4. Emery
FOUR
EMERY
Flustered, I pushed out through the front door of the bar and stepped onto the wood-plank sidewalk that ran the trendy main street of Moonlit Ridge, California.
Cool air gusted across my overheated flesh.
My skin flushed and flaming.
My heart still erratic and the vestiges of bliss still tickling through my nerves.
Did that really just happen?
I had to wonder if I’d made it up since the second I stepped out from the sanctity of those walls, the grief rebounded, reminding me of what I’d come here to do.
Except, I could still feel the burn of his hands and the imprint of his touch.
It was as if I’d been marked in some intrinsic way.
Altered and recalibrated.
Maybe there’d been a reason for me stumbling into this dive bar looking for a reprieve, after all.
But the reprieve I had found had gone so much deeper than I ever could have imagined .
Verging on impossible.
A bare hope I’d thought would never find fruition.
Guilt threatened to cut off the beauty of it. Guilt that I’d taken even a minute for myself.
For searching for something when this couldn’t be about me.
But maybe I really had needed the affirmation that I was alive. That I could stand after everything.
I hurried down the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel where we were staying. With each step, the hollowed-out cavern inside me howled.
Sorrow rushed in as I was set firmly back in reality.
There were only a few people milling about the small town at this time of night, the sidewalk and streets next to barren.
We were staying on Culberry Street in an old hotel that had been renovated into posh suites that overlooked the upscale street that ran through the main part of the town. A town that had a gorgeous lake and was surrounded by mountains on each side.
A beautiful small town that I was afraid was going to steal the last bit of joy from my mangled, shredded heart.
Head down and heart hammering, I passed by a high-end jewelry store, a bakery, and a tattoo shop called River of Ink. A single light shone from within, and I couldn’t help but think of the man who I’d left behind at the bar.
Of the designs that covered his flesh.
God, I doubted there was a chance I’d ever forget him.
Hugging my arms over my chest, I made it to the intersection and pressed the button for the pedestrian light.
I shifted on my feet as I waited, and my shoulders went rigid when I felt it.
An awareness that washed over me.
A rash of chills erupting on the nape of my neck.
Not the kind the stranger had written on me—a stranger who I’d been so wrapped up in that I hadn’t even caught his name—but the kind that sent unease sinking to the pit of my stomach.
A sense that someone was watching me.
That someone was there .
I would have been afraid that it was that creep who’d gotten handsy with me at the bar, except it was the exact same sensation I’d been getting for the last three months.
Fighting panic, I peered over my shoulder.
Stillness echoed back.
Emptiness.
Emptiness that was manifesting as paranoia.
Except, was it?
My mind traveled to the pictures I’d found in a big box at the back of my sister’s closet. To the files on her tablet, some of them that I couldn’t figure out access to.
Unrest rolled through me again.
The intuition rejecting that it was an accident.
The light switched, and I jogged across the street to the hotel that was directly on the other side.
The hotel was tucked back a fraction from the road, and there was a valet area up front that sat at an angle.
I rushed up the walkway to the double doors.
At my approach, an attendant opened one side to allow me access into the elegant lobby. “Good evening.”
“Thank you,” I murmured under my breath.
Summer had just arrived, but there was still a fire roaring in the enormous rock fireplace that took up the entire right wall. There was a sitting area in front of it. The furniture antiques and oversized leathers. The accents done in deep purples and glittering golds.
I kept my head down as I hurried to the elevators on the far wall. I stepped inside and punched the button for the seventh floor.
Queasiness rushed me as the elevator began to ascend.
I didn’t know if it was due to the alcohol I’d consumed or if it was the surging of sadness that gave me vertigo.
Because now, I felt laden with it.
Soggy with the sorrow.
Yet, somehow, I couldn’t regret finding my way to that bar.
I lifted my fingertips and set them against where my heart still stampeded from his touch. To that spark that promised I was still alive. A seal that I could do this. That I had to do this.
A bell dinged, and the elevator opened to my floor. I moved down the hall to our room, fumbled to get the keycard out of my purse, and pressed it to the sensor.
With a buzz, the lock gave, and I stepped into the lapping darkness of the living area of our suite. I quietly latched the door behind me and tiptoed across the room to the bedroom door that was in the middle of the left wall.
It sat halfway open, and I stalled at the threshold and stood watching the shadows play across the room. Over the two queen beds situated against the wall in front of me.
Mine was empty and still made.
My chest felt as if it might cave when my attention drifted over to the far bed closest to the window.
My mother was asleep, her snore soft where she was under the covers. But it was the tiny thing she had her arm curled over in a subconscious show of protection that made me want to weep.
The locks of her warm, blonde hair messy and wild around her cherub, angel face.
Tears blurred and that vacancy throbbed, and I had to force myself to tiptoe into the attached bathroom.
I started to change out of my dress, and a flush rushed over my body when I thought of the man peeling me out of my underwear. How it’d felt to trust.
To give myself over to the pleasure rather than the fear.
Shoving it off, I dragged on a baggy sleep shirt and shorts, brushed my teeth, then eased back out to my bed and crawled under the covers.
Both exhausted and restless.
I lie staring at the ghosts that danced over the ceiling for the longest time, unable to fall into the bliss of sleep.
Then my crumpled heart sped when I felt the movement to the side and shifted to find her standing at the side of my bed.
“Can I sweep wif you, Auntie Emery?” Her tiny voice was groggy, as if she were still half asleep .
“Of course,” I whispered, and I lifted the covers so she could climb in.
She snuggled in beside me, and I curled my arms around her slight body.
She blew out a contented sigh as she draped her little arm around my neck.
“ Wuv you,” she mumbled close to incoherently before she immediately drifted back to sleep.
Her sweet breaths and her steady heart whispered all around me.
While I clung to her with everything I had, my lips pressed to her forehead when I murmured, “I love you forever, Angel Face.”