Emmerson's Heart (4 page)

The times I went to town, if it was just to run into the small corner store or to pick one of my brothers up from school, I never saw the family out. The curtains were pinned to the windows and the glass in the front
was still taped together where some kids, probably one of the Andrews clan, had broken it when the place sat abandoned. Not a very good house, but at least it could put a roof over someone’s head who didn’t have the means to have the life of luxury as we did.

Maybe I would stop in and pay old man Wiggins a visit. At least he lived close enough to the fallen down place to know if there was anything unusual going on there. As for the other neighbors, there wasn’t much around that house. The church was kitty corner and
there were two empty lots on the other side. No neighbors were to the back and the church parking lot and park were on the block across from the house. It could be the perfect place to hide something, anything with most of the town’s residence on the other side of the town.

Whatever it was, I would find out. If Will was that keen on this girl and willing to help her out, maybe I could too. Just because I was blessed with my dad’s temper, looks, and attitude didn’t mean I couldn’t at least change a little bit. As for the few things I learned about this girl and the feelings it was starting to give me, I needed to. I needed to pay attention. Something wasn’t right. Something was….different.

Chapter 3

****Present****

Every mile back to the ranch brought more pain pressing down on my heart. I was gone all day, leaving the chores to Will, Rob, and my dad. I had to. I couldn’t be there as much as I usually could with Emmer home from school for the weekend. Like a coward, I left before she got up in the morning and I was home late when everyone was in bed already. Ten o’clock and I was in the clear. I had to be. I needed to just avoid her for right now. 

Every damn weekend, she was on her way home after her late class let out and it was getting to me. I hated it when she pulled into the drive and I hated it even more when she left again on Sunday night. Each time she left, it pulled me in a way I never thought was possible. Watching the tailgate of her truck going down the dirt road cut a piece of my heart away each time. The best thing was to not even see her at all if possible. 

By not seeing her, it was the only way I didn’t have to look at her, to talk to her, or to even be around her. I had to leave and stay gone on the weekends. Just seeing her opened the fresh wound again and again. But it was what I had to do.

Taking the dirt road out back of my parents’ house, I felt the sinking pit of my stomach fill in with the contents of the bag sitting in the shotgun seat. It was the bag that was supposed to make me get my head on straight and start thinking of what I should be putting my focus on instead of her. It was the bag I spent all day in the city for. The bag with the engagement ring in it.

For hours, I went to store after store, looked at ring after ring, but nothing. I came up with nothing every time. This should be something great in my life. This moment should be something I wanted and looked forward to, happy about, but I wasn’t. This was what I had to do and that was to make things right with Becky.

Becky had always been there, always been the girl I chased after, and the one I spent a while with before that damn Emmerson changed everything. With Emmerson at college, this should have been easier
. Having her gone was too damn hard, but in a sense, having her gone should have made this decision so much better, easier, and happier.

But it didn’t. It didn’t because of that girl. Because of Emmerson. It was her fault
, anyway, that I was in this predicament. What did she expect me to do? Sit and wait for her forever? Sit there and put my damn life on hold for her? Wait and wait just to find out she didn’t want me anyway, not like how I wanted her.

It was a mistake. All a mistake. I was torn up when Emmer left for college. Heartbroken, barely able to function, but I had to step back and let her go. Her going to college was my father’s rules. So, I got plastered that night. I got so drunk, there was no way I was going to be able to drive home. And what did I do? I called the one woman I knew who would help me recover. Becky. My loyal, sweet, and perfect Becky Harrisburg.

Now I was stuck. I was stuck in this crossroads where I had no idea which way to go. I had to put that ring on Becky’s finger and make things right. I owed it to her. Over the past few years, Becky had put up with a lot, constantly being put on the backburner because of Emmer, getting a nasty attitude from Emmer, and putting up with Emmer constantly being around and taking away our time together. But this time…..This time, I had to make it right with Becky no matter what. I didn’t have any other choice.

And if I was going to make everything right with Becky, I had to do the one thing that I vowed never to do in this lifetime. I had to push the one person away that I gave a life to. I had to push Emmer away and show her that I need
ed to get on with my life. My life.

Parking up
by my small place in the shadows of the big house, I felt my stomach pushing its way up. Getting married was a huge step and one I envisioned with Emmer, but because I was stupid, that vision was destroyed. Now, I had to do this. I had to propose to Becky and marry her. That was the only way I would be able to handle this, that I would be able to have anything.

Grabbing the bag off the seat, I clenched it tightly in my fist. I hated the ring. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was how ugly the damn thing looked on the freshly polished nailed hand of Beck, the woman I
just had to marry. Each time I thought about it, tried to see what it would look like placed on that soft, gentle hand, I just wanted to throw up. It sickened me to see what I had come down to, what I had become. It was what I had to do. Not what I wanted to do.

The hand that would make that ring shine and look just perfect would be the hand of a rancher, the one who didn’t care if there was dirt or mud on it, dug into the dark gray fur of her best friend, and the one who didn’t have her nails done at the salon or painted. Hell, if it was on that hand, it wouldn’t be on there for the most part of the day anyway. Emmer wasn’t a ring kind of girl. In fact, she just wasn’t a jewelry kind of girl either. If she even dressed up in clothes that weren’t reeking of horse, barn, or hard work, I was amazed. And if she was actually wearing nice clothes, my dad was sitting on her, confining her to the house. Once, I think he actually had Rob and Will hold her down, but that was because we were getting ready to go to Billings to have our family photos done and a loose Emmer was one that came back dusty and dirty and surrounded by the sweet aroma of horse and hay.

