by Violet Duke
“No I’m not.” She frowned. “I sound like an idiot.”
“I beg to differ. You sound exactly like the woman I’m in love with.”
Emma felt her heart triple in size and the tears start up all over again.
Yes, that. That’s what she should’ve led with. Her. Being in love with him. So that’s exactly what she did next.
Or at least tried to.
Between all the crying and hysterical pointing toward the picnic spread, she probably only said about two or three actual human words.
Jake, however, somehow seemed to understand it all perfectly. He yanked her fully into his arms. “I’ve missed you so damn much, sweetheart.”
Why was he so good at the speaking-words thing? While she was reduced to hand gestures and four hiccups that sounded nothing like “I missed you, too.”
Almost as if hearing her silent question, Megan explained helpfully. “This whole crying thing is new for Emma. Give her a minute. She’ll calm down.”
And with that, Megan plopped down on the picnic blanket and started chatting with Peyton the way Jake had been doing earlier.
The sight of this amazing picnic Jake had put together for Peyton finally managed to untangle her tongue. “Wh-why didn’t you tell me you’ve been visiting Peyton all these years?”
Jake smiled over at Peyton’s headstone. “You never wanted to talk about the past. I didn’t want to dredge it all up for you.”
“I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t share that part of your life with me.”
His expression hardened again like quick-dry cement. “For godsakes, Emma. Could you please stop apologizing to me. I just can’t take it when you do. The last thing you should ever have to do is apologize to me. Not after all that’s happened with us—”
“Wait, stop, Jake. Let me get this out first.”
She took a deep breath and went back to replaying all the words she’d rehearsed last night. “I used to wonder if I’d ever be able to trust the universe again. When it’s mean. And messy. And when it takes the people I love from me. When it hurts the people I love. Now I know.”
She gazed up at him. “And that’s all because of you. I know that I don’t know all the answers. Not even some of the answers. But that’s okay. I know I’m screwed up. For a person to love me, they have to love all of me. And I never thought anyone would. Anyone could. Until you came back into my life. What I said earlier about you sharing your life with me, I meant it. I don’t want us to start from a clean slate. I want our messy, crazy slate. I want us to work through our past. Together. For however long it takes. Do you . . . do you still want that, too?”
“More than ever, sweetheart.”
A whoosh of air left her lungs, just as the same determination she’d felt when baking Jake’s birthday cake pumped through her veins. “Fair warning. You and me, it’s not going to be neat, and it’s not going to be pretty. Not by a long shot. I still have so much guilt churning inside me that I’m not sure if it’s going to be a smooth road for us ahead. Is that okay? Do you even want to be with someone as screwed up as I am?”
“I want it all, Emma. Our past, our present, and definitely our future.” He took in his own deep, loaded breath then. “And you’re not the only one that’s screwed up, sweetheart. I have just as much guilt that I still need to work through.” He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Is that okay with you?”
“More than okay.”
She laid her head against his chest and pointed at the amazing birthday party Jake had thrown for her brother. “I still can’t believe you did all this for all these years. You’ve probably been a better brother to him the past fourteen years than I was a sister to him while he was alive. I’m glad he has you—”
Megan shot up off the blanket. “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. Emma, why in the world do you keep saying that? That you’re not a good sister? Not just about Peyton, but when folks talk about me. Our whole lives after the fire, folks would say that I was lucky to have you as a sister, and you would shut them down. Why? Why don’t you believe it? Why, for chrissakes, don’t you think you’re a good sister?”
Emma glanced at Jake, and he just squeezed her hand to offer her silent support.
If she was going to try to be straight with herself from now on and really work through things with Jake, she had to do so with Megan, as well.
“Megan, I’ve never told you this, but part of what’s been hard for me is knowing that what happened to you, and to Peyton, was partly my fault. Mom blamed me for it, and she was partly right.”
When both Megan and Jake took exception to that, she held up her hands. “Again, just let me explain first. I have all these feelings inside me that I haven’t been able to get out for fourteen years. So let me just get them out the only way I know how.”
From the beginning.
“I know Mom wasn’t right to say the things she did. To blame Peyton’s death and the divorce on me. But for a long time, I struggled with my part in all of it. I second-guessed every single decision I’d made that night. That whole summer, really. Everything from my decision to take third-year French during summer school, which was why I’d had my earphones on that night in the first place; I’d been listening to my oral-language lab CD when I fell asleep. Another thing I’d beat myself up for. For years I wondered if I’d just taken another class, or if I hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe Peyton would still be alive, and you wouldn’t have gotten burned.”
Emma must have replayed that night a few thousand times in her mind. Even now she could hear all the fireworks that had been going off that night. It’d been day six of the ten-day time frame the town allowed for fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July. There was still at least a half hour before the firework curfew would kick in, so after checking in on the kids, she’d turned the CD way up to tune out all the loud bangs and whirls and hisses coming from outside.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up from a deep sleep.
And her entire house was on fire.
“I kept telling myself, for at least the first few years, that if I’d just been awake or if I hadn’t been studying for French, I would’ve discovered that a firework had started a fire on our roof. And that the house was all but collapsing from the top down.” Sure, the fire report said the fire had spread quickly, but there would have been more than enough time to save the kids if she’d been awake.
