Seducing Fortune (A Serendipity Novel Book 3) (14 page)

“So, he jaded you.” Dylan nods as if he’s solved a problem.

“No. When Alex and I ended, it ended. No Ben & Jerry’s. No waiting to find a date on Saturday night. No helpless female. My dad raised me to go after what I wanted. A guy looked interested and I’d ask him out.” I take the box of coasters from him and place them on the shelf.

“You date a lot lately?”

“No. I keep telling you that I’m getting through college without distractions. I’m trying to keep my jobs. I’m staying focused.” And not falling for a guy that will crush my heart. “That one on the wall,” I say, pointing to a contemporary gray and cream rug.

“Looks great.”

“Not too much?” I glance to gauge if I see sticker shock.

He doesn’t blink. “No. Let’s get it. I like your sense of style.”

I feel myself blush at the compliment and look away to study a rack of framed wall paintings. “You should buy one big piece. Bold and abstract, but not gaudy. Here,” I say, placing my hand on the top of a frame.

Dylan moves behind me to look, his chest pressing against my back. He places his chin on my shoulder. “Perfect.”

I suck in air, not moving, because this moment is the perfect fantasy—beautiful, sexy, intelligent guy urges me to decorate his place. There has to be a candid camera somewhere.

“Okay, then. My work here is done.” I step away, nearly unsettling him. “Let’s get this stuff and load it up.”

I
’m
certain I look as happy as a cat taking a bath. I attempt to channel my dad’s patience, something I never imagined myself doing. But women and furniture arranging is not a happy combo.

“What do you think about the rug in this direction?” Veronica looks at Emerson. Not at me or at Collin, even though we’re the ones who’ll be moving the two-ton sofa and the club chairs once she decides.

Emerson shrugs. “Looks good either way.”

Collin and I have good-naturedly moved the new furniture several times over the course of an hour and I’ve worked up a sweat. It’s nine o’clock and I can’t stop checking the time. Ace and Malerie left half an hour ago. It’s like I’m racing some clock and Emerson might disappear like Cinderella at midnight.

I need time with her. Alone.

“Can we finish this tomorrow?” I sit on the sofa arm. “I think I’ve pulled a muscle.”

Emerson smirks at me. “Poor baby. You’ll have to put some heat on it tonight.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” I give her a lascivious look. “You, me, heat. Easy therapy.”

She blushes immediately, telling me this girl isn’t used to being teased—or maybe she thought about it and liked it. “I’m sure you can take care of it yourself.”

Veronica laughs. “You guys are so cute.”

Emerson’s face grows pinker, a deep shade of rose. A ringtone sounds and she turns away to search the room. A second later, she grabs her purse and pulls her phone from it. Her voice is low and her chin tucked.

I look away so my interest in her call won’t be obvious.

Veronica and Collin have moved to the bar area where he opens a beer. Their voices are intimate and they move closer to each other while they talk.

I turn and grab my own cell to study my unopened email. There could be so many reasons for her to stay, and I deliberate over the best one to argue.

She puts one hand over her opposite ear as if to block out noise. “This friend you’re staying overnight with. I haven’t met her. Why not?”

Emerson studies the toe of her boot and shuts one eye. The voice on the other end is high-pitched and loud enough for me to hear.

“I didn’t say that,” Emerson says with a tiny hint of irritation. “I know you’re not making her up.” She pauses a beat. “You aren’t, are you?”

Emerson closes both eyes for a couple of seconds. “I was joking. Okay then. No problem.” She ends her call, notices me watching and turns her back to face the door. Her arms are folded across her chest in a protective gesture with the phone tucked tightly against her body.

“Everything okay?” I move closer to stand beside her.

“Um hmm.” She glances up at me. “Are we done with the decorating?”

“Hey, guys,” I say to Collin and Veronica, “we’ll help you finish up another day.”

“Sure,” Collin answers. “Thanks for everything. We’re not sticking around. I’m taking Veronica home.”

“Come on.” I take Emerson’s hand and lead her up the basement stairs. She doesn’t even resist my hand, which tells me how preoccupied she is. “Who was on the phone?”

“Gabby.”

I pull her with me to the living room and drag her down to the sofa next to me. There’s a sofa blanket hanging along the back, so I grab the covering and drape us both underneath it. Emerson automatically kicks off her boots and tucks her feet underneath her body.

“Want a coffee or tea?” I ask.

Emerson shakes her head and lets it fall back to rest against the cushion. “I should go home. I have an early class.”

“Okay. If you have to go. But I wish you’d tell me what just happened. I can tell something’s wrong.” I take her hand and study it, running my finger along the lines of her palm and up to the edges of her silver thumb ring.

