Chapter Seventeen
Lost You
Three hours later…
I drove back to the mountains and went straight to Jacob’s.
I was terrified, I didn’t know why, but I was. I’d admitted that.
And he’d told me he was intent on helping me figure it out.
And I loved him.
My finger would be bleeding, dialing that number over and over again.
Throughout the journey, I heard Harvey’s words repeating in my head.
And that was what did it for me.
I loved Jacob in a way that I knew life without him would be no life at all.
Like Harvey’s life was without the ones he loved.
And I’d known that for years. Even when I didn’t have Jacob, I’d known it.
Now I had him and something was wrong with me. But he wasn’t running for the hills, knowing it the same as me, and not wanting anything to do with it.
No.
He was with me.
With me.
Wanting to fix me.
Wanting a future.
Wanting babies.
Wanting me.
It was me holding back. Holding back for no reason that I understood.
But the most intelligent person I knew was Jacob Decker. So if someone could help me understand, it was him.
Having made my decision, I went to Jacob’s but he wasn’t there. I sat in his driveway, pulled out my phone and was about to call him when I decided against it.
I’d call him when I was home. For this, whatever it was going to be, I decided I needed to be home. And Jacob, being Jacob, he’d come to me.
He’d come right to me.
Any girl in her right mind who knew that down to her bones would squeal with pure joy.
It petrified me.
Yep. Something was not right with me.
Luckily, it petrified me in a figurative way, not a literal one, so I could drive home.
When I did, I found that, just like when Jacob was looking for me and I’d been at his place fuming, when I was looking for him, he was at mine, hopefully not fuming.
He’d given me space like he said he would. Three days.
I guessed he was done doing that.
This was good because I was too.
It didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified.
It was dark but I’d left the outside lights on and I saw his truck. He was in the shadows but I still saw him at the tail in the exact same position he’d been in three days earlier.
I parked where I’d parked three days ago. But this time, I didn’t open my door, jump out of my truck and round the hood to find Jacob at the steps waiting for me.
I opened my door and jumped out of my truck to find Jacob standing in my door.
“Honey, I’m glad—” I started.
“Get in the house, Emme,” he clipped, and my head jerked at his tone.
Okay. Apparently he was fuming.
“I—”
He leaned into me so suddenly and so deeply, I had to lean back into the cab of the Bronco.
“Get in the goddamned, motherf*cking house, Emme.”
I felt my eyes round.
He’d never spoken that way to me. In fact, I’d never heard him speak that way to anybody.
I stared at his face.
He was angry.
No. That wasn’t right.
He was enraged.
“What’s happening?” I asked carefully.
“Get in. The goddamned. House,” Jacob repeated.
What was going on?
Although I wanted to know (or perhaps I didn’t), I didn’t think it was my best play to ask him right then.
So I said softly, “I will, honey, if you’ll get out of my way.”
He immediately moved out of my way.
I immediately moved to the front door, nervous, freaked, confused and still very scared, but now for a different reason.
I let us in. Jacob slammed the heavy door and the way it thudded in its frame seemed to rock the house.
Have mercy.
“Library,” Jacob ordered.
I turned to look at him. “Can we—?”
His voice dipped to a sinister whisper. “Ass to the library, Emme.”
I didn’t get this. I didn’t like this. I wanted to tell him that but I also didn’t think that was my best play at the moment. So I swallowed, nodded and moved to the library.
Jacob followed.
When we got there, he didn’t delay.
“You’re seein’ him,” he announced bizarrely the instant I turned to face him.
My head jerked. “I… what?”
“You’re seein’ him,” he repeated.
Okay, now I was really confused.
Did he think I’d been out with another man?
“Seeing who?” I asked and that was when he lost it.
Leaning in, he roared, “Harvey!”
Oh no.
He knew.
How did he know?
I looked at his face and didn’t ask. Instead, I took a step back.
Jacob kept speaking.
“Have you lost your mind?”
I lifted a hand his way. “Let me explain.”
“He snatched you from a playground.”
“I know it sounds weird, but please, let me explain.”
“Your father and mother didn’t know where you were for three days.”
