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I typed a quick message to Chelsea.
Hey. I need those pro detectives at your agency, the ones who dig up all the dirt and get shit on couples that help them get together.
She replied immediately.
Chelsea:Sure. Who’re we doing?
I typed the words. I deleted them. Then I typed them again.
Two people. Emory Abbot.
Chelsea:And?
I bit my lower lip, hard.
Benjamin Moore.
29
Noah
I’d chosen this coffee shop for a reason. Emma didn’t like bars. She hated the loud music and the stray lighting, the way everything seemed to flail out of control.
Back when we were dating, though, she’d been a very different person.
Emma Moore joined East Harbor full of ambition. She had her mind set on getting a degree in counseling and working with children, especially those who came from broken homes.
It was such a good cause, and more than that, Emma brought passion to everything she embraced.
Teaching her was a joy. It’s like when you’re saying stuff that’s important to you, but you also know it’s important to the other person, and that kinda makes it all the better? That’s what it was.
We became friends first. Benjamin and I were already pretty close going in, so I went when he invited me to a housewarming party.
That was also where I met June for the first time. I’d seen her in college, of course.
She was a damn good counselor. One who really cared about the students and wanted them to do well.
Emma and I... we got on like a house on fire. I honestly had no clue why people even used this idiom because it sounded pretty devastating. But I guessed that’s what it meant for us too.
I fell. And I fell hard. Here was this girl, and she was... well, she had everything going for her.
Beautiful, intelligent, with the kind of wit that could snub and undo me at the same time.
Being around her made me happy. Like the stupid kind of happy, the kind you get when you know you’ve found something special and you want the world to know about it.
But it wasn’t meant to last.
What sucked was that it wasn’t for lack of trying. I knew she loved me as hard as I loved her. That wasn’t missing.
Actually, nothing was missing. Except when Emory Abbot decided to turn his eyes on her. He stopped at nothing. He stalked and hounded her and turned her into prey, someone who was afraid to leave her home even in daylight.
I lost my lover. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I also lost my best friend.
Emory did something far worse, though. He deprived children of someone who could have gone on to make a huge difference in their lives.
Because Emma would have done it. She’d have risen and taken the social service sector by storm. And she’d be better than fucking Batman cleaning up the streets of Gotham.
So, he didn’t just hurt Emma and five other lives by extension. Oh, no, he ripped a whole vulnerable segment of society from what they could have had.
