Chapter 38
Emerson~
I stared in the mirror, my heart beating rapidly inside my chest. Despite the fact that Ramsey had already made the phone calls necessary to get me back into Windsor, now that he was no longer inside me, distracting me, self-doubt was beginning to make an appearance again.
When I had arrived at Windsor yesterday, Ramsey had been the priority; he’d been my main focus. I hadn’t been worried about the other students, their opinions, or anything else. I’d shown up there to challenge all of Ramsey’s claims, and when he’d gotten down on his knees, nothing else had mattered at that moment. No one and nothing else had mattered, and Ramsey had kept me in that bubble of bliss all night long.
However, now that the sun was up and reality had risen with it, I wasn’t sure how my first day back at Windsor was going to go. It wasn’t even that I was embarrassed or scared, because I wasn’t. My father murdering my mother had given me a measure of strength that no eighteen-year-old girl should ever possess, so it wasn’t that. I wasn’t weak, nor did I care what other people thought.
Nevertheless, while I didn’t have any reservations about showing up to school with Ramsey this morning, I still had no idea how I was going to handle what that meant, and I also had no idea how Ramsey was going to handle it. He was unstable on a good day, and so it was possible that the littlest thing might set him off today if I began to struggle with what I was feeling.
There was also Liam and Deke to take into consideration. While Roselyn was thrilled that I was back and had been blowing up my phone all morning, I hadn’t forgotten about how Liam and Deke had played a role in what had happened to me that morning. Sure, they hadn’t done anything other than support their best friend, but it was impossible to think of that morning and not think of them also.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if they were sorry for what they’d done. After all, they’d only done what they always did, and that was stand by Ramsey’s side. Yeah, Liam had struggled to look me in the eye, but not Deke. Whatever darkness lurked inside Deke Marlow, I doubted that he felt remorse for much of anything.
“You ready?”
I turned to see Ramsey leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes regarding me closely, and I knew that this relationship would be one that we’d never be able to hide from. Ramsey Reed met all challenges head-on, and since I was the same way, I knew that our relationship was never going to be an easy one, but I was okay with that. I was used to having a hard life, so this wouldn’t be anything new.
“Are you?”
He arched a brow, a smirk dancing across his lips. “Aren’t I always?”
I straightened as I turned to face him. “Yesterday doesn’t change anything at school, Ramsey. Those people are always going to hate me for infiltrating your little gang in a way that no one else has ever been able to do.”
Ramsey uncrossed his arms as he straightened to his full height. “My little gang?”
“What else are you guys?” I countered.
Ignoring that, he said, “You’re looking at me as if I would ever let something happen to you, Emerson.”
I choked out a laugh.
I couldn’t help it.
“Because it’s not enough that you happened to me?” I asked, half serious and half not.
His chin went up, and I wasn’t sure if I had offended him with the truth or not, but it wouldn’t make a difference. Even when Ramsey Reed was wrong, he was right. He might feel bad because he’d been wrong about me, but he didn’t feel bad for what he’d done as part of his revenge. At the time, he’d felt it justified, and so it was something that I couldn’t ever see him apologizing for. Yeah, he had apologized for being wrong, but that was it. The rest of it was just a part of being Ramsey Reed, and I had to be insane to have come back here.
As if reading my mind, he said, “You had your chance, Emerson. You got away, and I was going to find a way to live with that, even if it drove me crazy.” Ramsey stepped closer into the bathroom, and I briefly wondered if we were even going to make it to school. “But you came back. Of your own free will, you came back to me. You came back to me, and if you think that I’m ever going to let you go again, you’re out of your fucking mind, baby.”
“This isn’t going to be easy, Ramsey,” I told him. “I still don’t belong here.”
“If I say that you belong here, then you belong here,” he replied in true Ramsey Reed fashion.
I shook my head. “I’ll never belong here.”
Ramsey was finally close enough to place his hands on my hips, and with just that simple touch, I was certain that we weren’t going to make it to school this morning, and I was also certain that it wouldn’t make a difference. Ramsey was just going through the motions to get his high school diploma because he already had enough money not to really need it.
“What’s really bothering you?” he asked, his brow furrowed like he was still trying to read my mind.
“I still don’t know how I feel about the entire situation,” I admitted. “What happens if I find myself wanting to burn the entire place down?”
“Then I’ll light the fucking match for you, baby,” he replied so easily and evenly that I knew he wasn’t joking.
I stared into his beautiful face as I said, “We’re still toxic together, Ramsey.”
He gave me a terse nod. “Yes, we are.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“Emerson, I don’t scare easily.”
“Neither do I, and that’s the problem,” I reminded him.
“It’s not a problem if we’re both on the same side, baby,” he replied quietly, almost as if he didn’t want to spook me now that he was no longer distracting me with need.
Now, while he wasn’t necessarily lying, he also wasn’t seeing how that was a bigger problem. “I need you to do me a favor-”
“No,” he said, already shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” I squawked.
Ramsey reached up to tuck a strand of my dark hair behind my ear. “You were going to ask me to stand back and let you handle things at school today, and that’s not going to happen.”
It was scary how well he knew me after such little time. “I need to make my stance known to the entire school, Ramsey.”
“Me on my knees in front of you did that already, Emerson,” he pointed out.
“You don’t get it,” I sighed, very aware of the time.
“Then explain it to me,” he replied seriously. “We’re not leaving this bathroom until you do, baby.”
“I don’t want them scared of me because of who you are, Ramsey,” I told him. “I want them scared of me because it’s not enough for them to have seen you on your knees for me. It’s not enough because they also saw me covered in used condoms as you told them things about me that none of them should have ever known.”
His jaw ticked as his hands dropped from my hips, taking a step back. “So, what is it that you need from me to make that happen?”
“I need you to just not be…you so much,” I answered honestly.
Ramsey arched a brow. “Seriously?”
I let out another sigh. “Look, we’re going to be late for school, so we’re going to have to agree to disagree on your level of absurdity.”
“It’s not absurd to want to protect you, Emerson,” he argued.
“Again, we’re going to have to agree to disagree, Ramsey.”
Those chocolate-colored eyes of his stared down at me for a few seconds before Ramsey pressed his lips against my forehead. Neither of us could undo the past few weeks, and even if we could, I wasn’t even sure if I’d want to. I didn’t want to meet new and different versions of Ramsey along the way; that’s how marriages fell apart. I’d rather see all the bad upfront, lest I end up like my mother because I hadn’t been prepared for just how brutal love really was.
Grabbing my hand, Ramsey pulled me out of the bathroom as he said, “Let’s get to school. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
“Before we light that match to burn it all to the ground?” I quipped.
“Hopefully,” he replied, but I could hear the smile in his voice, and just like that, my lungs were able to take a deep breath again.
For better or for worse, this was us.
This was what our love was made of; including the toxicity that neither of us were eager to cure just yet.