Chapter Twenty-Nine
THAT NIGHT, EMMA MADE her way upstairs alone for the first time in ages. Her ankle was fine. She was fine. Everything was fine, fine, fine.
Especially the little dent the doorknob made in the wall when she slammed it open. And the crashing sound it made when she slammed it closed behind her again.
Putting her back to the door, she dropped her head into her hands. Her eyes stung, and there was this awful, twitchy, twisting pain in the center of her chest. She scrubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes so hard she saw stars. That was probably all fine, too.
Downstairs, everything was ready for Harvest Fest—or at least as ready as it could be.
After Hunter had exploded at her, accusing her of being a self-deluded, flighty, untrustworthy liar, she’d sent him packing in no uncertain terms. Hattie and Abby had exchanged concerned glances when she’d stormed her way back in, but she’d stayed focused on the task at hand.
All of the crates of books were sorted, the pre-orders counted out and marked with autograph requests, and everything packed and ready to be loaded up tomorrow night so they could set up their booth bright and early Saturday morning.
Gratitude surged through her. She never could have done it all alone. Hattie and Abby had stuck around for hours, and Hunter had done all of that driving…
The lancing stab of pain through her heart stole her breath.
She’d already apologized for asking so much of him. But that had only seemed to set him off. She’d been trying to keep things easy and light. He didn’t believe in destiny or relationships, so she’d been living in the present, being agreeable and fun.
Turned out, “fun” wasn’t what he wanted.
So what the hell did he want? Seriousness? Commitment?
Sudden, warm pressure squeezed her lungs.
She would have been happy to offer him all of that and more. She would have offered him…
Well. Everything.
But he didn’t want it. Or maybe he did, but he didn’t trust the way she offered it, and what was she supposed to do with that?
She clenched her eyes shut tightly against the dampness threatening to form at their corners. She liked Hunter. So much—she even—
No. There was no point thinking about how she felt about him right now. It was like her father had always said. No sense wallowing. Just go with the flow, and if Hunter wanted to flow right on past her and out of her life, then that was his prerogative.
Opening her eyes again, she made a beeline for the kitchen and opened the freezer to pull out a pint of definitely-not-self-pitying ice cream.
But as she turned to grab a spoon, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Her pulse quickened, a pointless hope rising in her that it might be Hunter, calling to apologize and admit to being a hypocritical ass.
But instead, it was an unknown number. She swore to God, if this was a spam caller, she was going to throttle them.
What if it was that HR person Ji-An told her would be in touch, though?
It was awfully late at night for a work call, but New Yorkers kept weird hours.
She tapped the button to answer the call, taking a deep breath before bringing her phone to her ear, opening her mouth to say hello in as polite a voice as she could manage, considering.
But before she could, over the staticky connection came the last voice she’d ever expected to hear.
“Jesus Christ, finally,” Brock groused.
Brock. Her former fiancé, Brock. Embezzling, abandoning, no-good Brock who’d been a jerk to her for their entire relationship, and who’d stolen every last dime they’d had before fleeing the country, and…
And…
If there was anyone in the world she should be able to yell at right now, it was him.
But instead, all the wind blew right out of her sails.
Oblivious to the little mental breakdown she was having, he barreled on. “What the hell, Em? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for weeks.”
“I thought it was some spam caller,” she choked out. “You never left a message.”
“What? For the feds to listen to?” He barked a laugh, as if the idea were preposterous. “Look, I need you to do me a quick favor.”
“What?” She meant it as what the actual fuck, but apparently he thought she was asking him about the specifics of the favor.
“Could you go into the closet in the bedroom and see if you can find a black briefcase? Leather. In the inside pocket, there should be a code I need for this crypto wallet I can’t get into.”
“The bedroom?” she repeated numbly. “The bedroom. In our apartment. In New York.”
“Where else?” He laughed.
She stood there, blinking for a solid minute while her brain attempted to do a hard reset. Deep within her, all of the rage that had been simmering started to cook again, ominous bubbles rising to the surface.
“Brock, you left me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that—”
“And took our life savings.”
“Look, you gotta understand, I was in some serious heat.”
The man did not have any idea what “heat” even was.
