Buyer’s Market(41)

I press my body against Ethan, backing against him. Ethan grips my upper arms and the waves of adrenaline shooting through my body that make me want to run tell me that there's nowhere to run because where I want to be is in Ethan's arms.

My mother’s eyes nearly pop out of her head at Ethan's hands around my arms. “He's not some man you can date. You're a child, and this is ridiculous. You have some kind of delusion here, and I love you, baby, but I know that you don’t know what you’re doing right now. You can come home with me, or you can come to the university to me.” She stomps.

Ethan's hands squeeze my arms tight and then release me. “Emmaline, go home with your mother,” Ethan says. His voice has that calm-before-the-hurricane quality, but this won’t be the prelude to something sensual.

My eyes well back up and I turn around. “No!” I try to fight back the tears but they’re streaming down my face. I bring my hands up to touch Ethan's face but he captures my wrists before I make contact.

I can see the pain in Ethan's eyes. “Your mother is right.” The valet pulls up with Ethan's car, and though his eyes are pained, Ethan releases my hands and takes his keys from the valet. “Go home with your parents.”

“Please, don’t leave me,” I cry out.

Ethan steps back toward me and wipes off one of my tears, and I watch his hand drop down into a fist, but he goes back to his car.

I beg Ethan not to leave me, whimpering and crying, but Ethan drives away.

My father comes toward me, but I push him away and he stays back. My mother walks toward me and grabs my arm but I push her away. “I will not go home with you. No one controls me, I'm a grown woman, not a child!” I storm off and drive back to campus.

As soon as I’m inside my room, I call Ethan.

No answer.

“I thought we were past that,” I say aloud to no one but myself.

My tears don’t stop flowing until I’m asleep. In my dreams, I’m sure that I am still crying. When I wake up from my fitful sleep, I pull the rose out of my purse and lay it on the pillow next to me. It smells so good, but right now I should be wrapped up in the unique, masculine scent of Ethan enveloping me.

We were starting something, and now I’m so crushed.

I understand what my mother was getting at, but she’s the one who doesn’t understand. I know that I’ll forgive her, but it won’t be just because she is my mother. I will absolutely need her to even attempt to understand that she crushed something in me when she callously called me a child and ignored anything I had to say.

Ethan won’t be forgiven until he erases every hurt he’s caused me. I feel like I’ve been hollowed out, scooped out and left in his mouth when I kissed him. The husk in a crumbled hump on my bed, that’s not Emmaline Travers.





Ethan





I can’t bring myself to open a second bottle of wine, even though finishing this first one hasn’t even gotten me buzzed. I don’t want to be numb. I want to feel this, even though this misery is crushing me more than I even knew was possible. I miss Emmaline so damn much it's killing me.

I can’t let anything stand between me and Emmaline. I know this now. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone in my life. I fucking love her. I know this, and I should've told her. I crave her, I long for her, I think about her constantly, and in my mind I picture a life with the two us, together. Forever. I’m not giving that up.

I don’t like what that means right now though. I have to go to Joelle. She’s not going to stand in the way of Emmaline and I. I know that there’s a complicated history. That Joelle is Emmaline’s mother and has genuine reasons to want me not to date her daughter.

But I don’t just want to date Emmaline. I want to marry her. I want to possess her. I want to grow old with her and die by her side. I'm older, and that means I’ll likely die first…and damn if that won’t be a life well lived.

I grab my keys, knowing I’m sober enough to drive and desperate enough to have Emmaline that nothing is going to stop me.

When I get to Joelle’s house, Daniel isn’t home. Good. I don’t want to deal with him. Daniel didn’t plan to kill me with his bare hands. That’s honestly a little strange…but he’s always been a much more passive person than me.

Joelle answers the door in shock when I show up. She looks like she wishes she brought a kitchen knife to stab me. “Come in,” she says instead.

I follow her inside, sitting on the couch. She sits in her chair. “I’m here to tell you that I’m dating your daughter. I love her,” I tell Joelle. I hate that I’m not telling Emmaline first. Emmaline should be hearing from me and I’ve been avoiding her, trying to drag myself out of my own stupor long enough to fix this situation and bring Emmaline back in my arms, no firing squad included.