Chapter 43 – Grant
FORTY-THREE
GRANT
“I fucked up.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Grady says as he pulls his attention away from the preseason football game just long enough to glance at me in the kitchen.
“No. Seriously.” I look at my phone for what feels like the hundredth time and debate calling Emerson again.
Her last text, the one from three days ago telling me she’s super busy with a week-long jump class, still doesn’t sit right with me.
I didn’t ask her to do anything. I didn’t even text her.
So her sending a random text to explain why she can’t see me for a few days feels hinky.
Especially after how she asked to be taken home from the lookout and then jogged up the stairs, saying she had a stomachache. I was left to stare at the shut door to her apartment with my apology getting lost in the night around me.
Something is definitely off. Maybe she just needs some space. Fuck if I know.
“Hey, Romeo? You gonna finish your sentence or are you interrupting my date with the 49ers for a reason?”
“Are you in my house drinking my beer, watching my television, and eating my pizza?” I ask, and he nods. “Then shut the fuck up because I seem to be the one footing the bill for your romantic evening.”
“Well, then get to the point and stop standing there like someone pissed in your Wheaties. What gives?”
“I don’t know.” I sip my beer as I cross the distance and take a seat across from him—my view of the backyard while his is of the game. “Watch those files, will you?” I say, pointing to the stack of cold case files I’m working on that are sitting on the opposite end of the couch as him.
“How can I watch them when they’re freaking everywhere? On the couch. Falling off the couch. On the floor. On the coffee table. On the desk. I mean, Jesus, do you take them in the bathroom with you, too?”
“You make fun, but when you’re sitting outside on my new patio with a built-in barbeque and flat screen television, you’ll be thanking me.”
“Doesn’t seeing this shit every day ever get to you? Don’t you need a break from it?”
“Sometimes.” I sigh. “Recently, a lot of the time.”
For being such a little shit, he’s smart.
“Something’s going on with her. She’s shutting me out.”
“I’d shut your ugly ass out, too.” I kick my foot out to knock his feet off my table, more to antagonize him than for any other reason. “But considering you just switched topics and left me in the dark, should I assume we’re talking about Emerson, again?”
“I’m serious.”
“Apparently you are,” he says as he smirks.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This thing with Emerson. You’re supposed to be fuck buddies, right? Well, that was the plan anyway. Either you’re getting too deep into it or she is because this is way more complicated than your normal run-of-the-mill one nighter . . . so what gives?”
“It isn’t different.” But it is. “She’s not.” But she is. “We’re not.” But we are. “We’re just fucking.” But it feels like so much more than that.
“Yeah, you keep thinking that’s all there is, and I’ll start putting money down on the 49ers to win the Super Bowl with this shitty ass team they have this year.”
The game drones on, Grady groaning with every turnover—and there are a lot—while I stare out the windows to the backyard and watch the sky change colors as the sun sets.
I’m supposed to be relaxing and preparing for my upcoming interview, but all I can think about is Emerson.
Did I push her too far and get too personal when she is so obviously used to running away?
“Hey, Grant?”
“Yup,” I say distractedly.
“I think I’m gonna head out.”
“What?” I look at him, confused as to why he’s leaving at halftime when I know the cable is jacked at his house. “What about the second half?”
“I have shit to do.” I narrow my eyes at him at the same time he juts his chin toward the front door.
I turn around and find Emerson standing on the other side of the screen. Her face is expressionless and her hair is pulled back, but it’s her eyes that are shadowed and sad.
“Em? You okay?” I’m on my feet as Grady opens the screen and gives her a soft greeting before jogging down the path toward his car. “Emerson?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . I just didn’t want to be alone.” Her voice is barely audible.
“No. Please. Come in.” I have my arm around her shoulders and am guiding her into the house. She seems so frail when I’ve never thought her to be anything but the opposite. We move to the couch, and she sits beside me as if she’s on autopilot. Concern rifles through every part of me.
Within seconds, I have the television off and the police scanner on the table beside me silenced. The overwhelming urge to hold her, touch her, soothe that look out of her eyes is too much, so I pull her into me—her head to my chest—and wrap my arms around her.
“What’s going on, Em?”
“My head’s messed up,” she says.
