Chapter 19
Nineteen
Emory
I rubbed my burning eyes, leaning back in my office chair. I sat up with a start at the sound of knocking on my half-open door.
I gestured for Lottie to come inside, and she sauntered in, taking a leisurely position in the chair opposite my desk.
“You okay?” Her brows furrowed as she inspected my face.
I clenched my jaw, reaching into my drawer to retrieve my eye drops.
“Yeah,” I muttered towards the ceiling as I tipped my head back and squeezed three drops into the corner of each of my eyes.
“Have you tried the blue light glasses I got you?”
I winced, patting the leaking eye drops from my cheeks. “No. I’ve got prescription glasses but wearing them gives me a migraine and makes my eyes hurt.”
Her mouth twisted in thought, “Maybe it’s the wrong prescription? The blue light glasses shouldn’t hurt your eyes, they might help.”
I shrugged, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try them.”
She smiled with satisfaction and leaned forward to adjust the name plate on my desk.
“Did you see Han’s texts?”
I glanced down at my phone, tapping the screen to illuminate any notifications. I frowned at the most recent text notification.
“Uh, no,” I said, looking back up at Lottie. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, she’s just talking about the new book were reading.” She held my stare for a moment too long and I looked back at the excel sheet on my computer screen. “You haven’t started it yet, have you?”
My fingers drummed on my desk, and I shook my head.
She groaned dramatically, flailing back in her chair. “But it’s so good,” she whined with a pout. “Your boyfriend is taking up too much of your time.”
My heart stuttered at the term. I hadn’t told them that we were using that label.
Her jaw dropped as she stared at me. “Emory Crawford. Is he actually your boyfriend?”
I bit into my lip, butterflies filling up my stomach at the thought of being able to call Enoch mine.
“Yeah.”
She gasped, her hand smacking the desktop and making my pen holder tip over. “Sorry,” she muttered, collecting the pens. “Shut up! You little rascal! Why didn’t you say anything?”
I swallowed, adjusting some paperwork on my desk for something to do with my hands. “We just barely talked about it last night.”
She raised her fist to her chin, leaning against the arm of the chair as she looked on with interest expecting more details. I rolled my eyes.
She flicked her blonde ponytail over her shoulder, wiggling her fingers at me. “Go on. Spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill.”
“Don’t be so coy. How’d it happen?”
I let out a sigh through my nose, my fingers dancing over the fresh pink skin on my forearm. “Well, he asked me if I was seeing anybody else. To which I said no. And then, yeah…he said I was his girlfriend.”
She squinted her eyes at me. Damn your nosey observant ass, Lottie.
“That’s it? He just said, ‘Emory, you’re my girlfriend’?”
She held my stare, waiting for me to budge and I groaned.
“Well, not exactly.” She bit back a smile, but I could see the glee in her eyes.
I sighed again, still absently tracing the hypersensitive fresh skin.
“He said he’s felt this connection to me since we met in high school.
He said…” My mouth twitched with a forming smile.
“He told me what my name means in Hebrew. Apparently, it can mean gift. Like, a gift from God. And he believes that I am a gift from God. How we met, parted ways and reconnected now…it does kind of feel like divine intervention.”
I trailed off, flicking my eyes up to study her reaction.
“Em,” she whispered, jaw slack. “That’s…”
She shook her head at a loss for words. I cleared my throat. She shook her head again, the smile returning to her face.
“So, basically, you’re saying he’s your fated mate and you’re living out our entire book club’s dream?”
I threw my head back with a laugh. Our book club consisted of just Hannah, Lottie and I, so it wasn’t saying much that it was their dream to find a fated mate. “Stop!”
She hopped up from her seat and stepped around my desk to pull me up from my chair.
She squealed with excitement, pulling me into her arms as she rocked us back and forth. She abruptly pulled back, face stoic.
“And we’re happy with this right? We like him back?”
I bit down on my lip, staving off the hope sparking in my chest that things would work out for us. I nodded and she returned to her squealing, hopping up and down.
“I’m so happy for you, Em.”
“What’s going on in here?”
We both turned our heads to Mason who was standing in the doorway with an amused smile on his face.
“How come you didn’t tell me I was your fated mate?” She whined, pointing a finger at him.
He flicked his eyes to me in a ‘what the hell is she talking about’ look.
I put my hands up in defense. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
Mason looked to his wife with a raised brow.
Lottie pouted, “Emory and Enoch are dating.” Her eyes lit up, and she turned back to face me. “Ooh! Emory and Enoch. Enoch and Emory. Em and En. Enochory, Emenoch—”
I cut off her rambling with a light shove.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Testing out the order of your names for your wedding invitations.”
“Woah!” I held up my hands, flicking my eyes to Mason for some intervention here. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Lot.”
Mason crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze turning serious as he looked between the two of us.
“So, we like this guy? He deserves you?”
Fuck no. He deserves so much better, just don’t tell him that.
“If Emory likes him, then, yes.” She turned to me with a head nod of confirmation. “We like him.”
I nodded back and Mason pursed his lips. “And we don’t think he’s an unstable psycho who held you hostage with a knife?”
I rolled my eyes with a groan. “Fuck’s sake. Cole totally fucked up that story. He never held me hostage. And he would never hurt me.”
Mason seemed to be mentally debating. “I want to meet him.”
I looked over at Lottie for help, but she smiled apologetically. “Sorry, but I’m always going to be Team Mason. I agree that we should all meet him. Get a feel for him personally.”
I put my hands up. “Fucking fine. He actually asked if he could meet you guys. He feels like he didn’t make a great first impression.”
