CHAPTER 22
The Night Before
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Wednesday night settled over the house with a weight that had nothing to do with the hour and everything to do with what waited on the other side of it, and Emery found herself standing in the kitchen long after dinner, unable to settle into anything as simple as sleep.
Dally had gone home to Vivian's for the night, some unspoken agreement among the adults that tomorrow's danger shouldn't share a roof with her tonight, and the house felt unusually quiet without her — the hush of a home holding its breath before something significant.
Emery had tried reading, tried a mindless show on the television, tried simply sitting still with her hands folded, and none of it had managed to quiet the low hum of anticipation running underneath everything.
Rhys found her there, leaning against the counter with a glass of water she wasn't really drinking, and something in his expression told her he'd been just as unable to rest.
"Can't sleep either," he said. Not a question.
"Too much in my head. Tomorrow, mostly. But other things too.
" She set the glass down, meeting his eyes in the low kitchen light.
"I keep thinking about everything that's happened this month.
How much has changed. How much of it started with a signature I thought was going to be the simplest part of any of this. "
"Life has a way of making the simple things complicated." He crossed the kitchen slowly, close enough now that she could feel the warmth of him. "Can I tell you something? Something I haven't said out loud yet, even to myself, really."
"Always."
He was quiet for a moment, gathering himself, and when he spoke his voice had gone low and unguarded in a way that made her chest ache with the rawness of it.
"My father never came back. Not once, not really, not in any way that mattered.
He left, and he stayed gone, and the lesson I took from watching that as a kid wasn't just that men in this family cheat.
It was that once you've broken something that badly, there's no version of coming back from it.
The damage is just permanent. You either stay and keep hurting the people you love, or you leave and let them build a life without you.
Those were the only two options I understood for a long time. "
Emery listened, something in her chest tightening at the rawness of the admission, unlike anything he'd offered her even in their most honest conversations these past weeks.
"When you found out about Sasha," he continued, "some part of me actually expected this to go the way my father's story went.
I expected either you'd stay and I'd keep failing you in slower, quieter ways, or you'd leave and that would just be the end of it, the two of us reduced to whatever careful distance felt survivable.
I never actually let myself imagine a third option.
That maybe it was possible to break something and then do the genuinely hard work of rebuilding it into something different, not just patched back to what it was before. "
"And now?" she asked quietly.
"Now I think my father just never tried.
I don't think it was that reconciliation was impossible.
I think he never once did the work required to earn it, and it was easier to believe the whole thing was hopeless than to admit he simply hadn't tried hard enough.
" His hand found hers, his thumb tracing slow circles against her palm.
"I don't know if I've earned this yet. Any of it — you standing here with me tonight, whatever we're building back together.
But I know I'm choosing to keep trying, every single day, instead of deciding in advance that trying is pointless.
That's different from anything I watched growing up.
I need you to know I see the difference, even if I'm still scared it won't be enough. "
Emery felt something in her chest crack fully open at that, eleven months of careful protection finally, completely giving way.
"It's enough for tonight," she said softly.
"I can't promise you forever, Rhys. Nobody can promise that, not really.
But tonight — right now, standing in this kitchen with you — it's enough. "
She was quiet for a moment, gathering her own courage the way he'd gathered his.
"I want to give you something back. Since you gave me that.
" She met his eyes, steady despite the vulnerability of what she was about to say.
"My mother used to tell me that love was something you kept quiet and small, so it wouldn't attract trouble.
That's not a direct quote — she never said it in those words — but it's the lesson underneath everything I watched growing up.
Stay quiet, stay useful, don't ask for more than what's already being offered, because asking is how you lose what little you have.
I built my whole personality out of that lesson without ever once questioning whether it was true. "
"And now?" Rhys asked, echoing her own question back to her.
"Now I think I spent nine years being the easiest possible version of myself to love, and calling it a virtue instead of what it actually was — fear, dressed up as generosity.
" She held his gaze, something fierce underneath the vulnerability.
"I don't want to be that anymore. I want to be loud when something matters.
I want to ask for what I need instead of hoping you'll guess it.