“Brock,” she shouted, shrill, and not giving a single damn. “You can’t just flee the country with every dollar we had and leave a note and not tell your fiancée where you’ve gone and then call and ask for the code for a—a—a crypto wallet. Jesus Christ.”
“There’s not even that much in the wallet,” he said defensively, as if that were the issue here.
“I don’t care how much is in the wallet!”
“Jeez, I was just asking,” Brock said.
And the funny thing was that, back a couple of months ago, she might have gone looking for his stupid crypto wallet code for him. But now? Now, she was just furious and…
And sad.
“Brock?” Her voice cracked.
How many nights had she spent scrolling the internet, looking for this guy? Researching countries without extradition treaties to the United States? Imagining what she would say to him if she ever found him?
She’d been desperate to know what he’d been thinking. If their entire relationship was a sham, if he’d always been planning his escape. What he’d even needed the money he’d been stealing for.
“Yeah?” There was a cracking noise, like he had the audacity to be snapping gum in her ear from an entire other country.
And somehow, that nonchalance was what shattered her.
She squeezed the phone so hard she worried the plastic screen might break. When she spoke again, her voice came out painfully small.
“How could you leave me behind?”
He muttered something she couldn’t quite hear, and there was a rustling over the line like he was moving around. For a second she thought he was hanging up on her, but then there was his stupid voice again.
“Look, I feel like a dick about it.”
A single tear formed at the corner of her eye, and she let out a watery laugh. “You are a dick.”
“I didn’t mean to, like, hurt you or anything.”
He really meant that, didn’t he? As if leaving her out of the blue could be anything other than hurtful.
Only…
It wasn’t his absence that had hurt. It had been the dire situation he’d left her in—the way he’d thrown their entire life together into a shredder along with the rest of the documents he’d destroyed on his way out the door.
For the first time in this whole conversation, his voice pitched lower. “Look, we really weren’t exactly a house on fire, were we?”
“I mean…”
“And I know that isn’t any excuse.”
She huffed out an echo of a laugh and swabbed at her eye. “It definitely is not.”
“But we were just kind of rolling along on inertia, you know? And when shit hit the fan and it was time to go, the idea of going alone felt like… freedom.”
A dull pang echoed in her chest.
“To me, it felt like bankruptcy,” she quipped.
But in her heart of hearts, she had to admit it. Looking at a future without him? It had felt a little bit like freedom, too.
“I said I was sorry.” He exhaled loudly. “Look, it’s not that I didn’t care about you. We had some good times.”
They had. But most of them were in the distant past.
She still couldn’t let go of the way he’d left her, though. And she might never get the chance to talk to him again…
“Was I—” She swallowed, closing her eyes before forcing herself to ask the question she’d been harboring for all this time. “Was I really so easy to just leave behind?”
“Babe…” He hesitated. “No. Of course not.”
“You’re just saying that.” She wasn’t being dramatic, either. He was a dick, but he was a dick she’d shared her life with for years. She knew when he was lying to be nice.
“It wasn’t easy,” he insisted. “But it was a clear choice.”
Ouch.
“Right.”
“Just—you know how you are.”
“Do I?”
Echoes of the conversation she’d had with Hunter earlier that night reverberated in her brain.
“You know.” Brock sputtered for a second. “You’re completely indecisive, but then you get all resentful when you don’t get what you want. I have to make all the decisions, but I’m always wrong. It’s impossible.”
Was that true?
The silent rage within her was threatening to boil over again. “You never asked me what I wanted. You just did what you wanted.”
“I gave up!”
They’d been together so long. Was it possible that, once upon a time, he’d been more attentive? She could scarcely remember. She’d been so young—so accustomed to trying not to be a bother, raised to go along, not complain, not make any more trouble for anyone around her than they already had.
So maybe Brock was right. Maybe she had been indecisive, demurring, deferring.
But not anymore. She’d met someone who’d cared enough to tease out her preferences, who didn’t run roughshod over her. Who would never, ever give up.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
Except he had, hadn’t he? Hunter had made himself clear tonight. He didn’t trust how she felt about him. She’d been indecisive, demurring, deferring with him, too.
Well, not anymore.
“You can give up on your stupid crypto wallet, too, then,” she spat.
“Wait, babe—”