Chapter 24 #2
That sound makes my heart lift, and I practically float upstairs to our room.
The bathroom door’s cracked open, steam pouring out like a cloud.
The shower’s running hard, water hitting the tile in steady bursts.
Emma strikes me as the kind of person who takes showers that could peel paint off the walls. Or maybe I already know this?
I glance through the crack and catch a glimpse of her, her shoulder, the curve of her back. Just a tiny bit of skin—devastatingly beautiful skin. She ties a towel around herself, and her curves bend and sway. Soft and strong all at once.
Something pools deep in my gut, a mix of heat and desire and absolute frustration. I’d give anything to remember what it felt like to touch her, to hold her. Please, God, give me my memory back.
She reaches for the knot in her towel, and guilt hits me like a slap. I shouldn’t be watching her like this. I drop to the floor. The towel hits the tile a second later, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I army crawl for the bedroom door.
Once I make my escape, I busy myself in the kitchen. Dishes, wiping counters, scrubbing the grout. A real Cinderella moment in an effort to push the image of Emma’s body out of my brain. Nothing works. It’s permanently emblazoned in my prefrontal cortex now.
How could I forget her?
I feel irrationally angry as I scrub the floor with a sponge. The fact that my mind is so weak it could forget a woman like her. I throw the sponge, and soapy water slaps back in my direction.
Me: I can’t believe I don’t remember her.
My text whooshes away before I can take it back. Liam’s response is just as fast.
Liam: I know, man. But it’ll come back. I know it.
Me: You’re not supposed to say that; you’re a doctor.
Liam: So are you. And you’d do the same to me.
Me: Fair.
Liam: Just keep doing the exercises, ask the questions, but don’t overwhelm yourself.
Me: Yes, sir.
Liam: Sir? Yeah, I need the other Steven back. Makes me sound old.
Me: LOL I’ll talk to you later.
When the kitchen floor is as spotless as my measly skills can get it, I sit back against the dishwasher. The cold steel against my thin t-shirt is startling.
The bubbles in the soap bucket have fizzled, replaced with murky gray water.
I take a breath and decide to try my memory exercises, but I keep thinking back to dinner.
The way Emma’s eyes were on everything but me.
The way she smiled, like she was trying to force herself not to break.
And the way she winced when I snapped at Easton.
The way they all winced. They all seemed so small and vulnerable.
A sick twist of shame hits me. I did that. I made them feel that way. Does that happen often? Did I ever get angry at her for no reason? The idea makes my stomach hurt.
I have to apologize. All I can think about is how much I want to make things up to her, even the things I can’t remember. I want to be someone she can trust, someone she can depend on. And my intuition, as tepid as it may be, tells me that I haven’t been that in a long time.
After what I would consider an adequate amount of time for a shower, I rush back upstairs. But the water is still running.
“How dirty does she think she is?” I mutter to myself.
Then I hear it. Crying. Is she crying?
“Emma?” I knock once on the bathroom door.
“Y–yes?” The fracture in her voice threatens to crack me open.
“Are you—”
“I’ll be out in a second,” she cuts me off, her tone treading that tender line she’s been teetering lately. The line that tells me she is not fine, but no one needs to worry about it.
I sit on the edge of the bed and wait long, grueling seconds before the water finally shuts off.
She comes out wearing a bubblegum-pink pajama set with thin stripes stretching from top to bottom.
The fabric practically shimmers under the bedroom light, and the stripes are like a trail, one for my gaze to travel and land on the top of her thigh.
I blink back to her, and she’s peering at me.
“Sorry.” I smirk. “Have a good shower?”
I could slap myself. Obviously, she didn’t. She was just crying, you idiot.
“Sure?” She peers at me.
“Good, good.” Ask her what’s wrong.
The towel loosens around her head, and her wet brown hair falls around her face. She tousles it, drying the edges, then tosses the towel in the hamper.
“What’s up?” she asks, moving around the room, again not meeting my eyes.
“Can we talk?”
She freezes for a fraction of a second—so quick I might’ve missed it if I wasn’t watching her, but then she’s moving again, busying herself around the bed, straightening the comforter, fluffing a pillow, opening and shutting a drawer.
She’s fidgeting. Maybe she doesn’t want to acknowledge what I said. Can we talk?
She grabs a striped throw pillow and starts to assess it then murmurs, “Is everything okay?”
I try to meet her eyes, but they’re focused on a loose thread on the pillow.
“Not really,” I finally say.
This time, she stops. Her wary eyes lift to meet mine, and the look in them knocks the air from my lungs. She’s scared. Whether it’s because of my mom or because of me, I can’t tell. But my gut says it’s the latter. I can’t take not knowing anymore.
“Emma,” I say, my voice tight, “do I scare you?”
A startled, maybe amused, sound slips from her. “What are you talking about?”
