Page 21 of The Knight
Her shoulder brushed mine, and I smiled like an idiot. “No, I tolerate watching movies with you because I love you.” The words struck me to my core. I had known her all her life. All her life, I had lived beside her, and those words directed at me, never before had come out of her mouth. She thought those words plenty of times when, on occasion, her soul had been unshielded, but never out loud before. I felt like I was soaring.
“What?” she asked, looking up at me, confusion in her pretty, green eyes.
I shook my head and smiled, “Thanks, Em. I love you, too.” It was true I did love her. My words came out as a whisper, and I found myself remembering, remembering a past moment with Emma—
“You know, that isn't very nice,” she said, moving away from me with a glare.
“What?” I said, teasing and walking past her down the trail.
“You know what I thought—that you—that we, would—”
“Kiss—right this moment?” I turned back to her and tried to let my feelings calm down so as to not alarm her. I would have been lying if I had said that I had not thought about it, but I wanted it sometime in the distant future. Not right then; she was too young. I was not yet ready.
“Of course,” She shrugged, as if it were the easiest conversation to have in all the realms.
“I—ah—don’t think it’s a good idea right now, Em.”
“But I need it to be you. Ry, I need my first kiss to be important, you know?” I watched as she sat down, defeated, in the dirt.
“Emma, I am sure your first kiss will mean something. I am sure it will be earth-shattering.”
She looked up at me in disbelief.
“Ry, please?” she begged, looking up at me with those beautiful eyes that made it hard to focus. My nickname, on her lips, was carried from her breath and made alive in the air. She had a way of making everything seem so simple, like breathing. Only she could break me down to just my basic self, with one basic syllable: Ry.
“Not right now, Em; not right now. Let’s go; let's not waste the day.” I held out my hand to her, and she took it. The warmth flooded between us, and I raised my hand to cup her cheek. I had given her a simple nickname, after she had made up mine. One just for her, just from me: Em. She stared at me as if I were the entire world, her melody swirling within mine. I wished I was ready. But I did not want to kiss anyone again, when I would only be wishing I were kissing Ana.
“Okay, fine, Ry—I will watch a movie with you, just as long as it’s not a horror movie,” Emma said, smiling at me.
“Yeah, no, of course,” I agreed as I started walking again, still stunned with the new revelation mixed with the past memory. My life had never been more complicated.
Chapter 13
We walked through the front door of my house and down the hall. I nervously grabbed the door handle to my bedroom and turned to Emma. “I just want to warn you a little that, well—” I stopped and ran a hand across my face. The nervousness about sharing it with her was making my body shake. How would she take the news? How would she take the news that I thought her parents had been murdered? “I’ve been doing some research, and–don’t think that I’m crazy, okay?” I needed to be ready for what I was about to show her, and how Emma was going to take it.
“Okay. What class of yours already has a project? Are we watching the movie in your room? You’re acting weird,” Emma went on. She tended to ramble a bit when she was confused or nervous. I didn’t dare unshield my melody to check because I was barely holding it together as I prepared to show her my research.
I nodded, not answering her questions and opened the door. Emma walked inside. As I approached her, I watched as she took in my room— watched as her eyes roamed over every singlething I owned on Earth. We had been in that room so many times together. I wondered if she had any memories of that. She wasn’t the same person on that day as she had been when we were young. I continued to watch as her gaze wandered over the wall behind my desk. I knew it was a sight to see. Papers and research taped up and charted out.
I could sense her confusion and a little fear.Murdererrose up in her thoughts, and then she had memories of movies. I didn’t catch it all; it happened too fast, but she was confused and possibly thought that I was insane—or a murderer. I needed to clear that up first.
“Okay, so I know it is a bit much, but there is something about having all of my research in one place and being able to always see it.”
She nodded and walked over to a piece of paper with all the dates I had found of suspicious behavior, from the man who caused Emma so much pain, who killed Lamont and Ara. “What is this?” She asked, pointing to the paper.
“I was mapping out any previous attempts.”
“Attempts?”
“Uh, yeah.” I looked at my feet and shuffled.
“What is this, Ry?” Emma asked, moving down the wall to news clippings of car crashes. She stopped when she reached the news clippings from the night Lamont and Ara were murdered. I watched as her body became rigid, and blackness seemed to coat her soul, much like it had in the hospital and right before I had left for the summer. It made me sick to think of the pain that she was experiencing, and I was worried about the corruption that was entering her soul.
“Are you okay, Em?” I asked, supporting her quickly as she began to wobble. I wasn’t sure if she was going to pass out or not.
“Ry, what is this—” Her voice was shaking.
“I know your parents were murdered, Em,” I said, looking into her eyes, pleading within her melody for her to listen to me, to not run away. I felt the horror that she was experiencing as it radiated from her melody, and I wanted to take it all away, remove all of the bad things from her life.
