by Teresa Hill
So he just stood there with so many regrets it seemed they should have choked him by now. If he didn't watch it, he might damned well cry.
He'd have given anything to be able to come to her as anyone except who he was, but that was impossible. He was chained to the past, as securely as his hands were chained together in front of him.
So he bent over and kissed her forehead, ever so softly, and said good-bye, then turned and walked away.
Chapter 11
Night came and went. Rye sat in his cell. One of the deputies brought him dinner from the diner on the corner. The sheriff brought him breakfast the next morning, along with the news that Sam had gotten into town early that morning and that Emma was home, shaken but fine. Mark was in Cincinnati, a surgeon trying to save his face. He was a bloody mess.
Rye was waiting for his brother to pay him a visit. He didn't think it would be long now. He'd have to face him with a set of bars in between them.
He laughed a bit at that. Hell, if he'd known it would be like this, he wouldn't have had to wait all these years.
He thought about talking to the sheriff, who seemed like a really decent guy. If Rye said, "Please don't make me see my brother for the first time in almost twenty years from behind bars," the sheriff might let him talk to Sam somewhere else.
But the next time the door to the cell block opened, he looked up and there was Sam.
Damn.
He looked like a man who'd driven like a maniac all night to come rescue his daughter from disaster, like a man hell-bent on getting some answers, answers he didn't think he was going to like.
Rye took all that in within seconds, looked the man up one side and down the other, and then looked away. He couldn't even look his own brother in the eye.
Sam just stood there, maybe a foot and a half away, rows of metal in between them. Finally, he said, "What the hell happened, Robbie?"
The Robbie part just about did him in. Robbie was a little kid who'd disappeared a long time ago. He wondered if he'd driven Sam crazy all those years ago with stupid kid stuff, wondered what kind of life they'd had and how things might have been different if they'd ever been together.
Not that it really mattered now.
"You mean with Emma?" Rye asked.
"I mean everything. How did you..."
"How did I end up here? Your friend the sheriff didn't tell you?"
"I'd like to hear it from you."
Rye shrugged and tried to look like it didn't matter in the least. What a crock. "It's a long story."
"I've got time, and it sure looks like you do, too."
Well, there was that. He was completely without the luxury of walking away. For as long as Sam wanted to stay, he supposed they'd talk.
"Is Emma okay?" he asked instead.
"Yeah. She's got a bruise on her head. She's shaken, but fine. Except for being worried about you."
Rye's head finally came up at that, and there they were, face-to-face.
It wasn't like looking in a mirror. Not exactly. Like looking at one that subtly distorted the image. Him but not him. Sam's hair was darker. He was a bit taller, a bit broader, a bit older, sterner, angrier, but then he had a right to be.
"She's worried about you?" Sam sounded as if that really had him going.
Rye couldn't imagine why Emma would care, unless... "She has this crazy idea that all of this is her fault. That she should have known her ex was crazy, and... You'll tell her what a crock that is, won't you?"
Sam nodded, not giving an inch.
"I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen to me."
"And she couldn't even tell me what was going on?" Sam asked.
That part seemed to be eating away at him, and if Rye had any doubts about the way Sam McRae felt about his daughter, they were gone right then. The anguish on his face, in thinking he'd disappointed her or failed her in some way, was enough to ease Rye's mind on that score.
There wasn't much else that really mattered now. Except maybe trying to help his brother.
"She was afraid you'd be disappointed in her."
Sam gaped at him. "She couldn't disappoint me if she tried."
Yeah, Rye thought. Good for Emma. He wanted her to have a father who thought about her that way. He wanted her to have everything. And the way he saw it, he owed his brother an apology, too.
"I'm sorry," Rye said. "I didn't... I should have taken better care of her."
"Oh, hell, I should have," Sam said, as if he didn't have any patience for anything resembling an apology in this.
"I told you I'd make sure she was safe."
"And she says you did, until the guy bashed you over the head."
"Still..." Rye began.
Sam held up a hand, waved off the words. It was his turn to look away. In a voice that shook, he asked, "Did you really kill that kid sixteen years ago?"
"Yeah, I did."
Sam took that about like he might a blow with a shovel. He backed up two steps, staggered almost, and shook his head. "Robbie—"
"Don't call me that," Rye said, more harshly than he should have.
And then Sam looked at him one more time, and it wasn't with anger that Rye had ended up this way. It wasn't disgust or embarrassment. It looked a lot like hurt, disappointment, disbelief, the need to understand struggling with the need to say there had to be a mistake. It was a where-did-you-go-so-wrong look, and it nearly sent Rye stumbling to his knees.
He hadn't really expected his brother to care, and he was coming to understand the depths of Emma's need not to let this man down. Because Rye found that he really hated the idea of disappointing Sam or hurting him.
"I'm sorry," he said.
And then, he didn't think there was much they could possibly have left to say, but Sam was still there, still waiting.
"Will you do something for me?" Rye asked.
"Name it." As if that was all it would take. He asked and Sam provided.
"Tell Emma I'm sorry."
Sam nodded, then looked thunderous all of a sudden. "That's another thing. She has this crazy idea that the two of you... That..."