“At dinner, it seemed like you were…” I pause as the words, the possible truth, lodge thick in my throat. “Scared of me. After everything with my mom…like you thought I was mad at you.” I swallow. “Do I? Get mad at you, I mean.”
Her gaze drops to the floor, and my heart goes with it.
“Emma,” I whisper, now staring at my hands. “Am I an angry man?”
“Steven, no.”
She slides onto the bed beside me, her arms wrapping around me. “You’re the least angry person I know,” she reassures, rubbing slow, comforting circles across my back.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
My voice splinters on the last word. Rejection burns through me, small, and stupid, and so achingly human. I’ve been rejected before, many times, but feeling it from Emma seems to hurt worse. Like something vital is being pulled from me, hollowing me out.
“Honey…” she whispers. “Hey, let’s look at each other right now.”
I huff out a shaky laugh and blink up at her, tears glazing the edges of my vision. She wipes them away with her thumb, and I feel ridiculous.
As if she can read my mind, she says, “I’ve seen you cry many times, don’t worry.”
“Tell me the truth, please.”
Her eyes soften, and she inhales a slow, fortifying breath. “You’re not angry, Steven. Never angry. Neither of us are. And honestly, I think that’s one of our problems.”
“So we do have problems?”
“Who doesn’t?” Her lips twist into a small, tired smile. “There’s a lot going on in our lives. And for a while now, we haven’t been doing great. We’ve been in therapy.”
“Therapy?” I never saw myself as someone needing to see a professional, let alone in my marriage. “We’re that bad?”
“It was your idea.”
“My idea?” I shake my head. “Who am I around here?”
She laughs at this. “You’re an adult, apparently. Life came at us fast, and I think…” Her face softens, like she’s deciding how much to say. “I think we’ve come to a place where we’re handling things differently. So yes, we’ve been in therapy, much to my dismay.”
Now I laugh. “Has it helped?”
“You think it has.”
“Ouch.”
“I mean, it has a little—don’t get me wrong,” she concedes, squeezing my arm.
Warmth blooms in my chest at the feel of her fingers against my skin.
“But as you can tell from earlier, I’m not great at working out our problems. I don’t like to face them.
I tend to run away, hide in my guilt.” She scoffs at herself.
“So it wasn’t that I was scared of you; I was ashamed.
I should’ve told you about your mom sooner. I feel terrible, Steven. Awful.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose, though.”
“Are you sure about that?” she jokes weakly.
I give her a look, knowing her better than she realizes, and she rolls her eyes. Emma is too kind. She’d never keep something like that from me on purpose. It’s not who she is.
“So if it was an accident, why the wall?” I mime an invisible barrier between us. “If I’m not angry, why not talk to me?”
She huffs out a laugh. “Because I’m bad at it.”
“You seem to be doing fine right now.”
“Maybe I’m less threatened by Young Steven.” She shrugs, eyes sparkling as her bare lips tip into a mischievous smile. “Young Steven doesn’t know things; he hasn’t seen things. He’s…impressionable.”
“Impressionable, eh?” I arch a brow.
“Very.” She smiles, teasing now. “I can convince him of anything. Impress on him a new way of thinking.” She’s theatrical as she waves her hand around, as if the new way of thinking is just beyond us, then lets her hand settle on my thigh.
“Oh, really?” I laugh, poking her ribs, and she giggles.
A smile breaks across my face at how natural it feels to flirt with her. It tells me there’s still a desire there. A desire for both of us.
Confidence sparks in my chest at this, so I lean closer and whisper, “Please, Emma, impress on me all you want.”
The tension shifts instantly. It’s warmer now, humming with electricity, her hot gaze roving over me, lazily appraising. I see the shift in her eyes, the want there. Her mouth parts just slightly. Her eyes flick to my lips, and she licks hers.
This is familiar. I know it is.
My heart hammers in my chest, stuttering over the need now coursing through my blood. I need her, not just the comfort of her touch, but to spend my life with her. I know I do.
I rest my hand on her thigh, just below the hem of her pajama shorts. A tantalizing border I can’t resist playing with. My fingers toy with the lace trim, and her breath catches. So does mine. For a moment, the world goes still.
She swallows as pink flushes her neck. “We should sleep,” she whispers, her emerald eyes never leaving my mouth.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“We’ll regret it tomorrow.”
“It’s worth the risk.” My gaze trails along the soft curve of her throat, the faint rise and fall of her chest. I trace the line of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder, memorizing every detail I thought I’d forgotten. “You’re worth it, Emma Jones.”
Her lips crash into mine as soon as I say her name. The sound of it seems to undo her completely. I melt into the kiss, into her. She climbs over me, wraps me up in her warmth, kissing me like her life depends on it. I know mine does.
We sleep in the same bed for the first time since the accident, and I dream of her.
Of her now and back then. Pieces of her that made me fall in love for the first time, pieces coming back to the surface.
This time, they’re coming at me harder and faster, penetrating deep in my soul.
And I realize falling in love with her a second time is inevitable.