Page 71 of Make Me Love You

She grinned. “I have so many ideas. So many. Like an endowment fund. You know how fancy private colleges have donors that create funds for scholarships and things like that? Why couldn’t we do something like that for Hart’s Ridge, but instead of scholarships, zero percent interest business loans or stipends to do repairs on Main Street, and that sort of thing? We just have to find the right donors. I was thinking—”

She broke off suddenly and looked at him.

“What?” he asked. “You were thinking what?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around and then back at him. “I just...I love you, Eli.”

***

Emma hadn’t meant to say it.

That was the thing about love. Once you realized you were in it, really and truly in it, you had to say it. The words were impossible to hold back. She might as well have tried to hold back the Chattanooga River as keep those words from reaching Eli’s ears.

It was a relief to finally set those words free. She should have said it eight years ago. She should have said a lot of things eight years ago. Maybe all those things were tied together somehow, and now that she had said one, she could finally say the others.

And that was a relief, too. That she was finally coming clean after eight years of swimming through murkiness.

She suspected the relief was all hers, though, because Eli was looking at her with something like horror on his face. He still hadn’t said anything.

So she figured she might as well keep going.

“I love you,” she repeated. “I think maybe I always loved you, but I didn’t always know what to do with that. Now I do, and that’s apologize. I’m so sorry, Eli.”

His brow furrowed. “For what? What could you possibly have to feel sorry for?”

He didn’t say anything about the other part, she noticed. The part about her loving him. That didn’t make her feel great. But okay. So they weren’t going to have one of those magical moments like in the movies where those three little words could fix everything, and they would say them and melt into each other’s arms and screw their brains out.

They could still have that moment, just not now. Now they would have to put in the work to earn it.

She could do that. She would do that.

“I’m sorry because eight years ago, something terrible happened, and I let you take the blame for all of it. For your part. For my dad’s.” She swallowed hard. “For mine.”

He took a step back, shaking his head. “You don’t have to do this. It was a long time ago.”

“I do have to do this. I want to do this, because I want to be with you, and that’s never going to happen if we don’t put the past to rest.”

“Emma—”

“Please let me. Then you can say whatever it is you need to say.” She had a pretty good idea that she wasn’t going to like it, but she would hear him out. And then she would tell him how wrong he was. Because this thing with them, it could work. She knew it could. There was too much love for it not to work.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“It wasn’t fair, making it all your fault. I don’t have an excuse. I was a mess. I still am pretty messy, but I’m working to sort myself out now. I saw my dad today. And I told him...I told him about that night. I told him it was me. I was the one who told the police he had been cooking meth.”

“You told your best friend,” he corrected.

“Who happened to be a cop.” She grimaced. “I wasn’t unaware of your job, Eli. I knew what an awful position I was putting you in. I just refused to think about it. And then after...I kept on refusing. Because if I thought about it, then I might realize that I didn’t just hate you. I hated my dad. I hated myself. It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t have to hate anybody. That just because I was mad didn’t mean I had to stay mad for eight years. I didn’t have to carry all that anger inside me. I could have set that burden down and walked away from it.” She looked at him and her heart ached. She wished he wouldn’t stand so far away. “I should have.”

He leaned against the porch column, chin tucked low, eyes on the ground. She wished he would look at her. Give her some indication that he understood.

But he didn’t, and she plowed forward anyway. “I wanted so badly to be the perfect daughter. The daughter my dad wanted. The daughter my mother deserved. And I...I couldn’t face how spectacularly I had screwed up. At the time, I could see only one way forward: you. Now, of course, I want to kick myself. Why didn’t I go directly to my dad and tell him to stop? Why didn’t I at least try?”

“Emma, you—” He blew out a long breath and shook his head. “That might have worked, or it might not have. He might have stopped and maybe that would have gotten him killed. You don’t know. We can’t possibly know. But I do know that your dad loves you. None of us are perfect.”

“That’s what he said too, when I told him.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

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