AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stopped suddenly, eyes going wide, giving a gasp as her hand flew to her mouth like she couldn’t believe she’d said that. Then she turned and walked away, leaving me dumbstruck.
I would never have expected that. But I supposed it made a lot of crazy sense.
I couldn’t even blame her if it was that. The man was the love of her life, and she lost him and got stuck with me instead and then for me to grow up, and look like him… sometimes, I used to wonder whether having my dad be the one that survived would have been better. Clearly, Mom, in her own way, agreed with me. Only in her mind, I was the one that didn’t exist.
The whole situation was unfair. It was unfair, to my mother, to my late father, to myself. Most people took it for granted that their parents were people too that had people they loved before they even had kids. I couldn’t ask her to stop loving Dad so much just because he was dead, and it was unfortunate that she still couldn’t see beyond him, even at her wedding, just so she could look at me and see me, not a ghost. I didn’t even need her to be proud of me; I just needed her to give a damn about me.
Not that any of that even mattered, now. She wouldn’t want any more from me after this. Even though I’d decided not to visit her again not too long ago, and meant it and felt nothing, having her reject me so openly hurt a lot worse than I would have expected.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Abe
Fuck.
That had been a total disaster. Not for me and my brother, though. We’d both been caught in less than civil situations before, though Carl way more than me. We could live with getting caught naked in some woman’s bed.
But Emma… she just sat there after her mother left, looking shell-shocked, and I knew it had hurt her, a lot, to hear those things from the only living relative she had. In a way, it made Carl and me lucky. Dad never blamed us for our mother leaving, though he’d mentioned plenty of times that she left because she didn’t want to settle down with children.
After a while, Emma got up wordlessly, lingerie still barely hanging on her body and dripping with fluid from both of us, and took the dress we’d dropped on the floor. She didn’t put it on, wrapping the fabric around herself and turning to us, but she didn’t look up at us.
Carl and I shared a glance. We both knew what was going to happen. As much as I couldn’t blame her, it wasn’t the outcome either of us wanted from today.
I got up off the bed, my pants pulled up but the fly only was partly done up, and he followed behind me. But when I got closer, Emma took a few steps back, making me freeze. Something squeezed in my chest, and I didn’t like it.
“Emma?”
“I think…” she started, but her voice trailed off, sounding small and broken.
My hands fisted at my sides. Sharon was now my dad’s wife, and my stepmother, and I wasn’t a brash, violent type of guy—that was Carl—but I wanted to follow her and hit her for making Emma sound like that.
Emma ducked her face down so we couldn’t even see what expression was on her face, and sniffled, wiping at her eyes with her hand. The back of her hand didn’t come away wet, but she still wouldn’t look up.
“It’s best if we stop seeing each other.” Her voice, when it came, was louder, firm.
I knew it was coming, but it still hurt hearing the words. I stepped forward again, ignoring her when she moved back, holding her by the tops of her arms.
“No, Emma. I’m sorry that this happened. We should… have been more discreet, it’s just not easy when so many people have their eyes on you. I’m… we’re sorry.”
“No” she shook her head slowly. “It wasn’t just the two of you. I hadn’t decided to approach you guys, not until my mom said something that made me feel pathetic about myself again.” She cut off, gave a laugh, but it sounded more painful than anything. “She noticed I was watching you, though. I knew she was suspicious, and I did this anyway.”
“We don’t regret what happened.” Carl didn’t have anything on but the brace, but he didn’t seem to care about his state of nudity. Emma glanced at him and then looked away. “It wasn’t the best way, but your mother knows now. So, what? None of us are going to be staying in town once they go off on their honeymoon.”
“It doesn’t matter. You guys have a life to live, and I have mine, remember? My practice? I finished my exams, finished my internship a while ago. I am unemployed, in debt because of the student loans, and I’m pretty sure I don’t even have food at home.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, hunching her shoulders. Her eyes were wet, but she didn’t cry. Still, I could tell if we just left her alone, she probably would. She might have been having problems with her mom, but hearing those words from someone that raised you must have still been hard.
I also knew, that if we couldn’t convince her to stick it out with us, we would both lose her. Carl knew it too, when I turned to him, he was already looking at me. He nodded his head, and I wanted to cuff him again for leaving it all on my shoulders. Whatever ability he seemed to think I had, I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
I had never been so terrified of anything in my life, even more than the accident; it had happened too fast for me to get to that point.
I looked down, slid my arms from the tip of her arms, pulling them away from her chest, slowly. She did so reluctantly, but she let her arms drop, and I slid my hands down to hold hers. Instead of focusing just on words, I decided to let her hear my sincerity, willing her to trust me.
