30. Ivy #2
“That’s not true!”
“It took years for me to figure it out. I thought I was being brave, encouraging you, pushing you, but who knew I was doing all that for a man that had long since decided my voice was just background noise? All that mattered was your revenge and now that Giovanni is dead, everything’s going well for you. I just got the memo late.”
Even though my insides are completely shattered, and a deep abyss has since formed, in this moment I want to be clear with the green-eyed boy who haunts my soul.
“I deserve better,” I start.
Emmett’s eyes narrow with confusion, as if what I’m saying is a given. “Of course you do, Angel. I know that.”
“No, you obviously don’t…” I croak, feeling an urgent need to burst into tears, but I hold steady.
“And that’s my fault, and I want to apologize to you like I should’ve done a long time ago.
If I had, maybe everything that happened, all the manipulation, calculation, chaos, unwanted sympathy, and pain… ”
“Angel—”
“I’m sorry!” I quickly say, cutting him off.
“I’m truly, sincerely, and deeply sorry, Emmett.
For my stupid feelings that inconvenienced the both of us.
For my stupidity that caused a mess. I’m so sorry for being so desperate in my need and desire for you.
For making it so damn obvious that I wanted you to love me, but most of all, I’m sorry for making your life hell when I hovered and lingered around you after you clearly told me you don’t feel anything for me.
I should’ve kept my heart to myself, maybe then I would’ve let go quicker, healed better. ”
Emmett has never looked at me the way he’s looking at me now, as if he’s lost, angry, uncertain… and afraid.
“No, Angel, please listen?—”
“No, you listen to me. I think I never quite articulated myself, which is why I so easily got trapped here,” I tell him, as the beginnings of a potent sorrow rise up in me. “Do you remember that rainy day in the park when we made that unbreakable agreement?”
He jerks his head in a nod.
“I asked you for something.”
A sad, bitter smile grows on my face as I recall the time I tearfully begged Emmett not to abandon me. Judging from the way he looks at me now, his arms flexing around me, I know he remembers too.
“I want to tell you that it’s okay now. I no longer need you to do me that favor.
” I take a deep breath then continue. “See, I’m a person that has always been desperate to be loved.
To be kept forever. To feel secure. To know that I’m so loved that I won’t be abandoned at any second.
I believed the problem was me. That I was easily forgettable and could be left behind without any hesitation.
I was too stupid, too sick, too mediocre, too unsightly, too… ”
“Stop. Talking!”
The two words are gritted out with such booming venom that if he wasn’t holding me, I would’ve jumped.
“Shut your poisonous mouth right fucking now!” Emmett seethes. “You’re fucking none of that!”
“Maybe,” I whisper brokenly. “But it was real to me. I believed it and that’s the thing about self-belief based on trauma, your entire behavior shifts to defend against that truth, so with you I gave it my all.”
In this moment, I bare my entire heart and soul to this monster.
I rip open all the hastily stitched wounds and cracks and bleed out.
“I didn’t mind you knowing that I was in love with you.
I wanted you to always know. Because for me I thought if you knew, then you’d love me back.
But someone who loves you, like truly loves you, doesn’t pick and choose when they want to be in your life.
Even if they struggle, they do their best to stay present for the ones they love.
I’ve seen it several times when I interned at Grammy’s hospital.
Even sick and dying, they would do anything and everything for their loved one. ”
I stop, hating the way my voice has grown hoarse and low with tremendous sadness.
“Loving you is not something I wanted the world to know, but having you know was everything to me. I hoped you would want to live for me. To live and love with me.”
Emmett hooded gaze only intensifies but still refusing to let me go.
“I just didn’t know that you truly didn’t see me as valuable enough for that, and so it didn’t take long for me to start breaking apart,” I whisper.
“It killed me when I saw you kiss Astraea back then, but I still stupidly hoped that you were mine because of the way you silently took care of me, watched over me, talked to me.”
“Who else would I talk to but you?” he suddenly asks, his voice low and gruff. “Who else has my attention, my focus, but you, Ivy?”
I shake my head as if physically warding off the honey trap in his words.
“Yes, because you needed to keep me in line and close enough in case I remembered the night your mother disappeared. I get it now, but I still can’t pretend that I didn’t fall for you.”
“I don’t want you to pretend.”
I stop breathing.
Aches, pains, agony… that’s all unrequited love is at its core.