“By the time I woke up, parts of the downstairs were catching on fire already, and when I looked up the staircase, all I could see was flames all around. So I ran upstairs and found the entire second floor hallway engulfed in flames. I got to you kids too late. And that’s on me. Honestly, if Jake hadn’t come when he had, we all probably would’ve died up there. Because I wouldn’t have been able to choose which of you to save.”
Late at night, around the exact same time as the fire, Emma’s nightmares would replay the images for her all over again. Along with the screams—the scared screams of her baby sister and brother coming from their rooms. Those were at times more torturous than the memories of the terrifying fire itself.
“I’ve never forgiven myself for choosing to save you over Peyton. Never. And the thing is, that made me feel guilty, as well. Of course I never regretted saving you over him, but still, a part of me felt bad about saving you and not him. Does that make sense? What kind of sister feels badly for something like that?”
“The kind who was forced into an impossible situation,” replied Megan gently. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.”
“Shouldn’t I? Do you know that in those thousands of times I’ve replayed that night in my head, some of those times, I’ve wondered what would’ve happened if I’d chosen Peyton instead. Instead of you, Megan.” Another knife wound of guilt sliced through her chest. “I’d wake up screaming and hate myself for even thinking it. Then I’d hate myself for trying to find solace in my decision. It was . . . an impossible cycle I couldn’t stop.”
Emma’s eyes fel
l to the ground in shame as she explained the rest of it. “I analyzed it, you know. My decision to save you and leave Peyton to Jake. I’d mentally measured, countless times, if your room was closer than Peyton’s—if that had led me to my decision. And I’d tried to remember if I’d been thinking that you were lighter and maybe easier for me to carry if it came down to that.” The guilt crept into her veins again, as slow and potent as Novocain. “But there was no difference in distance. And I hadn’t even thought about you being a tiny bit lighter than Peyton, either. Which made me wonder . . .”
She’d never told anyone this before. “It made me wonder if I’d chosen you because you were my biological sister, and Peyton was my stepbrother.”
Megan hissed a gasp of disbelief. Meanwhile Jake looked ready to slay an invisible dragon.
They both started talking at the same time.
But their voices became white noise as she turned to Peyton’s headstone. “I’m so sorry, Peyton. So sorry I wasn’t a better sister to you.”
Finally Megan’s sharp voice managed to pierce the remorse pounding in her ears like the ocean. “Emma. Stop that. Right now. You did not make a choice between your biological sibling and your stepsibling.”
“How do you know?” asked Emma raggedly. “How can you be sure that I didn’t weigh your life just a little more heavily than his because you were related to me by blood? That I didn’t sign his death sentence because he was my stepbrother who I hadn’t known as long as I’d known you? How can you know when I don’t know? I don’t know if in that moment, I’d chosen you for that reason. But if I had, then what does that say about me as Peyton’s big sister? When we’d all first become a family, I told myself that I wouldn’t love him any differently. That I wouldn’t treat him any differently. That he was just my little brother the way you were my little sister. But what if that night, when push came to shove, I proved myself full of crap?”
Suddenly she felt Jake let go of her and turn her into the waiting arms of Megan. “Emma, Peyton knew you loved him as much as you loved me.” She felt Megan smile against her shoulder. “In fact, he used to tell me so all the time.”
Emma pulled back. “What?”
“Oh yeah, all the time. Peyton never saw himself as your stepbrother. He saw himself as your brother. Period. And the two of us would bicker constantly over who was your favorite. Peyton always maintained that he was cuter and cooler, and thus your favorite by leaps and bounds.”
Despite everything, Emma found herself laughing. She could actually hear Peyton saying something like that. “I’m glad for that. That he thought he was my favorite. But it doesn’t change the fact that I might have been viewing him as my stepbrother that night when I chose you over him.”
“For crying out loud, you can’t torture yourself over a single split-second decision you made when the house was literally falling down all around you. Isn’t it enough that you tried to go back in to save him?” demanded Megan.
Wait, what?
Emma stared at Megan, stunned. “What did you just say?”
“You tried to go back for him. If you really thought of him as ‘just’ a stepbrother, you wouldn’t have risked your life to run back into a blazing ball of fire.”
“Megan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Megan turned to look at Jake in confusion. “She doesn’t remember?”
“Apparently not,” replied Jake quietly, his expression unreadable.
She didn’t remember.
Maybe that was a good thing. Because Jake sure as hell did remember. Enough for the both of them. Jesus Christ, carrying Emma’s unconscious body out of the house that second time was the one nightmare that hit him the hardest. He’d thought he’d lost her.
That he’d been carrying her out of that burning house so her parents could bury her.
“You were unconscious on the ground when I found you that second time,” he began, as the memories flooded him from every direction. “I didn’t even know you’d gone back in until I heard some random neighbor saying they saw you running toward the house.”
Emma looked at him in utter disbelief. “You went into the burning house again to look for me?”