Reflexively, my head shook and it did it hard, my hair flying with it, like this action could deflect his words and my ears wouldn’t absorb them. A defensive response I didn’t get and Jacob didn’t catch.
He started stalking toward me.
“Not knowin’ if you were eating.”
I retreated.
“Not knowin’ if you were bein’ touched.”
Another shake of my head, both my hands up now.
Not imploring.
Protecting.
“Not knowin’ if you were dead in a ditch.”
“Stop talking,” I whispered.
“No way they know you’re seein’ him. Your dad talked to me about what happened to you. How he’s not over it. How he wakes up every day with the taste of bein’ out of his goddamned mind worried about you in his mouth and it’s been f*ckin’ twenty-two f*ckin’ years.”
I couldn’t hear this. I didn’t want to know this.
I had to stop it.
“Stop talking,” I repeated.
“And you’re seein’ him.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Why are you seeing him, Emme?”
I shook my head.
“Why, in God’s name, would you be seein’ that… f*ckin’… man?”
You scream, you’ll never see your mother and father again.
The words violated my brain. Words I refused to remember for twenty-two years.
I tripped over something, righted myself and kept moving backward.
You scream…
“No,” I whispered.
You’ll never…
I shook my head hard, hit wall and slid across it.
“Emme?”
See your mother and father again.
“No,” I begged.
Strong hands on my arms.
“Emme!”
Emme!
My head turned and instead of a bookshelf, I saw them there.
Emme!
Their faces.
I couldn’t bear the faces.
I closed my eyes.
The hands left my arms, slid up and curled around my neck. “Baby, what’s happening?”
Emme!
I saw their faces behind my closed eyelids. Burned there. Burned there for eternity.
You scream, you’ll never see your mother and father again.
“Please, Emme, baby, talk to me.”
“No,” I forced out on a tortured whisper.
“Where are you, honey?” The hands at my neck gave me careful squeeze. “Jesus, Emme, come back to me.”
Emme!
Those faces.
“No,” I pleaded.
Emme!
“No!” I shrieked.
Yanking my neck from the hands, I tried to escape.
Arms caught me.
I fought, vicious, kicking, snarling, scratching, bucking.
Remembering.
I was standing behind the kissing tree at recess waiting for my kind-of boyfriend to meet me there.
The tree was in the corner of the far end of the playground. Perfect spot to hide from the teachers and try out kissing. It was also where the chain link fence had been pried away from the post so the bad kids could go out and smoke cigarettes, or whatever they did.
I had my back to the fence, my hands to the rough bark, my body tipped to the side so I could look around the tree to see if my boyfriend was coming.
Suddenly, a hand came over my mouth.
I froze.
I jerked.
A mouth came to my ear.
“You scream, you’ll never see your mother and father again.”
In the library in my home, I screamed.
Back then, I didn’t scream.
I didn’t… f*cking… scream.
“It’s me, baby, f*ck, shit. F*ckin’ hell, Emme. It’s me.”
My back arched, the hold didn’t let go, and I collapsed.
“Emme!”
I was sitting in the police station. I heard my father’s voice and turned my head.
Mom and Dad were there, rushing to me, bumping into each other at the same time they held onto each other and raced my way, their eyes glued to me.
They hit me and took me off my feet.
But I didn’t fall. Dad’s arms had closed around me.
Then Mom’s arms closed around me.
Both so hard I couldn’t breathe.
But I heard Mom sobbing. I felt the wet of her tears in my hair.
“We thought we’d lost you. Oh, my precious baby girl, we thought we’d lost you.”
Dad’s voice in my ear. Agonized. Pain so bad, it cut right through me then burrowed in, never to leave.
Never to leave.
“We thought we’d lost you.”
Lost you.
Lost you.
“Baby, you don’t say something, I’m calling an ambulance.”
I looked at Jacob.
We were on the couch. I was in his lap. His arms were tight around me.
“I can’t lose you,” I whispered.
His chin jerked back. “What?”
“I can’t have babies.”
“Emme—”
“I can’t lose them.”
His eyes went from alarmed to wary and his mouth closed.
“I can’t do it,” I told him. “I can still see their faces.”
Gently, Jacob asked, “Whose faces, baby?”
“Dad and Mom at the police station.”
