Chapter 28
Emmett holds onto my hand, our fingers interwoven, as I pull him through the crowd, weaving through bodies as we make our way to the different craft vendors.
The county I live in now does a Christmas festival every year, and apparently it’s a pretty big deal. Dozens of vendors selling foods, crafts, and other handmade goods, set up at the local event center. Then in the evening, everything is wrapped up with a beer garden and live music.
The nice lady that works at the gas station down the road from me had told me about it earlier in the week, so I’d asked Emmett to go with me.
Of course he agreed.
Ever since my freak-out at the office and telling him everything that happened with Trevor, Emmett’s been hovering. We’ve alternated between staying at his place and mine all week, and he’s insisted I work out of his office. Which is fine for now, considering the furniture I’d ordered for my office hasn’t arrived yet.
But the hovering is starting to wear on me. It’s not that I don’t want to spend all this time with him, but I don’t want his pity. I don’t want him to treat me any differently. To treat me like I’m broken. And that’s what it’s starting to feel like.
It seems like Emmett’s afraid that if he lets me out of his sight, I’ll crumble.
He hasn’t said anything further about Trevor, but I can tell he’s on edge. He’s tense all the time, like he’s carrying my burden. It’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen, and why I had put off telling him about Trevor for so long to begin with. It causes an ache in my chest to see him like this, like he’s a spring compressed too tight, ready to erupt at any second.
And knowing I”m the cause of it hurts. More than I even thought it would. There’s a permanent ball of guilt wedged in my stomach, eating at me.
The guilt worsened when I started having nightmares again, waking up in the middle of the night by my own screams, Emmett’s arms wrapped tight around me. And it’s only made him more tense. I can see it’s hurting him to see me struggle.
And I am–struggling. This week has been rough. I’ve cried more times than I’d like to admit, and I’ve been jumpy as hell. As though Trevor is going to sneak up on me at any moment.
Which he does–often–in my mind.
So I’m looking forward to this festival, and some downtime at home, to just relax and have fun with Emmett. To try to get back to some sense of normal and ease some of his anxieties.
Not to mention my poor chickens have probably been feeling neglected with how often I’ve been gone. Thankfully, Jax had installed an automatic door in the coop. It opens and closes to the run, so I don’t have to be there to do it every morning and evening.
Even though Emmett’s been more than willing to spend some weeknights at my place, I know it’s hard for him. He’s usually up before the sun to head back to the city.
I give his hand a squeeze and maneuver us toward a row of tables covered in pottery. There’s everything from cups to vases to little knick-knacks in a variety of colors and styles.
A group of flat orange disks catches my eye on the corner of one of the tables. They’re little round, clay ornaments with a red ribbon tied through a hole at the top. Engraved on the front of them are little dinosaur skeletons with Santa hats. Picking up one with a triceratops on it, I rub my thumb over the engraving.
“Do you like those?” Emmett asks from beside me, picking one up to examine as well.
A small laugh escapes me. “Would you believe I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was younger?”
The surprised look he gives me has me full on laughing.
But then his face suddenly becomes serious. “Why didn’t you?”
His question causes a pang in my chest. Setting the ornament back down, I grab another one, this one a pterodactyl. Turning it over, I see the price on the back and flinch. I know they’re handmade, but I can’t justify spending forty dollars on a single ornament. It’ll still be a couple weeks before I get my first paycheck from my new job.
“Riley?” Emmett puts his hand on my back.
“I got made fun of in school for my love of dinosaurs, so I gave it up,” I answer honestly.
Saying it out loud now as an adult sounds foolish. Why would I let some mean kids bully me into giving up something I was passionate about?
“Is it still something you’re interested in?”
I turn to look at him. “I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it after that. Plus, I never would have been able to afford college, so it wasn’t even a consideration.”
“Hmm.” Emmett waives his hand at the man behind the table, getting his attention. “I’ll take one of each of these.” He gestures toward the different dinosaur ornaments in front of us.
“Emmett,” I say under my breath. “There’s like a dozen different ones here.” He is not spending that much money on tree ornaments.
He looks at the man behind the table who is grinning widely, no doubt making his largest sale of the day right now. “She’s right. We’ll take all of them. I don’t think a dozen will be enough for the tree.”
“We don’t even have a tree,” I tell him, but I can’t keep the smile off my face.
He hands his credit card to the seller, then turns to me, grabbing my waist and pulling me close. “Then I guess we’re tree shopping tomorrow.”
“Sure you don’t want to just go out into the woods and cut one down? That seems like the manly thing to do.” I give him a little poke in the side as I tease him.
