the kitchen wearing my shirt and robbing my brain cells. Rush loses it and pins me against the wall, and my daughter is standing there in the middle of it, confused and upset.”

“She’s an adult.”

“She will always be my baby girl.”

My heart ached at that, thinking of Brynne, my own parents, and the way they so easily cast me aside.

“I didn’t want to just blurt it out like that.” He went on. “I was trying to protect you.”

“More like protect yourself.”

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