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Nope. Not even close. “Maybe you should sit down.”
Phil covered her face with her hands. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to marry Emmaline Mendez. Don’t you dare.”
Garrett straightened his shoulders. “I already married her. It’s been a few months.”
Phil staggered to a brocaded wingback chair, collapsing gracefully. “Are you trying to hurt me?”
The genuine pain in her voice dug into his gut like claws.
He sat on the matching ottoman in front of her.
“No, I’m not,” he said with gentle firmness, putting his hand on hers. “This has nothing to do with you or her mother. It’s about me and Emma and the fact that I love her. I have since high school.”
“What?” Phil’s face twisted skeptically. “You barely even knew her back then.”
“I didn’t talk about her, but I knew her,” he corrected. “We didn’t get together until much later. We had a brief relationship when we were in college.”
His aunt opened her mouth to interrupt. He held up a hand, forestalling her. “Please. I promise I will tell you everything you need to know, but first I have to ask, did you know about Emma’s accident?”
Phil blinked. “The hit-and-run in the woods?”
He’d expected that answer, but it was a blow nonetheless.
“Garrett? What’s wrong?” Phil asked, alarmed by the expression on his face.
He took a deep breath, trying to get ahold of himself. “I am upset, but I get it. You didn’t know she was important to me.”
He looked up to find his aunt wide-eyed, watching him like a woman taking out her garbage only to be confronted by a bear next to the bins.
“That woman—Mariana—left town after the accident,” Phil said carefully. “I heard the daughter was in the hospital for a long time. I… I would have mentioned it had I known that you were interested.”
“It’s my fault you didn’t.” He’d been too fucking proud and secretive.
He was man enough to admit he should have been more open about his relationship with Emma. Not just with his aunt, but also his friends from high school. Instead, he’d gone scorched earth on anything to do with Verdant Falls after Emma had stopped calling him.
The only exception was his partnership with Fletcher, but he hadn’t needed to come home to reconnect with him after college. Fletcher had sought him out.
He had no one to blame but himself for losing Emma for so long.
“I saw Emma again by chance in San Diego, working in my building,” he told Phil. “She hasn’t fully recovered from the hit-and-run. I wanted to take care of her. She needed health insurance. So I talked her into marrying me eight weeks ago.”
Phil glowered at him. “That sounds like something your father would do.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
His father wouldneverhave married Emma. He’d have set her up as his mistress for a year or two before replacing her with a newer model.
“I won her over eventually. But the hit-and-run caused memory problems. Emma lost everything from before the accident.”
Phil straightened in her chair. “I hadn’t realized it was that serious.”
He was relieved to hear that. If she’d known the extent, he’d keep blaming himself for not questioning her on old town gossip.
“It was bad,” he said, his voice growing thick with incipient tears. “When she woke up from her coma, she had no memory of being pregnant or giving birth. She was in no shape to care for a child. Her mother decided to tell everyone the baby was hers.”
His aunt’s questioning stare scoured his face, before transforming into a grimace of horror.
“That’s not funny!” she snapped.