It’s not cute, nor is it inspiring.
It’s nothing but a brave defeat that hurts like hell.
I hold Emmett’s dark gaze.
“I refuse to be in this warped vortex with you,” I tell him, my voice cracking, but this is the only way now.
“What?”
I hold his gaze, letting him see everything I’ve tried and failed to keep masked.
“Emmett, I wanted to die when we left Westbrook Blues because it physically ached to be so far away from you, but I didn’t dare throw my life away, do you know why?”
His jaw clenches tight, enhancing his incredibly chiseled jawline. The bone structure of this man has made me imagine kissing him countless times. Now, no more.
“I had attached myself so intensely to you in a way that was unhealthy because I believed you loved me too. I held on to you because I naively believed you were never far from me. It’s just that in the end, I still died.”
And this right here is the truth I’m just realizing.
“When you finally told me you’ll never feel for me what I felt for you, I died, and since then, I’ve not been alive at all. I’m a walking casket, not thinking, not cautious, pretending to be brave but waiting for destruction. Hating you, but still waiting to be rescued… I died loving you.”
With that, Emmett’s hold on me starts weakening, the look in his eyes completely broken as he stares down at me.
“You wanted to punish me,” I croak. “I think you did a spectacular job. You destroyed me so effectively that there’s nothing else left.
You won, so please, let me go, Emmett Easton.
I’ll no longer appear in front of you again.
I won’t ever bother you nor will I cause you distress.
I can’t take any more. This unrequited love ends here and now.
“One day, someone will love me, not in half measures or imprisoning me through faux acts of affection, but today is the day you and I part. Now, let me go.”
“No.”
The coarsely worded syllable hits me in the gut like a punch.
“What do you mean no?” I demand.
“No means no, Angel. This doesn’t end, ever. Not even after I’m gone!”
I can’t believe he just…
“Did you not hear what I said just now?”
“I did,” he says with a shrug. “And all I heard is that you’re still deeply in love with me. It can’t be helped.”
“Am I joke to you?”
He holds me even tighter, his hooded gaze on my lips, then my eyes.
“You, Ivy Marie Easton, you’re my evidence that God exists and that He loves me.”
With that, he kisses me… as if to shut me up.
I kiss him back just as fervently, kissing my husband for the last, pouring everything I have into the kiss.
I wanted him to tell me… but he’ll never tell me what I want to hear.
“You don’t get to seduce me into submission. Not anymore,” I whisper, pulling away. “I want you to sign those papers. As for a baby, one day I’ll be a mother. I don’t need you.”
With that, I pull away and leave the room, knowing I won’t be able to leave tonight, so I go check on Scar and stay in her room the entire night.
The next few days, there’s a somber atmosphere in the residence.
Giovanni’s murder put everyone on high alert… but the raging, livid head of the Family has everyone even more unsettled.
At one point, it was so silent in a room full of maybe eighty men, all of them tense, watching the man who sat behind a desk, cursing them out for being bad at their jobs.
Each night until Giovanni’s half-hearted funeral, I stay in Scar’s suite.
If she senses the trouble between her cousin and me, she doesn’t point it out.
After the funeral, I want to leave but Emmett suddenly shows up, banging on Scar’s bedroom door in the wee hours of the morning, demanding that I come out.
“What did you do to him?” Scar asks, stunned. “He sounds drunk.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You better go out there or he’ll break that door down.”
“I don’t care. He can do his worst.” I flip over and fall into a restless sleep.
The next morning, my lawyer comes to pick me up, much to the shock of Emmett’s grandfather, Scar and all the men standing guard.
“Ivy Marie.”
“Grandpa.” I crouch down to meet him eye level. “I’m so sorry that I’m missing your birthday. I left you a gift, though. I hope you like it.”
He stares at me with a mellow gaze. “You’re leaving?”
“I miss my grandmother.”
“Tell her I said hello.”
“Yes, sir, and thank you for everything.”
Unable to help myself, I hug the sweet old man who has known more loss than most but still remains strong. “Please watch over him for me. I give him back to you.”
Getting up, I hug Scar for a long time. She wasn’t close to her father, but he was still her father and now he’s no more.
“I have a jet and a yacht. Let’s go to Japan next!”
“I’m down!” she laughs.
With one last look at them both, and the familiar men that were with Scar and I when we were hopping all over the world, I rush to where George waits for me, with his own trail of intimidating men.