“It’s nothing.” She waits a beat. “We could watch a TV show.” She motions to the television. I know she’s never watched anything at our house, and she doesn’t own one at her apartment.

It simultaneously concerns and pleases me that she wants to stay a while.

We both sit without moving for a minute. Finally, I grab the remote and put the sound on low. The room is dim except for a light in the kitchen and the flicker of the television.

Her body relaxes against me and I place an arm around her shoulders. “Is this okay?”

She nods instead of answering.

“You don’t have to talk, but you know you can tell me anything.” I say the words against the side of her ear in almost a whisper.

She waits a beat before she nods again, her silky hair moving against my chin. “Gabby and I have been through a lot together. She forces me to act like her mother and I’m not. But in a way, I am the only mother she’s ever known.”

I give her hand a squeeze. “I can tell you’re close.”

“She can be an immature little shit.”

I chuckle against the top of her head. “Yeah. I can tell that, too. But you know, we all grow up sometime.”

Her spine stiffens and her shoulders bunch. “It’s like a catch-22 for me. I keep waiting for her to make good choices and then I’m afraid to let her make decisions.”

“Not making judgments.”

Emerson releases a shuddering exhale. “I told you about my mother. Mom has been crazy a good part of my life. Most of Gabby’s life.”

“That must’ve been hard for both of you.” I’m searching my brain for the right thing to say, and maybe I should just shut up and let her talk. At the same time, I’m scared she’ll freeze up and lock this stuff away where she’s been storing it this whole time.

“I get overprotective and bossy, but I know why I do these things.”

“You worry about her. That’s natural.”

“It’s days like these when I’m so tired of guarding her from her mistakes. But I’m responsible for her. Or at least I am when she calls me to bail her out. Last semester, she was arrested for shoplifting.”

“Emerson,” I pause, trying to guard against saying the wrong thing. “You love her, but she’ll learn to take care of herself.”

“No, you don’t get it.” She pauses. “When we were kids, she was such a nuisance. Always in my stuff, following me around, trying to be me. Wearing my clothes. Taking my things.”

This time, I don’t respond verbally. Instead I draw her closer against my body.

“I’ve never told anyone what I’m going to tell you.” Emerson’s body pulls away until I slide my arm around her stomach, hugging her back to my chest.

I lace her fingers through mine and nod. “You can trust me.”

“You need to know how important it is that I look out for Gabby. That will never change.”

“I would never ask you for that. I know you guys are there for each other.”

She inhales as if to brace herself. “When I was thirteen and Gabby was ten, my mom was going through a bad spell. She wasn’t taking her medication or something. I don’t really know what was going on back then, but I do know she’d stay in bed all day. My dad would plead with her and then they’d fight. Screaming fights where my mom would end up crying and locking herself in a room until my dad broke the lock or persuaded her to open it.”

“That had to be hell on a kid.” I lift my hand across her stomach and rub her arm.

“One day, my mom loads me and Gabby into the car. We had this car with a DVD screen mounted on the headrest of the passenger seat,” she says, a far-away tone to her voice, “so the person who sat in back could watch a movie. Gabby and I would always fight over who would sit back there. Mom would make the other person get in the front so we wouldn’t fight in the back seat. I won the argument because I always did. It’s like my mom just didn’t have the energy to fight my stubborn streak. I got in the back and mom was driving. Gabby and I were still arguing—even yelling across the seats.”

I make a little ‘hmm’ sound, uneasy about the tension rolling off her.

Emerson squeezes my hand tighter. “My mom says that she’s leaving my dad and taking us to live with my grandmother. Gabby starts crying, but I’m just pissed off. I hated her so much that I wished she’d go away and never come back. I started yelling at her that she had no right and that my dad would bring us back as soon as he found us. I yelled at my mom that she was in so much trouble with my dad and that he would never let me live with anyone else. I said it was because my dad loved me even if he didn’t love her. We drove past a lake and my mom stopped in the middle of the highway, got out, and opened my door. She yanked me out of the car and said, ‘Then stay with your father. He does love you the most.’ I was crying and Gabby was crying and trying to get out. My mother jumped back in the car.”

Fear freezes my chest, stopping my lungs from pulling in air. It’s like this frame in time is flash frozen. Emerson’s hold on my hand is fierce, fingers biting into mine.

She exhales and I swear I can feel her muscles tense, ready to bolt from this memory she’s reliving. I imagine one hundred story endings, all collaged in my brain with one tragic theme.