“We all have messed-up heads,” I murmur, my lips against the top of her hair, my fingers rubbing up and down her arms. It’s only when she hisses that I realize my fingertips have run over the ridge of scars, causing me to jerk my hand back in guilt over hurting her.
“Not like mine,” she eventually says.
“Want to talk about it?”
Her chuckle is despondent. “Do you know how many times in my life I’ve been asked that question? Therapist after therapist until I got so sick of being picked apart I just up and quit going.”
“I can imagine,” I say but know I have absolutely no fucking clue what she has been through. “Did something happen today?”
“Today? No. The other night? Yes.” She lets out a deep breath.
Her vulnerability transparent and haunting since I’ve never seen this side of her.
“I can’t stop thinking about Keely. I can’t stop obsessing over whether her dad is doing to her what mine did to me.
I can’t stop wondering about what other horrible things he has done to her mother that she’s been a witness to.
It’s messing me up, Grant, and that’s really hard for me to admit. ”
“Sh. Sh. Sh,” I say, guilt riding me hard over being the one to bring this all upon her.
This is on me. The little girl I see as her, she does, too, and there’s nothing I can do to reassure her that Keely will be okay.
So, I just hold her a little tighter and press my lips to the top of her head while we both process the turn of events.
Her needing me, and my wanting her to need me.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to save her, Em, but without her mom pressing charges or the little girl admitting anything, I have zero legal rights. My hands are tied.”
“And that’s why you were talking to her about the rocks.”
My hand stills halfway down her back. This is the first time she’s reacted to any mention of the rocks. For a while, I thought maybe it was a fake memory I had created to deal with her leaving even though I know for a fact it was real.
“What do you mean?” I fish.
“The rocks. You were kneeling, talking to her, picking up rocks that I couldn’t see but that I knew had color on them.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I didn’t remember, Grant. I didn’t remember the rocks until I had a dream about them the other night.
” I can sense the hysterical confusion in her voice despite how muted it is.
“You’ve mentioned them a few times, and I just thought .
. . I don’t know what I thought, but I just kind of let it go because it didn’t make sense.
Then I saw you with Keely and then that night I dreamed of the rocks.
Of our rocks. The zombie rocks. And the ones you’d leave there for me to find when I’d come out to escape from my house and—” She loses a huge, heaving sob of a sound, her fingers grip into the fabric of my T-shirt, and her body shakes as she fights with every part of her to keep from breaking down.
“Don’t be sad. It’s a good memory. It was the only way I knew how to let you know I was there for you. It seems cheesy now, but we were eight.”
“Not cheesy,” she murmurs. “I looked forward to seeing if there was a new one every day.”
“I didn’t know what was going on inside your house, Em, but I knew it made you sad.” I smooth my hand over the back of her hair and just pull her tighter against me, hating myself for doing this to her. “I’m sorry I brought you to the call. I didn’t mean for it to upset you.”
“You don’t understand.” She pulls away, her eyes red but not a single tear has fallen.
“Then make me understand.” The confusion in her expression kills me. The vulnerability in it even more so.
“If I didn’t remember that, then what else do I not remember?”
“It was rocks, Em. That’s it. I’m sure there are a million things you remember about what we did or where we played that I don’t. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not—you don’t—you’re here and I can’t stop them,” she says, flustered and visibly anxious.
“You can’t stop what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” The first tear finally slips over as she runs a hand over her hair, and the chaos of her emotions hit her.
I just stare at her like a deer in the headlights. I can handle hysterical victims, I can manage crazy suspects, but give me Emerson’s big green eyes full of tears and have her plead for me to give her answers I can’t give her, and I’m a guy fucked in so many ways I’ve lost count.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m so confused,” she says. “It’s you.”
“Me?” What did I do?
“No. That’s not what I mean.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and shakes her head. “I just—I don’t want to know anything else.”
“What are you talking about?”
She heaves in a breath that hitches as I reach out—needing to touch her—and use my thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek.
The simple touch is nowhere near enough, the connection not strong enough, so I lean forward and brush my lips against hers, my hand on the back of her neck, our foreheads touching.
I stay like that for a few moments, caught between the push and pull of needing her to stay and never wanting her to feel pain again. Crushed by the realization that somehow I’m the one causing the discord in her life.