Note to Emmett: Mission accomplished.
It only took a few demanding knocks of the thick tip of his shaft on my g-spot to send me into the stars. The earth shattered beneath me, but it was ok. I didn’t need to come back down anyway. I felt him as he followed me, his orgasm ripping through him as he claimed every inch inside my body as his own.
It was already his.
He should know that by now.
ONE WEEK. ONE WHOLE WEEK of pure fucking madness.
Snowboarding. Sex. Sunshine.
Fuck the consequences. Sometimes consequences are a vague idea, sometimes a definite result. This time, consequences were one fucking Chance. Her brother. And the chance that Little Miss Light of Mine had worked her way into my heart and made herself right at fucking home.
It was everything irrational and reckless, stupid and senseless—and it was all because of her.
I dumped scrambled eggs onto two plates. ‘Scrambled’ was P.C. for how my attempt at breakfast looked—more like massacred eggs. This is what happened when you lived on protein shakes and pussy for however-many fucking years.
Had I ever cooked for anyone before?
Fuck me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I growled. My eyes caught her as soon as she was out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and heading for the stairs. Little Miss Deer-in-Headlights looked back at me. “You aren’t putting clothes on so don’t even bother.”
She crossed her arms, the movement raising her towel—and my dick.
I nodded over to the window that I had begrudging cleaned, but that still served as a transparent warning—reminding her that she was mine. If only for right now.
It would have been easier to count the seconds that I hadn’t thought about fucking her this morning because those could fit on one hand. The real problem was that I already had fucked her this morning. I’d woken up early to put the finishing touches on the boards that were going to be picked up at the end of this week as riders arrived for the US Open. I’d been in the zone for about an hour before her scent drifted down the stairs into my workshop a second before she did—in one of my tees.
You know how they break a bottle of champagne over the helm of a ship to christen it? Yeah, well, I fucking broke her over the hard, sealed wood. Several of them. Several times.
Snowboards. Fucking. Christened.
One day I’d have her on my board and then I’d seal into it whatever pieces of her she left.
Goals. But not for this morning.
In one of the rare instances of my life, I attempted to not be a completely callous asshole and tried to think about how sore she must be. Still, it was a good thing she couldn’t see my waist below the counter because my throbbing cock hadn’t gotten the memo.
“You cook?” Her eyes were wide.
I smirked, “I do eat something besides pussy every once in a while.” She frowned, apparently, my humor tasted as poorly as my cooking probably would. “I also have toast and coffee coming right up.” I checked the pot. “Definitely not as good as Cup of Joe.”
I walked around to the side of the stool she was sitting on, setting her plate on the countertop. “And the food definitely doesn’t taste as good as you,” I whispered gently as my lips brushed her ear.
She didn’t acknowledge me, aside from picking up the fork on her plate and tasting my mess. That was ok. She could acknowledge me later when my dick was buried inside of her.
“How is it?” Wait for it.
She licked her lips and grinned. “Let’s just say that your eating is better than your cooking.”
Fucking perfect. I laughed.
I threw all the shit for my protein shake in the blender and turned in on high. It only took a few seconds for the Vitamix to emulsify everything. Dumping it into my cup, I chugged almost half of it off the bat—last night was quite the workout.
What was she doing?
I turned and she was over by the couch, looking in the cushions. She held up my cell phone.
“I thought I heard something buzzing.” We met in the middle and I opened up the screen.
Eight missed calls. All from Ruth.
Before I could think, I tapped to dial her number.
“Oh, thank God, Emmett.”
“What’s going on?” My voice was tight. I knew she was looking at me. I knew she’d seen the number of calls from Ruth.
“She took a turn for the worse overnight. The doctors say that she has days. You have to come now, Emmett. I-I don’t know how much longer you have.”
No. I didn’t need this now. I needed more time being tempted into thinking that I could be a better man before I was reminded that I wasn’t one.
“I’ll be there in three hours.”
I hung up, calmly setting my phone on the counter before I turned and whipped the plastic cup containing the rest of my shake at the window, spilling the contents onto the glass and floor. The liquid erasing any remnant that still reflected our words, just like my past was about to erase my future.
Waking up this morning had been a dream. The same dream I’d had for the past week. Sore. Raw. Filled. In places I didn’t even known existed. He’d built me a snowboard. After flying my cousin—one of my best friends—out from Florida for my birthday. I couldn’t imagine the time he’d put into making it for me; from my siblings, I knew it normally took him several weeks to perfect just one.
I’ll never forget the moment my eyes drifted from the bright yellow sun on the back over to look at him. Standing cool and confident, he was a Greek God covered with clothes. And, good or evil, I was the mortal who had tumbled easily under his spell.
So much had happened between that night and this morning. Between us. Inside of myself. It wasn’t until I was in the shower that I remembered that I’d taken Dylan’s ring off. Normally, I felt every second that it was gone—like I was missing a limb. But for a whole week, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
I didn’t feel the loss anymore. I didn’t feel the hole in my chest… I didn’t feel it because it wasn’t there.
