Twenty-Seven

Jensen

Emery’s gaze burned me like a brand throughout the service.

Luckily, the Christmas Eve service was almost entirely comprised of singing, and there was never a point where she could talk to me.

I’d been prepared for her to be here tonight. I’d figured, after the way I’d left things—or hadn’t left things—that she would want a confrontation. She was that kind of girl. But she’d made her choice that night, and then I’d made mine when I hopped on that plane and flew to New York.

What I did regret was that things were still tense with Landon. I should have fixed things with him before leaving. He was my brother. He would always be in my life, and if I had to endure his love for Emery, then I should at least let him know that I would stand down. I knew he was married to Miranda. But I always thought that was a temporary thing and that he’d find someone better in the end.

It had been impossible to get near him when I got back this morning. Miranda never left his side, and I couldn’t be in her vicinity for more than a few minutes before wanting my eardrums to burst.

But I would fix it tonight.

When the service ended, I reached down for my jacket, and when I stood back up, there was Emery, looking pissed as all hell. She was looking up at me with fire in her eyes, and it was impossible not to stare back. She was…stunning. Breathtaking. My chest tightened when I looked at her.

Avoiding her had seemed like the best option. I’d thought that telling her what I had seen would send her careening away from me. Yet, here she was, gazing up at me, as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to kiss me or punch me. What a quandary, this woman.

“You’re an idiot,” she snapped.

“Not now,” I muttered.

“Yes! Right now. I’ve waited all week for this. Why wait another minute?”

I could see in her eyes that she was in no way going to let this go. “Fine. Let’s do this somewhere else.”

“Fine,” she spat. “Outside then.”

I made my excuses to my family and then followed Emery outside. Emery nodded her head to the left, and we started walking in the bitter cold weather. She was in a warm jacket and scarf, and already, her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. Temperatures were dropping rapidly, and we were actually expecting a white Christmas.

“All right, we’re outside,” I said. “What is it that you have to say to me?”

“You’re being such an incredible idiot right now.”

“You mentioned that.”

She glared in my direction. “I can’t do this, Jensen.”

“Can’t do what?” I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

“You don’t trust me. You don’t value my opinion. You couldn’t even bother to talk to me. You ran at the first sign of trouble. Then, when things got tough, you went to see your ex-wife.”

“This has nothing to do with Vanessa. You know that.”

“How?” she demanded. “How could I know that? Do I know anything at all about what the hell this is about? You’re pissed about Landon. Then, you ran to your ex, and you expect me to not care about that? Look at how you reacted when you thought something had happened with Landon. I have every right to be upset.”

“You do,” I conceded.

None of what she was saying was wrong. But that didn’t mean I was going to stand here and let her yell at me. I knew Landon. I knew what he was feeling and thinking. She must just be blind to it.

“But it doesn’t change what I saw or how you feel about Landon or how Landon feels about you.”

“Oh my God, give it a rest! I do not love Landon, and Landon does not love me,” she hissed.

“I know what I saw.”

“No, you don’t. You really don’t. You have never given me a chance to explain what you think you saw. I can’t sit around and let you walk all over my heart, Jensen. I put myself out there after I’d been hurt. And then, at the first sign of trouble, you ditched me. And all of it could have been fixed with one little conversation that you refused to have with me.”

“If you think that one conversation will magically change everything, then tell me what I saw. Tell me what really happened.”

“Look, the night you saw me with Landon was in no way romantic. He came to apologize to me for being a dick when he found us together. Then, Heidi and I got drunk, and he offered both of us a ride home. I was too drunk to walk to the front door, so he helped me. I got inside and immediately called you. The end. That’s the whole story.”

“And you were all over him because…”

“One, I was not all over him. Two, I was drunk, and I’m not a good drunk. I’m a face-plant-into-the-concrete-and-bust-my-nose-and-get-two-black-eyes kind of drunk. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

I snorted, just imagining her falling over like that.

“That’s really all that happened?” I asked.

I suddenly felt panicked, like maybe Landon hadn’t been the one who overreacted…that I had been the one to overreact. If what she was saying was true, then I had hurt her this week for no good reason.

“Yes!” she cried, exasperated. “And you would know that if you had bothered to pick up the phone. Go ask Landon. Go ask Heidi! She was in the car that night. If anything, I think that Heidi might be into Landon. Not me! I don’t understand what I did to make you not trust me, but I hate this.”

“Emery,” I said slowly. I was an idiot.

“Save it,” she said in frustration, throwing my words back at me.

“You’re right,” I said automatically.

She gave me a wary look. “I am?”

“Yes. I am an idiot.”

“Well, that’s very obvious at this point.”

“What I’m trying to say is, I was so afraid of losing you that I pushed you away. I made assumptions. It didn’t help that Landon had said that, if I didn’t know what had really happened in your breakup, then I didn’t know you at all.”

Her eyes ignited in fury. “He said what?” she cried. “Oh, I’m going to kill him, I swear.”

“What I’m saying is that I want a second chance,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I don’t want to argue with you, and I don’t want to run. I was an idiot. A complete idiot.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, turning her face away from mine. “How do I know that this won’t happen again?”

“You don’t. But I don’t know how else to make this right. We both have pasts. We both have issues. Trust is mine. After what happened in my past, I have a hard time taking anyone at face value. But I’d really like to try to handle everything together. To start over.”

She sighed. “Jensen…”

“Give me a chance, Emery. Please.”

Snow slowly started to fall around us. She looked up at me through snowy lashes with fluffy flakes tumbling into her dark hair and blanketing her jacket. I knew she was hurting, and I had done almost irreparable damage. But I wanted to make this right…if she would just let me.

“Okay,” she said finally. “One chance, Jensen. That’s it.”

