33. Ivy #2
“How could I not?” he says simply. “Someone like me, my background, my bloodline, I don’t deserve the light that is you.
So that Christmas when you confessed you liked me, my God, I immediately went to panic mode and then disbelief.
My first instinct was to tell you everything I felt and more, but all I could calculate where my limited heartbeats and how precious you were to me, that I told you to find someone else even though I loathed that idea right away. ”
Images of that Christmas flash in my head again and I wince.
“It hurt,” I tell him. “It hurt so bad.”
“God, Ivy,” he says gruffly. “I’m sorry that you loved me.”
“What?” I pull back, shocked.
“It’s true,” he says, looking defeated like someone who had walked through blizzards, storms, hurricanes and all sorts of danger just to get here. “If you hadn’t loved me, you’d have had a happier life.”
“Don’t say that!” I mutter. “If I hadn’t loved you, I would’ve died the day we met.”
Emmett’s nostrils flares as if coming to life.
“You saved my life that night, twice! You protected me for years! You watched over me! You came for me when no one did! You were my first friend after Gramps passed. You celebrated my real birthdays when my grandmother and brother continued with my mother’s lie.
You allowed me in your personal space and let me be without reprimand.
You held my hand when I was lonely. You walked behind me when I felt abandoned.
You learned how to use an inhaler after my asthma got worse.
Hell, just recently I spent some serious bands, but you didn’t even blink! ”
“Why would I? It was just a nine hundred million dollars,” he shrugs.
I gape at my husband. “Scar told me you froze her cards for a whole year after she spent a hundred million.”
“That vicious viper was only sixteen,” he grumbles, annoyed. “She needed a lesson in humility.”
“Wow, what a father you’ll make.”
“Well, yes. Would you like some senseless, entitled little humans running around this world, spending money like water with no regard to you or me?” Emmett rolls his eyes. “I think not. They better learn to have some sense with that first dollar they get as pocket money or they’re out!”
“Just like that?”
“Look me in the eye and reevaluate my seriousness.”
I burst out laughing, only to wince from the pain from the bullet wound. Emmett glares at me and tells me to be careful and stay still.
“So I should be out too, then? I even put in an order for a helicopter.”
“It was delivered to the estate here in Westbrook Blues a week ago,” he replies gruffly. “So far you own three high rise apartment buildings, a yacht, a helicopter, a jet. Let’s not forget your publishing business. Are you planning on more purchases, my lady?”
“Hmm, Scar and I were discussing on maybe getting a?—”
“No!” he cuts me off. “I’m going to punish that girl again. She’s such a bad influence.”
“And if it was my idea?” I ask while chuckling.
“You’re my wife. Everything is yours. It has been since we were kids.”
“Wait, what?”
Emmett looks at me silently.
“For me, it’s a daily surprise when I woke up each morning but I vowed to myself that if I do wake, then my other vow of protecting you would only continue so I worked. The law degree was so that I would know for myself where all the loopholes are in case you faced some legal troubles.”
“Uh, from my illegal computer activities?” I mutter, beyond embarrassed.
“Among other things,” he says like a gentleman, but I hear the smile in his voice. “I also wanted to make sure that when I passed, no one would manipulate my will by cheating you out of your inheritance in anyway.”
I freeze in his arms, but my heart keeps thundering in my chest.
“Your will?” I croak. “When did you draft it?”
“The day after you disappeared from Westbrook Blues.”
Oh God.
“Emmett…” I trail off, the pain dragging me beyond its ravaging depths.
“I loved you then. I wanted to give you the world, but I was dying. The least I could do was make sure you and your children, and your grandchildren to the nineth generation would not want for anything.”
This is all too much.
His generosity is like a flood, great and immense, but the grief and loss are even more inundating than anything else.
“You were getting ready to leave me even then?” I whisper brokenly.
He’s silent for a while. “We were just kids, and I was angry and heartbroken. Because when you want someone as badly as I needed you but knew I had no chance at all without hurting you, the anguish is enough to kill you.”
I feel him wipe my tears, but I hug his midsection even tighter than before, wanting to fuse myself to him.
“So, you were suffering silently all by yourself just to spare me the grief of your death?” I grumble, the agony piercing my bones slowly.
“That’s not how it works. That’s not how love works!
I’m also dying, but that doesn’t mean giving up and shutting myself away when I could otherwise use the small time I have left to love you deeply, baby. ”
I feel him tremble, but he doesn’t respond, almost as if he can’t speak. When he does, I fall apart.
“I didn’t know how to love you up close when I believed my existence was a curse.”
The sobs come crashing into me without warning.
