Page 48 of Emma's Element

Marcus gave her a hard stare which she ignored as she walked to the grouping of tables the restaurant staff had put together for them, but he didn’t ask any other questions. Emma was relieved he’d seemingly let the subject drop. Evan and Tin Man returned, the latter giving her a wink. Not for the first time, she was thankful Jolene had talked her into moving to Lake Haven. What would she do without her Nighthawk family?

Chapter seventeen

Ithadbeenthreeweeks since he’d seen Emma, and he missed her with an overwhelming ache that could only be alleviated when he had her in his arms again. Watching her take down Jim had been the best thing he’d ever seen. She had been spectacular. Marcus was pretty sure that was the moment he’d started to fall for her all over again. But their talk in his suite had him slipping further. And now, the challenge was to convince her he was ready to give her everything. He wanted her in his life. Longed for her. He didn’t want to spend another minute without her. He needed to be near her. And if all she was willing to give him was her friendship, he would learn to live with that.

Nearly eight months ago, he’d thought the best thing for both of them was to leave. At the time, he’d thought that was the only way to protect her. It had been a mistake. He’d been a coward. He should have stayed and figured out a way to protect her then. She’d been willing to fight for them despite what she’d experienced after the boat accident, and he’d thrown it all away. Now, he hoped it wasn’t too late. He hoped she could forgive him.

He wasn’t too proud to beg her to spend some time with him. To listen to him explain his mistakes. Marcus pulled up outside her apartment. Getting out of the car, he turned to face the lake; he’d missed this view as well. Taking a deep breath, he held it a moment before letting it out. The air was so fresh and clean; he could practically feel it clearing his lungs of the LA smog.

Stop wasting time and go talk to the woman of your dreams.

He reached the door to her apartment complex just as her neighbor was leaving. She held the door open for him, and he climbed the stairs to the second floor and noticed Emma’s door was ajar. He pushed the door further, knocking as it opened. His heart stopped momentarily before turning over and hammering to an irregular beat.

The place was trashed. Furniture had been torn to shreds. Books lay haphazardly around the room, some with pages torn out. Knickknacks smashed. The frames that had once held the pictures of her friends and family lay ruined, glass shattered.

“Emma?” he called out in a panic. He raced through her apartment, searching the rooms for her, grateful he didn’t find her bleeding out on the floor somewhere. There didn’t seem to be any blood anywhere; hopefully, that indicated that she hadn’t been injured whenever this destruction had occurred.

Breathing heavily, he wandered back out to the main room. Stunned by the amount of damage. What had happened here? And where was Emma? The two biggest questions replaying themselves over and over again in his head, along with worrying if she was safe and whole.

The room was dark since several windows throughout the apartment had been boarded over. He walked into the kitchen, noting nearly everything had been pulled from the cabinets. Plates and glasses lay broken everywhere. The fridge was partially open, food spilling out of it . . . rotting. Marcus ignored the stench as he stepped over the broken dishware and walked back into the main room over to where her plants had been. The greens lay dying, ripped from the security of their pots, dirt scattered across the floor. Even her beloved lemon plant had not escaped the destruction. It, too, had been torn from its pot; the roots exposed. A fledgling lemon lay squashed near the wilting leaves as if someone had stomped on it.

Marcus spotted the picture of her as a baby with her parents on top of some of the wreckage. The glass had nearly torn the picture to shreds. As he crouched for a closer look, his heart shattered like the glass in the frame. Breaking for Emma. He knew she loved this apartment, loved those plants. And the picture of her parents . . . Who would do this to her? He thought they’d come to an understanding that night in his hotel room, which made him wonder why she didn’t tell him about any of this. They’d kept in touch with an occasional text when his schedule gave him a moment to breathe, but never once had she indicated any trouble.

He pulled his cell out and tried her number but got a message telling him the number was no longer active. He thumbed through his phone, finding their text thread; it had been five days since they’d last had contact. A simple text letting her know he was thinking of her. He’d never heard back. Her apartment was trashed,andher number deactivated. His worry grew exponentially. What was going on here?

Taking one last heartbreaking look around, Marcus left the apartment and ran up the street to Jolene’s. Going around to the back, he knocked on the door that he and Emma had knocked on so many times for their private little dinners.

Jolene answered the door and smiled. “I’ve been wondering when I’d see you,” she said, leading him into her office. “How’ve you been, Marcus?”

“Fine. Good,” he answered impatiently. “Where is she?” he begged. “Please,” he added, softening his voice.

Jolene sighed and sat at the table where he and Emma used to share those private dinners. “She never told you anything, did she?”

“I don’t understand. What didn’t she tell me?”

“How very like Emma,” she mused. “She never told any of us either for a long time.”

“What? What didn’t she tell you?”

“She’d kept it hidden for months.”

“Jolene, please,” he beseeched, growing frustrated. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Sorry.” Jolene sighed. “Late last week, Natalie and I went to Emma’s apartment. We’d been worried about her. She’d been isolating herself more and more. She appeared to be getting thinner, and she looked exhausted all the time. Even before the award ceremony, things had been strained for her. We knew some of what was going on but not all of it. She wouldn’t talk to any of us, and we couldn’t figure out why. So, we decided to confront her. Get to the bottom of whatever was bothering her. We found her sitting in the middle of what remained of her living room. Her father’s watch in one hand and her empty jewelry box in the other. The place had been trashed. Windows broken, furniture shredded. Anything with glass had been shattered. Picture frames, dishes, mirrors . . . everything. And she sat in the middle of it, completely broken. I’d never seen her like that. Not even after Paul died,” she sniffled softly.

“She told me about Paul,” he informed her. Her eyes widened with surprise. “But what happened to her apartment?”

Jolene hesitated. “I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this. She’d kill me.”

“Jolene, please.”

“Fine,” she said, huffing out a frustrated breath. “Emma still didn’t want to tell us what was going on. She tried to shrug it off as a random break-in, but Natalie had called Graham, who came and convinced her to tell us the truth.”

“And what was the truth?”

“After you left, she was hounded by the press for a few weeks. It never bothered her. She took it all in stride. Never even cared what they wrote about her. But after they left, she began to change. We knew about most of the men. We’d witnessed it more times than I care to mention.”

Marcus stiffened at the mention of men with Emma. He didn’t want to think about her with anyone else. “What men?”

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