Chapter 6
Emily rolled over and glanced at the clock beside her bed. “Noon, already.” She stretched her arms above her head. Her body was deliciously sore—like that of a woman who had been loved up the night before.
“Mmmm.” She sat up and pulled her robe around her. Grabbing her phone, she checked her missed calls.
“Ugh!” Fifteen missed calls from her mom and seven texts from her dad.
“Great!” Emily knew she needed to come up with something to tell her parents.
It wasn’t like she could say, ‘Oh hey, I hooked up with Ian last night. No biggie.’ Both of her parents would lose their ever-loving minds.
They hated Ian and had warned her time and again to stay the hell away from him and anyone like him.
What they had refused to come out and say was that they didn’t want her around shifters. At all. Ever.
Their demands had included Jenn as well, but she had fought tooth and nail to keep that friendship.
Jenn was her only true friend. The only one who had ever been there for her through thick and thin.
She never understood her parents’ attitude towards shifters or any other supernatural beings for that matter, and they refused to talk about it every time she brought it up. None of it made any sense.
A loud knock at the door pulled her from her thoughts.
“Awesome.” She knew who it was without even opening the door.
“Emily! I know you’re home. Open the door!” Her dad shouted.
“Coming!” She pulled her robe around her and went to calm her dad down.
“Hi, Daddy. What are you doing here?” she asked as she opened the front door.
“Your mother and I have been worried about you. You haven’t answered any of our texts or calls. We stopped over last night and found out that you didn’t come home all night. You know better than that!” He stomped through the front door.
Emily had seen her dad mad on plenty of occasions through the years. This was something more than his standard mad. He was pissed. Pausing halfway through the door, he leaned in toward her. If Emily didn’t know better, she would have sworn her dad sniffed her. What an odd thing for him to do.
“Where were you?” he shouted.
“I was out with Jenn last night. What’s the problem?” She lied through her teeth. If her dad knew she’d been with Ian, there would be hell to pay.
“Just Jenn? Did you spend the night at her house?”
“Where is all this coming from?” She changed the subject instead of digging herself deeper with the lies.
“I’m the one asking questions. Not you.” His voice turned to more of a growl, surprising Emily. Something was off.
“Yes. We went to dinner. I had a few drinks and didn’t want to drive home.
My car is still at the restaurant,” she shouted at her dad.
Her voice was far more forceful than she had strived for, but the line of questioning was maddening.
She was an adult. A full-fledged adult. It wasn’t like she was just over eighteen and a newborn adult, or in her early twenties and a toddling adult.
Why was it such a problem that she had spent the night away from home?
Instead of dropping the issue like she normally would, she continued.
“I’m thirty-five. I’m an adult, and if I want to spend the night out with a friend, I will. ”
Emily stormed off toward her kitchen, leaving her father standing there with his mouth agape.
“There isn’t enough coffee in the world to deal with this shit today,” she muttered to herself.
“What has gotten into you?” Her dad followed her to the kitchen.
“Really? You have to ask that?” Emily poured a cup of coffee for herself and one for her dad. “I think it’s time for you and mom to quit treating me like a kid. I’m an adult and it’s ridiculous that you’re beating down my door because I had the gall to go out with a friend last night.”
“We worry about you,” he replied, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Why? We live in this tiny town with next to no crime. What are you afraid of happening? That I’m going to get a paper cut and die from an infection?” The more she thought about it, the more pissed off she got.
“Em, you know that because of my job, our family is heavily scrutinized. We have to watch everything we do and say. We can’t get into any trouble that would lead to bad press.”
“Oh, my God! It’s not like I was out robbing a bank or something. I have never brought shame to this family or to your job, and you know that!” Jenn’s words about the control her parents had over her echoed in her mind.
“Emily, calm down. You know we only want the best for you.”
Something inside of her snapped. “You should probably go.”
“I know you’re mad now, but with time, you’ll see.”
She let his statement go. It was the same damn thing she had heard for years.
“I’ll see you Saturday.” He set his coffee cup on the counter and turned to head out the door.
“Actually, you won’t. I’m going out of town this weekend.” She might as well let him know now that she wasn’t going to be around for their Saturday brunch. It was a long-standing tradition.
“You can’t miss brunch. Your mom will be so upset. You know how much planning she puts into this every week.”
Cue the guilt trip. Any time she wanted to do something other than a family event, the guilt trip her parents took her on was swift and sure and unrelenting. She was so over it.
“I promised Jenn months ago that I’d spend some time with her. I’m going.”
“We’ll see,” her dad replied as he left.
Emily didn’t even know what to say. It was a good thing her dad chose that moment to leave, or things between them really would have come to a head.
The last ten years flashed through her mind.
All the times she had wanted to do something, and she had been denied by her parents.
Feelings of resentment and anger stormed through her, making her realize just how right Jenn had been.
Emily had always made excuses. She wanted to be the good daughter they wanted her to be. The obedient daughter. The daughter who listened to and obeyed her parents, even well into adulthood.
She owed her very existence to them and her trust. She’d never thought too much about it. After all, wasn’t it her duty to be there for her parents? So what if they cared about her more than other parents cared about their kids? Right? Her excuses had been as long as her patience with them.
Emily flipped open her laptop as an idea sprang to mind.
She never did anything without thinking things through.
Spontaneity was a word that would never be used to describe her.
Pulling up her calendar, she fired off a quick email to her boss explaining that she needed the week off for something that had come up.
Sure, it was short notice, but it wasn’t like she had ever taken her vacations to begin with.
They piled up over the years. Hell, she could probably take off sixteen straight weeks without batting an eyelash.
Her projects were ahead of schedule and no one else on her team was supposed to be off. Her boss shouldn’t have a problem with it, but just in case, she clicked the refresh button on her email every few seconds until she saw a reply from a boss.
“Finally! Take two weeks instead of one and enjoy yourself!”
Emily breathed a sigh of relief and started to pack her bags. She had no idea what she would do for an entire two weeks of time off from work, but she would figure something out.
The little voice in the back of her head worried about what fresh Hell she would have to pay for taking off without okaying it with her parents first. She quickly squashed that voice, finally taking control of her life.
A huge weight lifted from her chest. The weight was quickly replaced by a sense of giddiness.
“Wow!” she said to herself, feeling lighter than she had in years as the tether that had kept her attached to her parents snapped in two.
Something stirred in the back of her mind, but she had no idea what it was. It was almost as if a dormant part of her yawned from a sudden and unexpected awakening.
“How weird.”