Chapter 29
Emory
Emory’s phone buzzed on the corner of the bench as she poured two mugs of tea. In a third—plastic—cup, she added a dash of hot water to Clayton’s milk. After her own tea had brewed, she dropped the bag into his drink for a short second before pulling it out and dropping it into the sink.
“Do you have biscuits too?” Mya called out from the living room.
Emory held back her smile as she picked up the packet she’d already pulled from the pantry. There was nothing Mya loved more than dipping a crumbling biscuit into her tea, and even though Emory found the thought gag-worthy, she wasn’t about to deny her friend.
With the lid snapped onto Clayton’s sippy cup, she tucked it and the biscuits under her arm and balanced a mug in each hand. Her phone still vibrated along the counter, but she was ignoring it for a reason.
It was, more than likely, Jaxon. Or his property manager.
There were only two more weeks left on her lease, and since she was yet to formally acknowledge that she’d be moving out, she imagined someone was calling to confirm she would, in fact, have the property vacated on time.
She still hadn’t been back since evacuating to Byron’s for the flood, and the more time passed, the less she cared.
There wasn’t anything of worth left there anyway.
Jaxon could deal with all their old furniture.
The number flashing on the screen caught her eye, though.
It was, as it turned out, neither Jaxon nor the number she had saved for the property manager.
It wasn’t even the café, calling to ask her if she could come back to work.
She rushed the hot drinks to the coffee table, nearly spilling half the liquid over the side.
There was only one other person she could think of. Well, a few people really, but all with the same intent. A warm drop of hope spread behind her eyes, and the cool sludge of dread bubbled in her stomach.
“You okay?” Mya called as she raced back to the kitchen.
Emory didn’t answer. She lunged for the phone, connecting the call and bringing it to her ear with a deep breath. Her heart raced, but she stood as tall as she could and forced a fraction of composure through her voice.
“Hello, Emory speaking.”
Shit, so much for composure. Instead of the professional flair she had been hoping for, her voice had come out all high-pitched and breathy.
“Hi, Emory, my name is Ashleigh. I’m calling from Sydscape Media. Is now a good time?”
Holy even more shit.
Sydscape Media was Emory’s number one preference for a marketing position.
Applying for their highly exclusive graduate program had been Emory’s stretch goal.
The application she sent was purely so she wouldn’t spend the rest of her career wondering ‘what if’.
She never expected to hear from them, let alone so soon.
She nearly dropped the phone, fumbling it between her fingers. There was no time to falter, though, so she pushed her shoulders as far back as she could and turned away from Mya’s prying eyes.
“Hi, Ashleigh, yes, of course. How are you?”
The conversation was brief. Ashleigh mentioned being impressed with Emory’s determination and persistence with her course, given her circumstances, and gave her a breakdown of how the graduate program ran.
Emory managed to talk herself up without being at all cocky or condescending.
All traces of her imposter syndrome were kept firmly at bay.
There was a natural rapport between the women that helped the conversation flow well.
Overall, Emory was excited, and hopeful.
“It would be great to chat with you more about the position and your skills,” Ashleigh said as the conversation hit a natural pause. “Can we set up a formal interview later in the week? Maybe a video call while you’re still out in Gardner Creek?”
“That would be great. Thursday?” Emory held her breath. This felt too good to be true.
“Thursday is perfect. Does mid-morning suit? I’ll email you with an invite and some extra details.”
Shit, she’d only said Thursday because it was the first weekday that came to mind and all the research Emory had done on interview skills said that it was better to offer a date for the next step than leave it too open.
But Thursday was only two days away. She had a lot of work to do if she wanted to impress Ashleigh in a formal interview.
Emory fumbled her way through a pleasant goodbye, suddenly flustered and increasingly overwhelmed at the gravity of what having secured an interview with Sydscape meant.
Hanging up the phone a moment later, Emory sank the back of her legs against the bench and dropped her hands to her knees.
She should be happy, right? Ecstatic even.
So, what was this squeezing feeling inside her chest? It made it hurt to breathe, and she couldn’t stand up straight. She sank to the floor, sucking in short gasps of air through the pain.
A hand dropped to her shoulder. The ends of Mya’s green sundress tickled Emory’s cheek, and she crouched down. Emory instantly fell into her, curling into Mya’s open arms.
“What happened?” Mya whispered.
“Sydscape wants an interview with me,” Emory choked out through sobs.
God, it wasn’t even a job offer, and she was like this. The pain of even trying hurt so deeply, she wasn’t sure she could continue.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Mya swore under her breath. “I thought someone had died.”
“It feels like someone died. And it’s just an interview.”
“Like someone good died, or someone bad?”
Emory swiped her cheeks with the back of her hands and shifted out of her friend’s arms. “What kind of question is that?”
