Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Keep pushing. Keep going.
Emma’s trainers hit the grass with a steady rhythm as she rounded the curve of the sports field for the fifteenth time. Her lungs burned, her thighs ached, and her vision blurred slightly from the wind and the sting of unshed tears. But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.
Running was the only thing that dulled the noise in her head.
Running was the only thing that stopped her from drowning in the chaos of her thoughts.
Because this last week had truly stripped her raw.
She’d done what she told herself she must do.
She’d shown up, taught Freya, and kept her distance. Professional and controlled.
She didn’t go out of her way to speak to Freya outside of lessons, and every time she saw her in the corridor or heading her way, Emma did anything she could to make herself invisible.
A conversation with another teacher. A stack of exercise books that suddenly needed sorting.
Anything to stop the ache in her chest from pulling her under.
Because she was terrified.
Terrified of what it meant if she let herself lean into her emotions and her feelings on it all, and terrified of what it meant if she didn’t.
How can you lose someone you don’t even know?
Emma’s breath caught in her throat at that thought. She’d asked herself that question a hundred times, but tonight, it hit differently. It seemed…heavier.
The more she saw Freya, the more impossible it became to ignore the resemblance.
It was in the shape of her face. The tilt of her chin.
Her hair. Her eyes. God, those eyes. They were the same shade Emma saw in the mirror every morning.
And her mannerisms…the subtle quirks that should have been meaningless.
The way Freya tucked her hair behind her ear when she was nervous, or the way she chewed her thumbnail when she was lost in thought.
It was like looking at a younger, slightly altered version of herself, and it made Emma’s skin prickle every single time.
Surely that had to mean something?
She slowed to a stop and bent at the hip, her hands braced on her knees as her body trembled with exertion and emotion. The cold air caught in her lungs, sharp and stinging, as she dragged in breath after breath. Fuck, it hurt just to breathe these days.
Still…
Why now? Why her? Why this girl?
Whenever she let her guard down and allowed Freya into her mind even for a second, Emma unravelled.
She thought she’d made peace with the past and with leaving her family behind, but then Freya had walked into her office, told Emma what she had never expected to hear, and every suppressed memory clawed its way to the surface.
She’d even considered calling her mum again a few days ago.
The thought alone made her laugh now, but it had almost happened.
Thankfully, Emma had realised what she was thinking of doing before actually taking that step, because what could Jane possibly offer her?
A few vague words? A brush-off? Another layer of confusion?
Still, Emma had come so close to dialling her number.
Vanessa had tried to find the answers Emma so desperately needed. She’d quietly looked into what the school policies could potentially say about relationships between teachers and students who turned out to be related. She had tried to find anything that could help. But she’d come up blank.
Emma knew what the next step was. To go to the school board and ask for guidance. But doing that meant confessing why. It meant naming Freya. It meant risking everything, and she didn’t know if she could do that.
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her shorts. She didn’t need to check who was calling her. It would be Vanessa. It was always Vanessa, checking in, holding space, but never pushing too hard.
Emma fumbled it out of her pocket and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Emma, where are you?” Vanessa’s voice was calm yet laced with concern.
“I was just running. I’m still at school. I’ll be home in the next hour.”
Emma closed her eyes as the guilt settled in. She didn’t want to keep skirting the truth. She couldn’t keep doing it. Spinning in that never-ending loop of avoidance and fear. And definitely not with Vanessa. Her wife deserved honesty.
Sooner or later, she’d have to face it.
“It’s almost dark,” Vanessa said. “I thought maybe something had happened.”
“No, babe. I’m fine.” Emma swallowed. “Do you need me to pick anything up on the way home?”
“No. We have everything.” Vanessa paused, and then came the all too familiar sigh Emma was often faced with from her wife lately. “Baby, are you okay? Do you need to talk?”
Do you need to talk?
Emma hesitated. Of course she needed to talk, but the words seemed too big…
too fragile to say out loud. She wanted to tell Vanessa that she wasn’t okay.
She wanted to fall into Vanessa’s arms and cry until the hurt was gone.
But what was the point? Nothing had changed.
