Page 53 of Ramsey & Emerson

Muriel’s eyes watered over. “Oh, of course, I have a job opening for you, Emerson.” She reached over, then patted my arm. “I will always have a job opening for you here.”

The relief that I felt was so overwhelming that I could feel the pressure behind my eyes and the tears starting to form. To Muriel, it might be a small thing, but to me, she was saving my life. A place to live and a job to support myself was all that I needed in this life.

“Thank you, Muriel,” I whispered. “Thank you, so very much.”

She winked at me. “Just show up tomorrow morning, and we’ll give you a quick refreshing of things,” she instructed. “I gotta tell you, girl. It’ll be nice to put an end to these twelve-hour shifts with your help now.”

I grinned at her. “You’ll never give up your twelve-hour shifts, Muriel. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”

She smiled, then asked, “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” I admitted. “Though, nothing big.”

“I have just the thing,” she said, then hollered over her shoulder to the cook. “Gale, a light tuna on rye.” She turned back to me. “After you eat, and I push these remaining customers out of here, you and I are going to have ourselves a gabfest.”

That’s exactly what we ended up doing.

I told her about my narcissistic aunt. I told her about Bailey, and her selfish ways. I told her about the suffocating pretentiousness of Sands Cove and Windsor. I told her about Roselyn. We even talked about my father and mother. The only thing that we didn’t talk about was Ramsey. I didn’t mention him, his supposed love, his betrayal, or the fact that his betrayal was what had forced me to come back to Hantover.

Muriel also never looked at me with pity or wariness in her eyes like everyone else did. She looked at me with sympathy and compassion. That’s what made me trust her. That’s what made her my friend. So, I was scared that if I told her that I’d been so stupid as to give my virginity to the first boy that had truly ever treated me like shit, she’d see the destructive pattern in me and start to pity me.

It was a destructive pattern, too.

I’d fallen for an abusive boy, and like all abuse victims, I’d felt comfort in how he’d treated me cruelly. I had allowed myself to fall in love with him after everything that he’d done to me, and I was taking the blame like your classic victim, only not really.

I didn’t believe that I deserved what he’d done to me. I didn’t believe that I deserved how cruelly he had treated me. No. No, I was at fault because I’d known that Ramsey was dark, and I had willingly surrendered to his darkness. I had traded weeks of maliciousness and bullying for two days of sweet touches, deep conversation, and endless sex. I’d known that he was mean. I’d known that he was ruthless and unconscionable. I’d known it, and I had laid down for him anyway.

Ramsey didn’t deserve my forgiveness, but he wasn’t solely responsible for the hell that I was feeling now, either.

Nope.

I could admit when I’d made a mistake.

Chapter 31

Ramsey~

It had taken over a week for me to find Emerson.

After nearly losing my goddamn mind, I’d had one of my father’s security experts flag her name as soon as I realized that Roselyn really didn’t know where she was at. As soon as Martin had found her, he had sent me a text message with an attachment, showing that she was employed at The Cozy Diner in Hantover.

She’d gone back home.

I had spent all week living in my own personal hell, and it had never occurred to me that she might have gone back home.

Once I’d gotten the text message, I had called Liam and Deke, then told them that I was driving to Hantover, and that I wouldn’t be back until Emerson came back with me.

Deke had laughed.

Liam had grunted.

Unfortunately, Liam was still upset about what had happened with Emerson, but at least he hadn’t been avoiding me anymore.

I had decided to let Bailey stew for a little bit, but on Wednesday, I had finally gone after her. All classroom, auditorium, and library computers had been hooked up and synchronized to play a video of Bailey getting gang-banged by a bunch of lacrosse players. The video had been very vivid and vocal, and there was no mistaking that it’d been Bailey getting plugged airtight in every hole. Because the lacrosse players weren’t stupid, there wasn’t a single shot of any of their faces in the video, either. Just cocks galore.

That wasn’t all that I’d done, either. I’d had the same hacker on my dad’s payroll attach that video to play at random colleges across the country, so that she couldn’t run off and start a fresh life away at some out-of-state campus somewhere.

Then, because guilt was a motherfucker, I had released a confidential accounting of Constance’s real financial situation, and how she was being sued, or rather, her late husband’s estate was being sued for embezzlement, extortion, and the pain and suffering of a sixteen-year-old girl that Bailey’s father had been raping for years.

---