“The kind that makes you stop crying?” Mya stood from her squat and grabbed the two mugs of tea she’d brought over but left on the bench. She slid her back down the kitchen cabinet and passed one drink to Emory. Cradling the cup in both hands, she took a sip and stretched her legs in front of her.
Emory tracked each movement, wondering if she really was acting that intensely. This wasn’t the kind of issue that warranted a kitchen floor conversation. Was it?
She supposed maybe it was. It felt like her life was beginning and ending all at once, right when it was just starting to get good again.
“I should have known that falling into bed with Byron was going to end like this.”
“Who said it’s ending?”
“Ah, the interview? The fact that I need to move to the city to get the job of my dreams? The fact that I can’t stay here, even though it breaks my heart to acknowledge that.”
All her resolve from the day before had crumbled.
Yes, she loved Byron and didn’t want to leave him.
But she couldn’t see any way in which the two of them could be together.
He loved the farm, he loved the town, and she didn’t.
They were too different, no matter how perfectly their bodies fit together.
Whatever it was that floated between them was always going to be finite.
She knew that going in, she’d just let herself get too swept away by it to care.
Her heart had fallen, utterly and completely, into the deepest murky waters of the flood. And now she was left, crying on the kitchen floor because achieving her dreams was going to break it.
She had to, though. She had to break her heart, and Byron’s. He’d be okay, eventually. He had Tucker here, and now Jaxon was back in town, Byron had a chance to make things right between them again. She wasn’t going to be the thing that kept them apart any more than she already had been.
“Can I ask you something?” Mya’s voice was tender, and she nudged her toe against Emory’s leg.
Emory didn’t think she had the stamina for words. Not when everything was falling to pieces around her. She looked up, placing her mug of cooling tea on the floor. Her cheeks were wet again, but this time she let the tears spread. Everything else was a mess, her face might as well join the crowd.
“Does Byron feel this way, too?”
Of course he did. Emory hugged herself, wanting to believe it. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? Sure, it had been in a fit of protective rage, and he’d said it to Jaxon, not to her, but it still meant the same. Didn’t it?
Oh, God, she wasn’t sure. What if his words had been a lot more general than she had interpreted them?
What if he simply meant that he cared for her, the same way he cared for Clayton?
Not that he love loved her. She had to believe all the times he said he didn’t want her to go, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised that all of those things had always been said in the heat of a very lust-filled moment.
Neither of them had said as much when they were fully clothed. Emory wondered why that was. Why Byron was hiding his true feelings behind their wild sexual encounters. Why she was.
“I think,” Mya answered when Emory didn’t, “that if you don’t know the answer to that question easily, you need to give this interview everything you’ve got. Get all your options clear and on the table, and maybe then, the right choice will become more obvious.”
Yeah, Emory could hope so. But with her back-and-forth emotions over the past week, she just wasn’t sure.
It was as though every time Byron was near, desire flooded her body faster than the water had flooded the fields.
It took over every part of her until there was no room for anything else.
She couldn’t think straight in this house.
It didn’t matter how far Clayton’s toys had spread, or that his television shows were constantly streaming nursery rhymes through the house.
It didn’t matter that she’d taken over the study or that she had her own bedroom, even though she hadn’t slept in that bed for a week now.
It was still Byron’s house, and he was everywhere even when he wasn’t.
Picking up her tea, she gulped down the now lukewarm drink. It did little to ease the scratching in her throat, and nothing to reduce the pressure on her chest.
“I don’t think there is a right choice,” she admitted when her mug was empty.
“At least not one that can be made while I’m staying here.
Any time I come even close to realising that I should still work on my dreams, Byron swoops in and makes us breakfast or stands up for me or fucks me senseless.
All the rational thoughts leave my brain until all that’s left is this never-ending need for him. ”
Clayton’s clapping at the end of a song echoed through to the kitchen.
Maybe she should take him back to the cottage.
Take the couple of weeks left on the lease to properly pack away all the furniture and try to return to something that resembled normal life.
Although she had no idea what normal looked like anymore.
Her phone pinged in her lap. The email from Ashleigh, already. The firm’s eagerness was exhilarating, and surely a good sign.
The tips of Emory’s fingers tingled as she opened the email and read through the invite.
The first two paragraphs outlined the position, and that Ashleigh was the hiring manager and graduate coordinator.
Most of the information was exactly what Emory had expected.
The job was, on paper, made for her and her dreams. She wouldn’t just be some lackey of a graduate, making coffee and taking minutes.
Sydscape gave their newest employees a small portfolio of clients, and they were mentored through the year as they managed everything in the account.
It was the proper chance at utilising her marketing degree that she’d been hoping for all along.
It just really sucked that it would cost Emory her heart.