Page 68 of Make Me Love You

Standing in a voting booth, her finger hovering over the box next to her name, was a surreal experience. Emma wanted to take a selfie to commemorate the moment, but that was illegal, and Eli would be pretty annoyed if she lost the election over something so dumb.

A trickle of sweat ran down her lower back. She was the right person for the job, wasn’t she? Maybe the fact that she was even asking herself this question, and that she cared so much about the answer, meant that she was. Funny how she had barely paid attention to local elections, either voting for any old familiar name or not bothering to vote at all, and now that her own name was on the ballot, she was sweating the choice.

Not that Eli was much of a choice, considering that he didn’t really want it. He would kill her if she voted for him.

It wasn’t even a paid position. Hart’s Ridge needed to follow the kindergarten rule of “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

But Emma didn’t want to be mediocre. She wanted to be great. Not perfect. She was never going to be perfect, and thanks to Eli, she was slowly getting more comfortable with that, little by little.

Not perfect. But she could be great.

She checked the box next to her name.

From the voting booth she went straight to prison. She nearly turned around twice, but turning around would mean turning away from any kind of future with Eli, and that was unacceptable.

An hour later she was sitting across from her father in the small visitors room.

“What are you doing here, Emma?” he asked. “I’m always glad to see you, but I thought you would be spending the day shaking hands with voters, getting those last-minute undeciders, that sort of thing. Is everything okay?”

“Everything is good. Holiday House is already booked for most of the summer, so there will definitely be work for you to do when you get out next month.” She couldn’t believe it was really happening. Eight long years, and next month it would all be over. He would be home.

If he still wanted to live with her after she told him the truth, that is.

“Dad, I have to tell you something. About that night. When you were arrested.” She swallowed hard. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together and focused her attention there, unable to meet his eyes. “It was me. I told Eli you were making meth. It’s my fault you were arrested.”

The whole story came pouring out. How the smell—like a million cats had simultaneously peed in their kitchen—had woken her up several nights in a row. How she had noticed the empty packets of cold medicine, enough to supply all of Hart’s Ridge, even though neither she nor her dad had had even a sniffle for several months. How she had put two and two together after randomly watching an old episode of Breaking Bad. How she had hoped she could look the other way, that it was a one-time thing and he would come to his senses.

How that hope had been dashed when the man with the gun started hanging around.

“I was so scared, Dad. Not just for myself. I was scared for you. I had already lost Mom. I couldn’t lose you, too. I told Eli everything. That’s how he knew.” She steeled her nerves and looked up. Her dad looked as though someone had punched him in the stomach. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I don’t know if you can forgive me. I hope you can.”

“Oh, Emma, honey. What is there to forgive?” He scrubbed a hand over his ashen face. “I had no idea you knew. I had thought I could keep it away from you, somehow. That I could protect you. It made sense to me, that Eli would figure it all out. I always knew he would, eventually. He came around all the time to see you. He was a cop. This whole time, I thought I had put Eli in an impossible position. But he did what he had to do.”

“He had to do his job. I think I can forgive that, but it’s a lot harder to forgive myself.”

Her dad shook his head with a mirthless laugh. “All this talk about forgiveness. You, me, Eli—every single one of us was doing the best that we could. We all acted out of love. A little misguided, perhaps, but it was love, just the same.”

He didn’t understand. “Dad, I told a police officer you were cooking meth,” she said, exasperated. “You were arrested because of me.”

“Emma,” he said, mimicking her tone, “I was cooking meth. Maybe you sped up my arrest, but I assure you it was always forthcoming. I might be a brilliant chemist, but a criminal mastermind I am not. You found the evidence because I wasn’t any good at hiding it. I’m here”—he gestured to the prison around them—“because of my choices. Would I have made those choices if cancer treatments hadn’t driven us to desperation? Of course not. But that’s still not your doing.”

She stared at him in disbelief. It couldn’t be that easy. “So you forgive me?”

“You never turned your back on me. I betrayed your trust. I turned your home into a dangerous drug lab. And still, you show up here every week. You loved me through it all. The question is, do you forgive me?”

“I never blamed you, Dad.”

He grimaced. “You should, at least a little. A boy died from my meth. Just a couple years younger than you were at the time. I never told you that, but I think about it all the time. I didn’t force him to take it. I didn’t even sell it to him. But I made it, and he died. Even if you forgive me, I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself.”

Her eyes widened in horror. A kid died from her dad’s meth? “Dad...my God.”

“Your mistakes are nothing compared to mine. Let it all go, honey. Forgive yourself. You didn’t kill anybody. All you did was tell your boyfriend to arrest me.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Emma said reflexively. “And I didn’t tell him to arrest you.”

Her dad gave her a look. “Maybe not in so many words. But you had to know what he would do. And not just because he’s a cop and that was his job. He’s Eli. He would do anything for you. You told him your dad was cooking meth and there was a guy with a gun hanging around? Come on. You knew he would keep you safe.”

She closed her eyes. Of course she had. The thing she had pushed down so she wouldn’t have to think about it. That moment, on the second worst day of her life. She had been so scared, her mind reeling with a thousand what ifs. What if her dad blew up their house with both of them in it? What if he was killed over a deal gone wrong? So she had gone to Eli, because she had known he would fix everything.

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