CHAPTER 78
Emma
Misery.
From the top of my head to the bottom of my feet and back up to my head, I’m miserable. One living, breathing, black ball of misery.
Despair eats away at me. I can feel it gnawing at my flesh, my tissue giving way to its bite. Eating me alive.
I should have known this was going to happen. Not that the monster would appear in Declan’s plane, but that he’d show up. Somewhere. Someday. Somehow, it was bound to happen.
Right when I’m happier than I’ve ever been, the worst thing imaginable occurs.
Of course it does. How could it not?
I wasn’t put on this earth to be happy. I was made to scrape by, to eke out a life. But never thrive.
Girls like me don’t get happy endings. It’s the most important truth of all, and I forgot it.
I wring my hands until my knuckles turn white. This bastard is ruining everything for me. He’s going to open his big, evil mouth and tell Finn everything and then Finn will hate me. He’ll never want to touch me again.
No Finn. No Jasmine. No family. No Yosemite Ranch.
No love.
Nausea hits. I throw off the seatbelt and make a run for the bathroom. I shut and lock the door just before I vomit.
“Emma? Are you all right?” Finn’s on the other side of the door.
I rinse my mouth and spit into the small sink. I stare at myself in the mirror. I look sick. Panicked. Red skin. Red, bloodshot eyes. I’m looking at a woman who’s given up.
I shake my head. Blow my nose. Finn taps on the door.
“Let me in.”
I throw open the latch.
Finn gasps in shock and steps toward me, pushing me back into the lavatory. His brow is furrowed, and he looks at me questioningly.
“He’s no father to me.”
“I can see that.”
Finn leans out into the aisle to check on Perkins. His body tenses. His muscles twitch, like he’s a panther ready to pounce. Every muscle and sinew is sprung tight.
I place my palm on his chest, firm, yet gentle. His body relaxes a little under my touch.
From the back of the plane I hear the monster yell. “I’m not technically her father, but I was her foster father. Isn’t that right, Emily?”
Finn’s body expands to take up the entire lavatory doorway. His eyes are fixed on the monster.
“She’s giving me the cold shoulder because she was a bit of a troublemaker back when she was one of ours, like all of them, I suppose, one after the next.”
That voice. It crawls up under my fingernails and enters my bloodstream. Poison. Pain. I push Finn out into the aisle and vomit again.
The monster must have stood up because Finn spits out these words.
“Sit.
“Down.
“Now.”
I stay in the lavatory for the rest of the flight, until we hear Declan’s voice inform us that we’ve started our initial descent into Twenty Mile Municipal Airpark in Sweetbriar.
At the very last minute, Finn grabs my hand and gets me settled into one of the chairs toward the front of the plane. He sits next to me, blocking me in against the wall.
The monster can’t get to me.
Finn’s careful not to touch me, and I’m grateful for it. My body is too raw. My skin hurts. All I want to do is be on the ground, where I can run. Where I’ll have room to escape.
The plane lands. Declan bolts from the cockpit, opens the exit door, and prevents the monster from walking up the aisle. Finn gets me down the steps and onto the tarmac, and he grabs my hand as we run to the SUV waiting for us in the hangar.
I want to get out of here, but for some reason, Finn drives much slower than usual, taking care to drive around potholes in the road, as if he’s afraid I’ll break with a bump.
I can’t speak. Finn doesn’t make me. I just focus on breathing and returning to myself.
When we get to the Yosemite Ranch gate, he pulls the car over and turns off the motor. We sit in silence for a minute. Then two.
“It’s time, my beautiful Emma. Tell me. Whatever it is, you’re safe. Your story is safe with me.”
I dare glance up at him. I give him a weak nod.
He’s right. It’s time I tell him everything, from beginning to end. But I can’t open my mouth.
“I don’t need to know everything, things you don’t want to tell me,” he continues. “But I do need to know what is causing you so much anguish. I want to help you, Emma. As your man, it’s my job to protect you. But I can’t do that if I don’t know where the anguish comes from.”
I sit frozen.
“Don’t shut me out or push me away. I know it takes a lot of nerve to ask, considering it’s exactly what I did to you.”
My eyes flash at him. Is he right? Am I doing to him what he did to me when we first kissed?
But I’m not rejecting him like that. I’m just protecting myself.
Oh.
He protected himself by exiling me. He retreated into his own confusion and loss and chose not to share it with me.
And I’m doing the exact same thing.
I guess it’s too late. It has to happen. It will definitely fall apart if I don’t. There’s no longer any point in delaying it.
“I’ll tell you,” I say. “And after I do, you and I will be over. You’ll want nothing to do with me, ever again.”