“It’s you, Ivy,” he whispers hoarsely. “You’re the blessing. You’re the miracle. You’re literally my evidence that God exists. It was never about death when I called you Angel. It’s that you are literally my angel. So, if you’re gone, why should I bother? For me, that’s how it works.”
It’s too much. Way too much and I can’t seem to be able to take it as I sob in his arms.
“Money and words won’t make up for the pain I caused you in falling for me when all I did was reject you but Angel, as we fell over that cliff that cold ass night, I already knew I was dying. And I knew I had to honor the two conflicting demands I had,”
“What demands?”
“That night we met, you asked me what dying feels like,” he starts.
“And you said I should find out for myself.”
“What else did I say?”
“You said dying is no big deal.” I try to swallow around the ball of rusty nails stuck in my throat. “Not when you have someone.”
Our gazes are so locked in that I wouldn’t notice if the world fell apart in this moment and all was lost.
I just hold on to him, like he’s my lifeline.
“Yes,” he says softly. “It’s what you said after that destroyed me.”
I think I stop breathing.
“You said you didn’t have someone, not anymore,” Emmett says. “You broke me with those words that night, two conflicting demands rose up from my fucked-up heart.”
He raises a finger and starts speaking. “One. I needed to be your someone.”
I gasp, a shiver going down my spine.
“I needed to be your only one. I thought damned be to the one who was before that you had mentioned because that someone hurt you to the point where you wanted to kill yourself to atone for it, but I also felt relieved because my rightful position in your life as your someone, whether you wanted me or not, was now mine to take.”
My throat starts burning as a telltale sign of tears pricks my eyes.
“And second, I needed to make sure that I never see you regretful, broken, and burdened with grief ever again because in that moment, the look in your eyes resembled what I had seen before in my mother’s eyes, and I failed her.”
Jesus Christ.
“My mother grieved for me day in, and day out. She knew my days were numbered. She knew I was dying, and she fought like hell to find me all the doctors that I watched her wane from a vibrant, powerful woman to a shell of a person. I didn’t want that for you.”
I’m breathing erratically.
Emmett is watching me steadily, confessing words that I have never thought but also a dredge of panic starts rising up in me.
“It was too late, though. I was already in love, but when faced with two decisions in life, to be your someone or to protect you, one will always outweigh the other and when it comes to you, the second was more important to me, so I sacrificed my love for you, buried it deep, cast it away so far to the ends of the earth that I denied its existence.
“I denied the hold you have over my heart. I chose to go to war with myself every single day in order to honor the second demand of protecting you, but in doing so, I hurt you.”
At this point, I’m beyond crying… I’m downright sobbing.
Fast, hot torrents of tears fall down my cheeks relentlessly.
My throat is burning and itchy.
My palms are sweaty.
Every inch of me is misaligned and out of sorts because I had no defense for this. I wasn’t ready for this.
Emmett hugs me to him. We’re both in hospital gowns, the perfect picture of unfit and unsuitable.
Unrequited love is a mess. I don’t recommend it.
But it’s even worse to be a coward that never confesses how they feel, even if it’s love.
Keeping your pain inside, suffering alone is not a warrior mentality. It’s a broken soul mentality.
So what if you don’t have friends? Go pay a freaking therapist and talk.
So what if you have anxiety? Close your door and pour out you heart to God.
Unrequited anything sucks, yes, but being a coward sucks worse!
Emmett picks up my left hand and then he gently starts sliding my ring back.
“Ivy Marie Easton, there are going to be horrible days ahead, there are going to beautiful days like a dream, but through the extremes, the in-betweens and anything else, I’ll spend the rest of my life with you,” he says seriously.
“I know I did you so much harm, but I just can’t let you go.
I love you and I love our baby. I want this baby.
Actually, I already love him or her. I want to give life a chance for real this time.
I want to be real and open. If you’ll have me, I would love to be part of your lives without bulldozing my way in because I will, Angel, if you don’t answer me. ”
“Hmm, how about we first see how good you are at making me fall in love with you first?” I ask slyly. “I want yearning, I want drama. I want courtship.”
“I’m yearning right now!”
“More, please!”
He looks at me suspiciously. “What are those fictional men you love so much in those books doing now?!”
I throw my head back and laugh but he swoops down and kisses ne gently, heart-wrenchingly, flipping me back to my senses.
Emmett swoops in and kisses me hard, his tongue sliding into my mouth.
“God, I love it when you laugh,” he says huskily, then he leans back, holding my gaze.
“Anything you want, I’ll do it. I can’t deny you anything, Mrs. Easton.
I’ll yearn, I’ll beg, I’ll seduce, I’ll cherish, and I’ll love you for as long as I’m able.
Even beyond that because these heartbeats are powered by you. ”