Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Emma
I check my phone for the millionth time as I walk up the front steps to my house after two hours of trick or treating. It’s barely six o’clock but it’s already dark, the Halloween night breeze sending fallen leaves dancing along the sidewalk and a chill down my spine.
Jeremy should have been in touch by now.
The thought nags at me as I listen with half an ear to Maddy chatting with my friends about how much candy she’s eating tonight and debating the merits of peanut over peanut butter M&M’s—normally a conversation I would happily join in on, but tonight I’m just too preoccupied.
Even if he was going to stay in Maryland longer, he would have texted to tell me. There’s no way he would have missed trick or treating without letting me know. I try to stay calm, thinking of the note I found on my nightstand late last night when I went to sleep. The one he must have left there right before he headed home to pack his overnight bag for Maryland.
Dear Ems,
I love you.
I love you so damn much.
You and Maddy are my whole entire world. I can’t believe I get to call you both mine.
Love,
Jeremy
The love-soaked words play over and over in my mind. I want to go take it out of the box where Jeremy’s notes live and read it again. See the words he wrote. I haven’t heard from him since before he met his brother, and every instinct in my body is screaming that something is wrong.
“You okay, Em?” Molly hangs back while everyone else piles into my living room. “You’re being quiet, even for you.”
I let out a slow breath, trying to keep my uncharacteristic catastrophizing to a minimum. Jeremy hasn’t told anyone yet about his brother, and I want to keep his secret.
“Sorry.” I peek into the living room, where Julie and Hallie are sprawled on the floor with Maddy, surrounded by a giant pile of candy. “Do you think she noticed?”
Molly laughs a little. “Definitely not. There’s candy and costumes and three other adults giving her undivided attention. She’s fine. I’m more concerned about you. We can all tell something isn’t right.”
“Thank you for being here,” I say in a low voice. It’s the first thing I can think of to say. “I don’t think I could have done tonight without you.”
Molly wraps me in a tight hug. “You don’t have to thank us. I might not be a parent, but I know enough to know that no one is meant to do it alone. It takes a village, and we’re yours, always and no matter what. But I have to ask, Em, and you can tell me if I should mind my own business, but where’s Jeremy? I’ve seen him over the last couple of months with Maddy. I assumed he would be here.”
Molly’s question has me making a split-second decision, hoping my habitually good instincts aren’t failing me now.
“Can you guys do me a favor?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Can you hang here with Maddy? I need to go check on Jeremy. I’m sorry I can’t tell you everything, but something isn’t right, and I need to make sure he’s okay.”
“You mean, can we hang with the coolest seven-year-old in the world, eat all the candy, and have ourselves a little Halloween girls’ night? You bet we can.”
Molly takes her phone out of her bag and navigates to her music app, tapping a few times before “Girls Just Want to Have Fun ” comes blasting out of the speaker.
“It’s GIRLS’ NIGHT,” she yells into the living room, and Maddy lets out an excited squeal. Hallie and Julie both look at us, and all it takes is one look from Molly before they’re jumping up to dance with Maddy.
“Go,” Molly whispers. “We’ve got this.”
I give her a look full of gratitude and head straight out the door.
I feel both relief and a deepening dread when I see Jeremy’s car in his driveway. Relief that he’s here, and dread that whatever happened was bad enough that he’s home but hasn’t been in touch.
There’s no answer when I ring the doorbell, but the door is unlocked, so I walk right in, my need to see him overriding any kind of politeness I possess. We’re long past that.
I see him as soon as I open the door.
Jeremy is sitting on the living room couch, elbows on his thighs and hands clenched into fists. He’s hunched forward, head hanging low, an untouched glass of brown liquid on the coffee table in front of him.
The room is heavy with defeat, devastation, and a sadness so acute my breath clogs in my chest, and an invisible weight drops onto my shoulders. I make a conscious effort to stand straighter and breathe deep so I can help him without letting his feelings take me down with him.
I make it to the living room and Jeremy still hasn’t looked up. I think he’s too lost in his head to even realize I’m here.
I take a second to glance around the room. I’ve never spent any time here over the years. Since we’ve been together, he always comes to me because of Maddy, and now that I’m here, I’m struck by how sterile it feels. Cold, almost. There are no pictures or knickknacks. No books or magazines or the clutter of living. The furniture all matches and looks practically new even though I know he’s lived here since his playing days.
Jeremy lives four blocks from Julie and Asher, Rachel and Steven, but the contrast couldn’t be starker. This isn’t a home. This is a house that belongs to someone who doesn’t think in permanence.
Well, that’s just too damn bad because permanence is what he’s getting.
Walking towards Jeremy, I drop down in front of him. It’s my hands on his knees that has him finally looking up, surprised to see me.
“Emma.” He hasn’t used my full name in years. The fact that he uses it now, while looking at me with eyes that are somehow both shattered and vacant, has fear curling in my belly. I shove it away for later because this isn’t about me.
“I’ve been worried about you,” I say, tightening my hands on his legs, offering him an anchor when he seems so adrift. “I hadn’t heard from you since this morning, so I thought something was wrong.”
