Page 30 of Splintered Memories (Ember Hollow Romance #2)

Emersyn

I didn’t know how long I cried. Couldn’t remember the last time I felt like this. I couldn’t remember the last time I let this happen.

I wasn’t sure what I had let myself become in all these years, but I broke apart in August’s arms. I broke until I didn’t recognize the pieces.

Time slipped by and the tears flowed until my body was sore and exhausted. I cried until I physically couldn’t anymore, and I was nothing but a shuddering mess on August’s lap.

His hand moving up and down my back never stilled. Even as my tears did, he kept holding me and comforting me. It was only when I went limp in his arms did he speak.

“Do you need anything?” he whispered in my ear.

I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

August shifted me off his lap and onto the bed. His bed, I realized. He had taken me to his bedroom. The bed was larger than mine—not quite the king-sized that I was used to, but not the single bed in my room .

He stood up, tucking strands of hair behind my ear. His rough fingertips lingered on my skin, and I shivered. I blinked up at him, eyes wide. The enormity of what had happened started to sink in.

Not only did I feel completely shattered, those carefully built walls designed to keep in my emotions nothing but rubble, but I had kissed August.

No, not just kissed—I’d all but attacked him.

My skin heated as he stared at me. I wondered whether he regretted it. He had seemed to enjoy it, but what if he hadn’t? What if he was pretending?

As if he could read the flurry of thoughts inside my brain, August leaned down and pressed his lips against my forehead. “We don’t have to talk about it tonight.”

His expression was unreadable, but I could’ve sworn there was a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to go get you some water. Stay right here.”

Then he was gone, leaving his bedroom door slightly open behind him as his footsteps thudded toward the kitchen.

My fingers curled into the soft blankets of his bed. He had simple bedding, a navy-blue quilted comforter with matching pillowcases. It had been nicely made before we had disturbed it.

I scanned the rest of the room. It was bigger than mine, but not by much. He had a dresser and a bookcase against the right wall. There was one picture hanging next to the bed. I stared at it, my eyes burning again as I blinked away tears.

It was a picture of his family. An older one, because standing right in between Reid and August, was Thea.

She was beaming at the camera from under the arms of her brothers.

August looked so young. Unabashedly happy, with his grin spread from ear to ear.

I wondered whether that August, from so many years ago, had any idea what was in store for his future.

Did he have any idea that this might be the last picture he had ever taken with his little sister?

It was bittersweet, looking at the family photo.

All five of the Ramsey brothers surrounded their sister and were bracketed by their mother and father.

Then it hit me, that even though this family had been forever changed by a calamitous loss, their smiles had not been lost forever.

I focused on Raleigh and Warner. Those were the same smiles I had seen tonight around the dinner table.

Something hit me square in the chest, a feeling I had not acknowledged for so long. It was buried deep beneath my ribs and cautiously unfurled.

Hope.

If the Ramseys could survive, and I’d dare say even thrive, after losing their one and only daughter, maybe there was hope for me to put myself back together again. Maybe I could be better than this mess.

I pressed a hand against my chest, where that frail little blossom of hope dared to grow.

“I’m safe,” I whispered to myself. Willing it to be true.

The sound of August’s footsteps was headed back toward the bedroom, when the doorbell rang.

I frowned, my head snapping toward the open bedroom door. I had no idea what time it was, but despite that, I didn’t think the doorbell rang once since I was here. The only people who came over were August’s brothers, and they never used it.

After a beat of silence, the doorbell rang again. And then again, the person on the doorstep losing their patience .

August let out a low curse as his footsteps headed toward the front door.

My heart sank, but curiosity got the better of me as I peered out of the bedroom door.

August unlocked the dead bolt with a click, and the front door creaked open. I couldn’t see from my position in the threshold of August’s room, but the place was small enough that I heard every word.

“Now is not a good time,” August said, his tone a low warning.

The answering voice had my heart shudder in my chest.

“You are working for me , dammit!” My father’s voice shook as he yelled. He sounded desperate. So unlike the unruffled businessman I remembered. “You have kept her away from me for a week. That’s long enough.”

“I’m not keeping anyone from you. She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I don’t care,” my father snapped.

I hadn’t made the decision, but my feet took me toward him before I stopped them.

August’s back was rigid as he stood in the doorway. My father’s face was visible over August’s shoulder. My breath caught at the sight of him. He looked a mess. More of a mess than I even felt.

His face was unshaven and covered in stubble. He was pale, and purple shadowed his dark eyes. He wore a dress shirt but it was untucked and rumpled. I had never seen him like this before, not even when Delainey died.

