The Space in Between (42 page)

I know if I don’t make it to this party tonight, there’s not going to be many other chances for the two of us to hang out that don’t involve going to class every day, but something tells me that agreeing to go will end up biting me in the ass. With as crappy as everything else has been going, I get the feeling that there’s no other way this party tonight can go down.

I just hope the damage isn’t too severe.  My heart can’t take much more.

It’s barely been beating at all since February.

Christian

“How’d it go?”

When Johnny came to me a few days ago, talking up this party his brother wanted to throw for the seniors, I’d said everything short of telling him to fuck off to make him go away. Words that after he pulled Jonah into it, getting the guy to hound me into submission before finally cluing me in to the real reason he wanted me to go, I’m glad I didn’t say.

Even if it is the language he best understands.

After everything that happened with Rose, and my promise that I would do whatever I could to make things right between her and my dad—which I went home that night and did—I was more than a little eager to sign up for his idea.

He would get her to come to the party and get the two of us alone and it was up to me to do the rest. The kicker was in how he responded when I asked him why he wanted to do this when Emery clearly wanted us to be over.

“One of the reasons I liked hanging with Ems so much was because she didn’t really give a shit about much other than her pictures. Since you came along, even the pictures are taking a backseat. I’m tired of dealing with the Emery that cares. I want my mean girl back.”

Emery doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, but I got what he was trying to do, or in this case, say. He wanted his best friend back and nothing had been the same since the big secret came out in February. Two months had passed since then, days filled with both of us just going through the motions, well, when we weren’t avoiding each other, and the need for it to stop had brought two people that couldn’t stand each other onto the same side.

Bringing about what’s happening now.

Jonah had gotten the ball rolling by getting me to agree to go to the party at all, and JD had taken it a step further.

Now it’s up to me, and this time, knowing what’s at stake and exactly what can happen if it all goes sideways, I’m determined not to screw it up.

If I could stand up to the woman that would eventually become my step-mom, I could it with Emery.

“She bought it and she’ll be there tonight. Did you really doubt I’d pull it off?”

“We both know how she is about parties, especially when they’re even remotely attached to you.”

He flinches and even though it’s kind of a jerk move, bringing up the way she comes to his rescue when his brother gets him into messes, I have no regrets. I spent way too many nights when we were dating listening to her try and explain that she had to go rescue him as she’s throwing on her jacket and grabbing her car keys. He deserves to know that she wasn’t the only one he dragged into his mess.

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“Anytime.” I smirk, before flipping it around and saying what I should have from the second he put this plan in motion. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Just make sure I didn’t totally waste my time or ruin a perfectly good friendship to help you, and we’re cool.”

That’s an easy deal to make. I don’t plan on screwing up what comes next.

I faced my worst case scenario when she broke up with me and have been going against everything I want ever since in order to give her time to deal. Setting things right with Rose and then taking a step further and going to visit her aunt, it’s about going after what I want. What I’ve wanted since she was thrown in my path on the first day. It’s like I told her mom. I want to take that worse case and make it the best case. 

Emery is it for me, and even though it’s totally dependent on her actually sticking around and hearing me out tonight, I plan on proving it in as many different ways as I can.

One day in the not so distant future, I plan on taking Emery Carmichael and turning her into Emery Cayne and it won’t have anything to do with either of our parents, or some adoption plan they’ve put in motion to make Emery’s dream come true.

It will be because it’s just the way it’s meant to be.

The perfect ending to our perfect song.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Emery

“This was a bad idea.”

Johnny Davenport is a dead man when I see him again.

No, that’s not right. With the way I feel right now, having been duped into coming here for what was so obviously a set up to get me and Christian talking again, he’s whatever’s worse than dead.

I should have known when Johnny held up the bag of marshmallows he had on him and started freaking over roasting them over the fire that I’d been had.

But it had taken getting closer, tripping over a root in the ground and bumping into some random person to really clue in to it.

Except it hadn’t been a random person at all. 

“Wait.” Christian reaches out as I spin around on my heel and start what I hope is going to be my greatest and quickest escape.

Haven’t I been through enough over the last couple of months?

Breaking things off before we fell in even deeper and moving out of my house so I wouldn’t have to be surrounded by my mom’s happiness, giving up my own to assure it happened and walking the halls every day dead inside, avoiding him at all costs as I spent more time hiding and existing than living.

I’d done all of that, owned it and was trying to make the best of it.

When is enough supposed to be enough?

Seriously. You know how you’re supposed to say uncle when you’re fooling around with your friends and they put you in a move that causes you pain? Well, I’m not calling it out. I’m screaming it at the top of my lungs.

I can’t be here with him like this. Just like the last time we were together, it won’t end well for either of us.

“Let go of me, Mikey.” I plead, making the first of what I’m sure is going to be a dozen or more boneheaded mistakes until I can distance myself completely from this party.

“Mikey…” he repeats softly, his voice raising just slightly in question as the surprise of me using the name hits him.

“Chris—”

“Nope. You don’t get to change it. What’s done is done.” He cuts off my attempt to fix my mistake, the smile beginning to lift on his face giving away exactly how he feels.

This is the kind of mistake he likes, which makes it a dangerous one.

It won’t be long now before I’m forgetting about doing right by my mom and giving into what I really want.

Things can only go downhill from here, and you wanna know how I know?

I can smell him. That damn cologne of his that despite there being space between us now, along with a whole lot of weeks where I haven’t gotten to smell it, still manages to surround me. It’s more than just his smell though. It’s also the way his jaw seems to go lax as the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile, completely obliterating any chance I had of leaving unscathed.