I think that scares me almost as much as your fear scares you, but I'd rather be scared and honest than safe and small. "
He kissed her then, slow and searching, and this time there was no phone to interrupt them, no crisis waiting to pull them apart before either of them could decide what came next.
She felt eleven months of careful distance finally, fully dissolve, her hands finding the front of his shirt, his arms wrapping around her with a gentleness that belied how long he'd apparently been waiting for exactly this.
"Em," he murmured against her mouth, "if you want to stop, any point, just say it. I mean that."
"I don't want to stop." She pulled back just far enough to meet his eyes, certain in a way she hadn't let herself be certain about anything in weeks. "I want you to take me upstairs, Rhys. I want tonight, before tomorrow happens and everything gets complicated again."
He didn't need to be asked twice. He lifted her with an ease that startled a laugh out of her, carrying her toward the stairs with the kind of unhurried purpose that told her exactly how much restraint he'd been exercising for weeks, and the climb up to the bedroom that used to be theirs passed in a blur of soft laughter and softer touches, both of them relearning the geography of each other with the tenderness of two people who understood exactly what they'd almost lost.
The bedroom was dark except for the moonlight through the window, and Emery felt the last of her hesitation dissolve as Rhys laid her down gently, his mouth finding her throat, her collarbone, working slowly downward with a reverence that had nothing rushed in it at all.
She arched into his touch, her fingers threading through his hair, every careful wall she'd built finally, deliberately, starting to come down.
"You're beautiful," he murmured against her skin, and she felt the words land with a weight that had nothing to do with vanity and everything to do with being truly seen after so long spent hidden. "I've missed you every single day, Em. Every day, for eleven months, I missed exactly this."
"Show me," she whispered, and he did — slow and unhurried, learning her body again like something precious he'd been terrified he'd never touch again, each movement asking a question his hands answered before his voice could, and Emery gave herself over to it fully, the last of eleven months' careful distance finally, deliberately dissolving into something that felt, at last, like coming home.
They had barely begun when the world outside the bedroom reasserted itself.
Rhys's phone started buzzing against the nightstand with an insistence that cut through the darkness like a blade, and Emery felt him go still above her, some old operational instinct fighting visibly against everything his body wanted in this moment.
"Ignore it," she said, though even as she said it she could feel the shift in him, the specific tension that meant he already knew he couldn't.
He reached for it with visible reluctance, and Emery felt the warmth of the last several minutes begin to drain away even before he'd said a word, some old instinct reading the shape of bad news in the tension of his shoulders.
"Ghost," he said, answering, his voice already sharpening. "What is it."
She watched his face change in the dim light, watched the peace of the evening replaced by something cold and alert, and felt her own heart rate climb in sympathy before he'd even lowered the phone.
"They're moving tonight," he said, already sitting up, already reaching for his clothes with hands that had gone tight and controlled.
"Not tomorrow. Not Thursday at the signing.
Ruiz just mobilized people toward The Wrenhouse, right now, and Ghost thinks he's not waiting for us to be ready this time. "
Emery sat up too, adrenaline flooding through her with brutal speed, the tenderness of a moment ago replaced entirely by cold, sharp focus.
"Why now? Why tonight, if the signing's still Thursday?"
"Ghost thinks Ruiz figured out we moved the schedule on purpose.
That he knows he's been outmaneuvered, and instead of waiting to be outmaneuvered again, he's deciding to force the issue before we're ready for it.
" Rhys pulled his shirt over his head, his voice tight with the specific controlled urgency she recognized now as his crisis register.
"Which means whatever we planned for Thursday, we're doing some version of it tonight instead, with half the preparation and none of the coverage we built in. "
"Now," she repeated. "Tonight."
"Tonight." Rhys was already dressed, already moving with the controlled urgency she'd seen from him twice now, and this time when he looked at her, she saw something new in his expression — not the old instinct to leave her behind for her own protection, but a clear, unspoken question. Are you ready.
"Let's go," Emery said, already reaching for her own clothes, her heart pounding with fear and something else, something that felt almost like readiness. "Whatever's coming, we face it together."