She was still stuck at a crossroads, afraid to take a step in either direction.
“I’m okay,” Emma said, her voice cracking slightly and betraying her. “But thanks for always checking on me.”
“You’re my wife. It’s my job to check on you.”
And Vanessa meant that. Emma could hear it in every syllable, every breath.
Vanessa wasn’t going anywhere. She never had.
Through the chaos, the confusion, the ache of what-ifs, she’d been Emma’s constant.
They’d always been a steady presence in one another’s storms. That wasn’t going to change now.
Emma smiled at Vanessa’s words, clutching the phone a little tighter as her breath evened out. “I’ll be home soon. I promise.”
“I’m here when you’re ready,” Vanessa replied. “No pressure. Just…don’t shut me out completely, okay?”
“I won’t,” Emma said, though she wasn’t sure if it was the truth. It seemed easier to shut people out at the moment. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
Emma hung up, slipped her phone back into her pocket, and dropped down onto the grass, her knees drawn to her chest. She’d run herself to the edge just to avoid the ache inside of her.
The ache that seemed to pulse and intensify every time she saw Freya’s name on a register or passed her in the corridor and pretended not to notice.
It was killing her.
The pretending and the absence of words.
The distance between two people who were meant to be something more.
Emma picked at a blade of grass and twisted it between her fingers.
She didn’t want to mess this up. She’d already spent years pretending the family she was born into didn’t exist. But now she’d found something good, something real, and she didn’t know how to deal with the potential of losing it before she’d even had a moment to enjoy it.
She closed her eyes and tried to picture a world where things were simple.
Where she could take Freya out for dinner with Vanessa.
Where it was okay to ask her about school and friends and what books she liked to read.
Where she could look at her and not feel guilty for missing the first twelve years of her life.
But life wasn’t simple. Not for them.
She pushed up off the grass, dusted herself down, and gathered herself for the walk back to her car. She’d grab a quick shower at home and hold Vanessa close for a while. That, at least, was something she could count on. The comfort. The warmth. The space to just breathe.
Vanessa heard the front door click shut just after seven.
She’d been upstairs for the past half an hour, half-reading a book she wasn’t retaining a single word of, her thoughts too preoccupied with Emma.
Something had shifted lately. Not between them, and not in a way that Vanessa worried about her marriage, but within Emma herself.
Vanessa could feel it each time Emma stepped through the door.
The tension in her jaw, the silence that lingered too long between her responses, the way her arms hung heavy by her sides as though she didn’t know what to do with them anymore.
She listened as her wife moved around the kitchen.
She heard the fridge open and close, followed by the sound of Emma’s water bottle being filled, then the click of the kettle.
Vanessa narrowed her eyes when the stairs creaked, but that’s all it had been.
A creak. Nothing more. Emma wasn’t coming up yet.
Vanessa stood and slid her book onto the bedside table. She crossed the room to the dresser, her fingers finding the familiar leather handcuffs she hadn’t used in a while. Not because she hadn’t wanted to, but because Emma had needed gentleness, not structure. Not Madam.
Until now.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her expression was calm, but there was a heat behind her eyes she didn’t bother hiding. She held the handcuffs at her side and let them dangle from her fingers.
“Emma?” she called softly through the open bedroom door. “Come upstairs.”
There was a pause, just long enough for Vanessa to wonder if Emma was hesitating, then the stairs creaked again, and eventually, Emma came into view. Vanessa said nothing at first. She let Emma take her in instead. The robe she’d slipped into, black silk tied at her waist, her legs bare beneath.
Emma stilled in the doorway, her eyes darting to the handcuffs Vanessa held, her chest rising and falling slightly faster than before. “It’s, uh…” Emma cleared her throat. “H-have I done something I shouldn’t have?”
Ah. Emma was assuming that Madam only came out to play if Emma had done something to rile her up. Tonight, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Come here.” Vanessa held the cuffs up. “Now, Emma.”
Emma stepped into the bedroom and bowed her head. She didn’t need to ask, and she didn’t need clarification. The shift between Vanessa and Madam was something they both felt on a different level.