38. Emma
Chapter Thirty-Eight
EMMA
T ightening the coat more securely around herself, Emma avoided eye contact with the other pedestrians on the crowded downtown sidewalk.
She knew what she looked like—a cross between a crazy homeless woman and one on a particularly rough walk of shame. The mirrorlike reflection of the office suite around the corner had shown her as much.
But Emma didn’t bother to smooth her hair. She just kept walking blind, no direction or destination in mind as a torrent of thoughts filled her brain, each one more disjointed than the last.
Emma ended up going in circles, having walked around the block only to end up in front of Garrett’s building again.
Someone grabbed her arm. “ Emma .”
She blinked as Georgia’s wiry strong arms pulled her into a hug. “Oh, Em, I’m sorry.”
“I’m okay,” she mumbled, not sure if she meant it.
Georgia shook her head, her face hard. “If he hurt you, I swear to God I’ll take a socket wrench to his privates—I don’t care if he is Rainer’s best friend.”
“He didn’t hurt me.” Not the way George thought he had.
“Last night was wonderful,” she added in a mumble.
And it had been. Her one and only sexual experience was worthy of a romance novel. Except it wasn’t the only one, it seemed. This morning had taken a sharp turn into the horror suspense genre.
George’s head drew back. “Oh! I thought—well, never mind.”
“It’s what he said this morning that turned everything to shit,” Emma began as Georgia’s phone began to ring.
“Hold that thought.” Wincing, the other woman picked it up.
“Not a good time,” she hissed into the receiver.
Emma could hear Rainer’s voice coming out from the other end.
“Yes, I found her,” she told him. “ No . Keep him there.”
She said a few more words before hanging up, taking Emma firmly by the hand. “Come on.”
Two minutes later they were in the underground parking structure, heading to a fenced-off area hidden behind a privacy screen attached to the metal links.
“What is this place?” she asked as Georgia opened the padlock securing the area.
“My first workspace.”
She pushed the door open, revealing a couch and several racks of tools. “Rainer set it up for me while the warehouse that stored his car collection was renovated into a proper space for my car restoration business.”
She led Emma to the couch and sat. “I’d offer you a drink, but we moved the mini fridge over to the showroom.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
A small hand covered hers. “Sweetie, you’re really not.”
Emma’s eyes filled with tears. Her face crumpled. “Yeah, I know.”
George’s concern and sympathy just made the tears come faster. But Emma couldn’t stop herself. She buried her face in her hands and cried stormily for a few minutes.
Then the worst seemed to pass, and she was able to breathe. Dashing her tears away using one of the coat cuffs, she hiccupped.
George pressed a crumpled towel into her hand. It had a little grease on it, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Do you want to take it back?” she asked carefully. “About last night? If what you did with Garrett wasn’t consensual, I will support you in whatever way you wish. Just because he married you doesn’t mean he automatically gets sex. You know that, right?”
Emma hadn’t known Georgia long, but she was already her best, most amazing friend. “I think I seduced him actually.”
He’d been so sad that he hadn’t gotten the chance to dance with her at the wedding. Maybe she hadn’t consciously planned it, but at no point during the evening had she felt like stopping.
Garrett was right. A sexual relationship had been inevitable.
Emma shook her head, looking down at her hand. “This is because of my stupid broken brain. You see, I thought I was a virgin. According to everything I’d been able to piece together of my life before my accident, I was. This morning, I thought I had physical confirmation… a little blood on the sheets.”
“Oh.” Georgia’s expression lightened in understanding. “ Ooooh .”
“Yeah.” Emma sighed. “It wasn’t a lot, but I thought it confirmed what I knew. Till Garrett informed me otherwise.”
Georgia drew a line in the air. “And he knew this because the two of you…” She trailed off, scribbling in the air as if connecting the dots.
“He said he was my first,” Emma whispered, a faint ringing beginning in her ears. “I lost my virginity to him. Before the accident.”
Georgia didn’t make a sound. When Emma turned to check her reaction, the young mechanic was staring, open-mouthed.