“Daddy?” The word left my lips as a breathy squeak.

My father’s eyes cut to me and widened. His shoulders sagged with relief. “Emersyn,” he said. “Are you okay? ”

August looked at me from over his shoulder, not moving his body from where it blocked the doorway.

I wasn’t sure how to answer his question, so I ignored it. “What are you doing here?”

My father’s brows narrowed. “I needed to see you. I needed to know that you were okay.”

My spine stiffened. My chest burned, laced with my newly unbound emotions.

They ricocheted around inside me, almost making me nauseous.

There wasn’t one thing I could focus on.

Normally, it was the anger I clung to when I thought of my father, but there were so many.

There was concern at how much thinner his body looked after only a week.

There was hope that he truly cared about me.

And there was that all-too familiar hatred for everything my siblings and I had been put through under his roof.

I couldn’t fight the tears that surfaced to my eyes, blurring his form in my vision.

“Why?” I choked out. “Why do you act like you care about me?”

I thought he took a step closer, but August wouldn’t move, his body a shield between my father and me.

“I do care about you. You’re my daughter, Emersyn. You’re my—my little girl.” His voice sounded as thick and unsteady as mine.

A fresh cascade of tears rolled down my cheeks as I shook my head. “But you never cared then. You never cared when I was actually little and my mother starved me as a form of ‘ discipline.’”

My lungs seized on a deep breath, and I smeared away the wetness from my eyes with the backs of my hands.

The silence he fell into was deafening. I sniffed, pinning him with a stare that I refused to relent.

His eyes were wide and horrified. His mouth was tight and brow pinched, as if he were in pain.

“Emersyn.” He said my name on a sigh of sadness. “I know I wasn’t a good father to you. I never measured up. I didn’t—I didn’t protect you like I should have.” His voice broke, and a crack formed in my heart.

“Then why didn’t you?” I spat. “Why didn’t you protect me? Protect us?”

“Because I didn’t want to see it,” he hissed. “I didn’t want to believe that the woman I loved, the mother of my children, could ever hurt them.” Shame and guilt coated his words like poison.

I shook my head, because hearing him saying it was like cracking open my chest and yanking out my heart with bare hands.

“I told myself every lie to excuse the things she did. I was convinced that she loved you and could never harm you. I believed those lies until the day that she died and there was nothing left to fuel my delusion. All I had left was you and your brother and my fractured complacency.” My father’s eyes filled with tears, tears I had never seen before.

“It’s too little, too late. I know that, but I am so incredibly sorry, Emersyn. ”

My knees trembled. My brain couldn’t comprehend those words coming out of my father’s mouth. Those complicated and conflicting emotions swelled in me to the point where I thought I was going to explode.

Part of me wanted to run into his arms, but most of me wanted to push him away. I was afraid that he was probably right: it was too little, and it was far too late.

My tears continued to flow. I wasn’t sure they were ever going to stop at this point.

“I want to believe you,” I choked out. “But I don’t know if I can. ”

He deflated, his shoulders hunching in on himself. “I’ve been beside myself,” he said around a sob. “I don’t know where your brother is, and then you went through that awful fire…I just, I had to see your face. Just once.”

“You’ve seen her, but I think you should go now,” August said softly.

My father looked at me as if I might invite him in. I didn’t.

He hung his head, then he nodded. As he turned around to leave, a thought struck me. It was a question that I had forgotten in the tragedy of the last week, but I needed to know.

“If you really care about us, like you say, then why were you walking around town with that despicable man during Emberlight?”

My father frowned, blinking back at me. “You mean Alex Cohen?”

“I mean the man who framed a serial killer for my sister’s murder when it was really his son who had taken her from us.” My voice shook with hatred. I hated Alex Cohen, and there were no conflicting emotions about that.

A flicker of surprise lit through me as my anger was reflected in my father’s face.

A muscle ticced in his jaw as his eyes hardened.

“Because,” he said, voice a low rumble, “it’s important to keep your enemies close.

I know what he did, and I will never forgive him for it.

But as long as he’s walking these streets a free man, I will know about his every move.

And if he ever makes a mistake, I’ll be there to witness it.

I will be certain the whole world knows about it until he’s behind bars, where he belongs. ”

The venom in his tone sent a shiver down my spine.

My father didn’t wait for a response from me. As if he knew that was enough, he turned and walked away. I watched from over August’s shoulder as he got into his expensive, fancy vehicle and drove away.