Chapter 24
Idon’t want to see Emmett, but I need to. I’ve spent the last two days alternating between crying and fuming. Feeling nauseous, and wanting to devour anything unhealthy that I could get my hands on.
It’s been a vicious cycle, and thankfully Tracy hasn’t kicked me out yet. She did, however, convince me to finally take a shower tonight, the first I’ve taken since I got here.
It’s gross, I know. But I kept finding myself slipping into that place where everything just seemed too hard.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Tracy cornered me and told me that I needed to do something about this. She suggested telling Emmett to go fuck himself–which I seriously considered for a minute–but we both know that doesn’t solve anything. And continuing to avoid him isn’t going to make things better either. Plus, even with being as upset with him as I am, I miss him. God, I hate that I miss him. I hate the way he’s so fully integrated himself into my life.
Funny how you can hate and love someone at the same time.
I pause halfway down the stairs to the entryway of Tracy’s townhome and swallow hard. Is that what I feel for Emmett? Love?
No. That would be incredibly stupid of me. Emmett doesn’t get attached. And while I may not be a casual hookup anymore, I highly doubt he thinks of me in any kind of romantic way. I’m not even sure he knows what love looks like.
Though given my past relationships, maybe I don’t either.
Tracy suggested that I tell him about Trevor. That Emmett would understand better why his actions bother me so much. And she’s not wrong–it would go a long way toward getting us on the same page.
But I shouldn’t have to tell him in order for him to respect what I want. He should just do it. There shouldn’t have to be a reason why.
Besides, it’s not his place to be making these kinds of decisions for me. The only person who should be deciding where I work, what I drive, or what I do is me.
Not to mention the whole thing with Trevor is just not something I want to drag up. It’s still too raw. Too real to talk about with anyone besides Trace. Even though I’ve come a long way this last year and a half, I still struggle to control my emotions when I get in that headspace. It’s too easy to pull myself back to that place. To find myself the woman, cowering in the corner, praying that today isn’t the day Trevor finally has enough and does more than just threaten me with his gun.
Trevor is the past. And that’s where I want him to stay. If I could erase those years from my memory entirely, I would.
Plus, I want Emmett in his true form. I don’t want him tip-toeing around me because of what I went through. I don’t want him feeling sorry for me. I just want to be treated like a normal person. Not like a burden. Not like I’m weak. Not like I’m… broken.
Because sometimes that’s how I feel. It’s stupid. Logically I know that. But I still can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with me. That I should have known better or done something different. That there’s this inherent flaw within myself that put me in that situation, and I was too weak to overcome it and get myself out.
I sigh, grabbing my coat and stuffing my feet into some of Tracy’s tennis shoes that she’s letting me borrow. I came right over to her house after the meeting with Emmett and Adam earlier this week with nothing but the clothes on my back. Thank God Tracy and I are similar sizes so I could borrow some sweatpants from her for the last two days.
I pluck my purse and keys off the entryway table just as she appears at the top of the stairs. “Good luck,” she says, giving me an encouraging smile. “You’re doing the right thing.”
She’s right. Hell, he’s right. I don’t know what the outcome will be, but we need to talk about this.
“Thanks,” I say, trying and failing to put a smile on my face. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Pulling the front door closed behind me, I head down the walkway. Little puffs form in front of me with every breath, the air frigid tonight.
When I round the corner of the garage, I stop dead in my tracks.
“What the…” The breath rushes out of my lungs.
Emmett’s car sits in Tracy’s driveway, in the same spot it’s been since I first came over. Only now its tires are slashed and there are long, noticeable scratches down the length of the driver’s side. Even in the dim light from the streetlight I can tell the scratches are bad.
“Oh, my god.” My empty hand comes to my mouth as I slowly approach his car and survey the damage. I start to shake as I take it all in.
Moving around the front to the passenger side, I see that all four tires are slashed. There are scratches in the paint all over this side of the car too, and they’re deep. Really deep. This would have taken some time to do. How did this happen without anyone noticing?
Tracy’s neighborhood is quiet and full of families. The kind of place where your neighbors keep an eye out on each other and notice anyone unusual lurking around. Someone would have noticed this and told us by now.
Unless it just happened.
My hair stands on end and my palms get clammy.
Someone is out here. I know it. I can feel it weighing heavily on me like a thick, invisible force.
I move, sprinting back toward the house as I dial Emmett.
When I push through the front door, Tracy is sitting on the couch in the living room. I rush inside, closing the door and locking it behind me, my limbs a shaking mess as I fall back against the door.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, jumping to her feet, her eyes full of alarm.
At the same time, Emmett answers, “Hey, are you on your way?”
“Call the police,” I tell Tracy, my voice shaky as I try to pull myself together. I feel frantic, my heart pounding. I can’t shake the feeling of being watched, and it’s making it hard to breathe.
