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I know he is. My brother always knows when danger is coming. My mind wheels through old memories. Fragmented ones. Coloring on the carpet in the sitting room near my father’s office. Leo appearing at the door, his arms out, a smile on his face. I don’t remember my father carrying me on his hip. Only Leo. Only turning back to look over his shoulder. Only my arms around his neck, my coloring book clutched in my hand. I’m gonna drop my crayon, I’d said. Hold on, he said back. Hold on, Daph, hold on.
Emerson’s still watching when I round on him, anger burning up through that memory.
“You’re unbelievable.” His eyes flick between my lips and my eyes. “You’re a liar. A fake. You made me think—” All those texts. His mouth between my legs. The way he touched me in the art gallery. “You did all those things so that I would trust you, and I did.” My voice rises, but I control it before I’m actually yelling. Before my shame can overwhelm me. I need to stay pissed for this. “You’re a manipulative bastard. Did you mean any of it?”
“Any of what, little painter?”
“You were careful with me. You paid attention.” He saw more than I wanted him to notice. He saw everything. “You did that on purpose.”
“Of course.”
“To lure me here.”
Emerson shakes his head. “You asked me to come get you. Your messages were clear.”
“Listen to this message, then. I want to leave. I want you to take me home.”
“I won’t.”
“Then—”
“I didn’t lure you, little painter. That’s all I meant. It was your choice to come.”
“Because I thought you were better,” I snap, and for the first time, I hear my brother in my voice. I understand what it is to speak when screaming and raging would be more appropriate. “I thought you were better than this.”
Fresh shame scorches my cheeks. I never gave Emerson’s name to my family. Not Eva. Not Leo. Not anyone. But I defended him. He’s not like that. I said that to my brother’s face. Leo was a day out from surviving a deadly fever. I was so certain.
“Take it as a compliment,” Emerson says. I want to say that I hate him. That I hate how good he looks. That I hate how I can’t stop noticing. I’ll call this feeling hate, but in the back of my mind, I know it’s not the right word. I can’t turn him into something ugly.
“What does that even mean?”
That glint comes back to his eyes. The dangerous one. A shiver echoes in my body.
“I’m not better than that, little painter. I’m not a good man. I never made any such promise.”
Holy shit, he’s right. It’s possible I missed all the important lessons in art school. It’s possible I never learned to pay attention at all. Emerson hasn’t just been intense. He hasn’t just been obsessive. He’s been meticulous.
“You promised…” The sentence trails off. Emerson has used that word with me before. Promise.
“I never promised to be nice,” he says softly. He said that to me last night when he was forcing me to paint. I was begging him, shamelessly, to help me come.
“You promised it would be worth it.” Before. In his SUV. On the way to the beach. “This isn’t worth it.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I do.” I look away from him, out the window. I don’t want him to see that part of me is still curious. Part of me asks the same question of myself. How would you know? Part of me wants to feel brave and free, the way I did when I was running to him on the street.
I take a deep breath. Calm myself, as much as I can. This will be over soon. Very soon, if I know my brother. And I do.
In the meantime I make a point of considering my surroundings, mainly so I have an excuse not to look at Emerson. His bedroom is spacious. A big, king-size bed. A wide walk-in closet. The archway leading through to the art studio. Huge windows looking out onto the beach. Onto the ocean. A thin layer of snow covers the sand. The room is like a frame for the view. It doesn’t distract, or detract, from the sky and the water.
A person could paint the ocean all day from this house. She would never have to feel an icy breeze in her hair or the ache of frozen fingers.
“If you’re not interested in sleeping, you can paint.”
I whip my head back toward Emerson. “Why the hell would you think I wanted to paint?”
A brief smile lights his eyes. “You’re not aware of your body, little painter.”
