“Oh, please,” I said, so much sarcasm dripping from those two words you could drown in it. “Let me know what excuse you have that’s so good it can fix the damage you caused that night. I’d just love to hear it.”
He grabbed me by the arm and jerked me through the crowd toward the door. He handled me roughly, but it was still evident that he was holding back his strength because he wasn’t hurting me at all, just taking complete control. We made our way out the door and into the parking lot, Savannah, Lizzy, Jeremy and Brett hot on our heels.
“If you don’t let her go right fucking now, I’m going to beat the shit out of you!” Savannah hollered. “You might be a Marine, asshole but I’ve got a fucking black belt in kick-your-ass kwon do! Don’t test me.”
Jeremy was on her in a second. “Shut up, Savannah,” he said with more authority than I’d ever heard him use with her. “Let them handle it. Emmy doesn’t need you to interfere.”
She spun around fast as lightning. “Are you fucking kidding me, Jeremy? Just because you let him sweet talk his ass back into your good graces, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to buy into his bullshit.”
Jeremy’s eyes were fierce. I had no idea what the hell was going on in his head. “Savannah, for Christ’s sake. For once in your life just shut the fuck up! Luke and Emmy need to talk this out without you in the mix. I know how much you love to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, but I swear to Christ, woman, back the fuck off.”
Holy shit! Savannah was going to cut his junk off and feed it to him. “Are you insane?!” Savannah’s voice had reached a pitch that only bats could hear.
“Maybe, but you know I’m right.” I could see Jeremy working to calm his temper. He took Savannah’s elbow and started leading her away with the rest of the group following.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, losing steam fast. Jeremy had never talked to her like that, and I knew she was just as startled by it as I was.
“I’m gonna take your ass home. You won’t leave those two alone if you stay here, so I’m not letting you stay.”
She didn’t even bother to fight back, just let him lead her away. Right before I was yanked back into reality, I recalled thinking that I was so gonna have to get the story on that the following morning. Luke stepped in front of me and blocked my view of my friends’ backs. “You gonna let me talk now?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes at him. “By all means, speak.”
He started pacing and running his hands through that thick black hair. “That night we were together—” he started.
“You mean the night you took my virginity?” I offered snidely, hoping to make him cringe.
“Yes,” he hissed out then started pacing back and forth. “You told me you loved me, and after you fell asleep, I was just lying there thinking about how you deserved so much better than me. I knew that if I didn’t do something, you’d wait for me. I couldn’t let you put your life on hold for me when I knew I wasn’t worth it.” He stopped pacing and came to stand directly in front of me. “If I’d let you do that, you would have eventually realized what a piece of shit I was, and you’d have regretted it. I couldn’t stand the thought of that.”
I felt the tears pricking the back of my eyes, and the lump forming in my throat made it hard to speak. “You said that I would never lose you. You promised me that.” The words came out soft and broken.
He walked up to me and grabbed my face between his hands. The contact was a knife to my heart. “I know that, baby girl, and it killed me. Every day for eight years, I thought about how I hurt you. If it hadn’t been for a buddy of mine keeping my ass in check while we were in Iraq, I probably wouldn’t be here now… I can’t begin to tell you how much I regret the way I left you.” He spoke so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. “I knew you’d come when I wasn’t answering your calls. I went and picked Allison up at some party, knowing how much you hated her. I knew if you saw me with another woman, it would be bad enough, but you would never be able to forgive me if you saw me with her. I did what I did so that you’d let me go. I wanted you to have the life you deserved. I wanted you to meet someone who was actually worthy of you.
“But what you saw with Allison was fake. After I heard you run out of the house, I pushed her off me and made her get the hell out. What you saw was never finished, and I never had sex with her. I just needed you to let me go, baby girl.”
I reached for his hands and pulled them from my face. “You were successful, Lucas. You wanted to prove you didn’t deserve me and you did that… in spades. I know now, more so than I did then, exactly how unworthy of me you actually are.”
CHAPTER 8
LUKE
Watching Emmy walk away from me was one of the worst nights of my life. Staring back into her beautiful gray eyes, watching the tears well up in them, was like dying a thousand times. The one person in my life that I never wanted to hurt was the one that I kept hurting over and over again. She was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid my eyes on. Those eyes could always look directly through me, seeing everything I never wanted her to see. Her hair was still the perfect chocolate brown, not marred by highlights or any type of coloring that women seem to love so much.
Everything about her was pure. I always thought she was naturally beautiful when we were growing up, and she’d only gotten better with age. I hated putting that sorrow in her eyes and I didn’t have a clue how to remove it. Everything I said or did was wrong.
I’d spent the past few days beating myself up and getting nowhere. I had been back home for two and a half weeks and had managed to put off the one thing I dreaded doing. Today there was no excuse. I wasn’t working. I had no errands to run, and I needed to give Emmy a few more days before I attempted to talk to her again. My decision was made; I was going to see my mom. I hadn’t seen her since moving back, and although we emailed, it was always sporadic. It was time I saw her face-to-face.
I didn’t bother knocking, knowing that the door wouldn’t be locked. Most of the time she was too drunk to even remember where she put her keys. I opened the door and called out for her. “Ma. You here?”