“Baby, you could tell me to go cut a tree down with a butter knife and I would do it for you.”
His voice is teasing, but when I look up at him, the expression on his face is anything but. Those dark eyes bore into mine and hold so much promise in them that I can’t look away. I can’t think of a single thing to say or do other than to get up on my tiptoes and kiss him.
“Thank you,” I say, pulling my lips away from his.
I linger in his grasp, until there’s a clearing of a throat and the man behind the table says, “Here are your ornaments.”
Grabbing them, we thank him and continue our way down the row of craft tables. The entire front half of the event center is full of vendors, while the back half has a stage for the live music later on tonight, and a dance space surrounded by tables. There’s several alcohol stands off to the side, and a few food trucks and vendors as well.
Tugging out my phone from my bag, I see that it’s getting close to time for the live music to start, which means all the craft vendors will be closing down soon.
“Do you want to grab food while we wait for the music to start?” I ask Emmett, just as my stomach growls. “And drinks?”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” he says, and grabs my hand, leading me toward the back half of the event center to grab a table and get some food.
We settle for BBQ and a couple hard ciders. As we finish eating, the band takes the stage. Country music pours from the speakers, making my body vibrate. They’re good. Really good, covering a variety of artists and styles, both old and new.
Looking at Emmett lounging in his chair beside me, I can’t help but smile. He looks so out of place, especially with his jacket off. He’s all dark and tattoos and intimidation, yet he sits here casually like he belongs amongst the boots and flannel of small town country folk.
He catches me looking at him and stands up, offering me a hand and pulling me to my feet as well. “Dance with me.”
“You dance?”
Emmett does not strike me as the dancing type. Well, I’m sure he’d have no problem grinding into my ass at a club before fucking me in the bathroom, but that is hardly the type of dancing we’d be doing here.
“Only with you,” he answers, tugging me to the middle of the dance floor. He grabs my waist, pulling me close as the band starts a slow song.
The singer croons about a long-lost love, and Emmett holds me close, lazily moving to the music. I wind my arms around his neck and rest my head against his chest.
We sway back and forth, the music coursing through our bodies like we’re one, flowing from my very veins to his, uniting our bodies in a synchrony that is completely consuming.
The rest of the world fades. The bodies around us disappear into darkness as Emmett’s heart beats against my ear. The band on stage becomes barely a blip in the background, their voices carrying to us like sonnets from the abyss, tales of loves lost and loves so desperately hoping to be found again.
And in this moment, I become certain of one thing. The only thing that matters. Us.
That this man, holding me so close and tender, is the best thing to have ever happened to me.
That this man, gently brushing his lips to the top of my head, would do anything for me.
That this man, his thumbs rubbing circles at the small of my back, is the man I’ve become completely and wholly in love with.
And while that should scare me, opening my heart and baring the most tender and fragile parts of me, it doesn’t. I’ve never felt more certain of anything in my life than I do of us.
As the song winds down, Emmett grasps my chin, tilting my head back before kissing me so tenderly on the mouth that I have to fight down the emotion working its way into my throat.
My hands shake as I twine my fingers into his hair, opening my mouth and deepening the kiss, pouring every ounce of what I’m feeling into it and praying he understands what I’m saying.
When I pull back, the heat in his eyes sears me to the bone. He leans in to whisper in my ear, but before the words can leave his lips, the band starts up again and he pulls back.
I give him a questioning look, to which he kisses my temple and mutters, “Later.”
As the band starts playing a cover of ‘Dance the Night Away’, I can’t help but beam at Emmett. It’s one of my favorite songs, and I start bouncing to the beat.
Seeing my excitement, he takes my hand in his, placing the other on my hip and saying, “I hope you know how to two-step, because I can’t lead this.”
Laughing, I place my free hand on his shoulder, feeling his taut muscles beneath his shirt. “We’ll figure it out together,” I say, before shifting our weight to one foot, then the other.
As the band plays on, the fiddle sparking a flame of excitement in me, we find a rhythm, our feet moving us smoothly through the throngs of people around us.
I throw my head back and smile as Emmett spins me, my hair whipping around my face as I twirl, and catches me perfectly in his arms as he pulls me back into his body.
“I thought you didn’t know how to dance to this,” I say between breathless laughs.
He smiles at me, a full, gorgeous, happy smile unlike I’ve seen from him before. “Just making it up as I go.”
Giving me a wink, he leads us around the floor like a pro, and we spend the rest of the evening out there, twirling and moving around that dance floor, like there’s no place else in the world either of us would rather be.