Chapter 31 Worthy Emmett #3
“No celebration,” she says quietly, her smile there still, but… different. Wistful, maybe.
“No.” I shake my head. “No.” I point my finger in her face. “If you tell me you’re not going—no, if you tell Cara you’re not going—”
She swats my finger away, giggling softly. “I can’t go.”
“You certainly can,” I argue, because how can she not? Dream school, dream program? You don’t miss a chance like that.
“How? The Okanagan campus is in Kelowna. It’s five hours away.
I’d have to quit my job at the library, and I know I can get another job there, but…
it’s so expensive. Like…” She rubs the distress right off her forehead.
“So expensive. I made a spreadsheet, and even with student loans it feels unmanageable. And the payments start right away. There’s a five-hundred-dollar deposit to confirm my acceptance, and then another deposit for off-campus housing, since I applied late, and then—” She breaks off, shaking out her hands.
“I don’t know what to do. I’d have to pour every dollar I’ve saved into this.
Maybe I work for a year or two, save up, and then reapply and see if I get in again.
Or”—she shrugs, like this is as simple as deciding what to eat for lunch—“maybe I don’t go.
Maybe just knowing I was good enough to be accepted, maybe that’s enough. ”
My heart thuds as I look at Catharine, a girl who’s never been allowed to choose herself, but instead been forced to accept whatever breadcrumbs someone else has left out for her.
And I’m angry for her. I want to fight for her.
I want her to fight for herself too. “Only you can decide what’s enough for you,” I tell her quietly.
“You’re not used to it, I get it, but you’re in charge.
You’re your own boss. You get to decide which path you take.
You decide how worthy you are of the life you want to live.
You’re the only person who can go after it.
You’re the only one who can choose you, over and over. ”
She grips the bench, releasing a shaky breath. “I’ve never had that kind of control. Getting to choose my own ending?” She shakes her head. “No way, that’s not how life has ever worked for me.”
“How has life worked for you?”
“However my parents decided.”
“And where are your parents?”
“They’re…” She frowns, but it’s not all grief. There’s a realization, a slow dawning that comes to life in her eyes. “Not here,” she finally finishes on a murmur. “They’re not here. This isn’t their life.”
“Sure as shit isn’t.”
Excitement brews, so palpable, bubbling up inside her until it threatens to spill out. “This is my life. I get to choose my own ending.”
“Yeah you do!” I hold my hand up, and when she claps hers against mine, I grip it, shaking it. “Fuck yeah, Cat!”
“Oh, Emmett.” Cara throws one arm up from across the yard, the other clutching two ducklings to her chest. “An event filled with children. Can you not have the mouth of an angel for one day? You should be more like me.”
Catharine and I snort a simultaneous laugh.
Even Abel looks at Cara like she has three heads.
She introduced a swear jar at home in an attempt to control her language around Abel, and it’s going spectacularly.
Whoever swears less at the end of each week gets morning-shower oral every day of the following week.
Three weeks in, and it’s clear my cock is more committed to the game than her pussy.
“If she had a mouth like an angel, I’d call her angel,” I mutter, “not firefly.”
Catharine giggles, then sinks against the bench with a heavy sigh, shoulders dropping. Her smile is all kinds of easier as she watches Cara and Abel dance their way toward the bouncy mansion. “I wish I’d had that.”
“Had what?”
“That. That type of mother, that type of woman on my side.” Her eyes flicker. “I wonder how my life would be different if I’d had a mother like Cara. I wonder who I’d be.” She looks away, clearing her throat. “Do you guys want kids of your own someday?”
“Oh, uh… Well, we… um…” My heart patters a fast, uneven beat, a familiar ache stretching across my chest. I press my palm to it, trying to rub away the pain that always seems to sneak up when I’m least expecting it.
“We wanted to.” I close my eyes, shaking my head.
“We still want to. But we… it’s not that…
” Sighing, I rub the sudden exhaustion from the nape of my neck.
“Sometimes things don’t work out exactly how you planned. ”
Catharine’s brows tug together, head cocked as she looks me over. Her gaze finds Cara, then me, the way I wring my hands, my bouncing knees, settling on my eyes, and fuck knows what she sees there. Sometimes I swear I see every tortured thought in Cara’s head just by looking at her eyes.
“Oh my God,” she murmurs. “You’re kidding me.
” She drops her face to her hands, slowly dragging them down as she buries a disbelieving chuckle in them.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t funny. It’s just one of those situations, you know, where if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
Like”—she lifts her face from her hands, arms out wide as she chokes out another disbelieving laugh—“how fucked-up is that? I was fifteen and never wanted to be a mom. And then there are…” She sighs, gesturing at me, at Cara across the property.
“There are people like you two, two adults in love, in a healthy relationship, who want it more than anything, and…”
“Can’t get it to work,” I finish for her, nodding. “I’ve admittedly had my fair share of grievances about that. Not about you, but just… why not us? I just…” I palm my neck, shrugging. “I dunno. I think we’d be pretty good at it.”
Catharine’s eyes soften. “You are good at it. You’re amazing with Abel. I know he’s growing, but it’s so much more than age. He’s confident. He’s adventurous. He’s… he’s not afraid to exist exactly as he is. You guys did that.”
I swallow the tightness in my throat, looking down at my hands in my lap.
“I think… I think I just wanted to do right by someone. I see what I missed out on, what I needed as a kid that I didn’t get.
What I did get that I really, really could’ve done without.
It’s not easy, but… you know what I do when it feels really hard?
When he’s having a tough time and all I can think about is how my parents used to treat me when I was having a tough time?
When what I know feels easier than trying to change a pattern?
I take his hand in mine. It’s just so… so fucking small.
It reminds me that he’s just a kid. That he’s still growing and learning.
That I’m the adult, I’m the one who’s supposed to know how to manage all the heavy, hard emotions, and he looks to me.
He learns from me.” The tightness in my chest eases finally, a whoosh of breath that seems to take all the aches with it, giving them to the wind.
“I wanted to do right by him. I thought we could. But I realize now that it’s him who’s done right by us.
Healed us a little each day, and all he did was trust us. ”
I sniff, blinking away the sting in my eyes as Catharine lets her tears fall freely, silently.
“I grew up questioning my worth. Left home so I could find it, and I did. Found a family who loves me for me. But that kid right there, putting all his trust in me? That’s gotta be the most powerful feeling in the world, because nothing has ever, ever made me feel so worthy.”