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“Emerson got obsessed with me,” I tell my sister. “He did some things he shouldn’t have done. He took my phone. He kept me at his house. He wanted me with him more than anything else, but he didn’t hurt me. I miss him.” My throat closes. “And I think it’s too late.”
“Because you fell for him.”
“Yeah. And I know I shouldn’t think about him. I know it’s wrong. Except that’s not what it feels like.”
“How is it, then, Daph?”
“Right. It’s just—he’s right. Maybe not exactly how it was. I hated that I couldn’t talk to you. If I went back, I’d want my phone.”
Eva puts a hand to her forehead. “A man that takes your phone—”
“He loves me. He said so. He left home for me. He—” I am simply not going to cry. “It’s hard for him to do that. Almost impossible. But he didn’t want me to see him get hurt.” My chin dimples first. So much for stopping the tears. “He told me it was done. That I should find someone better. But I don’t want someone better. I want him.”
She steps over and puts her arm around my shoulders. My ribs hurt from suppressing the sobs trapped in my lungs. I push them down. Once. Twice. Eva rubs my arm. I keep waiting for her to confirm that it is in fact wrong to want anything to do with Emerson, but she doesn’t. There’s room here for me to say more.
“We didn’t—we got interrupted. We didn’t have time to figure out how to be together. I’m not going to get that time if I can’t get Leo to understand that I wasn’t hurt.”
Eva lets out a soft sigh, her hand moving up and down, up and down. Damn it, I wish it didn’t feel so hollow to think about painting. Drawing.
“I just want to be clear about what happened,” she says, finally. “You wanted to go with him?”
“I asked him to come get me from my apartment, and he did. We went to his house.”
“But then he wouldn’t let you leave.” The birds chitter to each other, as if shocked.
“He said I had to stay, but he didn’t keep me in a basement. I had a bedroom. He didn’t chain me to the bed.” He did tie me up in a frame.
“He was kind to you?”
“He was more than kind. I still tried to escape.”
Eva’s hand goes still. “What?”
“I tried to swim away through the ocean.”
“In the winter?”
“It was too cold.” The memory of icy water in my face, in my mouth, overwhelms the fresh air of the courtyard. “He surfs every day, even in the winter, so I thought I could make it. I couldn’t.” Echoes of those shivers, those deep, uncontrollable shivers, shake my body all over again. “I almost drowned. He came for me. Even afterward, he never locked me away. I met his brothers.”
“My god. You found another family just like ours.”
“They’re nothing like ours.”
“Please.” Eva laughs. “You met his brothers, and they let him keep you there?”
“It was Emerson’s dad who wanted the reward money. He’s the one who called. His dad…”
Is like ours.
“He said I was like art that he’d collected, but he didn’t mean it that way. He meant that I was valuable to him. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I’m a Morelli. It had nothing to do with money. It was me. And yeah, it was—it was fucked up.” Eva makes a surprised sound. “Can something be fucked up and still be right? Because honestly, being with the kind of man that Mom and Dad would approve of just makes me sick.”
Eva laughs, real and genuine. “I’m not—I’m so sorry, Daphne, I’m not laughing at you. I get it. I do. I think sometimes, it can work if it’s fucked up. Obviously—” A deep breath to steady herself. “If you’re telling me it’s right for you, then I believe you.”
“That’s why I need your help.”
She shifts her body so she can look down at me. “My help?”
“You have to talk to Leo. You have to convince him not to kill Emerson.”
