He heaves an exhausted breath and stares out the window. “I can’t believe you blew your cover and gave up your chance at a new start in life.” He looks at me and shakes his head in disappointment.
I shrug, unsure what he wants me to say. I already knew the new start I was promised is gone. I don’t regret my choice, though, not after seeing Evan and Doc go after Emery like that. I wasn’t about to stand by anymore and watch them slowly kill her anymore.
“I wish you’d tell me where Emery is,” I sign. “It’s been three days and all anyone will ever say is that she’s okay, but she’s been in and out of consciousness.”
“She’s okay.” He twists in his seat and stretches out his legs across the floor. “More than okay, actually, which is part of the reason I came to see you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she finally woke up and is coherent.”
I get to my feet and rub my dreary eyes, suddenly feeling very awake. “Can I see her?”
He thrums his fingers on the table, contemplating, then retrieves his phone from his pocket and checks his messages. When he puts his phone away, he reclines back in the chair. “She told us where it is.”
I gape at him. “She told you where the warehouse is? Just like that?”
“You seem shocked,” Stale remarks, pushing to his feet, “yet you’ve been assuring me that she’d cooperate.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think she’d do it that easy. Not when she’s terrified of her father.”
“Well, she didn’t do it without some stipulations, one being protection.”
So, just like that, Emery gave up the location. She’s braver than I thought. I should have given her more credit. All that time we spent together, she seemed timid and sweet, unlike her father who is more terrifying than the devil himself. But she’s had bravery hidden beneath the fear he worked to instill in her.
“There were more requests than just being protected,” Stale adds. “One is she wants to see you before she goes.”
“Goes?” I ask with my brow cocked. “Where?”
“That information is confidential.”
“And what about me?” I sign. “Where am I going?”
“That’s really up to you.” He rubs his hand over the top of his head, staring out the window again. “We can offer you witness protection, which I think would be wise considering, but I can’t make you do it.”
“Just like Brooks?” I question with speculation, still not convinced Brooks was ever safe.
He scowls at me. “I’ve told you time and time again that Brooks is safe, Ryler. Just like you and I are standing here. I told you I’d protect you just like I told him the same. We pulled him out before Donny got to him, so stop speculating otherwise.”
“Why would you give me the offer for witness protection?” I wonder. “I fucked up, which means I lose my chance at starting over.”
His mouth curves to a frown. “We’re not that cruel. We’re not going to just let you out there to fend for yourself after you’ve given us eight months of your life. Besides, you didn’t fuck up completely. You brought us Emery who told us the location of Ralingford.”
“That’s the town where the warehouse is?”
“It is. Emery even gave up the latitude and longitude so we could track it by satellite, otherwise, we’d be going into the search blind.”
Emery, you’re more amazing than you’ll ever realize.
Completely and utterly brave.
I want to see you again.
Hold you in my arms.
But how long will it last before you slip from my fingers
and blow into the wind like dust?
“And if I choose witness protection, then I’d never see anyone I know again, right?” I ask. “That would be the deal.”
“That’s how these things have to work; otherwise, there would be no point.” When I don’t respond right away, he adds, “Ryler, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but with you and Emery being gone for over four days now, my bet is Doc already has men looking for you. You know as well as I do that if they start looking into you, they’re going to eventually find stuff. Just like you know that even if we arrest them there’s always a chance someone will still come looking for you.”
Well, when he puts it that way, it’s really not a choice. Yes, it’ll suck leaving my stuff behind, leaving without saying goodbye to Violet and Luke, but it’s what I have to do. The worst is knowing that I won’t see Emery ever again. We never really got a chance. My encounter with the beautiful girl I briefly connected to was more fleeting than a storm.
“When would I have to leave?” I ask Detective Stale. “I’m guessing soon.”
“We’d get you out of here as soon as you’re finished saying goodbye to Emery,” he says, checking the time on his phone. “Which I’m hoping you’ll make quick for her sake. A team is about to raid Ralingford, and I want her on a plane before that happens.”
I rake my hands through my hair and then sniff my shirt, which smells like barbeque chips and soda. I need a shower and to put clean clothes on, but there’s not a whole lot I can do since I have nothing else with me except another shirt that I wore the first two days in this room.
“Where is she?” I ask, slipping on my boots.
He heads for the door, signaling for me to follow him. “I can only give you about a half an hour, then we have to get you and her out of here.” He unfastens the lock, opens the door, and sticks his head out into the hallway. He glances left and right before stepping out.
I follow after him as he hurries down the hallway. We rush past door after door until finally stopping in front of the last one.
