Chapter 64
RIGGS
As promised, Colt comes back for Gem at eleven o’clock. She spent nearly the entire time he was gone down by the river. She only came back to the house in time to take a quick shower, put on clean clothes and get her cakes loaded into Colt’s truck before it was time to leave.
Dropping another quick kiss on my cheek on her way out the door, it takes everything I have not to grab her.
Make her look at me. Listen to me because I can already feel her pulling away.
Distancing herself so that when the time comes, it won’t hurt as much.
Instead of fighting her on it, I let her go because she’s right. It’ll be easier this way.
They weren’t gone fifteen minutes before the delivery I’m waiting for arrives. I spent last night, pouring over Gemma’s notebook and Googling what a microbakery is supposed to look like. I am now the proud owner of a Pinterest account.
Using my chair because it’s faster, I roll down the front ramp that leads to the driveway so I can direct the delivery guys where to put it, happy I had the foresight to spent the extra money to have it delivered already assembled.
They’re climbing back into their truck and backing out of the drive and I’m checking out my late night impulse purchase when I hear the front door open.
Looking up, I see Emily, dressed in another baggy sweatshirt and jeans, watching me from behind the screen door.
Her face is pale and thinner than I remember.
Eyes a little sunken. She looks nervous and I start to worry how she’s going to feel about being left here alone with me.
“Gem’s gone,” I tell her before she can ask. “She left with Colt about a half hour ago to?—”
“Deliver Scarlett Montgomery’s birthday cake,” Emily finishes for me.
“I know, she told me.” Giving me another long look, she seems to make up her mind about something before she pushes her way through the screen door and onto the front porch.
Letting it close behind her, she comes to stand next to me. “What is it?”
“Right now, it’s a gardening tool shed,” I tell her, taking in the 3x2, gray clapboard cabinet I bought online. “But come tomorrow morning, it’s going to be Gem’s microbakery.” Opening the double doors, I reveal a set of deep shelves inside. It’ll need more for the job I expect it to do.
Looking at me, Emily gives me a faint, puzzled smile that makes her look more like the girl I remember. “You bought Gemma a microbakery?”
“No,” I answer her with a laugh. “I bought Gem a tool shed—turning it into a microbakery is up to her.”
“You’re still in love with her.”
When she says it, I look up at her, my throat suddenly going tight.
“I knew you were… before,” she goes on, walking past me to sit on the swing at the end of the porch. “Anyone paying even a little attention could see you were crazy about her when we were kids.” She laughs. “Just about the only people who didn’t know where the two of you, I’d bet.”
I think about it. How waking up on Saturday morning in this house was like waking up on Christmas.
Not because I’d get to eat my weight in pancakes or because I’d get to spend the day goofing off, down by the river, with my best friends—but because those were the times it was just Gem and me.
I’d sneak downstairs, careful not to wake Beck, and find her sitting in the sunroom, waiting for the sun.
I’d sit beside her and while she watched the sun rise, I’d watch her.
I’ve been in love with Gemma my whole life—even when I didn’t know what that meant.
Even when I hated it. Even when being in love with her felt like it was too big and complicated for me to figure out.
“Yeah,” I bob my head, angling my chair so I can look at her. “I am.”
When I say it, Emily flattens her mouth. “But you’re still going to leave?”
The question tightens the back of my throat because I don’t want to. I never wanted to leave. “It’s complicated.”
Sitting back in the swing, Emily kicks her foot to send herself rocking. “It’s really not.”
She’s right.
It’s not complicated at all.
“She doesn’t want me,” I tell her. Trying to make excuses for myself, I do the exact thing Gem accused me of—I blame her.
“Bullshit.” Giving her foot another kick, she pulls her long, thin legs onto the swing to tuck them under herself. “If you don’t have the balls to stay, at least have the balls to admit why.”
“I’m not good enough,” I tell her plainly, suddenly angry at her for pushing me. “I wasn’t good enough then and I’m sure as fuck not good enough now.”
“Don’t you think that should be up to Gemma?
” Cocking her head, Emily looks at me like she thinks I might be stupid.
“After all she’s been through, don’t you think she’s earned the right to make that decision for herself?
” When all I do is stare at her, stunned, she sighs.
“You can leave if you want to,” she says, giving me a sad look.
“She’ll fall apart. She’ll cry and blame herself.
She’ll convince herself she won’t survive, but she will.
She survived you once and she can do it again.
” Dropping her foot, Emily stops the swing before she stands.
“But if you leave her this time, don’t come back. ”
Making her way back to the tool shed I bought for Gem, Emily stands in front of it, hands on her hips. “I bet Dent has some paint in his work shed,” she says, tilting her head while she studies the cabinet. “I’ll go see what I can find.”
“That’s it?” I ask her, voice rusty and rough from being emotionally dragged by a woman who surely has bigger things to worry about than the fact that what it all boils down to is that I’m too much of a pussy to take what Gemma’s been offering me since the night she looked up at me on that trail by the river and told me she wanted me to kiss her.
And I’m too much of a coward to try to be the man she needs me to be now because I’m afraid of failing her.
“Riggs, you’re a big giant pussy—let me go see if Dent left some paint behind so I can help you decorate Gemma’s tool shed? ”
“It’s a microbakery,” she tells me, another faint smile ghosting across her mouth. “But yeah—that’s it.”