Understanding sparked in his eyes. His head dropped. His eyes closed. Then they opened and he pulled me closer.
“Harvey knows,” I told him.
“What does he know?” he asked on a whisper.
“What losing someone means.”
Jacob pulled me even closer.
“You don’t identify with him, honey.”
“I know loss,” I contradicted.
“You were lost. You don’t know loss,” he corrected.
“I know loss. For three days, that’s all I saw. And I saw it in Harvey.”
His arms tightened around me as the alarm came back to mix with the wary in his eyes.
“I need to call someone to see to you. It kills me but I don’t know how to give you what you need right now, baby.”
I ignored what he said and announced, “You scare me.”
“Emme—”
“No, you terrify me.”
“Baby—”
I lifted a hand and cupped his jaw. “I can’t lose you.”
“F*ck, Emme.” His words were anguished.
“If you gave me babies, I couldn’t lose them.”
“Honey, let me—”
It was pouring out of me. Truth. Undiluted. I didn’t hold it back. I couldn’t anymore.
I’d been holding on to it for too long.
I could see their faces.
“I’ve loved you since Elsbeth first introduced me to you,” I declared, and Jacob’s mouth closed. “You smiled at me, shook my hand and said something to make me laugh. You were so beautiful. You were so nice. I took one look at you and it felt like I’d been asleep for decades and seeing you, feeling your big strong hand wrap around mine, woke me up.”
He pulled my hand from his jaw, pressed it tight over his heart and didn’t say anything.
Not with his mouth.
His eyes were speaking though.
And what they were saying was amazing.
“I was the fairy-tale princess waiting for her prince to wake her from a deep sleep. And there you were.”
He curled his fingers around mine and he did it tight.
“But I couldn’t have you,” I went on. “If I had something as glorious as you and lost it, I’d be Harvey. Crazy. Alone. Buried under despair. Unable to go on.”
“You aren’t Harvey, Emmanuelle.”
I closed my eyes tight, bent my neck, pressed my forehead against his lips and only moved back when I felt him kiss me there.
And when I moved back, I looked direct in Jacob’s eyes.
“I know I’m not Harvey, honey. But that’s what he taught me. He showed me that despair and he gave it to my parents and then they showed it to me. That’s what he taught me. That’s what he left me. That’s what’s been buried in me for…” I leaned closer, “forever.”
His hand gave mine a squeeze as he murmured a hoarse, “Baby.”
I took in a stuttering breath and continued.
“I understood it. Logically, it came to me and I told you about it. But I didn’t understand it. I didn’t panic about it until I knew I loved you and you told me you loved me. I didn’t put it together that I saw Harvey how lost everything, everything he loved, and what that did to him. I didn’t put it together that, even as I was reaching for it because I wanted it so badly, I wasn’t going to allow myself to build any of that because he’d taught me to be terrified of losing it. Then I saw you with little Jake and you two were so beautiful.” I pressed closer to him and my voice dropped lower. “So, so beautiful, honey.”
He closed his eyes but opened them again when I kept talking.
“I wanted that. I wanted you to give me that, giving it to me by holding the baby we made in your arms. I wanted it more than anything else I’ve ever wanted in this world, except you. But Harvey lost his daughter and for three days my parents lost me and I couldn’t hack it. So I did what was safe. What was familiar. What you knew I was doing. But I couldn’t help it because I didn’t even know I was doing it. I felt the terror of possibly losing you, losing a child I’d made with you, and did what I’d trained myself to do since he took me. I retreated to protect myself from the possibility of that ever happening to me.”
“Baby, I love it that you’re seeing this. That you get this. But we’ve been here before and you still pulled away from me. What happened five minutes ago, it’s clear you aren’t dealing, and like your dad, you haven’t been dealing for twenty-two years. To do that and do it right, you have to talk with somebody,” Jacob said gently.
“I know.”
I watched him blink right before relief, sweet and pure, suffused his features.
“They’re burned on the backs of my eyelids, honey,” I told him.
“Who?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad at the station. But I trained myself not to see.”
He nodded. More understanding.
God. Jacob Decker.
So f*cking amazing.
“Are you good with letting someone help you erase that?” he asked carefully.
