Page 15 of Make Me Love You

Chapter Four

Emma woke up feeling unsettled. No surprise, when her life had gone topsy-turvy in the space of forty-eight hours. The realization that her income was drying up, the new and entirely unwanted responsibility of being mayor of Hart’s Ridge, and the abrupt end of eight years of giving her best-friend-turned-enemy the silent treatment—any one of those things on its own was enough to knock her on her backside, but the onslaught of everything all at once was too much.

She had told Eli that she was used to bad luck. Hell, she was even good at it. She was a worrier by nature, and she found that if she worried long enough and hard enough, the solution was bound to appear.

But this...this was different. And it was all Eli’s fault. She could worry about her food truck, and maybe she would figure something out, as Cesar had said. She could worry about being mayor, and maybe she could find her way out of that, too. But Eli...she could worry about Eli until the sun imploded, and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. He would still exist. He would still make her insides churn and her heart beat faster and her body lean closer, as if those eight years hadn’t been more than eight seconds.

And that was unsettling.

So she did what she always did when she felt unsettled, which was to visit her father in the Asheville Prison.

The guard looked slightly surprised to see her when she arrived. She gave him a reassuring nod. Her normal visiting hours were every other Saturday, five p.m., and of course Christmas and his birthday. It was unlike her to show up on a Wednesday morning, because most mornings she would be slammed with customers. Not a problem, right now. Cesar was once again covering the shift and probably reading a book out of sheer boredom.

The guard showed her to the visiting room, where there was a small table and a chair on either side. The first few times she had visited, there had been a glass partition separating them and they communicated by phone. Since then, her dad had earned privileges for good behavior. They couldn’t hold hands, but they could hug hello and goodbye.

A minute later her dad appeared—without handcuffs, because he had been deemed nonviolent—looking much better than he ever had before his arrest. Back then, he had lost too much weight from worry and there had been dark puffy pouches beneath his eyes from lack of sleep. Now he looked rested and healthy. He liked to say that there were only two things to do in prison: work out and read books, and he did both of those in spades.

After a quick hug, they sat down opposite each other, hands clasped politely on the table in front of them, not touching. Her dad was always so careful to follow the rules. In his lifetime, he had only ever broken the one. A major one, but still. Just one. That was all it took, apparently. The system was unforgiving that way.

“It’s Wednesday. You never come on Wednesdays. What’s going on, Emma-bear?” he asked, using his old nickname for her. It had come about when she was a toddler, not because she was as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear, but because when she didn’t get her way, she would shake her fists and growl as ferociously as a toddler could.

Oh no, my baby is a bear! What will I dooooo? her mother would mock wail.

Good times, in retrospect.

“Everything, Dad. Everything is going on.” She swallowed hard. Of course he knew about the processing plant closing, but when she had seen him last, there had still been hope—and customers. Maybe a senator would step in, or the governor. But that hadn’t happened and it was clear now that no miracle was coming. Lord knew the mayor wasn’t going to produce a last-minute Hail Mary.

The mayor being her was a solid guarantee on that.

“Tell me about it,” he said, in that Dad way he had, the way that made her want to do exactly that.

The whole story came pouring out. That she hadn’t had more than a dozen customers all week. That her last hope was hightailing it out of town and leaving her in charge. That she somehow had to find a way to save her food truck, save the town, and plan the Fourth of July celebration. That Eli—

And there she stopped short.

Her dad’s eyebrows shot up to his slightly receding hairline. “Eli Carter? What about Eli?”

Emma bit her lip. She didn’t want to tell her dad about Eli. As a rule, she didn’t talk about him at all, and she definitely didn’t talk about him with her dad.

“He’s acting deputy mayor,” she said finally.

“Is he? Kind of an odd choice, given his profession.” He tilted his head, considering. “Well, it could be worse. Eli’s a good kid.”

Not a kid. Kids didn’t have scruffy jaws that made her wonder...things...and shoulders that stretched tee shirts to their limits. Kids didn’t—she gave herself a mental slap. Bad Emma.

“Dad, he arrested you,” she protested.

“I’m aware.”

“I can’t work with him.”

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