That could and would never be and I needed to just get that out of my mind. I made my bed and now I had to lay in it. Be a man. Do what I had to do. Sometimes that wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to save face, right? Wasn’t it all about the man everyone respected?

Shoving out of my truck, I walked into the vast amount of nothing that lay behind the heavy wooden door
of my small place. That spot right in the middle of the living room wall now housed the fifty inch flat screen instead of that photo I always pictured being there. A few empty bottles of beer were scattered around the solid oak coffee table not even begging to be thrown away. Why? This was my place. I didn’t have to impress anyone and, sure as hell, no one was going to be living there with me, as I once planned. Trash littered the kitchen counter and there was some kind of stink drifting through the air. I didn’t care. Once Christmas came along, my life wasn’t going to ever be what I dreamed it would.

Kicking off my boots, I just let them lay on the bunched rug at the door. Stepping over the piles of clothes I tossed there after yesterday’s fiasco with muck from the stalls, I stripped right there and left the clothes. Why? Who did I have to pick up for now? Not a damn person. Besides, on the weekends, I hid over at Becky’s cute little house in town, right down the road from the school and on the opposite end of town where I once saved Emmer. Still, I had to drive past that old house where she used to live to remind me of what she had been through.

That was the past and I had to just get over it. So, she was dealt a bad hand at life, but I had been the one to stop it all because of a feeling. It was always a feeling when it came to Emmer. Always. Even before I knew her. When Will told me that some girl in school was stealing his lunches, it hit me then. When she first came to the ranch, that sickening pit in my stomach opened and I knew. The night I found her on the verge of death, it was like I felt every single moment that damn girl went through prior to being thrown out in the freezing cold. And now, I was just disgusted over what I did.

I ruined everything.

I lost her. I had to lose the one woman I wanted everything with. I should have known better, but what was done was done. There was no changing things. If I could, I sure in the hell would. I would for Emmer. She didn’t deserve any of this.

Shoving the door open to my bedroom, I felt the pain swelling into my throat. Maybe if I just came clean to her, let her know what happened, she would forgive me and this misery could be over with. But, I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt her like that. Emmer was the one woman I would never want to hurt, to cause any pain to, and telling her the truth, would devastate her and lose everything. It was just best kept secret for her sake.

Balling up the bag, I tugged the nightstand drawer open, knocking over an empty whisky bottle onto the pile of dirty and clean clothes. So, Thursday night didn’t quite work out as planned. I knew Emmer would be home Friday night and I needed something to ease the pain I caused to myself. Shoving the bag in there, I cursed knowing that ring would never make it to the finger of the one woman it should be on. And that ring meant my life would never be what I wanted it to be.

The floorboards creaked
, making my heart beat again in my chest as it always did when Emmer was around. That damn woman stopped my heart from the time she went back to school until she would be home on the weekends. At least I still had that for the time being. But that had to end soon. Soon, I would put my damn heart to rest along with my hopes and dreams and start my life with the one who I owed it to.    

“Can I talk to you?” Her voice was so soft and so sweet
, making me want to run away; just pack up and leave. I couldn’t have this and I couldn’t handle this. Not now. I was weak and I was really at my wits’ end. She had been gone for so long and I hated it. I hated not having her there at the ranch every day. Emmer was my whole life. Since the day she came to live with us, she was always at my side. Always. Now, I had to manage through the days without her. Soon, I would have to figure out how to live my life with another woman.

Now wasn’t the time. I had to leave. I ha
d to get my mind on Becky and go be with her tonight instead of staying with the temptation that was standing in the doorway to my bedroom. Digging through the pile on the floor, I pulled out some jeans that looked somewhat clean. I hoped they were clean. As if it mattered anyway. Peeling off my shirt, I dropped it onto the pile of clothing in the corner where I always envisioned her nightstand would be when she moved in with me. Yet another vision taken away by my stupidity.

Tossing them on my
bed, I sucked in a deep breath, taking in the sweet linger of her. Hell, she had been with Ben since she had gotten home from school and it was mixing with the perfume that I had bought her for her birthday in April. Going out with Becky was the thing to do; not what I had wanted tonight, but something that I had to do to get away from Emmy. Every time she came home, it was harder and harder to look at her, to be around her knowing just how bad I screwed up. “I don’t have time.”

“Please, Paul.” Walking in, she ignored the fact that I didn’t have my shirt on
and was showing off the tattoo that I had gotten down my side—the cross with the hands praying. It was the one that I had hauled her out of her class to go and get one day out of anger. To Becky, she thought it was because of our whole church thing that Mom had been into, but it wasn’t. To me, those were my hands praying that I would have the strength to get my damn mind back in line. Look at Emmy as my sister and not as I had been. It was deep, deep inside of me since that damn girl had turned eighteen and I had to remind myself she was supposed to be like a sister to me. Not since that day, not since that year before her high school graduation, had I looked at her like a sister.

“What is it, Emmer?” Rolling my eyes over to her, I snatched the dark blue long sleeved tee shirt off the bed and gripped it tightly. This wasn’t the first time that she had been in my place, in my bedroom hanging out, but it had to be the last. “Spill it or get the hell out. I have a date.”

“I know. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Her soft aqua eyes had filled with something strong. Sure, she was home on the weekends, but it was the five days in between that I hated. When she was younger, she always used to be two steps behind me, working right alongside of me. We used to laugh and tease each other as all three of us had. Now, that had changed that day in May. That all had changed when I showed up at her graduation with her crazed horse to watch her cross into adulthood, the very moment I waited for a year to see. “I was hoping that we might be able to go out and watch a movie. We haven’t hung out in a long time and I really miss it.”