Love Is Relative
Page 24
“I don’t know,” she says shaking her head. “Danny just took off out of here.”
“What?”
“He was upset. He just left… by himself.” She looks me in the eyes then.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “We’re going together; you must have miss understood….”
Sue’s expression turns from confusion to pity. “Oh, Emily,” she says wrapping her arms around me.
“No, it’s okay, he’ll be right back. We are going together. He has to come back for me.” I force a smile
She keeps her hands on my shoulders but takes a step back. “He said to give this to you. He said to tell you he was sorry.” She takes a hand off my shoulder and hands me a folded piece of paper that she’s clutching.
I take it from her, still holding onto the hope that the letter will tell me he forgot something at work, or he went to gas up the truck. But I know he wouldn’t write that down. I unfold the note and I’m crying before I even read his words.
Em-
Things are too complicated right now. We both need to figure out what we want.
I wish I were enough. I love you.
I shake my head at his words, willing them to go away. What does this mean? What does he mean? Why would he leave me? Why now when we can finally be together? Oh God, I feel the pain inside my body as it realizes, piece by piece, that Danny has left. He’s gone. The darkness seeps into me and I watch it cover me until I can no longer see.
The End
Love Is
Absolute
A Novel
Haven Francis
Emily has lost Danny. But their story is far from over.
When Danny leaves River Bluff he thinks he is running from the pain of losing Emily. He runs until he can run no longer, finding himself in the Montana wilderness. The reality is that it doesn’t matter where he is. He has come here to break… to fall… to forget about Emily once and for all.
But when he is lifted up by an unexpected stranger, he begins to realize that Emily was just a number on a list of things he was running away from. If he ever wants to go home to her, if he ever wants to love her completely; the way she deserves to be loved, he’s going to have to come to terms with his painful past. The quiet woods and an eccentric group of unlikely friends might be the home in which he finally lays his demons to rest and becomes the man he wants to be for Emily.
Emily knows now what it feels like to be left behind. What it feels like to be surrounded by people that she loves who have also been left behind. She knows what Danny knew; that she can both love and hate someone more than she has ever loved or hated anyone. Most days she hates Danny, not because he left her- she can understand why he would run from her – but because he left his family; the people who need him and don’t deserve to be hurt again.
But she’s managing. Even when she has to return to school and face the girls who torment her for having sex with her brother – even though Danny is not her brother and she never had sex with him – and the guys who consider her fair game. With Nat and Jessa by her side, she is surviving. With her new friend, Paxton, she is even managing to have a little fun. He has a few secrets of his own and a scandalous plan to get the hatters off her back.
What is harder to deal with are the bouts of insanity that take over her mind and body when the pain of the memories become too much. Those days are black and devastating. But she knows she can’t stay in that state of darkness; she has to keep living because people are depending on her now. Mike needs her, Maddie needs her and, more than anyone, Jason needs her. He has been left too many times to care about anything, or trust anyone; including Emily. But she’s not giving up on him. She will not let Jason become the self-deprecating, bitter man that Danny was when she came home. She will keep the Donovan’s together- with or without Danny.
Danny knows, as soon as he steps back into his father’s house, that things have changed. He no longer recognizes the family he left behind. His home is a stable one, for the most part. Mike and Emily are rebuilding the Donovan’s together. And Danny doesn’t know where, or if, he belongs.
He does not recognize the foul-mouthed, rebellious man Jason is becoming. Danny wants to help him, he wants to get through to him, but the walls that Jason has constructed are impenetrable. The only person that can reach him is Emily. She and Jason have healed together and their world is a place where Danny is not welcomed.
Danny is no longer the center of Emily’s world. In fact, she seems to be surrounded by people who consider her the center of their world… including her new friend Paxton. Danny’s not sure that anyone needs him anymore, but he’s not leaving his family again. And he’s not giving up on Emily.
And, thank God, she hasn’t given up on him
But they are no longer the same; they have both changed, in Danny’s absence. As they begin to know each other all over again they discover there is a whole other side of them, of their love for each other, that they never understood. What they find is a love that is absolute. A love that can make them strong, that can make them whole. A love that will be necessary if they are going to survive the tragedy that strikes their lives.
Continue Danny and Emily’s story in, Love Is Absolute. Coming early 2014.