21. Chapter 19
Emery
Waking up to an empty room in the middle of the night should be a bare minimum expectation for a person who is single. It should instill a feeling of safety and comfort that your personal space was not intruded upon while you were sleeping.
So why the fuck am I disappointed, and honestly, the tiniest bit irritated that my room is empty when I open my eyes and find that the chair has been pushed back under the desk and the space beside me is cool?
Did he wait until I was asleep again to leave me here, alone?
Or did he get bored and go looking for something to entertain him?
Flopping onto my back, I let out a puff of air. Now I’m irritating myself.
Pissed off because he is in my room. Pissed off because he isn’t. I need to pick a fucking side and stay on it. How can I want someone who betrayed me the way they all did?
They took my autonomy away.
They kept a massive fucking secret from me, left me locked in a dark room, with no hope of ever finding the key, then expected me to be delighted when they unlocked the door. All because they didn’t think I could handle myself if I was included in the plan.
When they were the ones who couldn’t handle themselves. All it had taken was the smallest amount of temptation from me and they cracked like crayons.
It’s fucking laughable, really.
And now I’m playing this ridiculous back-and-forth game with myself. The problem is that I’m so goddamn confused.
My body still wants them. I crave them, and not just physically. For that one weekend, I felt safe, treasured, like I’d found my place in this world. And knowing they wanted to keep me for even longer had started to cement my confidence in them.
But when shit got complicated, like so many foster families before them, they’d—metaphorically— shipped me back to the group home. Abandoned me with very few details about what I had done wrong and what the new plan was.
Which is where my brain steps in to remind me that they can’t be trusted, especially if they couldn’t trust me. How can I possibly put my well-being in their hands when they were so careless with it once already?
The issue with this tug-of-war between my body and my head is that my heart is the rope.
I miss them. I’ve missed them for weeks. Deep down, in the very pit of my soul, I know they are supposed to be mine. All four of them.
Derek.
Hudson.
Darcy.
Xavier.
DHDX.
My thumb finds my bracelet on the opposite wrist and strokes over the engraving as my eyes start to focus in the darkness of my room while I stare up at the ceiling.
I can’t go through all this again. I just can’t.
I’ve been taken in, chewed up, and spat out too many times to count.
I’m never going to give anyone the power to hurt me like this again.
Knowing that sleep isn’t going to return anytime soon, I reach for my phone.
My fingers brush against something that is definitely not my phone, and I remember the gift bag Xavier tried to give me earlier.
I furrow my brow as I try to remember if it’s from him.
No, wait, he said it arrived while I’d been asleep.
I push myself to sitting, propping my pillows behind my back so that I can still recline a little, then use the flashlight on my phone to light up the room before reaching for the white and gold bag and its giant golden ribbon.
With the bag in my lap, I carefully undo the bow, the entire thing coming loose from the handles with a shushing noise, the fabric reminding me of the negligés they’d purchased for me before they even knew me.
Whatever is in there is hard and a little heavy. Placing the bag on its back, I put my hand inside, grasp the items, and pull them out.
A notebook and a pack of sparkly metallic pens.
Ignoring the pens, I scoop up the turquoise notebook and trace my fingers over the flowy, floral patterns that are carved into the leather of the cover to create a border.
The whole thing is soft, and I imagine that when I hold it open, it’ll do that perfectly floppy thing that the best kinds of books do.
To top the entire thing off, there is a tiny lock in the shape of a heart holding it closed, with the slot for a key right in its very center.
I give a gentle tug on the lock, but nothing happens. Frowning, I glance over my lap, and when I come up empty, I upend the gift bag to see if I missed anything, but nothing falls out.
How the hell am I supposed to open this?
And who is it even from?
My gaze scans the blankets of my bed, hoping to spot the key or something that will help, when I notice that the ribbon has a deliberate kink in it where there is a fine thread wrapped around it. Lifting the ribbon up, I spot the tiny key. Bingo.
I carefully work the thread from the ribbon until the key is free, then I unlock the notebook. My chest constricts as soon as I open the front cover. There’s a note. It’s folded in half, but from the fine indentations, I can tell it’s a handwritten one.
Opening the note, I glance at the very bottom first to see who it is from.
Hudson.
My lips compress together tightly as I try to stave off the tremble that immediately took up residence in them. It’s bad enough that my eyes are threatening tears and my stomach is cramping around nothing.
Crying seems to have become my primary state lately, and I’m really fucking over it. All my fingers and toes are crossed in the hopes that it’s just a side effect of the head trauma.
I force my eyes to the top of the note and slowly read over his careful pen strokes, the shape of his letters so precise and perfect that they look like something out of a handwriting guide.
By the time I reach the end of the letter, the tears are overflowing, a few landing on the page and smudging the blue inked text.
Lowering the paper to my lap, I tip my head back and rest it on the pillows, the tears rolling down either side of my face as I struggle to breathe through the pain and emotions that clog my throat and chest.
He is waiting. For me. He isn’t going anywhere. He is giving me the space and a tool to work through my feelings about him, them. Us.
It’s so fucking Hudson that a little laugh hiccups out of me. This man. Seriously. Collector of all the information. Too bad he hadn’t known me well enough before finding out I was a student at his university.
I clutch at my stomach after an Oscar-worthy growl rumbles in it.
Ugh, fuck. When was the last time I ate?
Using the backs of my fingers, I wipe away my tears, remove everything from my lap, then slip from my bed, checking the time on my phone as I pick it up.
Two-thirty-seven in the morning. Dealing with the middle-of-the-night munchies is much easier when you don’t have a jackhammer trying out for a rock band in your brain.
Opening my bedroom door, I step out into the main living space. I pause there, waiting to see if Xavier is lurking somewhere, but there is no movement. However there is a very quiet, rhythmic breathing coming from the couch.
As stealthily as I can manage, I creep over to the couch, aiming my phone behind me so that I don’t accidentally shine it in his face and wake him up, but still provide myself with enough light to get a visual of him.
He is fast asleep, on his back, arms folded over his chest, head turned toward the back of the couch, with a blanket draped over his stomach and legs, one socked foot hanging over the armrest. The boyish shape of his face is more pronounced by his sleep-softened features, and I have the desperate urge to run my fingers through his golden curls.
But I don’t. I squash that feeling all the way down and back away. I also don’t allow my mind to wander down the path of why he is sleeping out here and not with me in my perfectly comfortable bed.
What I will focus on is the fact that he is respecting my boundary about not being in my bedroom while I sleep. That seems like a good win for today.
I pick up a banana from the kitchen, head into my bedroom, then crawl back into my bed.