Then, I tilted my face down toward hers, and our lips met, gently and nurturing. It was a kiss I’d missed all week. A kiss I’d remember forever.

“You won’t regret it,” I whispered against her lips.

She sighed into me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I hated the last week.”

“Me, too. I hated being away from you.”

“Why are you such an ass?”

I laughed. “Can’t seem to help it.”

“God, we’re so fucked up.”

“Emery?”

“Hmm?”

“What really happened with your breakup with Landon?”

She sighed again, heavier, and took a step back from me. “You really want to know?”

I nodded. “Yes. I would like to be on equal footing. Figure things out together. That way, maybe neither of us will be blindsided again.”

“All right.” She dropped her head forward, swallowed, and then nodded. “Landon and I had dated nearly two years when he got into Stanford on a golf scholarship, and I got into Oklahoma as a National Merit Scholar, but both of us wanted to stay home and go to Texas Tech, so we could be together. We had this whole plan. Then…as far as I know, your father told him to go to Stanford.”

“No way,” I argued. “My father wanted nothing more than for all of us to go to Texas Tech, just like him and all our relatives.”

She shrugged. “I was there. This is what happened. He thought Landon should be more serious about school and about sports. He wanted Landon to go to Stanford and try to walk onto the football team, which Landon didn’t want to do.”

“That at least sounds like my father.”

“Yeah. Landon was a good football player, but he always preferred golf. He got into a huge argument with your dad one night right before the deadline where we both had to decide where we were going to school. His dad said that he needed to break up with me or something like, if I was so important, then we could make it work long distance. As you know, your dad died shortly after that.”

I nodded. That part, I was well aware of.

“Landon felt…responsible for what happened. As if that argument had pushed him over the edge.”

“He wasn’t and it didn’t.”

“I knew that; I still know that. But the last thing that he ever said to your dad was something mean, and he couldn’t cope. He accepted the full ride to Stanford because that’s what your dad had wanted, and I took the Oklahoma spot. Then, Landon was just…gone.”

“Gone?”

“Adrift. I tried to bring him back and to help, but he disappeared those next couple of weeks before graduation. We were still together. I knew he still loved me, but he was broken. So, he broke up with me the day of graduation. He told me that he’d talked it over with his family—with you—and you’d all agreed it was best.”

“We never talked about this. He told me that you were going to different colleges, and you’d grown apart.”

“Well, I see now that you didn’t know.” She swallowed hard. “But, as you can imagine, as an eighteen-year-old, I was heartbroken. He still loved me. I still loved him. I knew he was only doing this because of what happened to your father. I tried calling him and messaging him and emailing him. No answer. He just disappeared off the face of the planet. I know he got my messages. He never blocked me. He knew how much I was hurting and ignored it. Sound familiar?”

I winced. It did. I’d seen her messages and how desperate she was. I’d put her in the same spot Landon had ten years ago, and I hadn’t even known it. And I’d done it for no good reason.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But, as you can see, history repeating itself wasn’t so good on my psyche. Landon made his choice all those years ago. I know he did what he thought was right. I just hated all of you for a long time because of him.”

We walked on in the snow in silence for another minute. I didn’t know what to say to all of that. I hadn’t realized how hurt Landon had been. When he’d disappeared to Stanford, I’d thought he’d been fine. Boy, was I wrong.

“So, since we’re being all open and honest now,” Emery said, glancing over at me. “Did you see Vanessa when you were in New York?”

“I did,” I answered slowly.

I weighed my options. How much could I tell her right now. There were still things that she didn’t know. Things that I knew I should tell her. But she looked so tense and ready to run. I worried one more thing would push her over the edge. I promised myself that I would tell her though when the time was right.

“But I didn’t go there to see her, and absolutely nothing happened. I was there for business.”

“Landon said it was complicated between the two of you.”

“It is. Vanessa is complicated,” I confirmed.

She crossed her arms over her chest, as if she were trying to keep her insides from squirming at the thought.

“But it’s not like that,” I rushed on. “I told you once that I could never be with her after what had happened, and that hasn’t changed.”

“Then, why did you see her?”

“We’re divorced, but not…disentangled. It’s complicated.”

“Disentangled?”

God, I didn’t know how to explain this. “I’m working on the disentangling, part of the reason I went up there. Plus, I was selling off a part of Tarman. I bought the company to dismantle it,” I confessed.

She frowned and pursed her lips. She looked like she was considering everything else I had just said and finding it unsatisfactory.

“That’s not really an answer,” she said finally. “Why did you see her?”

“She still lives in my apartment in New York.”

“Why the hell would you let her live there?”

“This is part of the disentangling,” I admitted. Soon. I would tell her soon.

“And nothing happened?”

“Emery, no,” I said softly.

“I know, I know,” she said, shaking her head. “I should trust you in return. If you said it’s not like that, then it’s not like that.”

God, I had fucked up. She was so wary now. It was so clear to me, what an idiot I’d been.

Staring down into her beautiful face as snow slowly fell from the sky, I knew.

I’d tried to run.

I’d tried to hide.

I’d tried to say fuck it all.

But there was no turning back.

Emery Robinson was it for me.

And I would do anything to keep her.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said, pulling her to a stop again. I ran my hands down her arms. “I knew, even while I was doing it, that what I was doing was wrong. I just…fuck, I was just so angry. I felt like I was going through the same shit again. But, this time, I would not just be hurting the woman I love but my brother, too.”

“Love?” she whispered. Her mouth opened slightly in shock. “You love me?”

“Oh, Emery,” I said, threading my fingers through her hair and pushing it behind her ear. I stepped toward her, feeling all my walls crumbling down. “Of course I love you.”