“What’s going on?” Emmett”s voice rumbles through the phone, a sense of urgency to it. There’s a shuffling on his end, then a door shutting.
I close my eyes, breathing through my nose. “I’m at Tracy’s and… someone vandalized your car. It’s really bad, Emmett. They must have just done it, because someone would have noticed that kind of damage.” I pause for a moment, tapping my fingers together instinctually to try to calm myself. More quietly, I add, “I got the feeling someone was watching me out there.”
Tracy takes this info and calls the police. When I hear dispatch pick up, she goes into the kitchen to relay the information.
“Lock the door. I’m coming to you,” Emmett says, the authority in his voice calming my nerves just the tiniest amount. “Don’t answer for anyone other than me or the police. Put me on speakerphone and don’t hang up until I get there, understand?”
“Yes.” My voice is still strained from trying to keep my emotions together; my fingers tapping as I try to keep any panic from setting in.
This wasn’t random. Some part of me just knows it wasn’t.
Pulling my phone from my ear, I put it on speaker. “You’re on speaker now.”
I hear the elevator ding in the background, then Emmett’s feet hitting pavement. “Does Tracy have a gun?” he asks.
“No, I don’t think so. She’s on the phone with 911. Hang on,” I tell him, rushing into the kitchen where Tracy is pacing back and forth, explaining to dispatch what’s going on. Emmett starts his car in the background, his tires screeching as heads this way.
“They’re sending someone over,” Tracy says as soon as she hangs up. “They’re ten minutes away.”
“Do you have a weapon?” Emmett asks again, this time directed at Tracy.
She must see the worry on my face because she pulls me into her arms as she says, “No. But the doors are all locked.” She runs her hands up and down my back. “Actually, I have a blade upstairs. I’ll go get it.” Giving me a squeeze, she releases me.
“Riley, go with her, baby. Don’t split up.”
I follow Tracy upstairs, where she retrieves her knife from her bedside table. We make our way back downstairs to the living room in tense silence. Taking a seat on the couch, I watch as Tracy starts peering out windows, knife clenched in her hand.
She looks like she’s ready to fight, her body tight and controlled as she moves around the room, and I get the sudden urge to laugh at the image of her, my tiny little blonde best friend, taking down an intruder.
And she’d probably win. When Tracy sets her mind to something, no one gets in her way.
The thought gives me an idea. “Emmett,” I say, forcing my fingers to loosen the death grip I have on my phone. “Will you teach me how to use a gun?”
I don’t react well to situations like this. I’m aware of that. I become that scared woman again, cowering in the corner, trying to make myself invisible until the threat leaves. Most people have a fight-or-flight response. I have a ‘clam up and hide and then run after the fact’ response. It’s why I almost didn’t make it out with Trevor.
“Yeah, baby. We’ll do it this weekend.” His car revs in the background. “I’m ten minutes away. Have the police arrived yet?”
“They’re just pulling up,” Tracy responds, moving to unlock the front door.
Through the front windows, I see two police cars parked along the street. Two officers make their way up the walkway to the front door as two more move around the yard with flashlights.
Tracy ushers them in, and I keep a tight grasp on my phone, somehow feeling better about everything by having Emmett on the other end of the line.
He stays silent as I recount to the two officers what happened earlier and my sense that someone was still there when I discovered the car. They alternate asking questions, one of them taking notes. It’s not much later when the radio on the note taker’s shoulder buzzes.
“All clear. There’s no one on the immediate premises,” a static-y voice says.
Given the all clear, we move to the driveway to survey the car just as Emmett pulls up. He’s out of his car and rushing toward me with a sense of urgency, the streetlight behind him casting his face in shadow.
It’s clear he’s holding back his own emotions, pushing down whatever is trying to surface. The tense line of his shoulders and the harsh set of his jaw betray the calm he was projecting through the phone.
It’s only now, when he’s feet away from me, that I finally disconnect our call.
“You okay?” he asks, crushing me against him, one hand holding my head to his chest, the other gripping me tight around the middle. I feel his breath in my hair before he kisses the top of my head.
Wrapping my arms around his torso, I cling to him as I nod into his chest. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
I press myself further into him, feeling safe and secure. Somewhere along the way, Emmett went from making me anxious to being my comfort. Even now, when I’m still upset with him, there’s no one else I want here with me.
“Are you the owner of the car, sir?” one of the officers asks, interrupting the bubble of Emmett that had enveloped me.
“I am.” Emmett runs his hands up and down my spine.
The officer tilts his head to the side, indicating for Emmett to follow. “I just have a few questions.”
Emmett lets me go, walking down to the street with the officer. I can’t hear them from here, but whatever they’re saying has me worried. Because Emmett looks worried.