“In the living room,” she called in that raspy smoker voice. Making my way into the living room, I noticed that nothing had changed in the eight years I’d been away. The entryway wall was still covered with my school pictures from elementary all the way through high school. The walls, originally white, were now a gross shade of beige from years of cigarette smoke. I rounded the corner and spotted my mother, sitting on the end of the couch in her bathrobe, cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other. I knew her well enough to know that what was disguised as iced tea was actually one part tea, three parts Jack.
The woman sitting in front of me looked so much older than her forty-six years. The alcohol and smoking had aged her by at least a decade. I remember seeing pictures of my mother as a young woman before my father had broken her spirit. She’d been so beautiful once. I got my green eyes and black hair from her. We had the same facial features as well, but it wasn’t the outward things that concerned me. Everything I was on the inside, I’d gotten from my dad. That was one of the main reasons I pushed Emmy away like I did. I knew there was a large part of him in me and I couldn’t stand to think of her broken like my mother. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me at eighteen, she never would have been stuck with that miserable bastard. She would probably be happy and healthy. I didn’t want that for Emmy.
“There’s my boy.” My mom stood from the couch and walked over to me, wrapping me in a tight hug.
“How you doin’, Ma?” I pulled her small frame into mine and squeezed.
“I’m good now that my son’s home safe.” She looked up at me with such a genuine smile, I could see some of the beauty from her past. “I’m so glad you finally had a chance to stop by. I know how busy you’ve been.”
Mom was what you would consider a functioning alcoholic. She’s been drinking for so long that, other than som
e slight slurring and her glassy eyes, you really couldn’t tell she was drunk. “I’m sorry I haven’t come by sooner.”
“Oh, no need to apologize. Come, sit and stay for a while.” She led me over to the couch that had been in this house for as long as I could remember. It was not holding up well. Cigarette burns marred the floral pattern in several places, and it sunk down in the middle where the springs became worn with time.
Maybe I should buy her a new couch.
“If I’d known you were coming, I would have tried to get to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner.”
“No, it’s okay, Ma. I’m not going to be able to stay that long anyway.”
Her faced dropped, and I instantly felt horrible. I knew she’d want to make my coming over a big deal, so I’d intentionally stopped by without advance warning. It’s not that I was opposed to her making me a home-cooked meal because I wasn’t. Being drunk all day every day never diminished my mother’s skills in the kitchen. She still cooked some of the best comfort food I’d ever tasted. I just couldn’t stay in this house much longer. The memories of the past weighed too heavily, and I could feel them sucking the life right out of me.
“How about you let me take you out to dinner, Ma? It can even be some fancy place where you get all fancied up and I have to wear a jacket.” I really did want to spend time with her, just not in this house. I knew she wouldn’t take me up on my offer though. Considering the whole town knew our dirty little secrets, Mom wasn’t all that comfortable going out in public.
“Oh sweetie, I’d love to, but I’m feeling a little under the weather right now.” I knew what under the weather meant for my mother. Some things really hadn’t changed much in the eight years I’d been gone.
I spent a little while longer with Mom before making the excuse that I had errands to run. I hated how strained things were between us, but I wasn’t sure if the damage could be undone. Too many years and too many bad memories to wade through to get to the other side. Of course, I loved her; she was my mother. But I wasn’t above admitting I held on to a massive amount of resentment toward her for allowing that angry bastard to make our lives miserable for so long. Hell, the fucker had been gone longer than I could remember, and she was still letting him ruin her life.
For the millionth time, I started thinking that maybe it was a mistake to move back after so long. There was only so much damage one person could inflict before people couldn’t forgive it any longer. Was I at that point?
The last thing I really wanted to do was go back to that empty apartment… alone. Eight years ago, I’d left behind everyone I ever cared about. Now I was back, living in the exact same town and seeing those people every day, and I’d never felt more alone in my life. Deciding to kill as much time as possible before dragging my ass back to my place and into bed, I stopped off at the store to do some much needed grocery shopping.
I guess subconsciously, I figured I’d be eating most of my meals at Virgie May’s. Since that clearly wasn’t going to happen, I needed to buy food. I hated shopping… of any kind. As if being in this store wasn’t bad enough, when I turned down the next aisle, I ran smack into my own personal judge, jury and executioner.
“Well good evening, Deputy Dickweed.”
“Savannah,” I responded curtly. “Just how many more clever little nicknames you got stored up in that arsenal of yours?”
She scrunched her nose like she was thinking and tapped her chin. “Considering there’s a shit-ton of curse words that start with “d” I think we got a while.”
“Brilliant.”
I tried to push my cart around her, but she side stepped back in front of me. “You shouldn’t have come back, you know.” She was really starting to piss me off. I prided myself on how I spoke to women, but damn if this chick wasn’t pushing all the wrong buttons.
“That’s not really your fucking call, now is it?”
She shoved my cart, causing the handle to ram into my stomach. “Why don’t you just head back to wherever the fuck it is you’ve been. No one wants you here, Luke. Or are you just too stupid to figure that out.”
