Chapter Seventeen
I huddled deep into my oversize sweatshirt and flipped up the hood, rethinking my need for macaroni and cheese. Was I supposed to approach him? Ignore him? He was with a friend, and frankly, I looked like a person who’d spent all day alone and then walked six blocks in the wind.
Once again, Emily’s words came to me, reminding me how important it is to encourage others. Others might not need me; but they might. Maybe Davis could use another friendly face. I couldn’t help thinking of the rift between him and his father that Kate and Daisy mentioned at the café. Imagining tension of that magnitude with my parents twisted my heart.
“Emma?” The woman behind the counter lifted a bag of takeout overhead, snapping me back from my internal angst.
I inched forward, moving closer to the bar and Davis with each step.
His voice rose above the noise of the crowd to my ears. “It’s complicated. I don’t know where to go from here.”
I turned to watch him, wondering what, if anything, I could say.
“Have you tried the truth?” The man leaning across the bar asked. He wore a name tag with Clayton on it, confirming my suspicion. “She already knows about the magazine.”
I froze. They weren’t talking about Davis’s father. So, who was the “she” in question? Grace? Had he lied to his aunt about something? Did he have a girlfriend? A vise tightened in my chest. Having a girlfriend would explain why Davis kissed me one minute, as if it meant everything, then ran away the next.
I hated the possibility more than I should. Much more. And I hated myself a little for feeling that way.
But what did the magazine have to do with anything? Did he mean the opportunity for Davis and his work on the manor to be featured in Architectural Digest ?
“I offered to help her move,” Davis said. “Things weren’t supposed to get this complicated.”
I blinked. Stunned. Davis had offered to help me move.
Behind Clayton, the swinging kitchen doors opened and closed with continual traffic, allowing brief glimpses inside. Line cooks worked over steaming grills and stovetops. The appliances held my attention.
The manor’s nearly debilitated stove and problematic water heater came to mind. Not to mention the furnace and allegedly bat-filled fireplace.
Only one of the stove’s burners had worked reliably before I’d fixed the others. It’d baffled me that a previous renter hadn’t complained. Also, Grace had emailed shortly before my arrival to confirm she’d personally given the place an inspection and everything was in working order.
What reason did she have to lie?
Then it dawned on me. I knew Davis’s reason to want me gone. Architectural Digest .
“Order for Emma!”
I snapped back to the moment, taking the final steps to the bar.
Clayton straightened, and his eyes traveled to me as I reached for the bag.
Davis got to his feet in the same heartbeat, eyes wide and lips parted.
I curled my fingers around the takeout. “Thank you.”
“Emma.” Davis barely breathed the word, but I heard it along with everything else I’d missed before now.
My spine stiffened, and I suddenly needed confirmation. “Have you been trying to make me leave the manor?”
His jaw tensed and his expression hardened. He didn’t speak.
I rocked back on my heels, knocked momentarily off balance by the truth in his eyes. “You have?”
He moved forward, hands parted before him, and my world tilted. “I can explain.”
My chin swung left, then right. This was impossible. Wasn’t it? I’d concocted a theory that couldn’t possibly be true. Why was he confirming it?
“I have to go.” I took a play from his book and nearly raced out the door.
I hustled down the sidewalk, clutching the takeout to my chest and waffling between horror and red-hot anger at his audacity.
The night wind blew down my hood and stung my eyes and ears. For the first time in my life, tears didn’t accompany the shock.
I felt unprecedentedly numb.
The first frigid drops of rain fell like bullets from the sky, pelting my hands and stinging my cheeks.
In the distance, thunder rolled.
I swallowed an exhausted moan. What kind of person embarked on a quest for happiness, only to wind up less happy than they’d ever been in their life?
Oh, yeah. Me.
“Emma!” Davis’s voice cracked through the chilly air. “Wait!”
My steps faltered, and I spun wearily to face him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flipping his palms up in surrender. “I just need you to listen.”
I bit my tongue and waited.
A wicked flash of lightning split the sky, and rain began to fall in earnest. A million tiny drops pinged mercilessly against the darkened street and sidewalk; others caught in halos of light around streetlamps. All combined to chill me to the core.
When Davis didn’t speak, I walked away once more.
He jogged past me and stopped, blocking my path. Rivulets of rain swiveled jagged patterns over his forehead, nose, and cheekbones. His guilty, shame-filled eyes pleaded with me while my heart continued to break. “Five minutes,” he begged. “That’s all I need. At least let me drive you home?”
A gust of wind beat the oversize sweatshirt against my torso, and I wrapped both arms around my middle to hold myself together. “No.” The offer and his stalling drove daggers through my heart. He shouldn’t need more time or the right conditions to speak his truth.
“It’s not what you think.”
I tried to step around him, but he opened his arms like a gate. “Wait! Okay. You’re right. It is what you think, but not for whatever reason you’re imagining. Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way.”
“How can you know what I’m thinking?” I asked, hurt and anger ripping through me. “You can read my mind now? Then go on. Take a guess.”
Davis made a low, growling sound of frustration, and I sidestepped him once more. “I never meant to hurt you. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“What then?” I challenged, stopping after only two steps. “Explain it to me, because I cannot understand.”
Again, he fell silent.
This time I moved into his personal space and tipped up my chin to glare. “Were you trying to make my stay miserable? Did you want me to leave? All those times you offered to help me find somewhere else to stay, was it just to get me out of your way?”
He offered a single stiff nod, and the familiar burn of frustration tears stung my eyes.