Jeremy lets out a short laugh, but there’s no humor in it. Dropping his head back down, he fixes his eyes firmly on the floor. “Something was wrong alright.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
His sigh carries the weight of the world, but when he speaks, his voice is curt. Angry.
“He knew. My whole fucking life, he knew about me.”
I think I know what he’s saying but I say nothing, just wait for him to continue.
“He’s my brother. Brian. There’s no way he isn’t. We look exactly alike. We have the same fucking freckle under our eyes. And we both look like him.”
“Your father.”
Jeremy looks up then, and his eyes are ablaze. In them is an inferno of anger tinged with a well of grief so deep I wonder if there is any bottom to it.
“My fucking father. He had an affair with my mother. He had a wife and then he had a whole goddamn family. A happy fucking family in a beautiful house in the suburbs with pictures everywhere that show exactly how happy they were and a file folder in a locked drawer in his office documenting the entire life of the bastard son he knew about but never bothered to help. I grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home, where no one loved me. Jesus fucking Christ, I would have settled for someone caring whether I was even there or not, but no one ever fucking did. And the one person who should have cared, my own fucking father, gathered all kinds of information about my life and left it in a locked drawer for his real son—the son he cared about—to find after he died. God forbid he try to help me when he was alive and I was a kid and needed someone, literally anyone, to care. But no. It would have ruined his perfect suburban image, so fuck the bastard son, right?”
Jeremy pushes up from the couch, locking his hands behind his head as he paces the living room, his breathing coming in ragged pants.
“My mother died. My own fucking father didn’t want me. None of the families I ever lived with wanted me. My teammates didn’t want to stick around once I couldn’t score goals for them anymore. No one fucking stays.”
Jeremy turns to me, eyes wild.
“You should just go, Emma. You’re going to leave eventually anyway, so you might as well just go now. Nothing lasts forever. Not for me.”
Jeremy’s anger is alive, and all the words swirling through my head about how I love him and I’m not going anywhere and I’ll never leave him aren’t going to reach him right now.
I’m not surprised that the angrier and sadder he gets, the calmer I feel. My gift has always been to give the people in my life the emotional support they need. And here in Jeremy’s stark house, in his darkest moment, I have never been more confident in my ability to do this thing. I know this man down to his deepest depths. He has been mine for a decade, and he will be mine until there is no longer breath in my lungs and far beyond that. I want to fight every person who has ever hurt him. Rage against every demon he has. Banish every single thought in his head that he isn’t enough to stick around for.
He is enough. He’s everything.
Now, to make him see that.
Like Molly said, it takes a village, and it’s time to call in ours.
I stand and walk to where Jeremy is still pacing. I stop him with a hand on his chest. His heart thunders against my palm.
“Tell me something true, Jeremy.”
Jeremy flinches a little at my words. He closes his eyes and shakes his head as if even the smallest truths are too heavy for him to bear.
“I just…I can’t. Not right now.”
I didn’t think he could, but if he can’t, I will. For him, but also for Maddy and me, and for the future I want us to have together. I slide my hand from Jeremy’s chest and take one of his hands in mine.
“Look at me.”
He opens his eyes slowly, and I start talking as soon as our gazes lock.
“If you can’t tell me one of your truths right now, I’ll tell you one of mine. If your father wasn’t already dead, I would kill him myself.”
I can see the surprise in Jeremy’s eyes, and I relish it.
“You think I wouldn’t battle for you? Slay your dragons? Go to war for you? I would do all that and more. I’m not going to stand here and explain to you all the different ways I love you and would never leave you because you wouldn’t believe me anyway. And that’s okay. You don’t have to believe me today. One day you will. You’re my person and my family and my whole goddamn world. You want to push me away because you think I won’t stay? Run away from me before I have a chance to leave you first? You go right ahead and try. I dare you to try. But know that there is nowhere on this earth where you could go that I wouldn’t find you and bring you home to me. You’re mine, Jeremy. And I fucking fight for what’s mine.”
Jeremy opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He tries again, but still nothing. Instead, he just stands there and stares at me, a little slack-jawed, eyes tired and confused, and I almost laugh at the expression on his face.
I reach up and cup his face, absolutely swamped by my love for this gorgeous, broken man and resolute in my determination to give him exactly what he needs. It’s not always going to be easy, this life of ours, but goddamn is it going to be beautiful.
“Here’s what’s going to happen right now. You are going to toss back that drink on the coffee table then go upstairs and take a shower. Put on some comfortable clothes. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I stand on my toes and kiss Jeremy softly. A reminder to him that I’m here and I’m his. I feel his breath hitch, his hands coming up to rest on my waist and then wrapping all the way around me in a tight hug.
“I don’t have anything to offer you, Ems,” he whispers. “I just…I have nothing.”
I smile at my nickname. The one only he uses. I pull back so I can see his face again.
“You are enough, just the way you are. Now go. Drink. Shower. Comfortable clothes.”
Jeremy doesn’t say anything else. He just follows my instructions and downs the drink in one swallow then heads to the shower. And when he disappears up the stairs, I pull out my phone and call in the troops.