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Startled, I look to the now open car door and find Emmett standing there, offering me his hand. Clearly, I’ve got to get my thoughts in check. Emmett was only opening the door for me, but I let my thoughts spiral out of control to all the worst-case scenarios in a matter of moments. Even when Emmett helps me out of the car and guides me to the couch, I still struggle to control my worry. Suddenly, I realize something.
“Emmett, I can’t stay here,” I say, twisting my hands together.
Emmett puts his hands gently over mine until I stop squeezing them.
“Yes, you can,” he says. “There’s a bed upstairs and I’ll stay down here on the couch.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
I stand from the couch and start pacing in front of it, trying to get the courage to be honest with him.
“If anyone from the church finds out I’m here, they might come after you. They might even come after your family.”
Emmett stands and stops me from pacing, holding me in place by gently grabbing the tops of my arms. The feel of his skin wrapped around my arms sends shivers up them and momentarily helps calm my racing heart.
“Aubrey. I promise you, no one is coming for you. Not here. Not if I have anything to say about it. And you just let me worry about me,” he says before wrapping me in a tight embrace.
My face buries itself in his chest and I let my arms come up around his waist, returning the embrace.
“Emmett,” I say, my voice muffled by his shirt.
“Yes, gorgeous?”
“I ran away from home. My parents are never going to speak to me again and I’m effectively now homeless,” I say, my voice cracking a little as I try to admit some of my current fears.
Emmett pulls back so that our eyes meet.
“Why don’t we get you cleaned up and then you can get some sleep. We can worry about all that in the morning.”
I nod and Emmett leads me by my hand up a set of stairs to an open loft. He has me sit on the edge of a bed, his bed. Then disappears into what I assume is the bathroom only to return a moment later with a wet towel. Gently and with more care than I’ve ever felt in my life, Emmett begins dabbing at the cuts I’d gotten from the rose bush. He never does ask me to explain what happened or why I finally left my parents. Right now, I don’t know if I have the strength to talk about it.
When he’s finished with my cuts, he shows me where the bathroom is and is about to go downstairs to the couch when a brave part of me, or maybe a wild part of me, makes a decision.
Chapter nineteen
Emmett
“Willyoustaywithme, please?”
Those six words nearly break me and nearly break my dick with how enthusiastically it gets hard.
I had already turned away from her. I have to take several long, slow breaths before I can turn to face her without a raging boner. When I turn back, Aubrey is sitting up on the bed, the blankets pulled up around her waist, her back against the headboard.
My bed.
My blankets.
My headboard.
Quickly, I try to think back to the advice Taylor gave me, and I panic. We didn’t go over this as a potential scenario. This wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities of things that would come up anytime soon. I stare at Aubrey longer than I should. My right hand absently moves to the back of my neck. The short coarse hairs there that peek out below my beanie pricks my fingers.
I’ve had sex with tons of girls, more girls than I can probably count even if I tried, but I’ve never, not once,sleptwith a girl. Sharing a bed for something more than, something other than sex, always felt way too intimate.
“Please,” Aubrey whispers.
She’s looking down at her hands twisted together in her lap as they often are and my heart actually hurts. I can’t deny her pleas. No matter what I have to do to keep myself and my dick in check, I am not disappointing this woman.
The bed dips as I sit on it and shuffle my legs under the blanket. When I do, Aubrey lets out a sigh and wiggles down under the covers so she’s laying down. I do the same, facing toward her as she faces me. We don’t talk and a sizable gap remains between us. That gap, however large it admittedly is, also feels excruciatingly small. I can feel her warm breath travel between us and smell her mint toothpaste.
