Page 75 of Healing Hearts
Emily doesn’t even answer me. She just comes up the front walkway, steps around me, and enters the house.
She’s got guts—I’ll give her that.
With a sigh, I turn and enter the house behind her.
We stand in the living room, a face-off, and if she thinks I’m going to be the first one to talk, she’ll be waiting a long time. I said everything I needed to say yesterday.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re not cutting Amir out too,” she says.
I hate that I can see, can recognize all the little tells in the way she speaks and moves that tell me how hard it is for her to be here. Having been behind the curtain of her life, I can’t pretend I don’t know how the show goes on.
“I’d still like to see him a bit,” I admit, “not as publicly, but I made a promise to you and him that I’d honor.”
“You made a promise to me too,” she says, and her voice cracks.
“I’m not doing this to hurt you.”
“But the hurt isn’t nothing. The choices you’ve made impact me. A lot.”
“I know that, which is why I’m putting some distance between us. You don’t deserve to be impacted by them.” I run my hand along the top of my head. “And I think we should sell the shop, before it loses too much value. I can’t recover from this.”
“Absolutely not,” Emily says, her spine straightening. “I’m not selling.”
“You’ll lose money. It’ll takeyearsfor me to build back the trust I just lost. Judy’s been arrested for dealing. She worked at my shop. People will think they just couldn’t get enough on me and Judy took the fall.”
“I’m not selling.”
“Then you should find someone better to run it.”
“There is no one better.”
“Brett could do it, if he wanted.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”
We stare at each other, and the tears in her eyes almost undo me. Fuck, I hate this. I hate how much it hurts, and how hard I’m trying to hide the hurt. The ache to be close to her, to breach the gap between us, is a physical pain and so strong that it’s distracting. But I won’t let my emotions win out. She doesn’t deserve any of this backlash, and I brought it right to her door.
“I’m just glad this all came out when it did,” I say. “That you haven’t ended up tied to me and my reputation permanently.”
“You promised me that no matter what happened between us, we’d still be friends.”
“When a friendship becomes more harmful than helpful, I gotta draw the line. There was no way for me to know this is where life would take us, but here we are.” My words might be matter of fact and confident, but inside I’m struggling to keep it together. The last thirty-six hours have drastically changed the course of my life, and I can’t quite find stable emotional footing. I want things I shouldn’t. Things I can’t have anymore.
“I understand how disorienting the last day and a half has been for you. You’ve worked really hard to regain people’s trust, to make the business run properly. Seeing that at risk must be really difficult.” Her voice is thick with tears. “But just like you didn’t abandon me when I was having a tough time, I’m not abandoning you now. Maybe you think you don’t want me here, but I’m going to be here. It’s taken me four years to feel like myself again, and this Emily,” she says, pointing to her chest, “is afighter, not a quitter.”
God, I fucking love her. My whole chest is filled with it, and it’s pushing out into the rest of me, begging me to go to her, tug her into my embrace, tell her I don’t care about anything but her and Amir.
That’s the irresponsible version of me struggling to break free. Damn the consequences, I’ll take what I want. And I’m not that guy anymore.
Maybe it hurts right now, but someday it won’t. I won’t have to hear people talking shit about Emily because she’s with me. They’ll know she cut ties with me, and they’ll go back to seeing Emily as she is—untainted by me.
“I’m not even in the fight, Em. I’ve tapped out.”
“Lucky for you,” Emily says, hitching her purse onto her shoulder, “I’ve got enough fight in me for both of us.”
Before I can tell her it’s futile, that I’ll never let her get that close again for fear of the impact it’d have on her life, she’s out the door and halfway to her car. I watch her go, my heart sinking at how much I want her and how sure I am that I can’t have her.
