Page 64 of On the Way to You

I frowned, because I knew more than he thought about what that sentence meant, about his bad days. I’d even mentioned them last night, right before he put his hands on me. I told him to let me in on the bad days, days I wasn’t supposed to even know about. I wondered if I’d struck a chord with him then, by using the same language he did.

And then I felt sick. Because if that was true, it meant I connected with him in what he thought was a genuine way, when really, I’d cheated.

“Is that why you asked me what made me happy when we met?” I asked after a moment. It was something I hadn’t read yet, something I didn’t even know if he’d written about at all, so I took the opportunity to ask for his answer instead of finding it of my own accord. “Because it was a day where nothing made you feel that way?”

He chuckled, and I latched onto that sound, to the promise behind it.

“No, that’s just what I ask people. I feel like the first thing everyone asks when you meet is, ‘What do you do?’ I’ve always hated that, like a job defines us. So, I ask what makes people happy.” His shoulders lifted a little. “That tells me more about a person than what they do to make money.”

I smiled at that, leaning up on my elbow again so I could see him. “So, you were okay the day we met?”

His eyes were still on the ceiling, but he smiled. “Yeah. That was a good day.”

“And today?”

Emery let out a long breath, finally meeting my gaze as his fingers pulled one of my curls taut before letting it bounce back into place. “Today’s a good day, too.”

His warmth permeated my skin in that moment, and I felt him, all of him, from where his hand touched my waist to where his eyes searched my own.

I didn’t know how long it would last — his smile, his mood, us — but I knew I had that day. And I’d take it.

“Well, then,” I said, rolling until I straddled him, the sheet getting caught between us as I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. “Let’s make the most of it, shall we?”

Emery ordered us room service and we ate breakfast in bed before making our way downstairs to the casino to gamble. Well, Emery gambled — I just stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders while he told everyone at the tables that I was his lucky penny. A little before noon, we packed up the car, Kalo in tow, and we were back on the road with our next stop being Laguna Beach.

It was a perfect day, temperature hanging somewhere in the mid seventies with not a single cloud in the sky. We drove with the top down and I chuckled at the fact that as soon as we’d found that fall weather I’d been dreaming of, we’d left it again. I wondered what it would feel like once we started driving the Pacific Coast Highway, once we reached the tip of California and crossed into the Pacific Northwest.

“We should make it in time for the sunset,” I said, plugging our destination into my phone to check our estimated time of arrival. “Have you ever seen it on the west coast?”

“I have,” Emery answered, flipping his visor down to unclip his sunglasses before sliding them over his eyes. “My family used to vacation in Santa Barbara when I was younger.”

“You and your parents?”

He nodded. “Yep. Three peas in a pod.”

I smiled, unwrapping the dog treat the concierge had given me for Kalo on our way out of the casino. I handed it back to her, rubbing her head before turning back to Emery. “I’m an only child, too.”

At that his expression flattened, and he shifted, his left hand taking the place of the right on the top of the steering wheel.

“I actually had a brother.”

My heart sank at the word.Had— past tense. I racked my brain for any mention of a brother in his journal, but came up empty.

“He… he passed?”

Emery sniffed. “Yeah. It was before I was born, though. My mom was about four months pregnant with me when it happened, so I don’t really have any kind of connection to him. They talk about him, my parents, but it just feels like they’re talking about some family friend I don’t know or something.”

“How old was he?”

“Almost five.”

A jolt hit my heart again, and I pressed my fingertips into my chest, massaging the muscle.

“That must have been really hard for you,” I said as we cleared the city, leaving the busy Vegas strip in our rearview. “Seeing pictures of him and hearing your parents talk about him, but not knowing him yourself.”

Emery’s brows pulled inward, as if he’d never thought about it before. “It was, actually.”

He said it not like a confession, but like a realization, like it was the first time he’d even considered it at all.