That was it. She’d hit the wrong damn button. Stepping around the cart, I made my way to her, not close enough to actually scare her, just enough to intimidate. “What the hell is your problem, woman? You PMSin’ or is this just your normal level of bitch?”
“You’re my problem, asshole,” she hissed as she jabbed her finger into my chest. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bruise tomorrow.
“Jesus Christ! I get that I fucked up, Savannah, but it was eight years ago! How much longer you gonna make me pay for the sins of my past, huh?”
Something flashed across her face. It was there and gone before I could figure out what it was I saw. Taking a step back, she looked at me like I was the most disgusting thing on earth. “What you did was so much more than a simple fuck up,” she whispered with so much hatred I could almost feel it. “But you’re too self-absorbed to even care, aren’t you? She’s lived in hell, Luke… absolute hell. She finally gets to a point where she can feel happy again, and you breeze back on in and fuck it all up. You can’t do that to her again. You need to leave... for Emmy’s sake.”
Before my brain could even form a response, she was gone, leaving me reeling. I knew that seeing me with Allison all those years ago was going to hurt Emmy, but I never thought it would be to such an extent. I didn’t take our night together lightly, at all. I knew she gave me a gift when she asked me to be her first. But how long could a woman—or a town for that matter—hold on to that much hatred?
CHAPTER 9
EMERSON
“Okay, woman, you better start spilling right now.” Savannah and I were laying out in my backyard working on our tans. And by working on our tans, I mean lying out on my back deck in shorts and tank tops drinking from the pitcher of margaritas I’d just blended.
Priorities.
“I know not of what you speak,” she replied, sucking down more of her drink.
“Like hell, bitch. What happened to you after Jeremy dragged you away the other night?” It had been a few days since my latest disaster with Luke, and this was the first time I’d been able to nail Savannah down long enough to get the scoop.
“What makes you think something happened?” She started gnawing on her bottom lip again, so I knew there was a story there. She was just going to make me drag it out of her.
“Uh… because I know you.”
She took another healthy gulp before spitting out “Ibroughthimhomeandwehadsex.” The sentence fell out of her mouth so fast, I could have sworn I misunderstood. I prayed I misunderstood.
“Say what now?” I asked in shock.
“Oh shut up! You heard me, don’t act like you didn’t.”
“Savannah! What the hell!” Like shit wasn’t already bad enough in this little town. Now Cloverleaf was at risk of being hit by the tornado I’d so lovingly nicknamed “Jervannah”.
“What? Why do you automatically assume this is a bad thing? What if we got back together or something?”
I twisted in her direction and started ticking the reasons off on my fingers. “First, I know you two didn’t get back together, because when I saw him today, he didn’t have a perma-grin. Secondly, you didn’t call me from the bathroom right after it happened to tell me all about it, in sweaty, gory detail. Third—”
“Okay, okay,” she interrupted. “I get your point, ass face. We didn’t get back together.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “Ohhh, this is going to be so bad.”
“Why does it have to be bad? Why can’t things just go back to normal?” I knew she knew better than to think that. She was grasping at straws.
“Because you know him, Savannah!” I yelled. “You know exactly how he’s going to get. He’s going to hold on to this for a few days, thinking he’s got a chance at getting you back, and when he realizes that’s not going to happen, he’s going to grow a vagina and go all chick on you. Ther
e’ll be silent treatment, then public blow ups and potential physical fighting once you get pissed off to the point of punching the shit out of him!” I wanted those two back together almost as much as Jeremy did, but not this way. Savannah wasn’t ready and this wasn’t going to destroy him. I couldn’t stand the idea of Savannah doing something that couldn’t be undone.
“Well, what the hell did you expect me to do? Did you see him the other night? He’s never talked to me like that before. Hand to God, Emmy. I about had an orgasm when he went all alpha like that.” It was another classic example of Savannah acting without thinking about the repercussions.
“Ugh. You’re sick, you know that? You’ve got serious problems.”
“Admit it!!” she screeched.
“Fine!” I admitted in defeat. I threw myself back down on my lounge chair and crossed my arms over my chest indignantly. “It might have been just a little sexy seeing him go all he-man on your ass.”
“Thank you!”
“Savannah,” I started, getting very serious. This wasn’t a joking matter. “You’re going to break that man. You know how he feels about you. Keeping him on a string like this is just cruel. You can’t keep giving him false hope, sweetie.”
“I’m not stringing him along,” she demanded.
“You are…”
Before I could finish my sentence, she was on her feet and sliding into her flip flops. “Why don’t you just stay out of my shit and take care of your own, Emmy! This is none of your business.”
I jumped up and followed after her as she headed to the gate leading to my driveway. I couldn’t let her leave mad. “Wait a minute. I didn’t mean to upset you, Van. I’m just worried.”
“I don’t need you worrying about me, Emmy. I’m a grown-ass woman and I’m more than capable of taking care of myself. You’re not my mother.”
She was at her car with her keys in her hand. I was thoroughly confused at the turn of events. I had no clue what I said that set her off. “I’m not trying to mother you. You’re my family. I care what happens to you.”
Picking up the Pieces Page 5