Oh God.
Like the spill I’d taken on the mountain, the thought came out of nowhere and it wasn’t until I was lying there, stunned and breathless, did I realize that I had fallen. In love. With Emmett.
If only that had been the sole shock of the morning.
I heard a phone vibrating and when I pulled it out of the couch, I saw there were numerous missed calls from Ruth. And then, it began to ring again.
It rang in the end of my fairytale evening with my knight in asshole’s armor.
I jumped as his cup crashed into the window, foolishly worrying for a second that it was going to break the glass. Something was wrong—and I knew it as soon as I found the phone and saw the slew of missed calls from someone named Ruth.
“Emmett…” He was paralyzed, staring at the window. In some sort of sick twist of fate, I knew the look—the one that said ‘is this really happening?’ Tyler had been the one in my position then—and he’d been the one to tell me about Dylan.
“Emmett. What’s going on?” His eyes were blank as he looked to me.
“I have to go to Denver.”
“Why?” I followed him as he moved towards the stairs, grabbing his arm.
He spun on me. “Miriam is dying.”
I choked back a sob. Oh, God. No. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Emmett if you don’t take me with you, not only will I burn every snowboard you have stashed in this house, but I will walk down into town butt-ass naked with lipstick written on my chest that says, ‘Emmett was here.’”
It was the only thing I could think of.
He didn’t laugh. But he didn’t argue either.
“You’re a stubborn piece of ass, you know that?”
I got up in his face. “But, I’m your stubborn piece of ass.”
We didn’t say another word to each other, the weight of death hanging too thickly in th
e air. I shimmied into my clothes, fear gnawing at my stomach when I told him we’d have to make a quick stop at my house so I could grab some stuff; he just nodded.
I didn’t know how long we were going to be gone. I didn’t care. I messaged Hannah before we left telling her there was a family emergency and I might be out a few days. Once in the car, I messaged Jessa.
ALLY
HEY. HOW’S TAMMY DOING?
JESSA
AT THE DOCTOR’S NOW. I’LL KEEP YOU POSTED.
ARE YOU STILL WITH HIM?
ALLY
YES.
JESSA
THEN STOP TEXTING ME.
ALLY
SOMETHING HAPPENED. I’M OK, BUT I’M GOING WITH EMMETT TO DENVER. I MIGHT BE THERE FOR A FEW DAYS SO I NEED YOU TO COVER FOR ME. TELL TAMMY IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO ME. I DON’T WANT HER TO WORRY.
JESSA
GOT IT. I’LL HOLD DOWN THE FORT.
ALLY
IF CHANCE WONDERS…
I didn’t know what to tell her to tell my brother. I just hoped that he’d be too busy with Nick and Ty to notice.
JESSA
I CAN HANDLE YOUR BROTHER. LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING, CHICA. BE SAFE.
ALLY
THANKS. LOVE YOU.
JESSA
LOVE YOU.
The pit in my stomach only grew until we were finally pulling out of my driveway about to get on the road to Denver. I thought he might leave me when I went inside to change. I think I held my breath the entire three minutes that I was in there, throwing on jeans and tossing a toothbrush and I don’t even know what else into a small duffel bag.
It took twenty minutes of flying through the mountains for me to finally ask the question on the tip of my tongue.
“What happened?”
“Miriam is sick,” he answered, staring at the road ahead.
“I didn’t know…” I trailed off.
“Alzheimer’s. For several years. Recently, they found cancer. They thought she would have longer.” His jaw ticked. “She doesn’t.”
“I’m so sorry, Emmett.” My heart squeezed painfully.
He laughed harshly. “Don’t be sorry for me. I’m the asshole that ruined her life. Be sorry for her that not only did she have to deal with me, but now she is dying of cancer.”
He was angry. And blaming himself. I hated it.
“What was she like?” I forced my eyes to look out my window so he wouldn’t feel interrogated. I’d never heard about any of these people through the grapevine which meant that he never talked about them to anyone; he’d never talked about this to anyone.
He needed to talk about them.
And I needed to take my own advice. But that was a problem for another day.
Mountains passed by, the peaks drifting up and down like the sound waves of his voice in our truck-cabin confessional.
“Patient. Kind. She was so much older than Rose Jameson. She tried to save her too, but some roses can’t be saved. I told you how she was forced to get clean to have me after which she dumped me to find her old dealer, according to my grandparents. When that didn’t work out, she took me back and used me for the child support money she got from the government and her parents. Then she would get her drugs and give me back.”
I was going to vomit, hearing this again.
“What about Miriam?”
“My grandparents had cut her out of their lives long before that. I’m assuming when she found out she was pregnant with Ruth. I never got that story.”
The story made me sick. I had been blessed, I knew that. In spite of my own horrors, I’d never come across anything like this except on TV shows. To hear the reality… to see its effects… was devastating.
