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“Emmy Lou, I mean it. It’s not you.”
“Oh my god! Don’t you dare say the it’s not you, it's me speech!”
“It’s true, Emmy Lou. I just spent the last eight years of my life in the military, being told what to do and when to do it. I’m sick of being dispatched to wherever in the world they decide they need me. I want freedom and to choose where I go.”
“I got it, Spencer. It’s just that you should have told me that before you asked me out. You don’t think that I deserved the choice of starting something with you if I knew you were just going to ditch me? You don’t think that would be something that I wanted to know before you took my virginity? Before I fell for you?”
His mouth opens but no words come out. At least he looks ashamed of himself but it does little to ease my pain.
“Enjoy your freedom.”
My voice cracks on the last few words and I turn from him and jog back to my car.
“Emmy Lou!” He calls after me but I’m already slamming the door and pulling away from his house and from him.
Unfortunately, the hurt still follows me.
The tears start to fall and I have to slow down so that I can see the road clearly. I park haphazardly in the driveway and rush inside, slamming and locking the door after me.
I don’t think that he’ll come after me, but if he does, I don’t want to see him.
He broke my heart. He crushed all of the dreams that I was already building in my head for our future.
As I curl up on my bed and sob, one thought sticks with me.
I guess the love at first sight family tradition skips a generation.
Chapter7
Spencer
Emmy Lou’s tear-stained face is burned into my brain. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last image that haunts me as I drift off into a restless sleep at night.
Hell, every time I blink, I see her red-rimmed eyes and quivering bottom lip. The spark in her green eyes flickered and then went out completely when I told her I was always planning to leave. It’s true, but then why did the words taste like battery acid on my tongue?
I had thought that it would be easier to just disappear instead of having a long, drawn-out goodbye, but it’s been close to a week and with every mile that passes between me and her, the ache in my chest only grows bigger and bigger.
I’ve tried to fight it, to ignore it, but it just keeps spreading until my whole body feels like an exposed nerve. I ruined my ray of sunshine.
I left Sunny Bend and came back to Valor, Wyoming. Wild had taken one look at my face when I showed up on his doorstep last night and told me that he would make up the guest bed. He let me sulk around his house all day yesterday, but it looks like his patience has worn thin.
“Alright, what’s going on with you?” Wild asks as he takes a seat on the couch next to me.
“I met someone.”
His eyes widen comically and I roll my own.
“Whoa. Who’s the lucky girl?” He asks.
“Her name is Emmy Lou.”
“Congrats, man.”
“I fucked it up,” I admit.
“Yeah, I figured that part out because you’re here on my couch instead of with her. What happened?”
I break and pour it all out to him. My plan to travel and make my own way and my own rules. Landing in Sunny Bend a few weeks ago and working at Sunny Side Up Skydiving. Meeting Emmy Lou. I tell him all of it.