“I thought you were enemies.”
She threw up her hands. “That’s what I said! But it seems we weren’t at each other’s throats the whole time.”
Georgia bit her lip, processing the new information faster than she had. “Was there a truce and it didn’t last?”
That was a good question. “I have no idea. I don’t know the circumstances.”
Georgia sat on the couch arm, facing her with her hands propped on her thighs. “He didn’t explain? Were you a couple?”
Emma was starting to feel bad for another reason. “I didn’t let him tell me. Once he started talking about the night of my accident, I freaked out. ”
Or rather freaked out further, because she had already been right on the edge of losing it.
How pathetic did she look right now? “I couldn’t process anything after that.”
“Whoa, wait , hold the phone.” George hopped down onto the couch cushions. “I thought he didn’t know what happened!”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what he knows. Like I said, I didn’t let him explain.”
Emma chewed on her lip, trying to break through that wall to her past. One memory—a flash that could explain what Garrett was. What he had done…
Georgia grabbed her hands and squeezed them, anxiety in every line of her face. “Did he run you down?”
Emma fell back on the couch cushions. The ceiling was turning above her ever so slightly. “I don’t…”
I wasn’t there. I wish to God I had been, but I wasn’t.
The knot in her chest eased, letting her breathe. “No.”
George squinted at her. “Are you sure?”
She pushed herself upright, but her body was weak. This time with relief. “What he said is that he wished he was there.”
George made a face. “Weird, but also not the same thing.”
“No,” she admitted, the shakiness still with her. “But he looked so guilty when he said it. I don’t know why he feels that way if he didn’t cause the accident.”
George considered that before laying a gentle hand on her arm. “Shit, Emma, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is too big. You need to talk to him. Get the whole story.”
Emma closed her eyes. “I know. It’s just hard, you know.”
“Why? I mean, why beyond the obvious?”
Slumping, Emma tried to find the right words. “The past isn’t just gone for me. It’s obliterated.”
Flopping back on the cushions, she twisted to face her. “My mom has this little room in her new house. It’s full of my old books, school papers, and all the prizes I earned in school. Before I left, she made me go through it all—the report cards, prizes, and letters of recommendation. I even read the copies I made of my college application essays.”
George’s eyes were soft and sympathetic. “And it was like someone else wrote them.”
She nodded. “There were so many accolades. Boxes and boxes of them, representing an insane number of man-hours. Verdant Falls was a small pond but I was a big-ass whale in it. But none of her work was familiar.”
“ Her is you,” George insisted. “You were a badass. And you’re still one.”
If only that were true.
“Not anymore,” she said, tired of putting a brave face on things. “I used to want to work on Wall Street. That ambition defined my life. I was in every club and extracurricular activity that would beef up my college applications so I could get into a top-tier school. I busted my ass for scholarships so I could afford it.”
“And now you’re a barista,” George finished.
“Oh. I’m the last person to knock a job in the service industry. I know exactly how hard it is and how terrible people can be to you when you wear a name tag every day.”
She smiled weakly. “It’s more about not recognizing that girl from before, the driven one that thought math was her love language and treated everything like a competition. She may as well be an alien. But everyone who knew me before expects her .”
She caught Georgia’s look of consternation and cut her off when the other woman opened her mouth to protest.
“Oh, they always pretended they didn’t. The counselors and the psychiatrists in the hospital had coached them on what to say. They parroted the same phrases, pretending to want nothing from me. But I knew better.”
The couch and garage ceased to exist, her memory supplying the image of a series of sterile white hospital rooms.
“Every single person who came to see me in the hospital would look at me with this unspoken expectation. In the back of their mind, each one of them thought that they would be the one to unlock my memories, to be the person I remembered. In their unspoken fantasies, they would kick open the floodgates and bring it all back for me. And when that didn’t happen, they inevitably left disappointed. Most stopped coming back after one or two visits.”
Georgia sobbed unexpectedly.
“I’m sorry,” she cried, waving her hands at her teary eyes as if she could fan the moisture away. “But that is so messed up.”
