Em
I close my eyes and breathe in the damp earth. The trees block out the sun, painting bars of shadows across me, and it’s so cold I wish I’d worn a jacket. I glance up at the tree house. I don’t think I can do this. You’ve got no choice.
“Em.”
I turn around and my heart slams like a rocket into my rib cage. Jake is striding toward me through the undergrowth, a smile on his lips but a question in his eyes. It’s just like the time I saw him again on the beach, when he first came back to Bainbridge. He seems nervous, unsure of my reaction. He stops in front of me and moves to pull me into his arms. I dance backward on shaking legs.
He freezes, his eyes darkening, his arms falling heavy to his sides. “What’s going on? When you weren’t at the police station, I figured something was up.” The look in his eye is so afraid that I find I can’t speak. I just want to reach for him, kiss him, make it all go away.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and his jaw pulses. “I know I shouldn’t have hit him, but he deserved it—”
I cut him off fast. “Look, let’s not talk about it.”
“But—”
“No,” I say, walking away, putting more distance between us. I need to do this fast. Get it over with. Get away from him. “I think we should break up.”
I hear him take a sharp breath in. “What?” he asks quietly.
I turn to Jake, but my gaze rests somewhere in the middle distance, not on him. “I don’t think it’s going to work, Jake. I mean, you’re going back to college and I’m stuck here.”
“Seriously?” Jake asks, stepping toward me. It’s as if he knows that if he gets close enough, I won’t be able to think straight, that he will have the advantage, so I walk even farther away.
“Yes, seriously,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around my waist. “I’ve thought about it a lot. You and me, we are never going to work. And I just have too much on my plate. I can’t deal with a long-distance relationship as well.”
Jake says nothing, but I can feel his eyes burning through me. I risk a glance up at him. He’s been waiting for me to make eye contact.
“This is bullshit,” he says, the word flying across the clearing like a bullet.
I startle. Jake doesn’t swear. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.
Suddenly, he’s right in front of me. He takes my hand and when I try to snatch it away, he holds on tighter. “Look at me,” he says, and I hear the thick layer of emotion in his voice. I glance up at him.
“I thought you wanted to be with me,” he says. “I thought we had something—something real.”
I shrug and wrench my hand from his grip. “Look, Jake,” I say, “it was good. While it lasted. But all good things have to end. There’s no point in dragging it out.”
The confusion in his eyes is so real it’s heartbreaking, but I’m able to stay cold, unresponsive to it. All I do is draw on all the tricks of the old Emerson—shutting down, closing off to all feelings and emotions. It’s easier than I thought it would be.
“No point?” he asks. His hand falls to his side. “Of course there’s a point. I love you.”
Okay. Not that easy. I feel that like a slice to the heart.
“What?” he asks me. “Suddenly, you don’t love me anymore? Because two nights ago that’s not what you were saying.”
“I made a mistake,” I whisper, looking again at the tree house. Our tree house.
“A mistake?” Jake asks, and I hear the wounded note in his voice.
“Yes,” I say, anger ripping through me. “It was a mistake getting involved with you. I should never have done it.”
“I don’t get it,” he says. “Is it because of the fight?”
I turn away and start walking out of the clearing.
“No,” I say.
He steps in front of me. “Then what? I’m sorry. I know it was stupid. I just reacted when he called you a—”
“You don’t need to be my defender, Jake. I don’t need you to stand up for me.”
“I want to stand up for you,” he says, his voice husky, his eyes filled with hurt.
“Why?” I ask. “Because it makes you feel better? Less guilty because you weren’t around to stand up for me back when it happened? Because you ran off and didn’t care a damn about me or what happened to me?”
I don’t know why I’ve just said this last part. I didn’t mean to. It just came flying out of me, and I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. The words are hanging in the air between us like a bad smell.
Something flashes across Jake’s face. “I’ve said sorry, Em. I told you what happened. I explained why we had to leave. I would have told you to your face, but you didn’t want to see me. You made that perfectly clear. And I get it. I really do get it. I don’t blame you.”
“What are you talking about?”
He frowns at me. “I waited for you. At the tree house. You didn’t show up. And I know why, but—”
“When?”
“The day after. I went there after school. I had this stupid idea.” He laughs under his breath. “I was there for hours waiting for you to show up.”
“Why would I have shown up?”
“Because of the letter.”
“What letter?”
Jake blinks at me. The blood drains from his face as though a sluice gate has opened in his neck. “He never gave it to you, did he?”
“What? Who? What are you talking about?”
“Reid. I gave him a letter to give to you.”
Jake bites his top lip and stares at the ground. Now he looks like a bull about to charge. I take a step toward him. He looks up and my feet freeze. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says.
“You’re right,” I say, taking a deep breath, forcing myself to be resolute. “None of it matters now. You should leave.”
Jake stares at me for a moment and then he turns around and walks away.
I stay where I am, rooted to the spot, watching until he’s out of sight, willing myself not to run after him.
The sound of clapping starts to echo through the damp woods. It gets louder. Rob appears on the path. He’s climbed down from the tree house and is sauntering toward me, smiling while he applauds. It was part of the deal that I let him watch.
“Nice acting,” he says.
“I did you what you wanted,” I spit at him. “Are you happy now?”
He nods, still grinning. “Hell yeah. That was Oscar-worthy.”
“I broke up with him like you told me to. I let you watch. Now are you going to drop the charges?”
Rob studies me, smirking. “I’ll think about it.”
I reel back and stare at him in disbelief. “Think about it?”
“Yeah, if I drop the charges, what’s to stop you from running back to him?”
My mouth falls open. He’s a bully—I knew that all along. But this is like a child pulling the wings off an insect, slowly, taking his time about it. I gave him a taste of power and control, and now he’s desperate for more. Damn it. I should have known this is what he’d do.
I weigh him for a moment, a riptide of anger building inside me, and then I take a step toward him, fists coiling at my sides as I consider the giant target that is his head. There’s a smug victory smile on his face, and it stops me in my tracks. For a brief second, it whips me right back to the locker room all those years ago. I saw that same smile on Jake’s uncle’s face right after he did what he did, both threatening and amused, both of them believing that my silence was a given.