“Miriam had a rose garden,” he continued as I tried to blink back tears, “I think as a memorial to the woman who bore me. But, I destroyed that, too. I was angry at her because she wouldn’t let me go to a party with my friends—my older friends who were into gateway drugs. She knew; she was trying to protect me. It wasn’t just that though. I was angry that she chose to memorialize someone who hadn’t cared about me at all; I thought it meant she must not care about me either.” It started to flurry outside. “So, I took clippers and cut off every bloom I could find.”
I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to fuck him—to love him. Anything to bring me into contact with him. Any way that I could show him that I cared. But he needed to talk more than he needed my touch, so I squeezed my hands together and continued, “Did you get in trouble?”
“No.” He laughed harshly. “She just replanted them.” We flew around cars, carving in and out of lanes like he did on the mountain. “She adopted me after my grandparents died. Before that I was in and out of foster homes for about a year because she had no idea that they passed; that’s how severed their relationship was. It had all felt fake until Miriam brought me home. I never knew what having a parent felt like really until her.”
So that part was true, too.
“She disciplined me when I acted out; I told myself it was because she was punishing me for her sister. I didn’t see then that it was out of love. I saw everyone as being out to use me for their own benefit. Every time she tried to care, I pushed back harder.”
“So, I ended up here and I didn’t speak to either of them until Ruth called and told me about Miriam’s Alzheimer’s. I told her I wanted to pay for her care—the best you could buy—not that she could have afforded it anyway, on the condition that she never asked me to come see her. It was the least that I could do.” Everyone else was driving slower because of the snow, but Emmett just plowed ahead. “When they found the cancer, that’s when Ruth broke my rules.”
“That’s who you were on the phone with the night outside Big Louie’s.” He’d found out that Miriam was dying.
He nodded. “That’s when they said she only had a few months left with the cancer. They’d tried a procedure but it hadn’t worked. I thought I had more time.”
“Does she want to see you?”
“Ruth said she does. I was hoping the Alzheimer’s would make her forget that. Hell, I’d hoped it would make her forget me altogether. But it didn’t.”
For the first time in a long time, I reached for my finger to spin the Claddagh ring that should have been there.
But when he talked about forgetting someone that you loved, I thought about Dylan only to realize that I hadn’t thought about him at all. Not once. Not for a split second. This whole time with Emmett.
I should have felt guilty. I should have felt like I betrayed his memory.
Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve.
If I hadn’t fallen so far, so fast, so deep in love.
Talk about great timing for that sucker-punch to my gut. My recovery was weak, but I wanted to—needed to—hear that there were good times left from his childhood. And I think he needed to hear them, too. “When was that picture from—of the two of you on your mantle?” It must have been a happy time. I wanted to hear about the happy times.
“The first time we came here. She always took us on winter vacations because Ruth had bad allergies; her face swelled up like a balloon.” Was that a hint of a smile? “Ruth skied. I snowboarded. And Miriam decided that she wanted to learn to snowboard too. It was both of our first times. She fell the entire way down the slope with a huge smile on her face. I don’t know that I ever laughed that hard before that day. She asked Ruth to take that photo when we were done. I don’t know why I kept it.”
“Because she is your mom. Because you care about her,” I answered for him.
He pulled off the exit towards downtown. I didn’t realize how quickly the time had flown.
“Yeah… well… some things are just too little and a little too fucking late.”
18. I hate what had been done to him. I hate the way he punished himself for it.
WE’D GONE STRAIGHT TO THE hospital. He’d called Ruth and she said the sooner we got there the better.
Walking
through the sterile hallways, I thanked God that I hadn’t had to go through this with Dylan. As much as I had suffered, at least, he hadn’t.
Ruth was several years older than Emmett. It made sense given that he’d said their mothers had been far apart in age. She had mousey brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail and looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her face streaked with dried tears. I didn’t know her, but I wanted to hug her.
When we walked through the doors to the visitor waiting area, she and Emmett stood frozen and stared at each other. He said he hadn’t seen them since he’d come to the school. That meant he hadn’t seen them for over fifteen years.
“Emmett…” Her voice was hoarse as she walked up and hugged him. He was shocked at first, eventually putting his arms around her lightly and patting her back. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come. I was afraid you weren’t going to make it.”
He ignored her statements. “How is she?” he asked tightly, his whole body rigid.
Ruth opened her mouth to answer but then spotted me, standing awkwardly off to the side.
“This is Ally,” he introduced me quietly.
“Hi, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother,” I said softly.
I should have probably just extended my hand, but that was never my style. I pulled her in for a hug and I felt the way her shoulders sagged for a second at the comfort. She was alone here, watching her mother die.
“T-thank you.” Her watery smile broke my heart. “She was resting. They drained a bunch of the fluid earlier but she’s very weak… very tired from it. I didn’t wake her because you said you were coming. T-they are just trying to keep her comfortable until…” She wiped a tear off with the end of her sleeve. “Why don’t we go in?” She turned and ushered us towards Miriam’s room. “I don’t know how she’ll be Emmett. I don’t know what she’ll remember today.”
The Winter Games Page 64
