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It was terrifying, but it was also the easiest compromise Emil had ever been asked to make.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
“This is…”
“Don’t say stupid,” Dahlia ordered.
Emil put up his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t going to.” Not technically a lie. He wasn’t going to use the word “stupid.” He stared around the mall—at the throngs of last-minute shoppers—and felt a little better about himself. He’d managed to get something for all the people in his life that he cared about.
It wasn’t very many, but it was something. And he’d done it himself. For the first time since he was sixteen and put under the tender loving care of his father’s money, he’d taken time out of his day and put thought into something.
He had four gifts for Victor and Oliver sitting at the end of his hotel bed, which would be carefully transported to his new place once he got the keys. He had one in shipment ready to be delivered to Dahlia’s office, and he had two gifts in a bag hanging from his wrist—one for Renzo and one for Mattia. He had no idea if it was too much or too soon, but Emil was struggling to care anymore.
And now they were standing across from one of those paint-your-own-mug shops that Dahlia was insisting they stop by.
“We can make best friend mugs,” she insisted, tugging on his arm. “Stop being a party pooper.”
Emil pulled a face, but in reality, he wasn’t going to tell her no. He was pretty sure this wasn’t a hobby he was going to get into, but if it made her happy, it was good enough for him. “Let’s go.”
She hopped on the balls of her feet. “Yes! No one ever does this with me, and painting a mug by yourself is embarrassing.”
Emil might have agreed with her even a few weeks ago, but he was trying to do more things outside of his comfort zone—and the biggest bubble he’d lived in for a long time was always being surrounded by people. It didn’t matter if he felt seen or ignored. If there were people around, he was safe.
Except that was an illusion. It was something his therapist had been working on with him for the last few sessions, and the breakthrough was intense and painful. But he also wouldn’t want to be the nerd sitting at a table by himself, painting some happy face on a cheap mug he was never going to use either.
They stepped into the shop, where a bright-faced girl who looked no older than eighteen greeted them with a little speech. Emil tuned her out almost instantly and let Dahlia absorb all the information as he stared around at the shelves. Several of them looked professionally done, but to the right of them were obvious customer creations.
“…and you can choose either a window seat or you can sit close to the display cabinet,” the woman was saying.
Emil gave a shrug, so Dahlia chose the inner table, and they both took a seat on the raised bench. “So we just…grab a mug and figure it out?” he asked.
Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Try to be a little more creative than that, best friend.”
“I don’t know that I have a single creative bone in my body,” he admitted to her as he picked up the mug and turned it in his hands.
It was matte white and a little rough against his palms. The texture was damn near insufferable, so he set it back down and watched as Dahlia rose and grabbed two small trays, a box of loose paints, and brushes.
“It doesn’t need to look good, you know,” she told him as she sat back down. “This is supposed to be meditative or something.”
“We could go to a yoga class for that,” Emil groused. He grabbed a thin brush, then selected a handful of paints in different shades of blue. “Or a temple. Or a park.”
Dahlia set her stuff down and gave him a flat look. “If you really don’t want to be here, then you can go. You don’t need to make me feel like shit for having fun.”
Emil immediately flushed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like that.”
“You’re like that because you’re a spoiled brat,” Dahlia said plainly. “And it’s easy to see you’ve been that way for your entire life. God, you must have been the worst toddler.”
He laughed, the sensation of it almost painful in his chest. He took a second to rub his sternum, then drew in a deep breath. “Until I was sixteen, I lived with my mom. She, uh…she had some issues. A disorder. When my dad left her, she started telling everyone I was sick.”
Dahlia stared at him, her brush halfway into a small puddle of lavender. “Sick like how?”
Emil shrugged. He’d blocked so much of it out he still struggled to remember how it started. “She was always keeping me home for shit. Stomachaches, headaches. She had me at all these different hospitals getting tested. She used to tell me she was pretty sure I had cancer. She said it so often I believed her.”
He shrugged and stared down at his mug, then dragged a smear of blue across the front. It looked stark and almost ugly against the white. “After a while, I figured out she was lying, but she started saying that I was delusional. Literally. That I hallucinated and that I was dangerous and could hurt other people.” Fuck, he hadn’t thought about all that in so long. “I wasn’t allowed to see my dad. I wasn’t allowed to be with the other kids in school. They kept me in this tiny classroom with this hulking security guard who would just stand there and stare at me all day.”
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Emil let out a pained laugh and passed a hand down his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before. Ever.”
