Page 117 of Always Be an Us

"Where are you going with this?" I ask because I know this conversation has to be leading somewhere, and I doubt I’ll like the destination very much.

"I just think it would be a shame for a sweet young girl like that to get her heart broken," she continues. "Don’t you think?"

My hand tightens on the wheel. The guilt that had been suppressed by all the chaos now returns to the foreground, loud in the quiet of the vehicle.

I shouldn’t be with her.

I distinctly recall my earlier resolve to give Emma up. Just a few days ago, I made that promise to myself, but with the break-in unresolved, I decided to push it off.

But at least, I can admit to myself that it’s mostly because I’m not ready to let Emma go yet.

Being with her is now often the highlight of my day. Hearing her talk, seeing her smile, touching her, kissing her...how does any red-blooded man just let that go?

Something tells me that breaking up with her is going to be one of the hardest things I've ever done and I'm just not ready for it yet.

"Emma is a nice girl," Rachel says in French so that Amelia doesn’t understand what she’s saying. "She’s not the type to play the type of games that I used to play and frankly, I don’t think she would if she even wanted to. She doesn’t deserve to be used and dumped."

"I know that," I reply in French. "You think I don’t know that?"

"Then why are you toying with her?"

"Who says I am?" I glance at Rachel, noting the shock on her face when I say, "I didn’t intend for any of this to happen. I didn’t want to be attracted to her orfeelthings for her."

"Things?" Rachel is so shocked that this time it comes out in English. "You feel things for her? Things like what?"

I glance at the rearview mirror, but Amelia is still engrossed in the journal and isn’t paying any attention to either of us.

"I don’t know," I admit, even though I instantly regret telling Rachel anything in the first place. "I don’t know what I feel."

That hushes her up for a few seconds, but now she’s staring at me as though I’ve sprouted two heads in my neck. And this time she doesn’t need me to prompt her to tell me what she’s thinking because, after a few seconds, she says again, in French, "You’re falling in love with her aren’t you?"

"Don’t be ridiculous," I scoff, but the concept doesn't sound as ridiculous as I want it to sound.

"I’m not." She shakes her head still staring at me in amazement. "I mean I suspected it yesterday when you kept fussing at her, but now I’m almost certain that you’re falling in love with her."

"Aren’t you the one who told me that I wasn’t capable of loving anyone?"

"Yes, because that's what I genuinely thought. I’ve never seen you in love with anyone before, not even me and I tried my hardest to get you to fall in love with me. You tried hard to fall in love with me too." She taps her chin as she muses, her smile turning a little snide. "But now I see that it’s because you’ve never met anyone like her before. Isn’t it?"

I remain silent. I feel trapped and I don't think there's any response I can give to escape this dilemma.

On the one hand, she’s completely correct that I’ve never met anyone like Emma and have never felt these...things for anyone else either.

No matter how much I try to fight it, these feelings of tenderness and care continuously creep up. I want to protect her from anything and everything because the thought of anything bad happening to her makes me go a little crazy.

But all that doesn’t mean I’m falling in love with her.

Love, as I understand it, is something else, something all-encompassing that blinds judgment and makes people weak.

It's not something I can feel or ever want to feel for anyone even if I could.

But if there is someone I could love, it would probably be Emma.

Rachel chuckles in the wake of my silence and faces forward once more. "Oh, this is going to be good."

I think the conversation is done after I drop Rachel off, but on the ride back, Amelia finally looks up from her book to say.

"Dad."

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