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"True." He cracked a smile. “You know me so well already. But to be forthcoming with you, most women don't interest me enough to mix them into my world, at the gym or the university."
I nodded and crossed my arms over my breasts suddenly feeling a bit of chill. I looked down at the ground and stared at his fancy motorcycle boots.
Emery reached out and lifted my chin between his thumb and forefinger, until my eyes had no choice but to meet his dark smoky ones.
“That is, until I first laid eyes on you.”
"What makes me so special?" I couldn’t believe he was saying these things to me and it wasn’t some type of rouse.
"I’m not entirely sure. I’m drawn to you. I want to be physically near you. When I realized you were in my class, I felt devastated. Then I had to ask myself why I was having such strong reactions to a new student in my 101 lecture when I don’t even usually ever learn their names. Because, that is, often, how little I care about my students.”
“I can feel it, too. I mean the pull, the draw—whatever you called it. Maybe we just have similar souls. We did grow up in the same neighborhood after all.”
“Under very different circumstances, I’d surmise. Why don't you tell me why coming back to Burgundy makes you lose your mind.”
"I won't talk about my history. If that is something you need, then this isn't going to work."
The truth was, I would have probably been more comfortable talking about growing up in Little Burgundy had Emery not brought me back to the cursed neighborhood. Maybe it would've been different, but I wasn't going to risk everything for a guy I barely knew. I didn't want anyone to judge me based on who my family was. People didn't look kindly on those who lived on the fringes of society, and the O’Haras definitely fell into that category. My family wasn't the type that most tried to understand.
"You don't have to tell me all your secrets," Emery said. His smile was slow, like honey, and he reached out and caressed my cheek with the pad of his thumb. The helmet was still tucked under his armpit.
"I can tell you that I'm the oldest of three kids. My mom got pregnant when she was sixteen, and my dad was seventeen. Nine months later, I came roaring into the world, and my two teen parents were obligated by their very religious parents to get married. You would think that a young marriage, a couple of clueless teens would end up falling apart, in an ugly way at that, but twenty years later and they're still together. Doing great from what I could tell when I left."
“Why’d you leave then, Celia? If everything is so pitch perfect at home, why you working for Lou like all the runaways do?”
"I don't talk about my family, especially not here. Just know that they’re alive, they’re good, and I’m working on starting a new life without them. It’s not against the law to be estranged from your family is it?"
Emery closed his eyes and shook his head. His shoulders visibly relaxed and he plopped the helmet over my head.
"Wanna get out of here? I’ve had enough of Little Burgundy to last me a while."
Chapter 5
EMERY
"Wow," Celia said as we stopped at Baron lake. A hidden lakeside attraction shrouded in trees and completely isolated from view, just off the highway. "How did I not know this place existed? I've lived in Burgundy my entire life."
"Most people don't know about it. I didn't even tell the other kids when I was growing up."
I grabbed her hand and walked through the trees to the perfect rock, a rock that I'd spend many hours of my life sitting on looking at the clear blue water. With the dark sky and silver moonlight casting down on the lake, the spot looked magical like it had been conjured for a romantic forest photo shoot—picture perfect. "When things got to be too much for me as a kid, I'd come here to get away from it all, be alone with myself and nature."
"Since we’re both skipping all the dark and gritty parts, you want to tell me about how you met Lou and y’all got so close like family?" Celia asked. She placed her head on my shoulder, while both of us looked clear across the water.
“Who says we’re like family?” I asked her.
“Uh, Lou, like ten thousand times a day.”
I liked having her there with me. It felt like she'd always belonged there, in the silence, in the darkness, by my side.
"I was a punk-nosed kid who got in over my head, and he bailed me out. More than once. I was wild when I was younger, I ran with a bad crowd, and found myself in a lot of hot water. Lou saw something in me. God only knows what he saw back then. I was such a little shit. Lou's a saint for putting up with me then; the same could be said about now, too.”
