Chapter 12 #2
“What do you want me to say?” I shout, and I’m barely aware that I’ve moved closer, that we’re almost chest to chest now. “That I’m sorry? That I regret it? Because I don’t! Your father took my brother from me and I wanted him to suffer!”
“Then make him suffer!” Emma shouts back, her face red with anger. “Not me! I didn’t do anything to you! I’m not the one you want revenge against!”
“You’re what I have!” The words explode out of me before I can stop them. “You’re the only thing I could take from him that would matter! You’re—”
“I’m a person!” Emma screams, and there are angry tears in her eyes that she refuses to let fall. “I’m not a thing! I’m not a possession! I’m not a weapon you can use against my father! I’m a person with my own life and my own feelings and my own—”
“I know that!” I roar back, and I’m dimly aware that my hands have come up and I’m gripping her shoulders. Not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to make her focus on me. “You think I don’t fucking know that? You think it hasn’t been eating at me for three weeks?”
“Then let me go!” Emma demands, her hands coming up to grip my wrists but not to push me away. “If you know I’m a person, if you feel guilty, then let me go!”
“I can’t!” The admission is torn from somewhere deep in my chest. “I can’t just—it’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple!” Emma insists. “You just don’t want it to be! You want it to be complicated so you don’t have to admit you’re in the wrong!”
“I’m not—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“You are!” Emma’s voice is raw now and the tears are tracking down her cheeks, which makes me hate myself.
“You’re wrong, Leo! You were wrong to take me!
You’re wrong to keep me! You’re wrong to act like this is somehow justified because of what my father did! None of this is right and you know it!”
“So what?” I spit back, trying to fight back the guilt that’s clawing its way to the surface. “What do you want me to do? Apologize? Say I’m sorry and let you go back to your arranged marriage and your perfect little life?”
“I want you to admit the truth!” Emma shouts. “I want you to stop hiding behind grief and revenge and admit why you’re really keeping me here!”
What the fuck does she want from me? “I’ve told you why—”
“Bullshit!” Emma’s hands tighten on my wrists, and it feels like a brand. “You’re not keeping me here for revenge anymore. You’re keeping me here because you’re lonely and I’m convenient and because having someone to have coffee with is easier than facing how empty your life is!”
I nearly rear back at her words. That’s not at all why I’m keeping her. “That’s not—” I try to deny it, but Emma steamrolls right over me.
“It is!” she shouts triumphantly, her eyes gleaming. “You wake up every morning and you look forward to seeing me. You plan our dinners. You find excuses to talk to me. This stopped being about revenge weeks ago and you’re just too stubborn to admit it!”
“And what about you?” I shoot back, my hands tightening slightly on her shoulders.
“You could have kept trying to escape. You could have refused to talk to me. You could have made this miserable for both of us. But you didn’t.
You played along. You had coffee with me and argued about restaurants and looked forward to our conversations just as much as I did! ”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Emma argues, but her voice lacks conviction and I seize upon it.
“You had a choice,” I press. “You chose to engage with me. You chose to stop seeing me as just your kidnapper. You chose to—”
“To what?” Emma challenges. “To like you? To enjoy spending time with you? To forget that you’re keeping me prisoner?”
“Yes!” I’m practically shouting now. “To all of that! You’re just as complicit in this fucked-up dynamic as I am!”
Her mouth drops open in shock. “I’m not complicit in being kidnapped!” Emma nearly screeches.
“You’re complicit in whatever this has become!” I argue. “Don’t act like you’re just some passive victim here. You’ve been an active participant in this…this whatever the fuck this is!”
“What is this?” Emma demands, and suddenly her voice drops, going quieter but no less intense. Her hands grip tighter on my wrists. “Tell me, Leo. What is this? What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, and the honesty of it feels like losing.
“You don’t know,” Emma repeats, and she’s staring at me like she’s trying to see through me. “You keep me here, but you don’t know why. You talk to me every day, but you don’t know what we’re doing. You look at me like—”
She stops abruptly, biting her lip, her face nearly as red as her hair.
“Like what?” I demand, hyperaware of how close we are, how my hands are still on her shoulders and hers are still on my wrists. “How do I look at you?”
“Like you want me,” Emma whispers, and the words hang in the air between us like a lit match over gasoline.
