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“Again,” she said in a clipped voice. “Offense.”
“You werefourteen, Emmy,” he said gently, trying to explain. “But you sure as hell didn’t look it.”
“Oh,” she muttered, looking down at her lap. Or rather her chest. She had been almost that developed at fourteen.
He also remembered a similar look on her face in Joyner’s office that day.
“The age difference between fourteen and seventeen was too damn big. And there were enough people who were gross and inappropriate about you.” He gritted his teeth. “That and I knew if I started kissing you in any context, I would never stop.”
She raised a brow. “Because you didn’t want to be one of thegross people.”
If only she knew the hell she’d gone through. He’d wanted to put his fist through every mouth breather who’d eye-banged her.
He gestured to his chest before dropping his hand. “You have a figure like your mother’s. Very… hourglass. And she had a reputation. When you were in middle and high school, she ran through a lot of men. Not boyfriends. Hookups.”
She sighed, looking at the ceiling. “So that reputation spilled over on me.”
Garrett grimaced. “Did she tell you any of this?”
Emma shook her head. “No. But I’m not surprised. She still… dates.”
He nodded, steering the conversation back to safer ground. “You overheard me asking Joyner for a new partner and became angry. Justifiably. Things deteriorated fast. And I didn’t help matters improve. I intentionally made them worse by being standoffish.”
“You were an asshole.”
He sighed. “Avoiding someone because you’re deeply in lust and can’t do anything about it looks remarkably like assholeness.”
She almost smiled. “I’ll bet it does.”
He raised a brow. “In my defense, you took that ball and ran with it. From zero to mortal enemies in a matter of days.”
“I can’t imagine that,” she said, laughing suddenly. But her humor subsided quickly.
“You’re not that different,” he said, reading her thoughts. “The core of you has not changed.”
She didn’t look convinced, but she appeared willing to let things slide in favor of enlightenment.
“But we did,” she said. “We became much closer.”
“Yes.” He let out a long exhale. “Our need to keep competing and sniping at each other finished when I graduated and went off to Stanford.”
She tilted her head. “I thought we graduated high school the same year.”
“We did,” he clarified. “You went from freshman to junior and ended up in over half my classes because it was a small school. Thereweren’t many classes to begin with. But you blew through the available curriculum too quickly. You technically graduated with me. But your mom thought you were too young to go away for college. That was why you took courses online in the library for another couple of years before leaving Verdant Falls—I’m not sure what your status was.”
He knew that because he still kept tabs on her back then, although he’d been thousands of miles away.
“That’s right. I took a gap year,” she said softly. “The school assumed I was going to travel but I was working and saving up for living expenses and preparing. I wanted to go to business school.”
He nodded. “As did I. I was on my way. And then you graduated and went off to New Haven for college. Your aim, and mine, was to graduate and go to Wharton or Harvard for business school. But that was years away yet for both of us.
“We had to get through college first. You somehow managed to come home for most of the holidays and school breaks. I think you drove down with a friend who lived in another part of the state and took the bus for the last leg.”
He leaned back on the couch, reminiscing for a moment. “I remember the first time you came to one of my parties.”
Surprise flared in her eyes. “I did? Without being invited?”
“Not by choice.” He grinned. “Your friend Katie dragged you.”