AllFreeNovel
Share Us
How long had I longed to hear someone who knew Jake tell me that it was okay, that they forgave me?
For years.
But not like this.
I lifted my chin, unsure how many more daggers my heart could take. “There was never anything to ruin. It was all a lie.”
She shook her head. “Not for me. You’re a good man. The best. And I fell in love with you because of who you are. All those things Marvin said in the film? They really mean something to me. And I know they did to you too.”
Emily looked down, the tears falling freely from her cheeks. “I know it’s over between us. That’s my fault. But I need you to know that what happened to my brother wasn’t your fault, and if you need forgiveness...maybe that’s one thing meeting me can actually give you. I loved my brother with all my heart, andI forgive you. Go live your life. I hope it is full of all the love and joy Marvin would want for you.”
I dropped my eyes shut, too many emotions hitting me at once to be able to process any of them at all. When I opened them again, she was walking away, her shoulders shaking.
And later that afternoon, Emily was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hate and Love are Buds
EMILY
The ride down the mountain was a blur—partially because the snowy hills and dark asphalt highway all streaked together thanks to the tears I didn’t seem to be able to stop, and partially because of the constant noise in my head.
Why did I tell him at all? I was going home. He never needed to know...
But I loved him. I knew it with a certainty I’d felt about very few things in my life before. That writing was my calling. That one day I’d leave San Diego. That the texture of yogurt was disgusting. And now? I knew that I loved Archie Kasper, a man whose name I’d known far longer than the man himself, a man who was nothing like the monster I’d imagined him to be.
And because of that, telling him had been the right thing to do. The only thing. But I couldn’t help mourning the loss of the opportunity for a future between us. As long as he hadn’t known, he’d looked at me in a way that told me our feelings were mutual.He’d even spoken the words—words I’d longed to hear my whole life.
Now?
It was gone.
The spark of connection in those deep blue eyes had been suffocated the second I’d uttered the words, told him who I really was.
An irrational part of me insisted that it should drive us closer—we’d both known Jake.
I knew, however, that it was the deceit that had made that impossible. Still, if I’d told him the second we met, I knew there would have been no chance at all.
I dropped my head into my hands as I sat on the plane. I hadn’t gone there to fall in love with Archie Kasper, or to make him fall in love with me.
I’d gone to prove to myself that people were just people, that blaming a stranger for an accident didn’t do anything to help alleviate the pain of the accident having occurred. It didn’t bring my brother back. It didn’t make my family whole.
Hating Archie Kasper was every bit as painful and hopeless as loving him.
I spent a miserable night at my apartment, nursing my wounds, and then went to my parents’ house Tuesday afternoon, planning to share as little as possible.
The landscape around the little house looked unchanged—nothing unusual in Southern California. But it was odd because the landscape inside me was a completely new terrain, changed fundamentally by the time I’d spent in Colorado.
“There she is!” Mom lifted her head from the flowerbed she was tending in front of the house, her blue floppy hat vibrant against the stuccoed white wall behind her. “I’m so glad you’re home.” She rose, and came to meet me, pulling me into her for a hug.
Mom smelled like sunshine and earth, the way she’d always smelled since leaving the professional kitchens that had infused her with the scents of lemon and garlic most of the time. She was a little taller than me still, and when she released me and stepped back, still holding my shoulders so she could look into my face, her smile fell.
“Oh no,” she said. “What is it, honey?”
I shook my head, working to affect a lightness I didn’t feel. When had my mother become so perceptive? Or was my heartbreak that obvious? “Nothing, everything’s great. How’s Dad?” I pulled my purse back up my shoulder after it had slid down during our hug.
“Your father’s pretty much the same. He’s been a little more worked up, knowing you were...traveling.”
