“I’m serious.” My head is buzzing and pounding. “I love her. I—” I turn to spit in the grass. “Maybe I always did, I don’t know.”
He looks up at me with one eye, the other already swelling shut. The Devils left. Apparently, none of them were willing to be witness to the two of us pummeling one another. Aubrey stayed the longest, begging us to stop, but even she knew there was no stopping this confrontation. It’s about four long years in the making.
As I stand here, nursing my wounds, it’s almost a relief to have it done. There’s an ominous, angry rumble of thunder rolling in the distance, and the air feels charged with the coming storm.
“Goddamn it, Reyn, she doesn’t need your bullshit!” he says, teeth clenched. “She deserves better than you.”
I slump down against a car. I’m not sure whose it is, but it’s sturdy against my back when I slide down, settling against its driver’s side door. “I know,” I agree, raising my face toward the cloudy night sky. “She deserves better. But she deserves what she wants, even more than that.”
“How convenient,” he sneers, but when he goes to stand, he wobbles, landing hard on the ground against another car. He looks briefly surprised by it, face eventually puckering into a glower. “Vandy doesn’t know what she wants.”
I shake my head. “You’re wrong, Em. She knows, just as much as any of us do.”
He volleys back, “And if you love her so fucking much, then what the hell with Sydney? I mean, are you fucking kidding me? This is exactly what I was talking about, you’re already screwing around with—”
“That’s bullshit!” It almost makes me want to start the fighting again. Almost. “I’m not my dad, okay? You know me better than this!”
“I know there’s a picture!”
I bark a humorless laugh that gets stuck in my throat. The picture. That fucking picture. How do I explain that? Sydney was right. She really had shown me a bitter bitch. “She jumped me on the way to the gym. She was pissed off and drunk, saying all kinds of crap about V. I jumped to her defense, and it just pissed her off more. That kiss lasted a fraction of a second before I shoved her away. There must have been someone else there taking video.” I push back my hair, sweaty on my forehead, waiting for the inevitable disbelief. When Emory just sits there, blinking at me through one eye, I wave a hand. “Go on. Tell me how full of shit I am.”
Emory takes an inhale that looks painful and releases it in a loud, booming laugh. He doubles over, wheezing, and I’m completely flummoxed as I watch. He raises his head to speak, but it dies off into more of that annoying, wheezed laughter.
I scowl at him. “What’s so funny, exactly?”
Still laughing, he points a finger at me. “You,” he manages to eke out.
I roll my eyes. “Great.”
Eventually, he leans back against the car, wiping his eye. He’s still panting, but he sucks in a big breath and says, simply, “I believe you.”
I eye him warily. “You do?”
“Completely.” He lifts a shoulder. “That’s a classic Syd maneuver.”
“Well, I’m glad it could amuse you,” I sneer. “Because I’m fucked.”
“Oh, you’re absolutely fucked.” He nods. “Totally fucked. Colossally fucked. They don’t even make words yet for how fucked you are. Because like I’ve been fucking saying,” his voice roughens to a tight growl, all mirth gone from his face, “V is naïve! She doesn’t have experience, Reyn. She doesn’t know when she’s being yanked around yet.”
“I wonder why!” I gesture widely. “You and your parents never let her do anything! Maybe if you’d loosened the fucking reins a little, she’d know by now what an asshole really looks like! But then she wouldn’t need you, would she? Her big bad brother, always standing between her and anything even remotely exciting.”
“It’s not like that.” His smile is back, but it’s sharper now. Meaner. “You think I enjoy this? You think it’s fun staying up all night worrying about her? You think I like the fact my stomach lining is getting eaten away by all this fucking stress? Sure, it’s a real party, puking my guts out when she gets into a car with someone else. It’s a blast seeing my mom drop everything when V has the tiniest problem, but never even fucking asking me why I can’t keep dinner down. Seriously, you think I like this?” He gestures to the space between us. “You think I like beating the shit out of my best friend, even though I can’t even blame him?” He lifts a shoulder in a belligerent shrug. “Because I can’t. The two people I love most in this world love each other. It’s the only thing that’s made sense to me in years.”
I look at him, my jaw gone slack. “Then why—!”
“Because that’s not how this works!” he yells, voice cracking. “You don’t get to do what we did, and then just act like we fucking deserve to be anything more.” He swipes a knuckle under his nose, head shaking. “Nah, dude. You and me? We made our bed.”
“Emory…” I rub my eyes, not unaware of the irony of what I’m about to say. “Vandy doesn’t blame you, and even if she did, she would have forgiven you ages ago.
Fuck, she’s already forgiven me.”
He peers at me through a slitted eye. “When?”
“That night she fell asleep at my house.”
Emory scoffs derisively. “You had no right to ask for that.”
“I didn’t ask.” I shrug. “You need to forgive yourself, you can’t just—you can’t just keep living your life like it’s a goddamn prison sentence. It’s not what she wants, and the more you do it…” I sigh, head feeling heavy. “You’re driving her away, Em.”