Stale slips his hand into his pocket and digs out a keycard. “Thirty minutes,” he warns as he feeds the lock the card. “Then I’m coming in.”
I can tell by the look on his face that he thinks Emery and I are going to spend our time fucking each other. While I don’t mind the idea, I doubt that’s going to happen. Things need to be said. A lot of important things, including an apology on my part for lying to her.
When Stale steps back, I push the door open and enter the room. The curtains are drawn shut and the corner lamp is on. The air smells like takeout and the bed is unmade, but Emery is nowhere to be seen.
Confused, I start across the room. As I pass by the bathroom, Emery strolls out and crashes into me.
“Oh, my God,” she squeaks, pressing her hand to her heart. “You scared the heck out of me.”
Her wet hair runs loosely down her shoulders, her skin is damp, and she smells like shampoo. She has on a pair of shorts and a faded black tank top. Not a single drop of makeup is on her face, and all I can think is absolutely perfect.
“Hey,” I sign, giving her a nervous smile. Now that she knows who I am, it feels like we’re meeting for the first time. And like the very first time we met, I feel a bit anxious.
“Hey,” she replies, biting her nails.
I can’t help smiling. She’s still the same Emery.
I remove her hand from her lips and lace our fingers together. We need to talk, I mouth.
She nods in agreement. “Yes, we do.”
Holding onto her hand, I guide her to the bed and pull her down with me as I sit down on the mattress. I stare at her for a while, wasting at least five of our thirty minutes together, memorizing her lips, her eyes, the curves of her body, the scent of her.
“I’m sorry,” I finally sign, after I finish staring at her.
Her head angles to the side. “For what?”
“For lying to you.” I tuck a strand of her wet hair behind her ear. “I should have told you who I am the moment Doc told me who you are.”
She burrows her cheek deeper into my hand. “Ryler, you don’t need to be sorry. You’re the good one here.”
“I’m anything but good. Trust me.”
“I do trust you.” She reaches for me, her fingers noticeably trembling, and sweeps her fingers through my hair. “I trust
you more than anyone, which might seem crazy because we barely know each other, but I really do. I realize that now. You’re the only person in my entire life that has made me feel some sort of safety. I just wish I could have trusted you from the beginning. Things would have been so much easier.”
“You couldn’t trust me all the time because I was lying to you most of the time.”
“But you lied for a good reason.”
“I should have told you who I am sooner,” my hands move desperately between us, “instead of waiting until things got as bad as they did.”
She lowers her hand to her lap then tucks her chin in, lowering her head. “You didn’t tell me because you didn’t trust me for a good reason. Who I am—where I come from—it makes me untrustworthy.”
I dip my head and make eye contact with her, lifting my hands. “No, it doesn’t. Just because you came from that place, it doesn’t make you a monster like Elderman or your father. Trust me, if where we came from made us who we are, then I’d have no chance of starting over. I’d always be a criminal through and through, but I know I’m not. I know I want to be a good person, and one day I will be.”
“You are a good person,” she whispers softly. “You got me out of there—got me out of that life.”
“No, you got yourself out of there by telling the truth. You’re a very brave person, Emery.” I smooth my finger along her jawline and fall deeper into my feelings for her as she shivers from my touch. “And don’t ever think anything less.”
Her tongue slides out to wet her lips as she lifts her head back up. We stare at each other in silence, the clock ticking. I don’t want to move, though, because moving means moving forward. Means starting over without her.
“What do we do now?” she asks breathlessly.
I’m not sure who moves first—maybe we both move together—but suddenly our lips slam together and clothes are being ripped off. I peel off my shirt while Emery yanks off hers. I kick off my boots, grab a condom out of my wallet, and then slip out of my jeans before climbing back onto the bed to help Emery out of her shorts. She giggles when they get stuck on her sandals and the noise is the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard because there’s so much freedom to it.
Once I get her undressed, I lie down on the bed and she straddles my lap. I knot my fingers through her hair, drawing her to my lips. The kiss is unlike the others we’ve shared, carrying more passion, more freedom, more everything. I kiss her with every ounce of emotion I’ve kept trapped inside me, kiss her like she’s feeding me air. Then, gripping her hips, I guide her down on me and thrust inside her.
She gasps from the contact, throwing her head back and arching out her chest. “This feels so amazing.” Her nails scratch my chest as I rock inside her.
With each rock, I sink deeper, my skin beading with sweat. She rolls her hips and lowers her lips to mine, kissing me fervently. I don’t want it to end. I tell myself that it doesn’t have to. That I shouldn’t have to let go of her when I only just got her.
Eventually, we both come undone. For the briefest moment, I feel so content, feel so at peace, almost forgetting that she’s leaving soon and that there’s a good chance I’ll never see her again.
