Page 6 of Perdition (Unchained Hearts #4)

FOUR

Emily didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the kitchen floor, braced against the back door, but it must have been a while since the sound of a familiar engine pulling into the driveway pulled her from her numbness.

She was also one of Em’s oldest and dearest friends—they’d met in high school, got matching tattoos at eighteen, and had been faithful pen pals while Em and Mads were stationed at Fort Drum for Mads’s training.

She’d been through most of everything in her life with Cheri Marks—the woman knew almost everything about Emily, Mads, and their epic romance. But not everything.

Not more than a minute after Em heard that throaty engine cut out, another familiar sound filled the air; the slap-slap of two-dollar Old Navy flip-flops on the feet of a woman who thought nothing of wearing open-toed shoes even in the dead of winter.

Of course, for safety reasons, she’d wear steel-toed boots in the garage, but once she left the shop, her feet were as loose as her brain-to-mouth filter.

“Yo! Bitch!” Cheri bellowed from the living room. “Where the hell are you?”

“In here,” Em squeaked out through a throat gone dry and narrow. She sat forward, preparing to push to her knees and then to her feet, when her friend came through the arched doorway from the hallway leading from the living room.

Cheri, with her thick red hair pulled back into a sloppy bun, just barely held of her face by an American flag bandana on her forehead, came to an abrupt stop.

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor?” she barked, planting her hands on her ample hips. The woman had legs like a model, and the face of a doll, but the curves and attitude were all sassy pin-up.

Not like Em’s curves, which were born of unshed baby weight, her love of carbs, and poor genetics from her Scottish ancestry, when having ample fat stores was the difference between starvation and survival during a harsh, lean winter.

Not that her body knew she wasn’t starving to death in the Scottish highlands, so she hung on to all that stubborn weight, no matter how many carbs she cut, miles on the treadmill she ran, or iffy diet pills she took.

“Did you slip and fall on all those tears?” Cheri asked, her expression now one of deep concern as her gaze took in Em’s face, which was probably puffy and red from her sobbing.

Em grunted in answer, not all that ready to start talking—she needed liquid fire courage first—she finished rising to her knees. Then Cheri was there, helping her to her feet. With grunting and moaning, Em stood, and met Cheri’s concerned green gaze.

“What the hell, Em?” she began again, this time her voice was pinched with worry.

“You send me that text and then I come here to find the code on the door isn’t working, and you on the floor—thankfully you left the garage door open.

I closed that for you, by the way. What the hell happened, baby cakes? ”

Damn, she’d forgotten that she’d changed the codes and hadn’t given Cheri the new ones. Too much had happened too quickly.

Without thinking, Em blurted, “I changed the lock codes to the doors.” Doors that had only ever been open to the man who owned the house…and her heart.

Grass-green eyes narrowed as understanding clicked in Cheri’s brain.

Nostrils flaring, cheeks turning red, lips thinning, she growled, “What did that motherfucker do?”

What hadn’t he done?

“He….” Hell, she couldn’t force the words past her lips, they were too jagged.

Cheri cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “Did that fucker cheat?”

Stunned that her friend, who knew Mads better than most people, jumped to that thought immediately, Em simply blinked at her, willing air into her suddenly constricted lungs.

No, Em had no proof that he’d fucked Sarah, but him taking the skank to their spot was almost as bad. Either way, he’d given a part of himself, something he’d only given to Em, to another woman.

Emotional cheating was still cheating, and it was potentially for more devastating than physical cheating.

With physical cheating, the pain of the betrayal could fade away, along with whatever memory the cheater had of the physical pleasure and the desire for the other woman, as desire often did.

Desire and lust without emotion, without connection, was empty, easily replaced, forgotten.

But emotional cheating had roots, deep, gnarly, and hard to kill.

Once it had entrenched itself in a person, completely removing that emotion—those intimate feelings for someone other than your partner—was nearly impossible…

at least not without completely destroying everything around it.

“Did that asshole stick his pencil dick in one o’ those club bitches?” Cheri snarled, and Em sighed.

She answered honestly, agonizingly, “I…I don’t know, Cheri.”

Cheri growled low in her ample chest.

“I’m gonna rip off his dick and stick it in a hot tail pipe, then I’m gonna rip out his tongue and making him rim his own ass.”

Em gasped. “Cheryl Lynn Marks!”

Despite the murderous look in her eyes, Cheri snickered. “Don’t go usin’ my full name like that; the only people allowed to do that are the law and the man tying me down to the bed. Either way, I’ve been naughty.”

Em couldn’t help it, she gasped again, but it turned into a belly laugh, the first such deep, brilliant, unfettered laugh in a long, long time.

Too long.

She hadn’t felt the urge to laugh with such abandon since….

The night before the kids moved into their dorms.

That was the last night they’d all been together without the hoopla of a holiday celebration. That had been the last night she’d felt…whole. Complete. Like part of something good and beautiful and…unbroken.

Things were broken, and if what she’d overheard Mads admitting in his office was true, they’d been broken for longer than she knew.

“…you are too young to be stuck—you have a full life ahead of you. You cannot let yourself be locked down with just one person….”

Word for word. That’s what he’d said. Those were the killing words that thrust the knife the deepest. He’d been speaking to Sarah, but he’d been gutting Emily, tearing out her heart, shredding her lungs, and drowning her soul.

