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“You really don’t want to know, Josh. It’s not something I want to think about, let alone talk about. Please, just drop it. I took the paracetamol. Can’t that be enough?”
“The pills, Em, why didn’t you want to take the ones I tried to give you first? I saw your reaction. Fuck, I fucking felt it. The fear, mistrust, confusion that you feel, I feel it too. That shit cuts right through me. So, I need to know why. Please, let me understand why. Let me be the one to help you.”
Goddamn it. “How do you do that? You make me want to tell you everything. But I’m so afraid that when I do, I’m going to wake up and find you gone. Again.”
“I promise you will never wake up and find me gone. The pills, Em, why?”
I can do this; he should probably know what he’s dealing with when it comes to me. I can’t stay anyway, right? So, what’s it matter what he thinks of me. It doesn’t. “Okay, sometimes he would give me pills, and when I woke up, days would have passed. I lost a lot of days being unconscious.” I’m looking down, not able to meet his eyes. I don’t want to see the disgust reflected in them.
Josh puts his hand under my chin. “Thank you for telling me.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “I have one more question that’s been eating at me.”
“What?”
“Why did you marry him? Did you love him? Do you love him?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
I shake my head no. I was never in love with Trent. Lust maybe, at the start, but it was never love. “No, I didn’t have a choice. I would never have married anyone if it were up to me. It wouldn’t be fair to enter a marriage when your heart and soul belong to another man.”
“What do you mean you didn’t have a choice?”
“Two days before my twenty-second birthday. That’s the first time I saw who Trent really was. He told me if I didn’t sign the paper, then he would have someone pull the trigger on my mum. He… he showed me video footage of my mum in the garden—someone was watching her.”
“Motherfucker!” Josh screams, taking a few steps back from me. He spins around and places his hands on the cabinet above his head. I watch his back fall and rise with each breath he takes. I knew I shouldn’t have told him.
“J… Josh?” I’m not even sure what I’m asking him. I don’t know what I expect or need of him right now.
He turns around and pulls me tight into his arms. My head falls to his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I repeat over and over.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Emmy. What happened is not your fault. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m fucking sorry I can’t torture the fucking asshole and make him feel even a tenth of the pain you’ve felt.”
We stand there, silently clinging to each other. This is my safe place, in Josh’s arms.
* * *
Sitting up on the rooftop,underneath the stars and twinkling fairy lights, I feel the most relaxed I have in a very long time. When Josh said there was a barbecue up here, it was the understatement of the freaking year. It’s not your regular backyard barbecue area. No, it’s a gourmet kitchen for the outdoors.
The back wall is lined with a stainless steel benchtop and cabinets. There’s a sink and even a four-door, under-bench bar fridge. Blue LED lights frame the outline of the bench, reflecting off the stainless steel.
We’re seated on a large outdoor daybed—an outdoor bed that’s more comfortable than any indoor bed I’ve ever owned. There’re strings of twinkling fairy lights hanging above that seem so out of place it makes me smile. I remember the night Josh took me back to the cabin after graduation. He had haphazardly hung fairy lights all over the place.
The way the lights are draped out here looks the same, like he has done it himself. I wonder what his fascination with fairy lights is. It’s odd, yet I love them.
“Okay, kids, I’m calling it a night. Catch you tomorrow,” Sam says, pulling his large frame out of the chair opposite us.
“Thank you for cooking dinner. It was delicious.” I smile up at him.
“For you, I’d cook any time, Emily.” He winks back at me.
“Huh.” This must be what all those heroines in the reverse harem romance books feel like, having multiple men doting on them.
“Huh, what?” Josh asks.
“Huh, nothing. I just had a random thought pop into my head—nothing important.” I can feel my cheeks heating up.
Josh tilts his head and squints his eyes at me, examining my every reaction. I really wish I could go back to high school me, who never let anyone see behind the walls. I need to work harder to build those walls back up.
“It was definitely something. Care to share?”
“Trust me, you really don’t want to know.”