“Yes. Because I knew, I just knew you’d gone back in. And most of the firefighters were up on the roof, or on the second floor over on the side of the house where Peyton’s room was to try to get to him. I knew if I didn’t go after you, I’d lose you.”
“Jake, I don’t remember any of this.”
“Like I said, you were unconscious. It was probably a combination of smoke inhalation and being traumatized.”
“But you found me?”
“Almost too late. You were at the base of the stairs, probably trying to figure out how to get up there when there were no stairs left to climb. I found you crumpled on the ground, and just barely managed to pick you up maybe a second before a falling beam from the ceiling came down. It . . . it would’ve crushed you, Emma.” His voice shook as he remembered how close that whoosh of fire had been. It had burned his shirt. And it had landed with a deafening thud so loud, his ears had rung for hours afterward. “When I saw you lying there, not moving, I thought I’d lost you. It was the scariest damn moment of my life, sweetheart.”
He couldn’t stop shaking as the flashbacks kept on coming.
Finally a pair of arms wrapped around his middle and calmed his sensory system down. “I can’t believe I never knew any of this,” Emma whispered against his chest.
“So you see,” Megan said softly. “You were an incredible sister to Peyton—one who didn’t think about her own life before running back into a house that was seconds from burning up in flames completely. You may have chosen me, but you went back for him. You’ve always been a great sister, Emma. To both me and Peyton.”
With a deep sigh, Megan shook her head at them both. “You two are like two peas in a pod. You’ve both been torturing yourselves over what you weren’t able to do, while failing to give yourselves credit for the extraordinary things you did do. Emma, you saved me and then you tried to save Peyton. Who cares if you had on a pair of earphones when the fire first broke out? You were our hero that night, just as much as Jake was.” Megan turned to Jake. “And you. You not only saved Emma twice, but you’ve spent the last decade being an incredible big brother to Peyton with these birthday parties and everything.
“You two are perfect for each other. Which is why . . .” Megan reached into her purse and pulled out a bright-red bow—the kind with the sticky back you put on presents. She reached over and stuck the bow on Emma’s head. “Happy birthday, Jake,” she said simply before leaving the cemetery and driving off.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Best birthday present ever.
Jake sat down on the picnic blanket and tucked a visibly dazed and shaken Emma beside him gently. Still seemingly reeling from the cataclysm of discoveries and self-revelations, Emma wordlessly pointed at the bakery box she’d been carrying earlier.
“For me?” he asked, smiling over the extracareful way she slid the box over for him to look at.
“Happy birthday.”
Jake opened the box and stared down at the cake in quiet wonder. “Chocolate strawberry shortcake with whipped cream frosting.”
Of course she’d remembered.
“I thought that was a tradition we could bring back.” She gave him a trembling smile. “To celebrate every new year of this amazing life you’re leading.”
He stared at her for a moment, wondering how it was that she knew exactly why his mom stopping the birthday cake tradition had affected him so badly. It wasn’t just because he felt as though she’d written him off as a son. Or because he’d waited that day in juvie, hoping as each hour passed that she’d come with the cake and a hug. Or because he’d waited the following year, as well.
No, more than anything else, he’d felt as if his mom was saying that his life didn’t matter anymore. That it wasn’t worth celebrating. It wasn’t just that he was no
longer worthy enough for her to bother baking him a cake, but no longer worthy, period. If your own mom doesn’t care about each new year of your life, then who does?
While his dad may have cast him aside so he no longer existed as a Carmichael, what his mom had done was, in a way, so much more hurtful.
“I never thought I’d ever see this cake again.”
Jake looked at the cake that, until now, had existed only in his pre-juvie memories. Until now, his pre-juvie life and post-juvie life had never really crossed paths. Until Emma. She was his past, his present, and now, finally, his future.
“Oh, shoot,” she cursed quietly. “I don’t have any candles.”
He shrugged and wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her closer. “Wouldn’t have any new things to wish for even if you did.” Kissing her softly on the lips, he murmured, “See, who needs a candle?”
Her cheeks colored. “I’ve missed your freckles.”
With a smiling head shake, she sighed. “What is it with you and my freckles?”
“I like ’em. And they like me, too.”
“What?” She laughed.
“When you blush, your freckles come out to say hi. And you almost always blush when you see me.”
“Do not.”
“Do so. Your freckles don’t lie.” He raised one wicked eyebrow. “It’s sort of like how around you, my—”
“Oh my God. Not in front of my brother!”
Chuckling, he pulled the cake out of the box and placed it on the ground carefully before dragging her into his arms. “I was going to say heart, you pervy hussy.” He placed her palm over his chest so she could feel what she did to him. “Around you, my heart never stops racing, and it always feels like it’s going to bust through my chest.”
She threw her arms around his neck and leaned in for a kiss, pressing the entire length of her soft, curvy body against his.
Until he raised the white flag.
“Okay, okay, so maybe it’s not just my heart that you can get stirred up.” He felt her shoulders shake with laughter. “That’s not exactly helping, sweetheart.” He pulled her off his lap and down onto the picnic blanket. “I think maybe we ought to start eating cake so we stay out of trouble while your brother is chaperoning us.”