Well, maybe not worried. More like he wants to kill someone. Which makes me wonder if my feeling I had was right, that someone was here, waiting for me to discover the car. And it makes me wonder if whoever did this knows Emmett. Or me. Or heck, maybe even Tracy. It happened at her house, after all. If it was targeted, it could have been meant to send a message to any of us.
Then again, it could have been completely random, and my instinct could have been wrong.
I don’t have time to dwell on it or to interpret the look on Emmett’s face as they continue talking, because before long, Tracy is ushering me back inside and making us each a cup of tea.
I take a seat on her couch as she rustles around in the kitchen behind me, filling the kettle with water and grabbing mugs from cabinets. When the kettle whistles, she fills a mug for each of us, and we sit in silence in her living room, watching Emmett and the police through the front windows.
The mug is warm in my hands and I tuck my feet under myself on the couch, settling back into the corner and letting my body melt into the plush cushions. I hear Tracy tapping away on her phone at the other end of the couch, and I risk a peek at her screen to see Blake’s name. When she notices me looking, she quickly locks her phone, saying nothing as she takes a sip of tea and goes back to watching the scene on her front lawn.
By the time the police finally pull away and Emmett returns to the house, the last bit of tea in my mug is cold.
“The police will make extra rounds around the neighborhood for the next few nights,” Emmett says, toeing off his shoes and then hanging his jacket in the entryway. “But I’d feel better if Riley and I spent the night here.” He glances at Tracy. “So you don’t have to be alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says, waving a dismissive hand in front of her. “Blake is on his way over.”
I shoot her a questioning look, but before I can say anything, she adds, “You two need to talk. In private.” She squints her eyes at me, as though she knows I want to use what happened tonight as an excuse to delay this conversation with Emmett. “So I asked Blake to come over.” She glares at Emmett, something lighting in her eyes. “Apparently, he and I have a discussion of our own that needs to be had.” She shrugs her shoulders. “And I really don’t want to listen to you having make-up sex. Or hate sex. Or whatever kind of sex you end up having tonight.”
“Trace!” I throw a little red decorative pillow at her, narrowly avoiding her face. She has the audacity to cackle at me. Cackle. Like some kind of wicked witch.
“We’ll stay until Blake gets here,” Emmett says, removing the gun from his back and settling between us on the couch. When Tracy laughs under her breath, I reach for another pillow, only for Emmett to grab it instead. “Unless you both want to strip down to your underwear, no more pillows tonight.”
We both glare at him, and his lips twitch, fighting to hold back a smile.
“Fine.” I grab the pillow from him and toss it onto the armchair beside me. When I lean into his side, his arm comes around me and I rest my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry about your car.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know.” I close my eyes, suddenly exhausted from the evening”s events. “But I still feel bad you have to deal with it.”
He doesn’t say anything, just kisses the top of my head and pulls me in a little closer. I must doze off at some point, because the next thing I know, Emmett is shifting beneath me.
When I open my eyes again, it takes me a second to remember where I am. I hear Tracy and Blake behind me, talking quietly in the kitchen, and Emmett is untangling my arms from himself.
When he rises to his feet, I sit up, rubbing the sleep away from my eyes.
“Let’s go home,” he says, reaching down to grab my hand.
I somehow muster enough energy to get up and put my jacket and borrowed sneakers back on. After promising Tracy that I will check in tomorrow, Emmett and I leave for his place.
I can’t help but stare at his vandalized Audi as he pulls away from the curb, and wonder if there isn’t more to this than we realize.
The ride to Emmett’s is quiet, and when he pulls into his spot in the parking garage, I barely have my feet out the door and on the pavement before he’s swooping me up in his arms and carrying me into the building”s lobby.
“I can walk, you know.” It’s meant to be teasing, but the yawn that follows ruins the effect.
Emmett snorts. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
My arms make their way around his neck, and I don’t bother arguing because I know he’s right.
When we get to his penthouse, Emmett sets me down just long enough to take off our jackets and shoes before picking me back up again and carrying me to bed. He lays me down on the side closest to the windows, the same side I slept on last time.
I go to slide under the covers, but he stops me, sitting beside me and putting his hands on my hips.
I don’t stop him when he slides his fingers under the elastic of my sweatpants and panties. And I certainly don’t stop him when he starts sliding them down my legs. He goes for my shirt next, working it up over my breasts, before helping me sit up enough to pull it off. But he doesn’t touch me, instead pulling the covers over me and tucking them under my chin.
When he leans forward, he kisses my cheek before saying, “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” I grab on to his arm. The last thing I want right now is to be alone when I’m feeling this vulnerable. But unlike the last time I asked him to stay, when he fucked me after the housewarming party, I don’t feel any shame in the fact that I want him. That I need him. “Where are you going?”