I didn’t answer. Instead I stated what I knew. What I’d been denying. What, if I allowed myself to understand it, I knew would kill me.
“Dad sees it, like me. I know he does sometimes in the way he looks at me.”
“He loves you, baby.”
Yeah. Oh yeah. My dad so, so loved me.
Tears filled my eyes. “Yeah.”
“You can’t see Harvey anymore.”
Poor Harvey.
Poor me.
I should never have gone to him. It probably wounded him every time.
But I needed him.
Now I didn’t.
But I’d miss him.
Tears slid down my cheeks. “Yeah.”
“And I’m gonna see to you.”
I knew it. I knew he would.
Jacob loved me.
Jacob had always loved me.
My breath hitched and I repeated, “Yeah.”
Then I dissolved.
Jacob pulled me closer, tucking my face in his neck.
And as I leaked everywhere, finally let it out after holding it for so long inside me, Jacob didn’t allow me to fall apart.
In his lap, on my couch, his big strong arms around me, he held me together so maybe… maybe…
I could finally find me.
And then be happy.
* * *
Deck
Twenty hours later…
Deck pulled up to the curb, shut down his truck and swung out.
Before he was halfway up the walk, the door opened.
He stopped at the bottom of the two-step stoop and took in Harvey Feldman.
Not surprisingly, the man looked old and beaten.
Surprisingly, he also looked kind.
“Emmanuelle will not be coming to see you again but if you attempt any form of contact, you’ll be seein’ me,” he stated.
Harvey Feldman closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank God.”
Deck stared.
The man opened his eyes and Deck spoke.
“I see you’re down with that.”
“No, sir. I am not down with that. I get the impression you know what it would be like to lose Emme. What I am is relieved to know that Emme finally has someone looking after her.”
The last part was a surprise.
The first part he did not like.
“I suggest you get down with it,” Deck warned.
His eyes grew intent and he asked, “I assume you’re Jacob Decker?”
This also wasn’t surprising. In the last day, when she wasn’t sleeping, Emme had shared everything including the fact she’d told Feldman everything.
So Deck didn’t answer. Instead, he jerked up his chin.
Feldman nodded. “Then, Mr. Decker, I’ll tell you that the first time Emme came to see me, I knew I had not yet endured my penance. No prison can accomplish that. Being locked away with men like the men I shared time with was not fun. But it is no penance. No.” He shook his head. “My penance was different. My penance was doing what I did because I lost all that I had lost and then God giving me the opportunity to get to know Emme knowing someday I’d lose her too.”
Christ.
He cared about her.
Genuinely.
Not expecting that, Deck had no response to it.
“I’ll ask one favor,” Feldman said, and Deck had a response to that.
“You’ll get no favors.”
“I have a feeling you’ll give this one to me.”
Deck held his eyes and ordered, “Spit it out.”
“I’ll need your contact details so I can get in touch with you should she attempt to contact me.”
“She won’t do that,” Deck returned firmly.
Feldman shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his lips. But it was no ghost, the pain lurking in his eyes.
“She hasn’t given herself completely to you. When she does, you’ll see.”
“Man, I’m not in the mood to play word games,” Deck bit out, not liking any of this shit and wanting it to be done so he could be on the road to get back to Emme.
“Sweet to the core, that’s Emme. She’ll worry about me, Mr. Decker, and eventually she’ll try to contact me.”
“I see you’ve seen the error of your ways and know what this is, so it gives me no pleasure to tell you, when she had her breakthrough, it was not pretty. She is currently under mild sedation in her bed at her home with her mother and father watching over her. It took a lot of talkin’ to stop her father from comin’ with me or comin’ on his own. You lucked out this visit is from me. Emme’s already spoken to a counselor and she’s committed to doin’ that until what’s twisted in her head gets straightened out. When that happens, she’ll know not to contact you.”
“She will.”
“She absolutely will not.”
“Do you know, Mr. Decker, the only thing that can hold back goodness and light?”
What was up with this f*cking guy?
“Again, in no mood,” Deck clipped.