Oh, hell, Rye thought. Things had been going so well, relatively speaking.
"Tell me nothing happened between you and Emma," Sam insisted, in full outraged-father mode.
"Nothing happened," Rye said. "I mean—"
"What? What do you mean?"
"When the guy broke into the house... I should have known, but... I was kissing her."
Which obviously had Sam wanting to break him in two. "What do you mean, you were kissing her?"
"Look, I kissed her, okay?" Rye wasn't about to get into the rolling around on the floor part. Not if kissing went over this badly. "I knew you wouldn't be too crazy about the idea, and I doubt she is, either, at the moment. But it didn't go any farther than that."
Sam still looked murderous.
Lost, Rye said, "I'm sorry. Obviously, it won't happen again."
Not with a set of bars and his past between them. Not when she was scared of him. Emma was slipping away into that good-girl-dream territory he'd always known she belonged in.
"You really don't know?" Sam roared. "You didn't think to wonder? To ask, maybe?"
"Ask what?"
"How old she is." Sam glared. "She's eighteen, asshole."
"Eihhh..." He felt like he'd been hit with the shovel again and started to say something, but got no more than that out before words completely failed him. He backed up a step, not sure the bars were enough at the moment to keep Sam from wringing his neck.
Eighteen?
"No way," Rye said.
"Do I look like I'm kidding?"
No, Sam did not.
Rye had an awful image of schoolgirls, ponytails, and shy grins. Of indecently young girls. This felt even more bizarre than the whole scene with Emma's ex. If she'd been just a year younger, he might well have gone to jail for what he'd been wanting to do to her.
"Jesus," he muttered.
&nbs
p; "Yeah. She's my daughter. Keep your filthy hands off her."
His hands felt filthy at the moment. His mind.
Shit.
"Wait a minute. She's in college," he said, not as a way of defending himself, but trying to understand. Surely he hadn't been lusting after an eighteen-year-old girl. "She said she was finishing college."
"Which would have made her what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?"
Which wasn't much better. Rye got that. But it was a lot better than eighteen. He stood there waiting for lightning to strike him dead right then, and when that didn't happen, he realized he still had to face Sam. Lightning didn't sound so bad.
"She said she was finishing college," he insisted.
"She's finishing her first semester of college," Sam said, very slowly and carefully, as if he might be talking to a dunce. "You make a habit of dating college freshmen?"
"No," Rye insisted.
Fuck.
He couldn't believe this.
He was behind bars, seeing his brother for the first time in almost twenty years, and feeling like he was practically on the same level as a child molester. He really knew how to make an impression on someone.
And his brain was still stuck on the idea of Emma, so soft and so sweet, so understanding of him and so hard on herself. Emma scared and clinging to him. Emma whom he'd obviously let down so badly. Even worse were the things he'd wanted to do to her....
"How the hell could she be eighteen?" Rye asked.
One look at Sam's face told him it wasn't the thing to say. It would never be the right moment to say that.
"I'm sorry," Rye said. He thought about saying he'd asked, more than once, how old she was, and she hadn't told him. But Emma had enough to worry about. He certainly wasn't going to add to her troubles.
Besides, he was supposed to be the grown-up here.
Not the dirty old man.
Jesus.
"I kissed her. That was it."
"You spent the night at my house with her, and not in the carriage house."
"She was scared," Rye said. "Her ex-boyfriend kept calling, and he'd already shown up at the house once. And nothing happened. I guess this isn't the time to ask you to believe me about anything, but..."
And Rye just gave up then. What was the point? He'd screwed things up as badly as he possibly could here in this town and with this man.
With this man's little girl.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
"Yeah, me, too."
And with that, his brother walked away.
* * *
Emma lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, just about as miserable as she'd ever been in her life. The past twenty-four hours seemed like a blur. Her and Rye sitting in front of the fire, her lying on the floor with him on top of her, kissing her. Mark scaring her half to death; Rye doing the same.
Now he was behind bars. Mark was in the hospital, and she was here, bewildered. How in the world had this happened?
She'd never forget the look on Sam's face when he'd burst into her room at the hospital early that morning. He'd been so scared, so worried, and so very hurt. She hadn't thought she'd ever hurt him and hoped to go her entire life without ever doing that again.
He'd started asking her what happened, and she'd just burst into tears, not remembering half of what she'd said, just happy to have him close.
He and Rachel had brought her home. She'd slept for a few hours. Now she needed to go downstairs and face them. She was trying to find the courage to do just that when the door to her room opened slowly and Rachel looked in.
"Hi. Feeling better?"
Emma started to say she was. She was in her own house, in her own bed, Sam and Rachel here, too, and Mark wasn't going to drop by anytime soon.
Nightmare over.
Except it wasn't.
She was going to cry yet again.
"Oh, Em." Rachel came and sat on the bed beside her. "I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry. About everything. I don't know how it happened. I don't know why. Everything just went crazy all of a sudden."
Rachel bunched all the pillows up against the headboard and sat down beside Emma, Emma's head on her shoulder, the way they used to do when Emma was much, much younger.
