AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I wore this to work,” I whispered, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had a coat on,” he said defensively as I tossed it in the garbage.
“I’m going to bed,” I announced, pushing past him. “Tosleep.”
“We weren’t done talking,” he argued, catching me around my waist.
I deflated against him, the headache I’d pretended to have suddenly becoming real. “Can we talk tomorrow?”
He sighed and kissed my temple. “Sure. I’m gonna turn off the lights and then I’ll be right behind you.”
“Thanks,” I said, squeezing his arm before pulling away.
“Emilia,” he called softly as I reached the bedroom doorway. “We are gonna talk tomorrow, sugar.”
It sounded less like a promise than a threat.
Chapter 14
Michael
Iclimbed outof bed that morning, knowing there was no way that I was going to work. After the conversation we’d had and the way Emilia had clammed up right before Charlie had come knocking, I knew that if I left all day by the time I got home that night, she’d be all balled up again. I never wanted to sit through another dinner where she picked at her food and put up a very transparent front trying to act like everything was okay.
The car shit had thrown her, and the bad first day at work had exacerbated it—but there was something else going on that I wasn’t quite seeing. She was so fanatical about paying her own way and doing things herself, it almost seemed like a compulsion. Logically she knew that I could fix up the Subaru no problem with minimal costs, but she was still panicking about paying for it. She hated the job at the coffee cart after one day, even I could see it, but she didn’t speak up and tell Charlie that it wasn’t going to work out—even though Charlie had given her the perfect opening.
I needed to figure out whatever the hell was going on in her head, because if we didn’t, eventually it was going to become too much, and I had to know how to mitigate the fallout.
Sighing, I started a pot of coffee and leaned against the counter. I’d thought after we decided to be back together that everything would settle into something easy, but that just wasn’t happening. Little things that I hadn’t paid much attention to had practically lit up like neon signs as I’d lay in bed trying to sleep. The way she’d taken so long to come home after her parents died because she’d wanted to save up money, instead of running back as fast as she could like it was clear she’d wanted to. She’d given in about letting me pay the rent but had stocked my kitchen with hundreds of dollars in groceries and hadn’t let me pay her back. How little clothes she had, even though Rhett was fully kitted out. The way she’d made such a stink about me buying her new tires or getting her car detailed. How she’d assured me over and over that she’d find a job and pay her own way, even though I’d assured and reassured her that I wasn’t worried about it.
As I stared at the coffee dripping into the carafe, my gut burned. She was so fixated on paying her way, of not being amooch,as she’d put it, that she was tying herself up in knots. I was pretty sure she’d wound herself up so bad that she’d puked the night before. She’d tried to play off her run from the room, but I’d seen that shade of green before.
Then she’d hacked off her hair, just like she used to when we were kids and she’d had a particularly bad night at home.
I was sitting at the table drinking my second cup of coffee when Emilia stumbled into the kitchen in my t-shirt. Her short hair stuck up in every direction, and it flew around her face as she squeaked and jerked to a stop.
“I thought you went to work,” she sputtered, crossing her arms over her chest and then trying to smooth her hair, going back and forth between the two like she couldn’t decide if she should hide her braless tits or the mad scientist thing on her head.
“Took the day off,” I replied, watching her in amusement. “Coffee’s hot if you want some.”
“That’s actually why I came down.” She gave me a tight smile as she tried to walk past me like she didn’t have a care in the world, tugging on the t-shirt.
“Rhett still sleepin’?” I turned to watch her.
“Yeah. I thought I’d enjoy a cup of coffee on the stairs.” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “A few minutes of peace and quiet but still able to stop him if he wakes up and tries to come down on his own.”
“Smart,” I replied, getting to my feet. “I’ll join you.”
I settled on the stairs to wait for her, wondering how I was going to bring up the day before. I hated to rock the boat because she seemed calmer than she had been, but I couldn’t let that shit fester.
“Why’d you take the day off?” she asked as she sat beside me, pulling her knees up under the t-shirt until only her toes were poking out of the bottom.
“We need to finish our conversation,” I replied, leaning against the banister.
“It could’ve waited until you got home.”
“And have you spinnin’ out all day?” I huffed.
“You heard Charlie,” she replied, taking a sip of her coffee. “It wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I’ll go back tomorrow, and it’ll be a little better, and the day after that will be even better—”