Emery lays her head on my chest right above my racing heart, still straddling me as we both work to catch our breath.
“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispers, tracing circles on my chest. She tips her head, resting her chin on my chest as she peers up at me. “Not when I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again.”
“We might one day,” I sign then smoothe her damp hair out of her face.
“Yeah, maybe.” She remains silent, chewing on her lip, her eyes glazing over as she gets lost in thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
A faint smile touches her lips. “You’re always asking me that.”
“That’s because you’re hard to read,” I sign, dropping a kiss on her lips. “And I want to know what’s on your mind.”
She pushes up and swings her legs off me. “You know, I used to think you asked me that because my father was making you. That he was trying to have you get into my head.”
“Emery.” I sit up in front of her. “I never wanted to use you. Most of the time we spent together, especially in the beginning, was real for me.”
“I believe you and that’s not why I’m bringing this up.” She grabs a pillow and hugs it tightly against her chest. “I was just thinking how great it would be if we could run away together, but then I realized how impossible that is.”
The moment the words leave her lips, the moment she puts it out there, I know I’m facing a life-altering choice.
“Why is that so impossible if we both want it?” I sign to her.
Do we both want it? Do I want it? I barely know her and she hardly knows me, yet somehow we know more about each other than others know about us. That has to mean something, right?
“You don’t want it.” She frowns, cuddling the pillow closer. “Trust me. You don’t want me like that.”
“No… I’m pretty sure I do.”
She rapidly shakes her head, her eyes widening. “Ryler, you don’t even know me… don’t even know what you’re getting into.” My hands lift to protest but she continues on. “You remember at the concert how I told you that I’m crazy? Well, that’s one of the few times when I was telling you the painful truth.”
“You’re not crazy,” I insist, scooting closer to her, the mattress concaving under my weight. “You’ve just had a rough life.”
Her eyes water with tears. “My parents had me on these pills most of my life and I found out a month ago that those pills were for psychosis.”
“Your parents are the fucking crazy ones.” I snatch hold of the pillow and chuck it aside. “You need to realize that.”
“I sometimes see my dead brother,” she divulges, wide-eyed in horror. “I think it’s out of guilt, but still… That’s not normal.”
I swallow the lump welling in my throat. So that’s why Doc always referred to his son in past tense. “When did he… when did he die?”
“Before I left for Laramie,” she explains. “I caught my father burying him in the basement, and he threatened to kill me if I didn’t help cover his death up. I somehow blocked the memory out, but then it started surfacing when I stopped taking the pills. That’s when Ellis started showing up. I would talk to him and everything, but couldn’t figure out why. Then I remembered everything.” She begins to sob, heart-wrenching sounds that pierce at my soul. “You need to go. Run away from me.”
Some might say she’s right—that I should run away and leave her. It would be the easy thing to do, just like it was easy for Aura to bail out on me when I needed her. Just like it was easy for my father and mother to bail out on me. Easy, easy, easy, and my life will be perfect, perfect, perfect.
I don’t want perfect, though. I don’t want to let her go. Don’t believe that she’s as crazy as she thinks she is. She’s just lost. Besides, who am I to judge her after all the shit I’ve done. In my own way, I’m crazy, too?
“I want to help you, Emery. Let me help you.” I wipe her tears away with my fingers and pull her onto my lap.
“But I’m crazy,” she whispers, her eyelashes fluttering as she blinks back the tears. “You shouldn’t want to help me.”
“No, I should. I really, really should because… I care about you, Emery, more than I’ve cared about anyone before,” I sign the most honest thing I ever have in my entire life. “And honestly, everyone is crazy in their own way, depending on how you look at it.”
She looks at me like I’m insane but then a laugh sputters from her lips. “Are you being serious right now?”
My lips quirk. “More serious than I’ve ever been.”
“So, we’re really going to do this?” Hope gleams in her eyes. “Go away together? Because it just seems so… Well, crazy.”
I press my lips together and nod my head. “If that’s the case, then I guess t
he choice is fitting.”
She stares at me for another second or two before wrapping her arms around me, and I cling on to her, knowing that I made the right choice.
“But what about Stale?” Emery pulls back. “Is he going to allow us to do this?”
I shrug. “Doesn’t really matter. We’ve already pretty much gone against everyone. What’s one more person?”
“You’re right,” she agrees then leans in to kiss me.
For a moment, everything is perfect, everything feels right. And I truly believe there’s more perfection for us in the future now that Emery and I are finally free from our past. Are finally free to be ourselves and live the lives we’ve always wanted to, under our own freewill. Together. We won’t have to go through this alone.