"And you couldn't tell us?" Rachel asked. "Did you think we wouldn't understand? That we wouldn't help you? Emma, we would do anything for you. Absolutely anything."
"I know," she said, tears falling faster. "I know that."
"Sam is so upset. He thinks he's failed you in some way—"
"No." Emma shook her head. "I did this. This is my life, my decisions."
"And you're growing up and making decisions on your own. I know that, and Sam does, too. But in our hearts, you're still ours. Our daughter. You always will be. And he's a man. A father. He thinks he's supposed to be able to keep all of us safe and happy, that it's his job."
"I'm sorry."
Emma stared around her room, which was painted in the softest, creamiest yellow. She had a gauzy and puffy rose-colored comforter that looked like a cloud and a fabulous old bed made of intricately swirling iron. They'd done this just for her, and it was so pretty. Zach and Sam had been at an auction looking for things Sam might salvage from an old house and use in his construction business when they'd found the bed. She and Rachel had sanded it and painted it a grayish white that made her think of clouds, too. Sam and Zach had painted the room. Grace had picked out the curtains.
This was her room, her family, her place. How could she have forgotten that?
"Right after it happened, I got on the train to run back here. I thought I'd pour out the whole story to you both. But that night on the train I kept thinking about my mother. About how crazy everything was back then. Mark hit me, and it all came rushing back." Emma wiped away tears with a trembling hand. "It was so ugly. All of it. I didn't want to bring it into this house, or to have it anywhere near Zach or Grace. She doesn't know what it's like to be afraid like that, and I didn't want her to know. I didn't want her to ever think of anyone hitting her or me. I guess I thought if I never brought it here, I could pretend it never happened. Look how well that turned out."
"Emma, listen to me." Rachel gave her a squeeze. "This is not your fault. Mark obviously has problems. But those are his problems. Not yours."
"I brought him here."
"He brought himself here."
"To find me, and now he's Rye's problem," Emma cried. Rye. "He was just trying to protect me. That's all. I thought Mark had killed him yesterday. He was so still for so long, I thought he was dead and that maybe I would be, too."
"You're not," Rachel said. "Rye's not, either."
"He's in jail," she cried. "He must hate me. He was so worried about what Sam would think of him, and now look at this mess. All because of me."
"Emma, we talked to Joe. He said you both saw what Mark looked like when Rye got done with him. It went long past subduing him. It was brutal."
"He did it to protect me," Emma insisted.
"Did he?"
What else could it have been? She knew him, after all. Not the way she'd thought she'd known Mark. This was Rye. She knew what he was, deep down inside.
Oh, God, Rye.
She wanted him here with her, had to talk to him, try to make him understand, and she had to understand him.
"What happened between the two of you?" Rachel asked. "Joe said... He said Rye spent the night here with you, that it looked like..."
"It was nothing like that," Emma said. Surely Rachel would understand, Rachel who'd been so in love with Sam for so long. "Mark had been here, and I was scared. I hadn't slept much at all. Having him in the carriage house didn't seem like enough. But nothing happened. He wouldn't let anything happen."
"He wouldn't?"
"That's right. I admit it. I wanted something to happen. He's special, Rachel. He's so kind, so understanding, so gentle." Not anything like the man she'd seen yesterday tearing into Mark. Not really. Was he?
"Emma, he's thirty-three."
"I know," she said, turning into a girl who just needed her mother. "I didn't when he first came here, and by the time I did, it was too late."
"Too late for what?"
"I think, maybe... I'm in love with him."
"Oh, Emma. No." Rachel sat up and turned to look at her, dismay on her face.
"Yes, I am. And I know what you're going to try to say. That he's too old for me. And that I'm too young, but you and Sam were married by the time you were my age." They'd snuck around behind Rachel's father's back, because he'd disapproved of Sam so much, and then Rachel had gotten pregnant. "You're really not going to try to tell me I can't be in love with him, are you? That I can't possibly know what's in my own heart?"
"I guess I can't. But, Emma, you've only known him for a few days."
"How long did it take for you to know you loved Sam?" she tried. "You said you always knew."
"Maybe I did. But, as much as we loved each other, it was still so hard. We were so young, and we almost didn't make it. I don't know if you ever really understood how close Sam and I came to losing each other."
"But you made it," she said.
Rachel covered her face with her hands and used her fingertips to rub at her forehead as if it ached, then switched tactics. "What about him? Is he in love with you? Did he tell you that?"
"No," Emma admitted. "He didn't want to have anything to do with me. He didn't think Sam would like it, and he really wants to get to know Sam. I don't think he has anybody else left."
"Doesn't sound like it," Rachel said.
"I know it's all a mess right now. I can't imagine what he must think of me, but it won't always be this way, will it? Things are bound to settle down, and then..." He'd forgive her for this mess, and he wanted to get to know Sam, which meant he'd be here, a part of their lives, and as long as he was here... "There has to be a way."
"Emma, did he tell you where he's been? What his life has been like?"
"He told me about his problems with his parents, and he tried to make it sound like he'd done awful things I wouldn't understand—"