“We were near this place where people launch fishing boats. I took a few steps to get out of the highway and watched her drive straight down the ramp and into the lake. My mother...” Emerson whispers, her words strained. “She drove them into the lake.” She shakes her head as if disbelieving even now what she has to say. Emerson stops talking, moving, being. I’m unable to process what she’s said. I hug her to me, making consoling sounds, those noises you make when words are worthless.

“How did they get out?” The question is more so I can understand all the details of the accident—no, I realize it can’t be called that. Because the bigger picture is that this wasn’t an accident and Emerson was almost in the vehicle.

“A guy in a truck was driving by.” Emerson’s voice is too even and calm. “He got out, jumped in the water, and pulled my mom out. My mom struggled against the guy and yelled that she was so done with everything. So ready to be finished.’ The place they drove in was deep, but it was the edge of the lake. Gabby was out of the car and swimming.” Emerson’s mouth twists into a rueful smile. “She could not wait to give me hell for leaving her in that car.”

“You didn’t leave her anywhere. You had no control over that—”

She doesn’t respond to my soothing. “And I was just standing there watching. I couldn’t move or think or do anything. I just stood there, unable to help because I couldn’t even function. I provoked my mother into trying to kill them both. Gabby got to the shore and let loose this hysterical scream and smacked me so hard it knocked me down.”

And then it hits me. Gabby was caught in her mother’s suicide attempt and Emerson blames herself.

I place my hand underneath her chin and turn her head, forcing her to look at me. “There was nothing you could’ve done to stop what happened. You understand that, right?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Hey,” I say. “Sometimes things happen and as much as you want to think you could’ve done something different—something to impact that event—it’s just not true.”

“Yeah, sure,” she says in an automatic, placating tone. “I was a kid. But now I’m an adult and I understand my mom was sick back then. My dad should’ve done something. But I was so wrapped up in worshipping him, I never saw him as anything but perfect.”

We sit in silence. She’s enveloped in my arms, warm and pliant. I listen to the sounds of the heater kicking on and the clunk of the ice maker.

“I tried to warn you about the baggage thing,” she whispers in an I-told-you-so voice.

She’s bared her soul to me. A gift. An offering so I’ll know the demons of her past.

“Three years ago, I fell in love for the first time.” I say the words so low that I wonder if I thought them or said them aloud.

There’s an immediate difference in her. She pulls away from my arms and turns to look at me, wide-eyed. I gently push her head back down to my chest. “Yes, hard to believe, I know.” I laugh at her expression.

“Yeah, I didn’t see that coming. Dylan falls in love...”

I stroke her hair. “Well, I didn’t want to, but that stuff you hear about having no control over the people you love? All true.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“I was a sophomore, she was a junior.”

She laughs. “I can see that. Older woman. You thought she was a challenge.”

I ignore that comment. “Met her at a Cardinals game. I accidently threw my hotdog into her lap.”

Emerson chuckles. She’s enjoying this. My chest tightens and I debate telling her the rest of the story.

“And then....” she prompts. “You said she had nice buns. Okay, that was so corny I am literally dying.”

“Yes, she had nice buns.” I smile and lift our joined hands to lay on top of the blanket. I’m starting to sweat a little as I always do when I think about that year.

“So, you asked her out and she went. Then what happened?” Her voice is soft, steady, curious.

“Kate and I dated. Actually, you can’t call it dating. I knew I loved her from the first time we went out. We spent every spare minute together. Kate was this serious type. I mean, she had to be. She had Paisley to think about.”

“Paisley?”

“Oh. Sorry. Kate had a daughter. Paisley. She’d gotten pregnant when she was in high school. She and Paisley lived with her parents while she went to college.”

Emerson’s voice is carefully neutral. “Why’d you break up?”

This is the part I always imagine saying as matter-of-factly as the first of the story. But it’s simply not possible. My throat is tight and my skin hot. I kick the blanket off.

“She was in a car wreck. Guy had been driving all night and fell asleep. He crossed the centerline going eighty. T-boned Kate’s Mazda. She and Paisley died on impact.” Every muscle in my body tenses, freezes, burns. It’s been a while since I’ve said these things aloud. I thought by now it’d be easier.

The truth is... It is easier for the most part. I don’t feel like I want to vomit or run or scream at the universe for losing my Kate and Paisley.

Because they’re gone and I can’t make them come back. I lift my hand from Emerson’s stomach and swipe away a fucking tear.

She makes a strange sound low in her throat. “I— I didn’t know any of this.”

“Hey, come on. Don’t cry. You didn’t know. Only a few people do.”

Emerson’s hot tears drip onto our hands. I breathe in, breathe out. “Emerson, stop. You’re killing me. Don’t look so sad. I’m okay.”