“Darkness,” Feldman answered his own question. “And, since Emme shared you’re highly intelligent, I know I don’t have to tell you that darkness drowns out light. But when that light is freed, when so much has been stored for so long, nothing can dim that beam.” He paused to suck in a breath before he finished, “That beam is Emme. When she was twelve, I did something that drowned that beam. If I’m assuming correctly, seeing as you’re visiting me, that beam has been freed. And because Emme is Emme and she carries that light, she’ll contact me.”
Already creeped way the f*ck out by this guy, he was concerned about his girl. Now he was more concerned because she spent time with his whackjob. Not to mention, not wanting to be there at all, what the man said made Deck more of all of that.
So he moved to shut it down by asking, “Are we done?”
“Make her happy.”
That meant they were done, thank Christ.
“Already planned on doin’ that,” Deck muttered, turned, walked two steps then turned back. “I’ll get you my email address. She contacts you, you don’t open your door, answer the phone or reply to an email. You email me.”
Feldman nodded.
Deck walked to his truck.
Then he wasted no time getting home to Emme.
* * *
One day later…
“Okay, so, nervous breakdown… check,” Emme said, and Deck’s eyes went from his book to her at the opposite end of the couch.
She was slouched down, feet in his lap, head to the armrest. But her hand was up, palm facing herself like she was holding a notepad, other hand holding an imaginary pen and her eyes were on him.
“So, now that I’ve done that, what do you suggest I add to my bucket list?” she asked.
“You ever f*cked on a beach?” he asked back.
Her eyes fired but her lips said, “Uh… no.”
“Add that.”
She turned her eyes to her palm and faked scribbling on it, mumbling. “That sounds a lot more fun than a nervous breakdown.”
Deck smiled, tossed his book on the coffee table, leaned into her and hauled her to him. Stretching out full on the couch under her, Emme instantly settled full out on him.
Buford, lying on the floor beside the couch, lifted his head.
He inspected their new position, approved and settled back down on a groan.
“Um… honey,” Emme called, and he looked from his dog to her. “As you know, my parents are in town on the supposed errand of picking up a bucket of chicken. As the nearest chicken joint is in Chantelle, this will take a while. But as they’re multi-tasking and using this,” she arched her back so she could lift her hands out of his chest to do air quotation marks, “errand to make clandestine phone calls to my siblings in order to give them status reports on the state of my sanity, that said sanity being in question, they’ll be back soon. So, to sum up, you can’t make love to me on my couch.”
This was a shame.
It was also true. All of it.
And last, it made it even more clear something he’d been noticing since Emme and the doctor agreed she could go off the sedative.
Harvey Feldman was right.
He’d drowned out Emme’s light.
Now it was beaming so bright, he was blinded.
“You’re right,” he replied. “So we’ll just make out.”
“Making out with you tends to lead to other things.”
He grinned and asked, “How do you know? We’ve never made out.”
“This is how I know, honey. Because it’s always led to other things.”
Deck burst out laughing.
In the middle of it, he felt Emme’s mouth touch his so it faded to a chuckle.
When he caught her eyes, they were shining.
He stopped chuckling and his blood began to burn.
“I’ve always wanted to do that while you were laughing,” she whispered. “Always.”
F*ck. He wanted to make love to her.
He hadn’t had her in over a week.
He needed her now.
“You need to stop bein’ sweet or I’m barring the door against your parents. They can have chicken. I’ll be havin’ you.”
He watched her eyes fire again as her body melted on his and her hand slid up his chest to his neck.
“I think Dad would break down the door. He’s a little…” she paused, “in my space right now, and I need to give him that.”
That was the damned truth.
“Yeah,” Deck reluctantly agreed.
“But, even though I’ve slept more in the last two days than any healthy body needs, I’m suddenly feeling really tired so I figure I’ll have to go to bed early. And I don’t think they’ll mind if you didn’t keep them company.”
“This sounds like a plan,” he murmured.
“I love you, Jacob,” she declared suddenly, and his arms around her gave a squeeze.
“I know you do, baby.”
“Thank you for not giving up on me.”
F*ck, but Feldman was right. That beam was blinding.
He rolled so he was on top and her arms adjusted so they circled him. He lifted his hand and brushed the bangs off her forehead.
Then he caught her eyes. “You up for talkin’ about something?”