Hell, she shouldn’t have been so honest. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Emma was weeping by this point, too. This was a pity party she shouldn’t have invited anyone else to.
“I guess Rainer didn’t know Garrett and I had something before the accident,” Emma decided. “Or he would have told you.”
Georgia blinked as if waking up. “If he does know, I’m going to strangle him.”
“That would be a bad way to kick off your marriage.” Emma laughed before frowning. “Wait, why aren’t you on your honeymoon?”
George brightened. “I had an unexpected commission. A spectacular 1960 Shelby Cobra came in.”
She laughed suddenly. “Rainer is salivating over it and plans on making the owner an offer. He didn’t want me to feel rushed with such a fine specimen, so we decided to give ourselves a couple of extra days at home before leaving. We’re supposed to fly out on Friday. But we won’t go if you need me here.”
Emma felt awful. “No, you have to go on your honeymoon.”
The thought that her drama was derailing her new friend’s plans shook her. “I’m making too much of this.”
“No, you are not! You’re making exactly the right amount of fuss. However you choose to handle it, that’s the right amount.”
Georgia wiped the shining streaks off her cheeks. “Are you going to leave him?”
Why did the mere mention of leaving Garrett suck all the air out of the room?
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling short of breath. “I guess it depends on what he has to say.”
Hell, they were married. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t just pack her bags and leave. They would have to divorce.
Not that Garrett would agree to that. He would fight her every step of the way. She knew that with a certainty she didn’t feel for anything else.
“Unless he gives up when I don’t get my memory back,” she muttered, her stomach swirling unpleasantly.
Could she live with him and watch him lose whatever hopes he was harboring? Because he would.
Emma disappointed everyone eventually.
“He’s spoken to your doctors. He’s known from the start that it’s not likely you’ll ever recover your memories.” Georgia squeezed her hand. “And I can’t believe I’m defending him right now, but he’s trying to build something with you. Something new.”
Emma pulled the coat tighter around herself with her free hand, unaccountably tired. “He still should have told me about us.”
“Oh, I agree.” Georgia shook her head in disgust. “I can’t believe he didn’t. You know—before last night.”
“But?” She knew there was one.
Georgia gestured up in the general direction of the penthouse.
“I see how he looks at you when you’re not watching. I was there the night he married you. Garrett had the suave playboy bit down to perfection. I never thought I would see him willingly put on that leg shackle. But that night he was… eager. And like stupid-level happy.”
She clicked her tongue. “I didn’t know what joy looked like on Garrett until you came back into his life. And granted, I haven’t known you that long, but the last few weeks you seemed happy too.”
Emma groaned. “Are you suggesting I forgive him?”
“No.” Georgia was adamant. “I think you should go back and kick his ass for keeping secrets. But maybe after that, you should let him explain. Because there is a lot you don’t know.”
She scooted closer and wrapped a thin, strong arm around her. “I get why you didn’t want to get entangled with someone from your past. Your reasons for that are one hundred percent valid. But not knowing is hurting you more. ”
George was right, of course.
Emma laid her head on the shorter woman’s shoulder. “Can we just sit here for a little? Five minutes. No more.”
She couldn’t in good conscience take a second longer. Georgia had gotten married yesterday. She needed to be with her husband instead of consoling an amnesiac mess.
“Are you sure?” George asked. “We can go to brunch instead. That’s what we were doing—coming to invite you over.”
Okay, Georgia might actually be a saint.
“That is so sweet, but you got married yesterday .” And not under false pretenses.
“Go on your honeymoon,” she ordered. “I’ll be fine.”
Georgia narrowed her eyes, studying her. “All right. You seem better so I’ll take you back up. But if you need anything, I’ll be right next door.”
She got up and wiped her hands on her shorts. “Just make sure if you kill Garrett, do it before Friday. The body won’t fit in the Shelby’s trunk, but I’ve got a rare T-Top Caddie in the shop with a big ass that will do the job nicely.”
Emma laughed, wiping the traces of tears off her cheeks. “You’ve got a deal.”