“I just have to make a few phone calls,” he says, running his hand up and down my arm. “I’ll be right out in the kitchen if you need me.”
Nodding, I let go of him. He leaves the door to the bedroom cracked just the tiniest amount, and a thin beam of light filters in through it when he turns on the kitchen light. When I hear the low rumble of his voice as he talks on the phone, I sink a little further into the mattress. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but the sound is enough for me to feel at ease.
I’m nearly asleep when I feel the mattress dip beside me. I turn to face him, bringing a hand up to touch his stubble covered jaw, and immediately his mouth is on mine, his tongue licking at the seam of my lips.
Opening my mouth for him, he plunges his tongue in, kissing me slowly, passionately, licking into my mouth with long, searing sweeps.
When he rolls on top of me, his hips settle between my thighs. I can feel the hard, naked length of him, and my hips roll, seeking him out.
“I need to feel you,” he says, his lips moving to my neck. “I need inside.”
There’s an edge to his voice of longing and agony. When he pulls back to look at me, the dark of the room does nothing to hide the tense set of his jaw or the divot between his eyebrows.
He looks at me with a tortured gaze in his eyes, and I find myself wondering what’s causing him so much torment. Was it me avoiding him for the last few days? What happened tonight? Did it have to do with the calls he had to make when we got here?
Whatever it is, even in my anger and frustration toward him, I find myself wanting to soothe him. To offer him whatever kind of comfort and bliss I can. Because that’s what he was for me tonight. Comfort. Safety.
I’ve barely managed to nod when he slides inside with one powerful, long stroke. He comes down on top of me, his forearms supporting him just enough so I can breathe. Holding me close, he grinds into me, his strokes long and slow. Every roll of our hips together rubs my clit in just the right way, and I can already feel that tension coiling in my belly.
“Come work for me, Riley,” he murmurs in my ear, just as he makes a hard thrust into me. He pulls out slowly, adding, “Please, baby.” He slams back in. “I need you.” His hips pull back. “Jax needs you.” They slam forward again. His arms come under my shoulders, his hands gripping onto the tops of them and holding me firmly in place as he continues at the tortuous pace. “We’ll pay you enough that you never have to worry about money again.”
I push my hands into his chest, forcing him up. He stops moving, seated deep inside me, as he stares down at me with glazed eyes.
“It’s not about the money, Emmett.” I wrap my legs around his hips. “It’s that you never bothered to ask what I want. That you’re trying to force me into this. That you threatened me.” I clench around him, gripping his cock with my muscles, and he shudders above me.
“Fuck,” he groans, letting out a long breath. He drops back to his forearms, and his hands clench beside me, his forehead coming to my shoulder. “What do you want?”
Bringing my hands to his back, I run them up and down his muscles, my fingers feeling the hard lines and ridges as he tries to hold still inside of me. I squeeze him again, and there’s a strangled sound in his throat.
“If you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to come before you even get off,” he grits out.
A smile finds my lips, and I realize that now, when he’s barely hanging onto control, is probably the best time to lay out my demands.
“One,” I say, running my hands down to his ass to give it a light squeeze. “I want to get off tonight.” He grunts into my neck, and I take that as agreement. “Two, I don’t ever want you making decisions for me again, not without talking to me about it first.”
I feel him pulse inside me, and he rolls his hips, just the smallest amount. “Christ, okay.” He rolls them again, a little harder this time, so I squeeze my legs around him, digging my heels into his ass and holding him firmly in place. “Fuck,” he groans. “Okay, what else?”
“I want my own office space.” Lord knows I’d never get any work done sharing an office with him. “And I want the flexibility to work from home when I can.” I take a second, crinkling my nose, as I ponder what other stipulations I should put in place. “Since you insisted on getting rid of my car, I want a new one–of my choosing.” I bring my hands to his cheeks, cradling his face and forcing him to look at me. “And I want you to trust me, like you’ve asked me to trust you. I want you to trust the decisions that I make. And I want you to respect them. Even if that means saying no to your job offer.”
He closes his eyes, sighing. “You don’t make anything easy, do you?” I clench my pussy again in answer. “Fuck. Fine. Okay. Yes, to all of that.”
I unwrap my legs from him and roll my hips, longing for him to start moving again.
But he doesn’t, instead staring down at me and asking, “Does that mean you’re coming to work for me?”
There’s no stopping the smile that creeps onto my face. Because he’s asking me. Because he’s giving me an option. And because I know my answer.
“Yes.”
He kisses me hard, groaning into my mouth. When he pulls back, he smirks at me. “I told you I always get the yes.”
I giggle, giving my hips a little wiggle as he starts pumping into me again, driving both of us to that intoxicating, addictive pleasure that we can only find with each other.