“Considering I’m entering intense psychotherapy tomorrow, I hope so,” she teased.
“Baby, I’m serious.”
The light of humor faded from her eyes. He missed it but he’d work at getting it back. But now they had shit to go over.
“I’m up for talking about anything, honey,” she told him.
“Right,” he said quietly. “When shit went down, what got us there was me comin’ down on you.”
“Jacob—”
“Let me finish, Emmanuelle.”
She closed her mouth.
He kept going.
“I was pissed. Out of my mind with worry. I got the call you’d visited him and I had to wait for you to get back. That didn’t make me in a better mood. I lost it and the results were f*ckin’ great but the path to those results was a little shaky.”
He’d told her, due to his concerns, he’d had Feldman’s house watched and his phones monitored. He had not, however, had his emails checked, which was how they always communicated.
Emme had not been angry. Then again, when Deck had shared this, she’d been mostly sedated.
However, she didn’t get angry at the reminder now either.
Instead, she replied, “Things happen for a reason.”
“And those things would have happened without me losin’ my mind on you. No excuse, but you deserve an explanation.”
After he said that, she said nothing so he kept going.
“I had no idea where your head was at. You kept disconnecting and I also had no idea how to stop you from doin’ that. I had six days of not bein’ with you except for maybe twenty minutes, that whole twenty minutes we were up in each other’s shit. I knew something was wrong. I knew it was dark. I knew it had to have something to do with what happened to you when you were a kid. But I had no clue how to guide you where you could share, and I knew when you did, I was powerless to right what was wrong with you. I didn’t have those skills. I didn’t like that. Any of it. So I lost it.”
“Jacob, honey, stop it.”
“Emme, baby, that shit was not right.”
“You know,” she started, cocking her head on the seat of the couch, “when all that went down, I was coming home from Harvey, ready to face you, ready to try to work it out, whatever was wrong with me. And you know something else? It so totally was going to fail.”
He felt his brows draw together. “What?”
“I was so deep, so beyond reach, my parents after years didn’t reach me. My brothers. My sister. Friends. And even you, the first time I met you. The only thing that could break through was something breaking through. And that something had to be powerful enough to accomplish that. And that something powerful was your anger.” She gave him a squeeze. “You were angry at me but you were angry for a reason. I was doing something crazy. And you tried other ways but you weren’t getting through to me. It’s understandable you lost it, and bottom line, things happen for a reason.”
“I’m glad you think that way, baby, but—”
She cut him off. “And I was kidnapped for a reason.”
F*ck.
“Babe,” he said low.
“No. It’s true. If I wasn’t, I would never understand in the way I do now how much I love you. How important your love is to me. How precious. How I don’t ever want to lose it. And, belatedly, how I should work not to do that.”
That he’d accept because he f*cking loved it.
And he did that by dropping his forehead to hers and murmuring, “Honey.”
“Same with Mom and Dad. Same with everybody. It took me a while to learn the lesson. But one could say I’ve learned it.” He watched her eyes smile. “Definitely.”
“It is not okay what he did to you,” Deck said gently.
“No. It absolutely isn’t. But it’s also not okay for me to live through that and not learn. He did wrong. He hurt me, my parents, you, anyone who loved me. Life has a lot of lessons, some of which I was too scared for too long to learn. Now what I have to learn is not to let that happen anymore.”
When she was done speaking, she tipped up her chin to touch her mouth to his.
When she settled back he lifted his head and she spoke.
“Please don’t be upset you got that angry with me. I can see why you would be but what I want you to see is why I needed you to be.”
All right. It was safe to say he was done.
“You’re bein’ sweet,” he warned, and she grinned.
Then her grin faded and remorse filled her eyes.
“So are you, honey. But then, you always were to me.” She took in a ragged breath and finished, “Always.”
Deck suddenly didn’t give a f*ck about her parents maybe coming home soon so he dropped his head and took her mouth.
He got one sweet stroke of her tongue, her strawberry scent all around, when they heard Barry shout, “We got chicken!”
He felt Emme giggle against his tongue.
It sucked that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do.
But that didn’t mean the taste of her laughter on his tongue wasn’t all kinds of sweet.