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“I’ll see you later, killer. It’s getting late. You should run home now so I can get some sleep.”
Cold fury rolls through her eyes. The same I have in me. The type a person feels when they’ve been sliced cleanly to the bone.
“I hate you,” she hisses.
Laughing softly at that, I round my shoulders.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
She stares at me a moment longer before her hands fist and relax, her indecision clear about whether to cut me off at the knees.
“Great. I’m glad we got that cleared up. I’ll see you later, I guess.”
Neither of us speak as she turns to walk across my room and leave, but before she opens the door, Emily pauses with her hand on the knob.
“I have to wonder if you’re doing this to me now as another bet with Mason.”
My body stills in place, disbelief filling my head. How the fuck does she know about that?
She glances over her shoulder at me and smiles, the expression not reaching her eyes.
“I sure hope I’m worth more than five bucks this time. I think you can afford it. I’d like to think my pain is at least worth ten now.”
Our stares dance together, the knife she just tossed firmly embedded in my chest.
“Have a good night, Ezra. Sweet dreams and all that.”
Opening the door before I can respond, Emily turns the corner and disappears down the hall.
Every instinct is telling me to run after her. Every thought is screaming for me to fall at her feet and explain about the reason I first talked to her when we were kids.
Yet I can’t take the first step in her direction. I can’t find my voice in time to scream out for her to stop.
I can’t do anything right when it comes to Emily.
So I punch a wall several times instead, plaster and dust raining down onto my feet.
Emily
The night of the bonfire meant everything to me.
Really, it wasn’t much, and I’m sure other women have experienced a moment like that several times in their lives.
It’s not like Ezra went down on a knee and proposed marriage or anything. It wasn’t like he stared up at me with hope and love behind his eyes while asking me to promise myself to him for the rest of our lives. But it was the closest thing I’d ever get to a moment like that.
He was asking me to be his alone. Admitting who I was to him and begging me to feel the same way. He was stripping the words from my heart and claiming them as his.
Ezra was giving me a moment I never thought I’d have. Not with the arranged marriage. Not with being promised to a man who didn’t want me.
The screwed-up part is I don’t think he knows how much it meant to me.
People have their futures to look forward to growing up, and although that future doesn’t look the same for everyone, there are still milestones we reach.
Getting your driver’s license for the first time, becoming an adult, graduating high school and college, getting married and having children. The list goes on and on, but for me, so many of those milestones were out of reach or without meaning.
At least until Ezra showed up and gave them to me anyway.
He gave me prom.