“All so you could be in a magazine.” I silently thanked the wind and rain for masking the traitorous quake in my voice.
“It’s a huge opportunity.” He raised his palms again. “I was a coward, and I’m sorry. I thought I could make it your choice to leave. It was a shitty thing to do. I know that, but—”
“But?” I choked on a laugh. “There’s a but to that statement?” I shook my head, falling back enough to catch my breath.
“Being featured in that magazine would change everything. It would change my future. Allow me to break away from my dad’s company and finally form my own. A company that saves and restores historic properties instead of leveling them to make room for more condominiums.”
“You could’ve been straight with me,” I said, admiring his plan, hating his execution.
“Grace and I agreed on all the changes. Then you showed up.”
The take-out bag in my hand swung and spun in the wind. I imagined hitting him with it.
“I didn’t want to be the bad guy, but I needed you out of the house if I wanted to get started. I never expected this connection.” He motioned between us, eyes pleading. “I wish you could understand—” He stopped himself again, and my hackles rose impossibly further.
“The only reason I don’t understand is because you’ve never tried to tell me,” I snapped. “Instead, you lied and schemed.”
“I panicked!”
“You pretended to fix things and care about my comfort while intentionally making me miserable. You made sure the stove would give me problems, knowing I had to use it if I planned to stay so long. You probably blew out the pilot light on the hot-water tank. Then you set it to low after claiming to fix it.”
His sheepish look confirmed my accusations.
“Were there ever really bats in the bedroom fireplace, or was that a lie too?”
“There might’ve been a bat,” he said. “At some point.”
I scoffed and tried to get around him.
“Don’t go! Emma, please.”
I stopped. “What about the other night when I nearly froze to death?”
“The system’s old, and you’ve been here full time for two weeks. No one ever stays that long. Running lights, a blow-dryer, the stove—and I saw the space heater hiding behind the door in your room. The fuse box was bound to have a problem eventually.”
I shoved past him. “I wouldn’t have bought the damn space heater if you didn’t keep messing with the furnace! And I left my big blanket with you and Violet in the park that day.”
He turned and kept pace at my side. “I know. I have the blanket in my truck. Also, I didn’t blame your space heater. I understand why you needed it.”
I glared but kept walking.
He raised his palms again in peace. “I’d planned to tell you everything that night. I wanted to confess and sort it all out before things got worse. Then we nearly kissed again, and I freaked out.”
Breath whooshed from my mouth in a cloud of steam against the falling temperature. My steps faltered, and I plowed to a sudden stop. “You keep running away because you know you’re being an ass and lying to me. You keep coming back and playing with my emotions when you know what I came here to do.”
Davis ran a hand through his sopping hair, then over his rain-slicked face. “I’m so sorry. I hate the way things are, but you’re right. You came here to stop looking for love, and I knew we couldn’t come back from this. I had to tell you what I’d done, and I didn’t deserve your forgiveness. We were over before we ever began.”
I bit my trembling lip, gut wrenched from the loss of what might’ve been. “The worst part,” I croaked, no longer caring to hide my emotional overload, “is that none of this had to happen. If you would’ve just told me the whole truth on the night we met, I would’ve moved out instead of settling in, and we’d both be happy right now.”
The weight of a dozen failed relationships settled on my shoulders, and an ugly truth appeared. I’d always blamed my family or my job for ruining my prospects at love. But here, in Amherst with Davis, the only common denominator was me. Things had fallen apart before getting off the ground because I’d wanted a man who lied to my face every day for the sake of his job. The irony was not lost.
“What?” Davis asked, stepping bravely into my personal space. “What are you thinking right now, Emma?”
Spears of icy rain stung my cheeks as I raised my tear-filled eyes to his.
“You want us to be honest,” he said. “Take your own advice and let me have it.”
I think I’m cursed in love, I declared silently. I’ll never have the one thing I’ve always wanted, and this catastrophe of a would-be romance is one more way the universe is telling me to let that dream go. Hot tears rolled over my frozen cheeks. “I was wrong to kiss you that night. You knew it, but I didn’t want it to be true. I came here because I needed the time and space to find happiness on my own. I made a big deal out of that.” And I’d blown it immediately upon arrival. “I caused ripples in my family. Had a huge fight with my pregnant sister. Forced my parents, who want to retire, to work full time again. All so I could forge a new path for myself—and I turned my back on all of it the moment I saw you.”
Something darkened in his gaze. “What are you saying? You really think what we have is a mistake?”
“What do we have?” I asked. It surely wasn’t romance. Not the kind I wanted. Were we friends? My friends didn’t lie, then keep up the ruse.
My heart ached so deeply I pressed a hand against my chest, hoping not to collapse. I’d caused this mess—unintentionally, maybe—but I was the one on a mission. If I’d stuck to my goal, everything would be completely different.
Davis lifted a hand in my direction but stopped short of touching me. He glanced away, then back, as he let his arm drop. A measure of hope lifted his brow. “Maybe we can start over. Forget this happened and do things the way we should’ve from the beginning.”
I swallowed a sob at his offer. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Thunder boomed, and lightning struck. The fine hairs on my arm stood at attention.
I didn’t blame him for avoiding the ugly truth. The foundation we’d built upon was quicksand. One part his willful deceit and one part the abandonment of my goal. A recipe for disaster.
“Emma,” Davis pleaded, but no words followed.
We’d already said them all.
I squared my shoulders as the pain gave way to numbness. “Goodbye, Davis.”
I turned away, allowing the sobs to come and moving at double time back to the manor. “Do not follow me.”
This time he obeyed.