That damn smile will be the death of me. Don’t even get me started on his hair.
Oh boy.
Yep, standing here and breathing him in the way I am, I’m completely gonzo by the time I get to that.

What had been shaggy and sticking out in random spots when we’d been together, what I always thought was a permanent case of bedhead, is even longer now and maybe even a little lighter.

He’s freaking gorgeous and something tells me with the way his eyes are studying mine, without so much as a blink, both sides of his face now lifted, he damn well knows the effect he’s having.

Damn him.

Lowering my gaze, focusing on the flames billowing up out of the makeshift fire someone thought would be smart to make in a gigantic barrel a few feet away, I swallow down my body’s visceral reaction to the boy that despite everything I’ve tried, I still love, and attempt to get out from under his grasp again.

“Well, this has been fun, but I have to go. I need to find Johnny.”

Why am I explaining? What I do with my time and with who stopped being his business that day in the newspaper office when we broke up.

Get it together, Ems.

It’s a nice thought, but with me already starting to feel the sweat as it begins to bead on my face, a combination of my nerves mixing with my reaction to him, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get anything together for a really long time.

Emery has left the building.

“Johnny’s the reason this is happening.”

“What?” I ask, my eyes finally landing directly on his as he shoves his hand in the air, waving to my best friend-turned-traitor now standing on the other side of the fire pit.

I don’t know why I’m acting all surprised. I knew from the second we got here that this was some kind of setup. The only thing I hadn’t known, but do now, is just how deep in this mess Johnny was.

It was an empty threat before. I wasn’t actually going to do anything to JD, but now, the threat is real.

I’m going to kill him.

“I played by your rules at school, Emery. I did everything I was supposed to. Giving you space, not pressuring you to talk to me when all I wanted to do was grab you and drag you into an empty classroom so we could have it out. Yell, scream, kiss, make out, or whatever else. I just wanted to feel a sliver of what I did when we were together again, but I swallowed all of it. Did what I knew you needed me to do.”

“What does this have to do with Johnny?”

“He’s seeing the same thing everybody else is. The same shit Jonah’s been riding me about for weeks. Us not being together and how wrong it is. He wanted to help, so when he found out about Gavin setting up this party, he found me.”

“Got it.”

“No you don’t. Not all of it anyway.”

“No seriously, Chris, I get it. You and Johnny teamed up to get me here so you could do what you thought was best for me.”

Judging by the scowl creeping across his face, he doesn’t agree, but I don’t care. He can try and deny it all he wants, but going behind my back, it was about what he wanted. Not what I did.

I was okay with the way things were.

Liar.

Fine, I wasn’t okay with it. I missed him and what we shared every single day. So driven under and completely destroyed by it that it was a struggle to get out of bed most days, and even worse trying to breathe once I’d done it. It still doesn’t change what they did though.

“Emery, do you trust me?”

“You know I do.” I admit softly.

“Do you still love me?” he asks, and not at all prepared for the question, I’m floored into silence. Arguing my statement or asking to move away from the crowd of people accumulating, those are the things I had been prepared to hear.

Not this.

The one thing I can’t lie about, even if I have perfected how. If the words themselves wouldn’t give me away, the look I get being this close to him because his love is such a full body experience, would have.

I suck at this.

Moving in close and slipping his hand around my arm, he starts walking us away from everyone before I’ve gotten the chance to put the answer to his question together in my head, not stopping until we’re walking straight into a mess of half broken and leafless trees.

“Where are we going?”

“Away from the noise.” Is his only response as he continues to trudge through the underbrush with me pressed closely to his side. After walking for what feels like fifteen to twenty minutes, most of it uphill, he leads me through another group of trees until we come out onto a pebble path.

A familiar pebble path.

Oh God.

It’s my—
our
spot.

“What…where…how?” I stammer as he continues to walk us along until we’re standing directly behind the rock and slipping his hand out of mine, wastes no time sitting down on it.

“I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately and figured it out.”

Looking from him to the empty space just big enough for me to fill beside him before finding him again, he smiles softly and slaps his hand down patting the spot.

“I won’t bite, I swear. Unless that’s something you’re into these days. Then, well, no promises.”

Why is something as small as sitting beside him so difficult to do? I’ve done this same thing with him so many times I’ve lost count, but now it’s gut wrenching. Like, if I sit there and give into that playful smile he’s wearing, it’s going to give hope to something that’s hopeless.

Seventeen years. That’s what Christian is fighting against.

In all of that time, my mom had dropped everything to give me the best possible life she could. Making sure I was as happy as possible, putting her own happiness on the back burner to achieve it. As upset as I am that it’s come down to this and I had to walk away from her in order to cope with everything, it isn’t enough to change the truth.

She deserves this happiness. Even if it’s at the expense of my own.

And his.

“I just want to talk, Ems. No pressure. I agreed to Johnny helping me get you here because I just wanted to sit and talk. Like old times. Before we let feelings get in the way.”

“Feelings were always in the way.”

“Can’t argue with that, but fine. Let’s go back to the first day.”

Giving in to what he wants, I slide down onto the rock and focus my attention out over the water, knowing that as soon as he starts talking again, it won’t be the first day like he wants, but every single day after.

It’s a pretty illusion he’s painted though.

“I get why you did it now.” He admits. “Why you went to live with your aunt.”

Told you.

So much for the first day idea. Christian and I have eclipsed the first day a million times over by now.

“So you finally believe that it wasn’t about you?”