“No, I don’t,” I try to deny it, but it’s so obviously a lie.
“You do,” Emma says triumphantly. “You look at me like you want me and I’m losing my fucking mind because I—”
I don’t know which one of us moves first. Maybe it’s both of us or neither of us; maybe it’s just the inevitable result of three weeks of tension and anger and want that neither of us knows how to process.
But suddenly my hand is in her hair and her hands are fisted in my shirt and we’re kissing—or maybe fighting, it’s hard to tell the difference right now. Her teeth catch my bottom lip hard enough to hurt and I tighten my grip in her hair, tilting her head back so I can kiss her deeper, harder.
Emma makes a strangled sound and she’s pulling at my shirt like she wants to tear it off me, and I’m pressing her back against the counter because I need her closer, need more, need—
Emma shoves at my chest suddenly, hard, and we break apart both breathing like we’ve been running. She’s staring at me with wide eyes, her lips swollen and red, her chest heaving.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Emma asks, and her voice is shaking.
“I don’t know,” I admit, my own breathing harsh. One hand is still on her waist and the other in her hair, more loosely, and I can’t seem to make myself let go.
“We can’t—” Emma starts, but she’s still gripping my shirt, still pressed against me. “What the fuck. This is—we’re—”
“I know,” I agree, but I don’t move back either.
“You’re my kidnapper,” Emma says, like she’s trying to remind herself. “This—this is wrong. This is so fucked up.”
“I know,” I repeat, and then I’m kissing her again because talking is clearly not helping and at least when we’re kissing I don’t have to think about all the reasons this is wrong.
This time Emma kisses me back fully, no hesitation, her mouth opening under mine and her tongue sliding against mine in a way that makes my entire body go tight with want.
I grip her hips and lift her onto the counter, stepping between her legs, and she wraps them around me immediately like this is something we’ve done before.
“Leo,” Emma gasps against my mouth, and the sound of my name in that breathless voice makes me want to hear it again, louder, screaming.
But then she’s pushing at my chest again, and this time when we break apart she actually puts distance between us, sliding off the counter and backing toward the door. Her face is white.
“I can’t—” Emma says, her hand coming up to her lips like she can’t believe what just happened. “I need to—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she runs out of the kitchen, leaving me standing there with my heart pounding and my control in shreds. I have absolutely no idea what the fuck just happened.
I pour myself another cup of coffee with shaking hands and drink it in one burning swallow even though it’s still too hot.
This is getting out of control.
I avoid her for the rest of the morning, hiding in my office and pretending to work while actually replaying our fight—and those kisses—in my head. The way she felt pressed against me. How she tasted.
Emma’s words echo in my mind. You don’t know how to end it.
She’s right. I have no plan. No endgame. I took Emma for revenge but I keep her because…because I can’t imagine this house without her anymore. Morning coffee wouldn’t be the same. Dinner alone sounds unbearable. Somewhere along the way Emma Brennan became too important to me.
And now I’ve kissed her. We’ve crossed a line and I don’t know how to go back.
I don’t know if I even want to go back.
By afternoon I need a file from my other office—the smaller one I rarely use but keep for overflow documents. I walk in without thinking and freeze.
Emma is sitting at my desk. With my phone in her hand. Dialing a number.
Rage floods through me, hot and immediate and welcome after the confusion of this morning. This is concrete. This is something I can be angry about without having to examine my feelings or think about how she tasted or the way she said she wanted me too.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask harshly, and I watch Emma jump and drop the phone with a clatter. Her face goes pale then immediately flushes with anger. “I was calling my mother.”
“The hell you were,” I snap, crossing the room in three strides and snatching the phone off the desk before she can grab it. “You were calling your father. Giving away our location. Planning your escape.”
“I was calling my mother,” Emma repeats, standing up and getting right in my face. “You know, the woman who raised me and is probably sick with worry because her daughter disappeared three weeks ago? That mother?”
“No,” I say flatly, pocketing the phone.
Emma’s eyes go wide with disbelief. “No? That’s it? Just no?”
“That’s it,” I confirm. “You can’t call anyone.”
“Why the fuck not?” Emma demands, her voice rising. “What possible harm does it do for me to tell my mother I’m alive? She doesn’t work for my father. She doesn’t care about his business. She just wants to know I’m okay!”
“She’ll tell Connor,” I argue.