12. Garrett
12
Garrett
S eeing Todd’s bony fingers wrap around Emma’s wrist makes my blood boil. Hearing her gasp in surprise – or worse, pain – makes my hands ball up into fists.
“Wait, I didn’t mean…” he starts to say to Emma as he yanks on her wrist to hold her in place.
“Get your hands off her.”
Without thinking, I shove him away from her. He stumbles backwards but doesn’t fall. It takes every ounce of self-control that I have not to shove him again, at full force this time. He’d probably leave a body-sized dent in the ground if I did. My fist flexes with the urge to punch him, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight. Not even close.
I’m not particularly prone to violence. Sure, I’m an asshole sometimes, but not a violent one. I watched my older brother Silas get in enough fights over every stupid, little thing when I was younger to know that fighting usually causes more problems than it solves.
But just this once, I wonder if it might be worth it.
A soft touch registers on my shoulder. The same touch that I felt on my arm last night. Emma’s touch. The fact that it’s already programmed into my brain is worrisome, but that’s a problem for later.
“Garrett,” she says softly. Her wide eyes lock on mine. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m fine.”
I nod tightly at her.
Todd is still staring at me like he’s bracing himself for a punch. He puts his hands out defensively and apologizes.
“It’s fine,” Emma repeats. “If you could just arrange for someone to pick us up, I think we’d both like to be on our way now.”
Todd nods, keeping one eye on me as he sulks off to make a phone call.
“You good?” Emma asks once he’s out of earshot.
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Sorry.”
Emma drops her hand from my shoulder and takes a step back. “Don’t be. Todd’s a jerk. Someone’s definitely going to punch him one of these days, but it probably shouldn’t be you.”
She’s right, of course. She usually is.
A minute later, Todd approaches cautiously. He keeps his distance as he tells us that a shuttle is on its way and rattles off seventeen reasons why he should catch up with the group. Once he’s gone, we take a seat at the picnic table to wait for our shuttle.
Emma fidgets with the hem of her shirt, barely looking at me as she breaks the heavy silence. “Sorry that we have to leave early.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I shrug.
“If you want, I can book a solo tour for you later…maybe with a different outfitter.”
“Emma, seriously, don’t worry about it. Like I said, cycling isn’t my thing anyway. The whole point of this trip was to figure out which tour operators we wanted to partner with, and now we can cross this one off the list.”
We’re both quiet. I look up at her, but when her eyes catch on mine, I have to look away. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is urging me to do all sorts of crazy things. Things like finishing what we almost started last night.
“So, what now?” she asks. “Are we going back to Denver for a few days?”
“I doubt we can find a private jet to get us back there on this short of notice. It seems like they’re booked pretty solid right now,” I tell her, even though I know I could probably find someone willing to drop another client if I offered double the going rate.
Truthfully, I have no desire to return to the office.
“I have another idea,” I tell her.
Park City, Utah is a four-hour drive from Moab. We rent a sporty black car and I drive.
Emma doses herself with ibuprofen and hugs a water bottle to her lower abdomen as she sleeps in the passenger seat. It’s weird to be so close to her while she sleeps. We’ve traveled together a few times, but she’s never nodded off in front of me, not even on the red eye flight we took home from Boston last summer.
When we pull up in front of the hotel, I say Emma’s name but she barely stirs. Her eyelashes flutter with vague recognition but immediately fall shut again. Guess she’s pretty wiped out.
I reach over and place my hand on her knee, giving it a quick but gentle shake. Emma’s eyes slowly flutter open again, her gaze landing right on my hand at her knee. As I pull my hand away, she slowly drags herself up in her seat.
“We’re here already?” she asks.
Her sleepy, raspy voice hits me in the pit of my stomach.
“We’re here.”
“Sorry I slept the whole way. I can’t believe I did that.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her. It’s more than fine, especially when she turns to give me a sleepy smile. Her eyes are heavily lidded, and her hair is a little wild. It’s too much. I clear my throat and say, “Let’s go check in.”
After that, it’s back to business as usual between us. Emma and I meet in the hotel’s business center at eight o’clock the next morning. We sit at opposite ends of a large conference table and catch up on all the work we’ve missed. Occasionally, we exchange a few words without looking up from our computers.
At five o’clock, we both pack up our laptops and retire to our rooms. It almost feels like everything is back to normal, except that I can’t seem to shake the thought of her being just down the hall as I go to sleep at night.
On the last night of our detour to Park City, I know I need to make a choice. If I’m sending Emma back to Denver, it doesn’t make sense to drag her all the way to California first. I sit in my room, scrolling through the list of tomorrow’s flights from Salt Lake to Denver.
Indecisiveness isn’t usually a problem for me. Most people get too caught up in their feelings. They try to find ways to spin a bad decision into a good one because they can’t separate facts from emotions. Taking the emotion out of it has never been an issue for me.
Which does not explain why my finger keeps hovering over the purchase button, but I can’t seem to pull the trigger.
Objectively, sending Emma home is the best decision for both of us. But when I think about finishing this trip without Emma, I feel…something. Sad, maybe? No, that sounds too pathetic. Not having her here hating me and giving me hell at every turn certainly makes this whole trip seem a lot duller though.
On the other hand, I almost kissed her. Worse, I nearly punched a guy for touching her. Granted, he would have deserved it, but it raises all sorts of questions about how I feel about another man touching Emma at all. Questions that I don’t think I like the answer to.
Maybe I just need a drink to take the edge off.
I stand up, grab my room key, and make my way down to the hotel bar. It’s a small, dimly lit room off the lobby that’s outfitted in dark wood from top to bottom.
“Whiskey neat,” I say to the bartender, motioning toward the bottle on the top shelf.
“Yes, sir,” the man nods.
I take a seat at the bar and tip my chin at the bartender when he sets the drink down in front of me. Then I feel another pair of eyes on me. When I look across the bar, it’s Emma staring back at me, and she isn’t alone. There’s a man sitting a little too close, talking to her in a low voice with his arm resting on the back of her barstool. His fingers are close enough to brush the exposed skin on her shoulder.
My stomach twists and my fists clench, giving me a very clear answer to my question about how I might react to another man touching Emma.