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“Shh. We don’t gotta talk about that tonight. It’s not the time. I just wanna make you feel good this weekend. I wanna make you smile, and I don’t want you to be alone. We’ll deal with the rest of it later.”
I should tell him no. Tell him to leave. End this for good. But I didn’t. I turned to him, lifted his hand to my lips, and kissed it. “Thank you. I…” Didn’t have the words. “Just thank you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sam
We always cooked rather than ordering in. We’d never left Emerson’s house together, of course, and the only place in town that delivered was Iris’s. We couldn’t order from there. They would recognize my truck and know I was staying here. Now that I thought about it, I was surprised no one had mentioned not seeing my vehicle at Molly’s on the weekends.
We went inside, and I tried to get Emerson to relax and let me make the food, but, predictably, he wouldn’t. “You’re not good at accepting help.”
“I don’t guess I am,” Emerson replied. I didn’t want to waste too much time in the kitchen, so we decided to throw some chicken wings in the air fryer and ate up some of his leftover fruit and salad with it.
He was quiet, but I reckoned I was too. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything he’d told me. I’d obsessively read some of it, but it was different hearing it from Emerson. The pain in his voice had damn near wrecked me…and the way he’d looked at me, all the self-hate filling his eyes, but interspersed with flickers of a need I didn’t yet fully understand, one I wasn’t sure he even knew was there… The way he’d clutched me like if he let go, he’d float away, lose himself to the wind and his pain… I couldn’t get over it.
But none of that changed the truth. Emerson had been in love with a man who had been murdered. He’d found Daniel’s body. He’d been tried for killing him. People still thought he did it. How did someone ever get over that? For the first time, I understood why he was hurting so much, why he kept himself cut off from the world. I wasn’t sure I could open myself up to it either.
But I wanted him to…I wanted him to open himself up to me. I wanted to be his friend, and his lover. I wanted a chance at something more.
We ate together in silence. When we were done and Emerson said, “I need a shower. I feel gross,” I followed.
“I’m goin’ with ya. I said I wanted to take care of you tonight, and I meant it.”
I waited for him to argue, saw the confusion brewing in his eyes, strong and deep, but he just nodded. I breathed out a sigh of relief, thankful we weren’t going to fight about it. This was my first time in his room. I walked around, looked at the perfectly made bed, the laptop in the middle of it. There was nothing on his dressers or his walls. No pieces of Emerson. No clues about who he was at all. Just…nothing. “I think you need a new interior decorator. Isn’t that what you fancy folks do?”
He chuckled. “You laugh, but I had one in New York. Had to play the part, right? Everything needed to be the best.”
Jesus, that was sad. And how many times had I thought that about Emerson and things he’d shared? Not that having someone decorate for you was bad, but his reasons for doing it were. I wondered if he realized how much he’d changed. If he saw that the same things weren’t as important to him, that maybe he was now being his more authentic self. “Bed looks comfy.” I winked, then headed for his en suite. I turned the shower on. Emerson came in behind me and reached for his shirt, but I swatted his hands away. “Stop tryin’ to take over my job.”
His nose wrinkled up in this cute way, like he was confused about what I was doing. But he didn’t fight me. I ran my hands up his torso, tickled and touched each of the dips between his abdominal muscles. “I like this so much, I’m tellin’ myself you did it all for me.”
He smiled. “I kept in shape for you?”
“Damn right you did. I’m glad you agree.” I pulled his tee off, then unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. Emerson was getting hard, his cock plumping up and his balls filling, but I didn’t touch him there. Just pulled his pants and underwear down, kneeling while I helped each foot pull out. “You remind me of something that belongs in some fancy art gallery, like they’d have a sculpture or a paintin’ of you and everyone would gather around in awe of all that pretty.”