Those words had left Em bleeding, suffocating on the blood, and then fighting to surface against waves of agony.

“Cheri…I don’t know what to do….” She swallowed but couldn’t stop the ball of tears from rising into her eyes, spilling down her face to burn tracks of salt and despair along her cheeks.

“Things haven’t been right for a while, and I’d stupidly hoped…

I’d hoped that it was just growing pains, that we were just adjusting to our new life without Sorsha and War at home. ”

Their twins, who’d turned ninteen that winter, were living the dream in college.

They still called home often, visited when classes permitted, but mostly they were happily experiencing the life of college students—War more than Sorsha, since Sorsha was the shy one and Warwick was the life of any party.

As fraternal twins, the two were closer than any typical brother and sister, but they were as different as night and day, which worked for them because they balanced each other out.

They weren’t going to be happy when they realized things weren’t so fabulous at home, and Em was terrified of that. She’d hidden her unhappiness well—at least she thought she had—so the discord between their parents would come as a blow to them.

God…when had things gotten so freaking messy?

And it’s going to get messier…isn’t it?

Cheri sighed then wrapped her arms around Em and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug. But damn, the woman was scary strong.

“Pack a bag for a few days; you’re comin’ home with me,” Cheri commanded. “I just bought a bottle of that wine you like, and we can get blasted, make bad decisions, and you can just let it be for a night. Tomorrow, we’re gonna talk about all the shit that’s been dimming the light in my Em’s eyes.”

She knew. Cheri knew that Em had been hiding things, but that wasn’t a surprise; the woman was perceptive as hell.

Apparently, her bestie was done waiting for Em to spill the tea, because she was bringing out the big guns—wine and a sleepover.

Em hummed, closing her eyes, taking the comfort where she could get it.

She only hoped that once she’d bared it all, she would still be strong enough to stand and, if necessary, walk away.

Expelling a heavy breath, Em replied, “Fine, we’ll have a sleepover.” Her expression hardened as her hands curled into fists. “But first, we have some shit to do.”

Standing in line at the Sheetz gas station was not what she’d originally planned for her evening.

Truthfully, she’d hoped that after dropping off Mads’s jeans, she’d find him in his office, they’d talk for the first time in too long, and he’d tell her how much he missed her.

Then, he’d tell her he was taking her to dinner, then home, to “ werk the bedsprings .”

It had been so freaking long since she’d even seen her gorgeous husband naked she was stuck using old pics of him in uniform to jelly her bean.

It was those nights she felt the most pathetic.

So, of course she wanted her husband to see her, admit he missed her, then make her come so hard and so often she couldn’t walk let alone sit upright for days.

But none of that had happened.

Instead, she’d been dragged from her own home by her bestie, who was expecting Em at her apartment in thirty minutes, which meant Em only had another ten minutes to spare in line, waiting for her turn to pay for gas.

She sighed and crossed her arms, annoyed.

Frustrated. Desperate for the cheese platter and wine Cheri had promised her as a reward for packing her bag for a long weekend, and getting her ass in her car.

They took tequila off the table when they agreed that morning after hangovers were not conducive to deep, soul-bearing conversations like the one Cheri was pushing for, and Em was grudgingly preparing for.

The next person in line moved forward, scooching their armload of snack purchases toward the harried looking Latino in the Sheetz t-shirt and visor. His name tag read “Dominic.”

Only two people left in front of her.

Ugh. Em heaved another sigh. Why was she always so fussy about using cash for non-online purchases? She even used cash for groceries, which always drove the kids crazy when she’d stand at the cash register, counting out change—totally embarrassing for preteens with an image to maintain.

Just thinking that made her roll her eyes.

She used cash because that’s how her grandma taught her financial responsibility.

Once cash was spent, that was it. Not so with credit cards, which could be collected and run until empty, one after the other—and suddenly, you were up to your eyeballs in debt.

Even from a young age, Emily knew she didn’t want to owe anyone anything.

She didn’t even have a business loan for Flower’s Blooms; the Unchained MC were her investors, and she’d paid back every penny—and then some in interest—so she could do business without worrying over MC interests.

Finally, she was at the register, paid, and was headed back to her car.

She had five minutes to get to Cheri’s, and she was feeling the urgency.

Realistically, she knew there wasn’t any real danger in being late, but one didn’t make Cheri mad unless they were asking to have their asses handed to them—verbally and physically.

Then again, Cheri was Em’s best friend, had been for decades, so she wasn’t feeling as alarmed as most people would be.

Pointing her Durango toward Cheri’s house, Em tensed when her cell rang through the car’s Bluetooth system.

It was Mads.

And she knew exactly what he was calling about.

With a sneer and an aching heart, she hit ignore.

She needed space to think about how shitty her marriage had become over the last year. And she definitely needed to think about what she overheard in Frost’s office. And she really needed to think about what she was going to do if it all fell apart.

When the phone rang twice more, one on top of the other, the pang in Em’s chest clanged along with it. She’d never not picked up when Mads called before; she always answered, because that’s what good wives did, that’s what women who love their husbands did—and God she loved that man so damn much.

But then she remembered all the times she’d called him, and he hadn’t answered. All the read but unanswered texts. All the nights with the empty bed and even emptier promises.

She turned off her phone, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and swallowed down her sobs.

She’d cry later.