“Okay, yeah. I’ll ask the group chat when everyone’s available and we’ll plan something lowkey. I don’t want him to feel like he’s being interrogated or something, so tell him he can bring a friend if he wants.”
Jae.
I nodded in agreement and cleared my throat.
“Well, I gotta run. I’ve got an appointment. I’ll see you guys.”
Lottie pulled me in for another quick hug before walking to the door. Mason linked his hand with hers and she stared up at him with adoration.
“I love you. Even though you never told me the fates brought us together.”
Mason chuckled and pecked her lips. Mason waved over his shoulder as they left my office, and I shook my head to myself.
Boyfriend.
I rubbed my cheeks, the smile on my face beginning to feel natural.
◆◆◆
I stared absently at the blue coffee mug on the small side table. Sarah crossed her legs and the silence dragged on.
“He says he loves me.”
Sarah nodded and the silence returned. I took a deep breath of her ‘spill your guts’ essential oils wafting through the room and cracked my knuckles.
“He says that he doesn’t think I should be held accountable for the things I did while in the gang. Says he doesn’t care what I did and that I don’t even need to tell him everything.”
“Why don’t you seem happy about that?”
I scoffed, looking up at her in disbelief. “Are you for real right now? I told this man I murdered someone, and he apologized to me. To me.”
She pursed her lips and blinked like she didn’t see my point. Like I hadn’t just confessed to killing someone. Like all her patients confessed to killing people.
“You wanted him to be angry with you. Why?”
“Because.”
She waited for me to elaborate but I kept my mouth shut.
“Because that means you could keep punishing yourself?”
I shrugged, but she was right. Mostly.
“You’ve never told me about what you did prior to ending up in witness protection.”
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Right,” she nodded. “But you’re not in witness protection anymore. And unless you tell me you’ve got a plan to kill someone, or yourself, I’m not allowed to tell anyone about it either.”
I bit into my bottom lip, debating.
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know whatever you’re comfortable sharing. But I think we need to get to the root of this guilt you’re harboring. Why don’t we start there? Tell me, what’s the thing you feel guiltiest about.”
I blew out a breath, smoothing my sweaty palms down my pants.
“Probably the murder.”
She nodded. “Tell me why you feel guilty?”
It took me a minute to get the words out, to be honest.
“I chose my life over his. I…If I hadn’t chosen to live, if I had ended things sooner, I wouldn’t have been in that position.”
“What do you mean, ‘ended things sooner’?”
“It was my choice. Carlos, he was the man in charge, and he gave me a choice. I could join his gang, or I could die. But if I died, he was going to make someone else take my place…a child, someone younger, someone more innocent. And maybe he was lying, maybe he wouldn’t have…
I wasn’t going to take that risk. So, I agreed to join.
I didn’t know what they were going to make me do to initiate, I just knew I didn’t want anyone else to take my place. ”
I swallowed, the story not any easier to tell than it was speaking to Enoch and Jae.
Sarah waited.
“I had to give them my body.”
I kept my eyes on the mug, unwilling to watch her reactions. When she didn’t say anything, I continued.
“And I had to kill a man.”
“I chose my life. I chose to live and take that man’s life. Like mine was more important. Like I was worth more. I don’t feel worth more. I feel…worth…less.”
Sarah hummed and the iron tang of blood flooded my mouth. I bit deeper into my cheek.
“That’s a lot of weight to carry around.”
“No shit.”
“How do you cope with that?”
“I dunno. I guess I don’t. Just…try to forget it happened.”
“You don’t think you should be forgiven?”
“Murder is murder. And if it weren’t for my deal with the FBI, I would’ve been punished by the courts.”
“And what would have happened if you had been arrested for the murder?”
“I would’ve been killed before I made it to jail,” I said with a shrug.
“So, it sounds like, in an impossible situation, under duress, under a real threat which would have resulted in your own death, you made a choice. If you hadn’t killed the man, do you think he would be alive right now?”
I shook my head.
“So, either way, you both would have been killed.”
“Don’t get me wrong, the man was a piece of shit. He…he raped me. I’m not exactly sad that he’s dead. But if I hadn’t killed him, I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt. Or live with the guilt of every other awful decision I’ve made since then.”
“So, you wished you had died then?”
If I had, I wouldn’t be here now with Enoch. But maybe that would’ve been a good thing. I would’ve died before Enoch and Jae got attached.
She pressed forward when I remained silent. “Do you think that those people you were supposed to testify against would have been arrested if you had chosen to die?”
“I wasn’t the only informant to the FBI.”
“So, you had no responsibility in getting these people arrested?”
I swallowed the blood and saliva in my mouth.
“I know at least one of the other people had been informing for years…surely the FBI would’ve had enough dirt to arrest them at some point without me.”
“And how many more people would have been hurt by this gang?”
I shrugged. By the time the FBI got me, everything had fallen apart. There was never any legal justice for anything that happened.
“This guilt will never go away if you don’t give yourself some grace. If you don’t forgive yourself, Emory, you won’t be able to move on. I think you’re comfortable living in pain because you think you deserve it. But is that all your future will hold? Constant pain, constant guilt.”
“I don’t know any other alternative.”
Sarah smiled sympathetically. “You could be happy, Emory. I can’t tell you that it will ever go away completely, but if you give yourself the chance at forgiveness, I can see how much brighter things will be for you.”
“But I don’t deserve it,” I spat with frustration.
“Everyone deserves forgiveness.”
I shook my head.
“I’m done.”
I grabbed my backpack from beside my feet and stood. Sarah pursed her lips, and I could see I was letting her down. But what the fuck did she expect from me? There was never going to be an excuse for what I did. Never.