From: Rachel Helms
To: Romona Hicks
You didn’t have to get me a gift. Also, I totally know my dad is aware I’m moving less than a mile from his thug client that makes me turn into a mush of a girl. It’s more fun if he knows.
Emery nervously paced around her bed. Rachel should’ve been here already. She looked at the time on her phone for the thousandth time.
“You’re making me nervous,” Noah called from his room. He was putting away the pile of laundry she’d put on his bed. Emery didn’t remember a decision to start doing his laundry, she just did it. It’s the least she could do since he still wouldn’t let her pay for her half of the rent. She’d started buying all the groceries and stuff for the condo as well.
“Well, I’m just excited,” she called back. “At least one of us is doing what they want to do,” she muttered to herself.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she sung back.
Noah took long strides from his room to hers and stood in the door. “What did you say?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, Noah. Life didn’t turn out the way I expected is all.” She was folding her own laundry and piling it on the bed.
Noah leaned against the doorframe that he’d repaired. “It’s not like your life is over, Emily, it’s just starting.”
“It is just starting and it’s not starting the way I imagined,” she said as her phone rang. “You okay?” Emery answered.
“Ugh, yes. Traffic is a bitch and her mother’s a whore. It took me two hours to get north of Atlanta. I’m about an hour out.”
“Why haven’t you answered my calls? I was nervous.”
“I’ve been on the phone. Derrick met me at the Cracker Barrel in Bartow County off 75 so I could get the latest round of cash from him.”
“Oh…” Emery knew Rachel and Derrick had been getting hot and heavy. She was honestly comforted that Rachel’s life was going so well.
“So it’ll be a few hours,” Rachel finished.
“Okay, see you in a few.” Emery pressed end. She stared at the screen. “Maybe I can be okay living vicariously through Rachel.”
Her phone notified her to a message. It was a video. Ashley’s face appeared on the screen with a huge grin. Emery pressed play.
“Hey.” Ashley was standing in her school uniform and tucked her hair behind her ear. Her gaze drifted off to the side of the camera and she waved. “So, we’re leaving today for two weeks in Hawaii. Isn’t that amazing? I wish you were coming with us. We would have so much fun. Remember when we went and dad took us horseback riding and you fell off?” Her face looked pained at the memory and Emery realized that’s what she’d become to Ashley, a memory just like their father. “Anyway, I have to run, but we’re going to be gone for two weeks. Coach had to okay our vacation. Phil was pissed.”
Her screen went black. Without her realizing it, Noah had moved to stand next to her so that he could watch the video.
“She looks like you,” he commented.
“Yes, she does,” she said. Her voice didn’t hide her sadness.
“Do you wish you could go with her?” Noah’s fingertips grazed her jaw line. “Who does she live with in Atlanta and why can’t you see her?”
Emery blinked at his questions. One of the things that had been going so well between her and Noah was that he didn’t ask a ton of questions and never pushed her. But every once in a while, he’d ask a question.
“I mean, you’ve been here for two years and you’ve never been back to Atlanta to see her. Are you that scared of your ex-boyfriend?”
The trail of tingles he was leaving on her skin followed his touch to her chest; he dropped a kiss on the curve of her breast.
“I can go with you if you want,” he offered. “No one will hurt you if I’m there.”
She realized the chink in the armor of Emily Sanders, the part of her story that really didn’t add up. Emery didn’t want to be a person who never saw her sister because of some stupid boy, but that’s who Emily was to Noah. Sighing, she did the only thing she knew how to do to distract Noah from all the questions that she couldn’t answer. Her hands skirted over the planes of his stomach before dipping into his shorts.
“What? No underwear?” she teased.
“I’m always hoping to make life easier for you.” He smirked and then groaned when she grasped him gently.
“You really do make my life better.”
Noah’s eyes closed and he exhaled slowly as she walked them both over to her bed without removing her hands from his pants.